# Preparing for full OLL



## Myachii (Jan 24, 2015)

Recently I decided I would have a go at learning full OLL. Right in the middle of my revision for my May - June exams. I am not a smart person.
But once I have an idea like this, I won't stop till I've done it.
I've spent the past two days, instead of learning the actual algorithms themselves, preparing this hideous paper waste:







It might not actually look big but each of those sheets of paper is quite large.






Therefore, the collective group of algorithms + the top sheet is taller than me (there is probably room for one more row beneath the bottom row before the floor)

Above the algorithms I have a standard Cubewhiz print-out with the algs I already know crossed out.






Next to this is the interesting part, i.e the bulk of my two days work. These sheets of paper give detailed descriptions of what each case looks like, and also which cases look similar and how to differentiate between them.






All in all a massive pain to produce. But now I probably have a massive recognition headstart so yay


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## Lazy Einstein (Jan 24, 2015)

That is a pretty good setup. I just made a Google Doc, printed it off, and took to out with me when I was learning. I like how big your drawings are.

I suggest trying out different algs for each case before you settle on the alg you are going to learn. You may find algs you like better than Bob's. Here are a ton of OLLs.


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## Smiles (Jan 24, 2015)

Lazy Einstein said:


> That is a pretty good setup. I just made a Google Doc, printed it off, and took to out with me when I was learning. I like how big your drawings are.
> 
> I suggest trying out different algs for each case before you settle on the alg you are going to learn. You may find algs you like better than Bob's. Here are a ton of OLLs.



I agree. don't take shortcuts by memorizing an alg, then using the mirror alg for the mirror case (unless it's really nice, like fat sune or something like that).
I did that because I was ambidextrous or something, but it's much faster to use your dominant hand for (almost) every case.


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## Rocky0701 (Jan 24, 2015)

Looks like an awesome start you have! All I did when I started learning OLL was make note cards, maybe that's why I only know like 2/3 of them. Great commitment, and at this rate I bet you should easily have them all down in two or three weeks.


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## Seanliu (Jan 24, 2015)

Wow. Could you type this up and post this somewhere? I think this is gonna be a great source of info! Then what I need to do is just modify some of the more horrible left-handed algs...


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## MM99 (Jan 24, 2015)

Just learn ZZ instead


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## Myachii (Jan 24, 2015)

Lazy Einstein said:


> That is a pretty good setup. I just made a Google Doc, printed it off, and took to out with me when I was learning. I like how big your drawings are.
> 
> I suggest trying out different algs for each case before you settle on the alg you are going to learn. You may find algs you like better than Bob's. Here are a ton of OLLs.



Thanks! And I did use badmephisto's OLL algorithm list as well. I would draw each OLL, then review both Bob's and Bad's algorithms, perform them both, and see which one flowed nicer for me.



Rocky0701 said:


> Looks like an awesome start you have! All I did when I started learning OLL was make note cards, maybe that's why I only know like 2/3 of them. Great commitment, and at this rate I bet you should easily have them all down in two or three weeks.



Thanks, I figured I would learn them now because I'm sick of being stuck at 18s. I stopped for a good three/four months at the end of 2014, and got back into it after the UK Championship. After about a month I went from ~20s average to ~17-18s and haven't moved since, so I want to get all the algs out of the way so I can knuckle down and practice.



Seanliu said:


> Wow. Could you type this up and post this somewhere? I think this is gonna be a great source of info! Then what I need to do is just modify some of the more horrible left-handed algs...



Do you mean the algs or the Looks/Similarities?
If you mean the latter, then it might be a bit difficult to understand (I made it so I would understand the abbreviations)

For example, here is the description for case 53:
When TC in UBL, TC← Bar of 3 on R
TC means trapped corner, UBL is the position.

If you want me to type it all up I guess it wouldn't be too difficult, but you may struggle with understanding it.


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## CriticalCubing (Jan 24, 2015)

That is excellent. But I would do it more on PC so as to not waste paper. I have an OLL image I made where I cross off OLLs I learnt with paint and then I have a OLL doc which I refer anytime as it is also on my mobile and PC. So whenever I want to learn OLL algs, just pop open mobile, get a cube and do it. I am also going to do OLL tutorials from February so check that out


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## Myachii (Jan 24, 2015)

CriticalCubing said:


> That is excellent. But I would do it more on PC so as to not waste paper. I have an OLL image I made where I cross off OLLs I learnt with paint and then I have a OLL doc which I refer anytime as it is also on my mobile and PC. So whenever I want to learn OLL algs, just pop open mobile, get a cube and do it. I am also going to do OLL tutorials from February so check that out



I would do something like that, but I prefer to have a complete list of everything I need right in front of me. I don't particularly learn algs well using a PC, I prefer to write them down and learn from my own handwriting.


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## sneaklyfox (Jan 24, 2015)

Ok, it's good to prepare this way. I just don't get why such large pieces of paper. Smaller makes it easier to flip through. I used flash cards.


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## Dong (Jan 24, 2015)

If I average ~20 sec, should I start to memorize full OLL?
Should take me 1 week, I'm good at this stuff.


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## obelisk477 (Jan 24, 2015)

Dong said:


> If I average ~20 sec, should I start to memorize full OLL?
> Should take me 1 week, I'm good at this stuff.



Yes. Now is a good time to start learning.


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## Myachii (Jan 24, 2015)

Dong said:


> If I average ~20 sec, should I start to memorize full OLL?
> Should take me 1 week, I'm good at this stuff.



Normally I would say no, but if you can get it down in a week, go for it.



sneaklyfox said:


> Ok, it's good to prepare this way. I just don't get why such large pieces of paper. Smaller makes it easier to flip through. I used flash cards.



I didn't have smaller square paper, and my post-it notes seem to have come without the sticky back xD


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## sneaklyfox (Jan 24, 2015)

Myachii said:


> I didn't have smaller square paper, and my post-it notes seem to have come without the sticky back xD



I would have cut it in quarters then. But whatever. It's your paper. Use it how you like. Good luck learning.


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## Dong (Jan 24, 2015)

obelisk477 said:


> Yes. Now is a good time to start learning.



Yeah I suppose 



Myachii said:


> Normally I would say no, but if you can get it down in a week, go for it.



A week of dedication.. oh noes! But yeah, gotta go find comfortable OLLs that aren't on Bob Burton's printable page. oh boi!

thanks m8s


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## Myachii (Jul 16, 2015)

Wow. What a journey.

I posted the OP on January 23rd, and completely ignored the monstrosity of algs that took up a large chunk of my wall for a long time.
Today, on July 16th, I've learnt them all.

This wasn't a long, one alg a week process. I knew only 21 OLL's up until about 4 days ago, when I just decided that I needed to get it over with.
Around mid-June I decided I wanted to commit to this. With 36 algs left to learn, I decided I'd do two a day starting July 1st and then spend the remainder of the month drilling the algs ready for TGN, a competition on August 1st and 2nd.
On July 1st I did my first two. And then I stopped. I just forgot completely about the two a day until around 4 days ago.
On the first of these few days I did 3 or 4 algs. Then the next day, I was extremely bored. So I simply ploughed through them. 

On the 14th and 15th July I learnt around 25 algorithms. Today I did the final six.
I was very surprised at how easily I was remembering them. After only 10 minutes or so of practice and getting used to them, they were stuck.
Also, I was taught 2 new J perms (I had no idea the ones I was using weren't the mainstream ones), and a new improved alg for the bowtie case (diagonals) of OLL.
So in about four days I've learnt upwards of 35 algorithms. And I remember every one of them.

Here is the stack of algorithms that were taken down one by one from my wall:





Here is the checklist, completed:





Thanks for all the support you guys gave when I first created this wall of algorithms.


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## cashis (Jul 16, 2015)

proud <3


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## Rubiks560 (Jul 16, 2015)

Congrats!

This really makes me want to tackle things like VLS. Been a long time since I tackled a big alg set.


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## CubeWizard23 (Jul 16, 2015)

Man.. i wish i had that kinda dedication 30 + algs in a week

mad skilz bro


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## OrigamiCuber1 (Jul 16, 2015)

That's great! I could never do that. But then again I don't actually need to know full OLL... ever... pls don't ask why.


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## Myachii (Jul 16, 2015)

Rubiks560 said:


> Congrats!
> 
> This really makes me want to tackle things like VLS. Been a long time since I tackled a big alg set.



Go for it  This has inspired me to consider learning something huge like ZBLL next year. I think if I do it will be in the Summer as far away from all exams as possible xD
I'm probably going to have a look at COLL or WVLS after the competition.


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## zipper (Jul 16, 2015)

still working on my OLLs. 7 more to learn( 4 L-shapes , 2 P-shapes and 1 bar pattern) . Started learning 1,5years ago. also tried learning 10alg-s per day but failed. next day i had forgot them all.
i average about 30-25sec , pb is 17sec. cross+f2l takes me 20+sec most of the time and LL is 10sec max(usually 5-6sec)


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## PenguinsDontFly (Jul 17, 2015)

Myachii said:


> Wow. What a journey.
> 
> I posted the OP on January 23rd, and completely ignored the monstrosity of algs that took up a large chunk of my wall for a long time.
> Today, on July 16th, I've learnt them all.
> ...



thats crazy! congrats! 1 question. why is each alg 1 whole page??? waste of paper and ink much...



OrigamiCuber1 said:


> That's great! I could never do that. But then again *I don't actually need to know full OLL*... ever... pls don't ask why.



me too.


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## molarmanful (Jul 17, 2015)

Pssh, y'all are noobs. I figured out all non-dot OLL's and the COLL's, then edge controlled so I would never get dot OLL's.

Just kidding, great work!


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## cuberkid10 (Jul 17, 2015)

I've been working on full OLL for the past 4 years... I really need your level of motivation!


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## fiftyniner (Jul 17, 2015)

Congratz!

As a working adult with a family, it took me a few months to learn up PLL and 2 years for OLL. 
But then I (regretfully) took some shortcuts (mirroring some right hand algs - which is now a pain as I near to breaking out of the 20s)

All my OLL algs are in two-sided A4 coloured printout.


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## rubikmaster (Jul 17, 2015)

I just learned full OLL about a week and a half ago. Well, almost full OLL. I still know only 1 dot case (the one with all the edges flipped cause it's kewl) so I'm at 50/57. My story is actually insanely similar to OP's. I knew 14 of them when I started out and originally I planned to divide up the learning process to at least 6 or 7 days. And then when I started out, just sitting on the couch with my spreadsheets, I just kept going through all of them and I realised this was so much easier than I had expected. The algs were super-easy to learn, most of them were either similar to algorithms I already knew (e.g. fat sune, fat antisune and their mirrors, so that's 4 algs you don't even need to learn, your only problem is being able to recognize them) or made up of easy trigger moves or just made up of different ways to take out an F2L pair and put it back in. By the end of the day I had already learned roughly 30 algs meaning I now knew a total of 40-something algs. And the total amount of time I had spent on the learning process was maybe 3 hours. 

During the next couple of days I mainly focused on practicing to recognize each case and execute algorithms since recognition was my main problem, I could easily execute all of the algorithms even though I had done very little practice on them. But when recognizing some of the cases I would either not be able to recall which algorithm I needed to do or I'd do a wrong one, sometimes I'd just forget from which position I needed to execute the alg. So I would do a bunch of LL scrambles and practice only OLL and my main focus was just going through the cases, figuring out which ones I had trouble with and making sure that I associate each algorithm to it's case. I casually learned a few more algs along the way and got to a total of 50 a few days ago and I've just been too lazy to learn the remaining 7, but I'll get to it. 

I'd say the most important thing about learning algs IMO is learning to recall the alg once you see a particular case. When I was learning PLL 4 years ago, I actually found it harder to memorize the algs rather than recognizing the cases. So it was the other way around. I think that was the case because of multiple reasons: 
a) PLL is a bit easier to recognize (I know that at least more than half of the OLLs are really easy to recognize but there are some tricky ones)
b) I learned PLL at a much slower rate (only 3-4 algs a day and I probably had days when I learned none) so obviously I had no trouble with mixing up the cases
c) I didn't know how to properly memorize algs at the time


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## cashis (Jul 17, 2015)

Why are people so opposed to mirroring algs? I know the mirror to most of my OLLs, they're just as fast.


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## molarmanful (Jul 17, 2015)

cashis said:


> Why are people so opposed to mirroring algs? I know the mirror to most of my OLLs, they're just as fast.


*It really depends on who you are™. *For me, my left hand has a different turning style than my right hand (I know it's weird, I'll probably make a thread and video on that later). This basically means that I execute different algorithms differently when mirrored (which might be the *case* (haha punz) with most people).

Example: My lefty T-perm is regripless and very fluid (very Joseph Skyler-esque), but my righty T-perm is much more choppy but executes finger tricks much more quickly. In this case, I prefer my lefty T-perm, but in other cases, say lefty vs. righty Sune, I prefer righty Sune.

However, I have no problem mirroring algorithms because both hands are about the same speed. It's just that other people might be faster/more comfortable on right/left, so they prefer that hand.


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## mpcuber1 (Jul 17, 2015)

Congratulations! I still need to learn four more algorithms, but I'm lazy these days.  
For me, mirroring algorithms has been helpful and I've learnt a handful of OLLs that way (and one PLL).


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## mpcuber1 (Jul 17, 2015)

molarmanful said:


> *It really depends on who you are™. *For me, my left hand has a different turning style than my right hand (I know it's weird, I'll probably make a thread and video on that later). This basically means that I execute different algorithms differently when mirrored (which might be the *case* (haha punz) with most people).
> 
> Example: My lefty T-perm is regripless and very fluid (very Joseph Skyler-esque), but my righty T-perm is much more choppy but executes finger tricks much more quickly. In this case, I prefer my lefty T-perm, but in other cases, say lefty vs. righty Sune, I prefer righty Sune.
> 
> However, I have no problem mirroring algorithms because both hands are about the same speed. It's just that other people might be faster/more comfortable on right/left, so they prefer that hand.



I'd have to agree with everything you said. I was playing around with my cube one today and managed to do a lefty t perm, which I think is helpful for the auf. It also reduces algorithm count.


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## Isaac Lai (Jul 17, 2015)

I realised I actually know 27/57, so I guess I will try and learn full OLL soon (hopefully I don't procrastinate)


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## Myachii (Jul 17, 2015)

Isaac Lai said:


> I realised I actually know 27/57, so I guess I will try and learn full OLL soon (hopefully I don't procrastinate)



If you don't want to learn them all in a few days, I'd suggest doing maybe 3 or 4 a day for a couple of weeks and you'll soon get the hang of them.



zipper said:


> still working on my OLLs. 7 more to learn( 4 L-shapes , 2 P-shapes and 1 bar pattern) . Started learning 1,5years ago. also tried learning 10alg-s per day but failed. next day i had forgot them all.
> i average about 30-25sec , pb is 17sec. cross+f2l takes me 20+sec most of the time and LL is 10sec max(usually 5-6sec)



If you have only 7 more to learn, I'd say do maybe 2 or 3 a day for a couple of days and constantly drill them.



cuberkid10 said:


> I've been working on full OLL for the past 4 years... I really need your level of motivation!



Thanks! My motivation was literally me just being sick of not knowing them all xD Set aside as much time as you can spare and just go for it, you'll be surprised how quickly they disappear  And also, when learning the algs it's a good idea to try an OLL time attack every now and then (you get a list of all the OLL's, then start the timer, do all the ones you know, then stop the timer) as it really helps to solidify the recognition in your mind.


cashis said:


> Why are people so opposed to mirroring algs? I know the mirror to most of my OLLs, they're just as fast.



I agree, I never really understood that. At least 5 of my algs are simply mirrored versions of others I use.



molarmanful said:


> Pssh, y'all are noobs. I figured out all non-dot OLL's and the COLL's, then edge controlled so I would never get dot OLL's.
> 
> Just kidding, great work!



Thanks!



fiftyniner said:


> Congratz!
> 
> As a working adult with a family, it took me a few months to learn up PLL and 2 years for OLL.
> But then I (regretfully) took some shortcuts (mirroring some right hand algs - which is now a pain as I near to breaking out of the 20s)
> ...



I kinda had the advantage of 2 and a half months off after finishing my GCSE's 



rubikmaster said:


> I knew 14 of them when I started out and originally I planned to divide up the learning process to at least 6 or 7 days. And then when I started out, just sitting on the couch with my spreadsheets, I just kept going through all of them and I realised this was so much easier than I had expected. The algs were super-easy to learn, most of them were either similar to algorithms I already knew



I know right? PLL algs are quite unique (apart from the ones with more than one alg like Na and Nb) and they take a bit of time getting used to. OLL algs are just a bunch of combined triggers and a little bit of new stuff for some strange cases every now and then.

In my opinion, despite having nearly triple the algs, learning Full OLL is only a tiny bit more difficult than learning full PLL.
My example is that there were only two OLL's that I got really stuck on. For OLL #30 I just couldn't find an alg that worked for me, so I spent ages practicing a few and getting nowhere. For OLL #55, I was determined to learn the WR OLL because of how fluid it seemed. I spent ages trying to get used to the finger movements and I eventually got the hang of it. 

For PLL, it took me 2 hours total to finally learn the four G perms, because I simply couldn't tell the difference a lot of the time.

If you're looking to learn full OLL but are put off by the large number of algs, go for it! You'll be surprised how many triggers (like R U R' U' and R' F R F') are used, and you'll have them down in no time!


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