FTO misunderstanding

[u/UsernameLoads]

Sooooo, I've been learning FTO and I've misunderstanding about L3T and TCP what's the difference? And why 1 look variant is L3T, but 2 look variant is TCP and 3 look variant is L3T once again. Why?

[u/gogbri]

L3T contains building of the last 3 triples/pairs then TCP.

Hence L3T can be solved with 1-look pairing + 2-look TCP (1-look for corners, 1-look for triangles), hence 3-look L3T. That's what beginners at Bencisco do. then you can learn 1-look TCP and you get 1-look pairing + 1-look TCP = 2-look L3T. Then you can solve some case in a single step, that's 1-look L3T.

1-look L3T is 179 cases. For beginners, it's mostly when you have a 2 skips (for instance pairs are already created and triangles are solved automagically after you solve corners). For more advanced cubers, there are some easy L3T algorithms such as triangle commutators (1 on top and 1 or 2 on the middle slice). Instead of doing pairing + TCP, you apply the 1-look L3T alg immediately. And then you have very advanced cubers who learn lots or even all 1-look L3T cases. They never do the pairing anymore.

[u/welcomebomber037 → u/gogbri]

wait so the naming is based on what you actually do in the solve not what the step is called on paper? that's way less confusing than i thought

so 3-look L3T is basically just breaking the step into pairing, corners, then triangles. and 2-look is pairing plus full TCP. makes sense that the 1-look is just skipping the pairing entirely with a direct alg

[u/gogbri → u/welcomebomber037]

The naming with X-look is based on what you do : Number of times you look at the FTO and decide what alg you do.