Hey guys its me CriticalCubing and today I am going to make a video on the topic of lookahead and the things that no one talks about in a lookahead video
Around a month back, I had taken 2 months break from cubing and I didn't cube even a single day in those days
and as a reason my lookahead was pretty bad so when I came back to cubing my lookahead was choppy and not as smooth as I wanted it to be
so I was asking advice and asking how I can get that smooth lookahead
at that moment I realized that there are lots of thing that people don't cover in lookahead video and today hopefully I will cover the things that I think are important for lookahead
People have a misconception that lookahead starts during the f2l. No, this is a huge misconception and lookahead starts during the inspection.
If I scramble my cube up, the moment you start your inspection is the moment you start looking ahead
you are looking at all of your cross and options and if I do a quick and dirty cross the way I will solve the cross will preserve this back block
and I see this pair, so I can preserve this pair as well. So, I was actually looking ahead into the solve during the inspection
lots of people I have seen will just look at their cross piece, blah blah blah boom boom boom
sub 0.5 cross and then think that they are Feliks Zemdegs thats okay and thats really fine. You can solve your cross that fast only if you are capable of doing so with proper lookahead
If you are not capable of looking ahead at that TPS then you should not be turning at that TPS. It will make your solves choppy and slow
and as you are getting faster and faster, you should be making your solves flow more instead of turning fast because in the world class level, everyone is turning fast but their lookahead is what sets them apart
Lets go back to the cross example. I see this f2l pair which I want to preserve so while I am inspecting I am trying different combination of cross solution which will preserve this f2l pair
and the easiest way to preserve this f2l pair is by just taking it out of the equation.
Then you can solve the cross like normal and then you can insert it at the back easily like that. So this lookahead to my first pair, started during my inspection.
So, lookahead starts during the inspection and not during f2l, and whole throughout the solve, we are looking ahead at what we are doing next
First I am going to talk about lookahead during the cross. When you are getting faster, you should already know how to solve cross pieces just by looking at them.
Once you have the cross solution, you should be looking at your first f2l pair and when you are beginning, you won't be able to predict where your first pair will end up
and in those cases you have to track. Up until 10 seconds I used to take a note of an corner or an edge that will be in a good position once I do the cross
and while I am doing the cross, I just track the pieces. For example lets take this. For solving the cross
because I was tracking this, while I insert this red, if I insert normally then it gives me a bad f2l case so I just insert it like that so as to get a better f2l pair.
So this is how you lookahead during the cross. If you cannot predict your first f2l pair, either track an corner or an edge or sometimes even double corners (I don't do that)
Otherwise if your lookahead is at a good level, then you should be predicting stuff.
Now we come to lookahead during f2l and the thing that I have noticed and is very important while you are looking ahead at your next f2l pair is TIMING
Now, I have seen videos where people talk about slow solving where you take a note of a pair
That is okay and you can practice that but that does not actually teach you much about timing, like you are not consciously trying to get the timing right for your lookahead
Basically what we are doing in this f2l stage is looking at something else while we solve something else. For example, I will take a note of these 2 f2l pairs while I track that
But the thing is, the moment I see this f2l pair, once you are getting faster and faster, then moment you see an f2l pair, you should know how to solve it and you should not be looking at it anymore
The moment I took a glimpse of the pair, I should not be looking at it anymore as I know how to solve it. I look at this now, so I see sea see (xD) oh these 2 are paired up
The moment I insert this f2l pair I know what I need to do to insert this f2l pair
So I should not be looking at it anymore and I should be looking at something else. And ooh I see this stuck f2l pair so the moment I see this f2l pair, I should start solving it.
Once I am done inserting that...so in this case the f2l doesn't move
so the transition from this f2l pair to this f2l pair will be easy and fast as I have to do D move and flipping alg
Now the moment I insert this f2l pair, you know what case this is so you should be be looking at this case. I see this case and I know that the corner is down here as its not in these 4 positions
so I want to instantly start tracking these two.
F2L lookehad, you have to get this timing proper and the faster you get, the more impeccable this timing should be.
Smooth fast people like Feliks for example. He doesn't even need to pause during his f2l. His timing for this is impeccable and as a reason he doesn't need to pause
Your goal should be to try and turn at a TPS where you don't need to pause during your f2l
Now I know how to solve this case so I should not be looking at it. I see this other pair
Looking through viewfinder is a bit difficult :(
So that is your f2l to f2l transition or f2l to f2l lookahead
Once you are at your last f2l pair, here you start your f2l to OLL lookahead