You don’t need to learn full OLL to be a good speedcuber

Note: this article is based off of Cube Master’s video, Why Yiheng Wang uses 2 look OLL. I did not find any of this information myself. Link to the video

Why the world’s fastest speedcuber, YiHeng Wang, uses 2-look OLL

One of the most common misconceptions of intermediate cubers who use 2-look OLL and PLL is that you need to learn full OLL and PLL to get faster. While this may be true in some cases for OLL and definitely in PLL, some algorithms may be too slow because of the awkward finger tricks. As you can see from the subtitle, the world record holder for the 3x3 average of 5, YiHeng Wang (王艺衡), uses 2-look OLL. But, it is not the 2-look OLL that you are used to.

The most common way of doing 2-look OLL that many beginners use is orienting the edges first (in other words, solving the yellow cross assuming you are orienting the yellow side for OLL, which most beginners do), then orienting the corners. But Yiheng uses a more uncommon method of orienting the corners first, then orienting the edges.

Source: jperm.net

For example, let’s look at the algorithm that Yiheng uses for OLL 34. OLL 34 is the OLL in the picture above. The classic 1-look OLL algorithm is R U R2 U’ R’ F R U R U’ F’. If you try it on your cube, you can see that the finger tricks are very awkward. Some beginners might use a 2-look algorithm that you can do with the 2 unoriented corners facing you: (F (R U R’ U’) F’) (F R’ F’ Rw U R U’ Rw’). In fact, the F’ and F cancels out each other so you could save moves! But Yiheng also doesn’t use this for some reason…

The algorithm that Yiheng uses starts from the same angle and is (R U R’ U’) (R’ F R F’) U (R U R’ U R U2' R’), or sexy-sledge, U, and sune. Another possibility is that instead of doing U sune, you could also do back antisune.

Also, because the classic 1-look algorithm has so many weird moves that it makes the algorithm very inconsistent. To prove my point, Yiheng’s deviation for his old algorithm is 0.178, while his deviation for his new algorithm is… 0.194?!

There was actually this one case when Yiheng had a major lockup on his new algorithm because of this flash coming from the crowd, so the cubing meme NoFlash existed before it became a meme!

Anyways, if you exclude that outlier, the deviation for the new algorithm is 0.02. That is seriously consistent.

Another case Yiheng uses 2-look OLL for is OLL 29, as seen in the screenshot below.

Once again, he used to use the standard algorithm, which led to many good times including a 3.27, an Asian record. But then, he switched to a 2-look algorithm, (sexy-sledge) (R U R’ U’ M’ U R U’ Rw’). Once again, the new algorithm was much more consistent; the old deviation was 0.15, while the new deviation was 0.017.

But this is a different type of 2-look OLL. By doing a sexy-sledge, he orients the corners first, then doing the algorithm to flip those 2 leftover edges. This, I thought was a pretty good strategy, so I decided to switch to it and got some pretty good times with it.

But, not everyone might think it’s good, and that’s fine. Everyone has their different preferences, and this is mine. I just wanted to yap about this.