Very general question

[Jeroen]

Hey guys!

So, I'm new to this community and all. I'm just a guy who likes to play Tetris. For some reason it calms me to hyperactively spam my keyboard playing this game. I'd also like to improve myself. Get better. From what I've seen on this forum so far, everyone here is better than me, has a lot more knowledge than me and has been around here for ages...

So far I've never spoken to anyone about Tetris, except for some reallife friends who just remember the game from their old gameboy and don't even know you can do things like harddropping pieces. So basically, I don't know all the shortcuts or terms used. I just know some of the game variants out there.

My main question is: How do I improve myself?
My common sense tells me: Just play a huge amount of games, and you'll get better. But I've been playing 4-6 hours a day for about 7-8 months straight now, and I don't feel I've been improving a lot in the last two months or so. Or in other words, my improvement seems to have halted.

To give you guys an idea of my current 'skill level', when I play 2P Tetrisfriends I can about hold on at level 20. When I play on Tetris Battle (Facebook) I'm at around level 87/88, and according to Cultris 2, my average blocks per minute speed is around 85-90 BPM.

When playing on Facebook or TetrisFriends, I usually just stack and go for back-to-back Tetrisses. I can do T-spins, but I'm having trouble setting them up, and I'm too slow when doing it. When playing Cultris 2, I tru combo'ing, but not very succesfully I might add. I believe my max combo is 9 or 10, and I usually don't get higher than 6 or 7 in a game.

So, what am I really hoping for posting here? I don't really know. I guess it would be nice to see a kind reply of some sort with perhaps any kind of useful advice. For the most part when reading on this forum I see tons of shortcuts and terms I do not know, so I'm hoping you guys could keep it simple and easy for me?  

Thanks in advance and it's good to be on this board now!  

[Paul676]

Your common sense is right - play more and you'll get better

[Jeroen]

So are there any specific things I could focus on?

Since as I said, I don't feel like I'm really getting better here, while (for my standards) I'm really playing a lot...

[Destiny]

Keep practicing the tspins  I would suggest practicing some downstacking since it'll help you survive in arena and will help you preform better in cultris since it's basically of game of downstack.

If you're the type who likes to just send b2bs try a build like 6-3 or 5-4, since when i tried it, it helped me build a tspin into double tetris which sends a huge spike. Also you can work on your speed a little so you can ds faster and spam those b2b faster  

Having some concept of timing wouldn't hurt too. When to block and when to send can help you a lot in outlasting other players and knocking them out as well.

PS Welcome to HD

[Jeroen]

Keep practicing the tspins  I would suggest practicing some downstacking since it'll help you survive in arena and will help you preform better in cultris since it's basically of game of downstack.

If you're the type who likes to just send b2bs try a build like 6-3 or 5-4, since when i tried it, it helped me build a tspin into double tetris which sends a huge spike. Also you can work on your speed a little so you can ds faster and spam those b2b faster  

Having some concept of timing wouldn't hurt too. When to block and when to send can help you a lot in outlasting other players and knocking them out as well.

PS Welcome to HD

Thanks, that's some great advice. Gives me some things to work on. A few more specific questions though:

- "try a build like 6-3 or 5-4, since when i tried it, it helped me build a tspin into double tetris which sends a huge spike."

Now in my original post, I talked about terms I didn't know, and a lot of posts on here I didn't understand. What is a build like 6-3 or 5-4? I usually just send the pieces in such way that it seems most suitable to me. I don't know any builds, and have no clue basically what your sentence meant  

- When training for T-spins, would it be better to keep doing 2P matches or Arena styles, or would it be better to do Marathon-like games for training to be able to have more playtime, and less 'waiting' time?

- Are there some other good platforms apart from Tetrisfriends (which is annoying to me, as sometimes it doesn't record my keys when I tap too fast and I misdrop a lot due to that on this site), Cultris 2 (which I don't really like due to the focus on combo's) and Tetris Battle (which requires energy so I can only play 6 battles in a row)? Preferably something I don't need to use emulators for. Any advice on that? I mostly like the Arena-like style of play...

- When focussing on 'some concept of timing', how would I go about practising that? I've learned that with my usual double b2b tetris opener, I usually get a KO if I get to send first (which I usually do) because they're stacked high just when I send it. But other than that, should I be watching their field all the time, or how exactly do I go about practising this?

Thanks for the welcome, and for the help! I'm glad I joined after all this time of lurking and simply not understanding most of the posts I saw here...  

[UJS3]

What is a build like 6-3 or 5-4?

6-3 tetris stacking means building two stacks (one 6 columns wide and one 3 columns wide) and filling tetrises in the fourth or seventh column. Here's an example. Compared to more conventional tetrises at the side of the matrix, there's a minor advantage in the number of keys pressed per tetromino. The biggest advantage in multiplayer games though is that it's much more versatile. With a 6-3 stack it's easier to build tspins on top of your stack, or even change to a center 4 wide combo. 5-4 stacking is similar, but with different stack widths.

As for practicing tspins, you could play against misakamm's Tspin AI bot without time pressure (it's a turn based game). The topic is on harddrop.

[Jeroen]

6-3 tetris stacking means building two stacks (one 6 columns wide and one 3 columns wide) and filling tetrises in the fourth or seventh column. Here's an example. Compared to more conventional tetrises at the side of the matrix, there's a minor advantage in the number of keys pressed per tetromino. The biggest advantage in multiplayer games though is that it's much more versatile. With a 6-3 stack it's easier to build tspins on top of your stack, or even change to a center 4 wide combo. 5-4 stacking is similar, but with different stack widths.

As for practicing tspins, you could play against misakamm's Tspin AI bot without time pressure (it's a turn based game). The topic is on harddrop.

Thanks a lot. I'm definitely going to try the 6-3 build to see how I fare using that!
I'll also try out the AI bot. I believe I saw a topic like that, so I'm sure I'll find it. Seems really useful for practise.

Sounds great to me. Thanks a bunch!

[Destiny]

You could try nullpomino but hardly anyone gets on multiplayer nowadays. Or you can try Tetris Online Poland. For the timing stuff. I barely remember much about it. I only remember basic idea of send when you're at a comfortable spot in the matrix like from the bottom to the mid point. If you're over that try to block any incoming lines. So if you're at the top and you have a t spin or tetris. Wait for something to be send your way so you can cancel that. However if you can send it and downstack to a safe position, go ahead and do that. Watching their field would also help you  

PS. I'm bad at giving advice so don't listen to it a lot because I just say what people told me in the past and sometimes I could've gotten it mixed up or not fully explained it properly :3

[thousandfire]

First off, welcome to HD

A large number of clones have a 10-wide matrix. Building 3-6 or 5-4 usually refers to building two stacks on either side of the matrix, leaving a tetris (as in 4 line clear) well (hole) in the middle (as opposed to on the right or left side). Destiny referred to this method as making it easy to set up for t-spin doubles (TSD's) while also doing tetrises (for this reason I've heard it referred to as a hybrid build, as in tetris-tspin hybrid). Another advantage to this is that you can keep your back to back bonus (b2b). This refers to an extra attack line that is sent for any tetris/t-spin double/t-spin triple (TST)/t-spin single/t-spin mini (when a t-spin is performed that clears no lines, pretty sure that whether or not this keeps b2b depends on client) that is sent after any other tetris/TSD/TST/t-spin single/t-spin mini without any single/double/triple line clears in between in guideline games that reward t-spins.

I believe that it would be better to practice t-spins against actual players. For example, just go into arena and start doing as many t-spins as you can make (supplement with research/thinking about piece placements). Tank your rating until you're like rank 8 and gradually get faster at doing what destiny suggested without caring about whether you win or lose. Doing the same thing in a marathon mode is ok too, whatever works for you. Just remember, there is no substitute for praaactiiicee.

As far as client goes, you can ask people on the shoutbox to play nullpomino multiplayer with you: you can set up a rule like tetrisfriends quite easily, and you'll be spared the lag/lack of sonic drop (instant soft drop)/lack of 180 rotations. The downside to npm (nullpomino) is that there aren't a lot of people that play, a lot more people play TF (tetris friends), and there are ways to deal with the lag somewhat/be more careful. Things like playing with a smaller flash window and making sure there is only one flash plugin active at a time.

Timing can specifically refer to, once you have your tetris/T-spin ready, when you choose to clear the line. You can either clear it when your garbage queue (the red bar at the right on TF) is empty, which sends lines, or you can wait for your opponent to send you garbage before clearing the lines, which cancels the incoming garbage. In rooms like TF arena/6P battle you can also choose which opponent to attack (a technique called aiming). More generally, timing refers to how you handle the flow of the game. For example, if you're in the process of stacking your b2b tetris opener and you see your opponent is about to send lines, you can abort and choose to send only one tetris, which has the two-fold effect of pressuring your opponent to block lines/abort as well as placing you in a safer (lower on the field) position. Timing as a concept has one of the highest skill caps. In games where players have the ability to spike out (send a lot of lines at once and usually defeat) their opponents with setups that can take about 5 seconds if an opening is seen, timing and watching your opponent's field become very important. Being able to pay attention to more than your field will come in time, to practice timing I would suggest just seeing if you, just before scoring a tetris, can change your mind based on the opponent's field. Is he high up with lot of messy (swiss cheese, hard to send back) garbage? Try to set up a second tetris and spike him/her out. Is he about to send you a tetris of his/her own? Wait to clear the tetris until your garbage queue fills up. One of the more effective uses of watching your opponent's fields is seeing if someone is attempting a 4-wide (a combo that uses a 4-wide well that usually sends a lot of lines but takes a while to set up). Being able to spot something like that early is a great defense against it: you can choose to try to spike them out to make them abort or start a 4-wide of your own.

Wasn't sure how clear I needed to be, so I decided to err on the side of wall of text.

Hope that helped?

[Destiny]

This thread is all paragraphs xD

[Jeroen]

Wow, that reply was about as clear as it can get. Don't worry, I love reading books, and I feel like I've just read one!

Well, I guess I'm really going to disappoint in my answer as I have nothing to say except thank you! I think I have plenty of material to work on again, and I'll be sure to try and get back here when I've put in a couple hundred hours of training! I hope to have made some nice improvement by then.

I'll get a new Tetrisfriends account and give Arena a try (on my current account I'm rank 16 there. Trying to start going for T-spins there while currently sucking at that, I would get killed in about 15 seconds every game... That's not much use I suppose.

Thanks everyone who replied!

[Paul676]

Just to add that when doing a 6-3 or 5-4 build you should aim for the sides to be as equal as possible so you can build tspin doubles as easily as possible. Skimming helps here (harddrop.com/wiki/Skimming)

[perfectclear]

In general, to get better at the game the advice is quite daunting: memorize this http://harddrop.com/wiki/Main_Page, these http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4143, and play a ton, learning timing as you go (timing is something a lot of ppl dont quite fully understand, I would say there isnt a perfect guide for it yet).

short of doing that, or rather to make it a lot less daunting, try learning some techniques from here http://harddrop.com/wiki/Category:T-Spin_Methods and incorporating them into your play. that should help a lot with the difficulty in recognizing t-spin opportunities.

[thousandfire]

^ this

Good thing you like reading books, cuz this forum and wiki have no shortage of written stuff about tetris...

Read whatever is interesting and read a lot. When you feel like you're plateauing, read about something different, try a different game/game mode and then switch back. Get lots of sleep. Rinse and repeat. Be patient.