Hey guys, its me CriticalCubing and Mats Valk recently got the WR using the Valk3. Let us see what we can learn from him
This is the same scramble as the one as Mats got and Mats is a dual color neutral solver, so he either solves blue cross, or green cross
If we check out the blue and green cross, we can see that green cross is better.
In green cross, we can already see 2 edges that are nicely placed adjacent to each other in relation to each other
If you do a D move to fix your cross, red is matching with red and yellow is matching with yellow
The next edge for solving the cross is this orange one which is conveniently placed in here and you can place down bu doing one move like this
The last edge for your cross is this green and white one and this can also be placed down by doing L2, like this
The cross is pretty easy in this one, however the first pair is also easy
you have this pair, and this pair is only affected by the D move that you do for matching the center and cross piece
and lastly, the R2 that you do for inserting this white edge, once you are done, it will be in this position
If you want to lookahead even more further you have this corner which is affected by the L move that you do
for inserting this edge and the edge for this corner is back here which is affected by the R2 that you do for solving the white edge
Your first 2 pairs are in here and here. Just during inspection, you already have first 2 pairs out for you, hence maximizing your lookahead
Let us solve the cross now. You first insert this orange pair with L move like this and then you do a D move for matching the cross edge and center
and lastly you do R2 for inserting the white edge. This is your first pair and this is your second pair
For solving this pair, you break it apart by doing R U' R' and we have to solve it in the front left slot, which you can do with L moves like this
Your next pair is this one and this one, and you can setup this into a 3 move insert by doing an U2 R U R'
Now you have a 3 move insert and this pair needs to be solved at the back, hence you have to do a rotation here
Here you do an rotation and U', which you can do with your thumb like this...yeah
You do a rotation and U' and then you can solve this pair by doing 3 move insert R U R'
Once you have solved this pair, you have these 2 pieces as your next pair and for solving this pair, you need to do another rotation
Do an rotation and do U2 to keep this edge at back and you can pair these two up by doing R U' R' and insert it at the back with L moves, like that
The last pair that you have is these two. For solving this pair you need to do another rotation
You do a rotation like this and for solving this pair, you match the red with the red in here by doing an U2 and you can pair it up like this
Now here Mats did something interesting which made this solve a WR solve and not a normal solve
Here what most people will do is U' and inserting, otherwise U2 and inserting like this
What Mats did here was that he did OLL skip substep called Valk Last Slot, invented by Mats Valk himself
Instead of just inserting this pair directly, he did an U2 to keep in here and then he did, R' U sledgehammer
for getting these two blocks in here. Here we have this block, so he did an R' F R to get this block on top
and now you have the slot at the back open, so for inserting this pair you just need to do U R
for solving this pair at the back which gives you an OLL skip.
Once you are done with this pair, you don't have to do OLL anymore and you can go and do PLL
However, Mats got lucky here and he got a PLL skip. He doesn't need to solve PLL
The way he recognized PLL skip is that he had a solved bar on left and front side, which only happens when you have PLL skip
The only thing that he needs to do now is AUF (Adjusting the U Face) so he did a U move for matching the white with whites, oranges with oranges etc
and doing the U move soled the cube for him, so he could just stop the timer and get the world record of 4.7 sec
Congratulations to Mats Valk for getting his WR back
Fun Fact: Mats Valk used the Valk cube and Valk Last Slot to get the world record
What can we learn from Mats Valk WR? The first thing I saw was that the solve was pretty simple.
He didn't do anything fancy like XCross or Multislot tricks etc
He made a simple simple, looked ahead to his first pair and just kept on looking ahead till the last f2l pair
The only fancy thing he did was the VLS and then he got a PLL skip
The thing that you can take away from him is to practice looking ahead and turn at a TPS where you don't have to pause
Mats was turning at 8TPS and he didn't pause for a single second
Also, have good and fluid transition. Mats didn't pause when transitioning from last pair to VLS
Practicing looking ahead, turning at a TPS where you don't have to pause and learning last layer tricks
like VLS, Winter Variations, ZBLL etc will be helpful