Tetris Burst Thoughts

[bigwig]

Can someone explain the tetris burst ladder? there is a 50 cent entry for the seeding with no prize.

I think, I'm not sure, that this $.50 entry is just to seed you into the start of the ladder. When the ladder opens, you can challenge people on it. Staying at the top of the ladder gives you rewards points each day.

[morningpee]

Be very careful with this. I've run into a bug that replaces your score with a very low score. For example, I got 81,549 points on one game. When I pressed "close", it redirected me to the scoreboard, where it said I only got 1,288 points. See the screenshots:
[!--ImageUrlBegin--][a href=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/o0UKAvg.png\\\" target=\\\"_new\\\"][!--ImageUrlEBegin--][img width=\\\"500\\\" class=\\\"attach\\\" src=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/o0UKAvg.png\\\" border=\\\'0\\\' alt=\\\"IPB Image\\\" /][!--ImageUrlEnd--][/a][!--ImageUrlEEnd--]

[!--ImageUrlBegin--][a href=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/vKVisL6.png\\\" target=\\\"_new\\\"][!--ImageUrlEBegin--][img width=\\\"500\\\" class=\\\"attach\\\" src=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/vKVisL6.png\\\" border=\\\'0\\\' alt=\\\"IPB Image\\\" /][!--ImageUrlEnd--][/a][!--ImageUrlEEnd--]

This has happened to me in 12 separate games. I have played roughly twice that many (still on the first buy-in, but it is not nearly as profitable as it was for Goldenshadow or bigwig, my current balance is $0.83).

I have notified GSN Support. I'll update the thread if/when they respond.

[morningpee]

I got a response about the score discrepancies today.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Thank you for notifying us of these incidents. Your inquiry has been passed along to the Game Engineers for additional investigation. I will provide an update on their investigation once concluded. Your continued patience is greatly appreciated![/quote]
So, they said they would look into it. A couple hours later, my account was banned.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Please be advised that your account has been terminated. As a result, we are permanently banning you from the GSN online gaming community.

As stated in the WorldWinner Terms and Conditions, GSN reserves the right to terminate your account or decline or limit your participation in any tournament for any reason, including, but not limited to harassment of other participants, posting of objectionable material, creating multiple accounts, game fraud, or any breach of the terms of the agreement between you and the Site, and any breach of the security of your account or the Site.

By registering for an account and/or participating in any tournament offered on the Site, you consent to allow the Site to access your account information to investigate complaints or other allegations of abuse.

All winnings have been voided. The remaining balance of $10.00 has been refunded back to the payment method(s) on file. Please allow time for processing.

You are no longer welcome in our GSN gaming communities.

2.14 Fraud and Abuse
The Site strictly prohibits user fraud and abuse relating to the access and use of the Site. In accessing the Site or participating in any activities, products or services offered by or through the Site, you represent and warrant that: (a) all information you supply is complete and accurate and not in violation of any applicable laws, regulations and the Terms and Conditions and (b) you will not circumvent or attempt to circumvent any provision of the Terms and Conditions or engage in any activity that interrupts or attempts to interrupt the operation of the Site. Anyone who engages in, participates in, or displays behavior that may be interpreted, in the Site's sole and absolute discretion, as the use of unfair methods on the Site, including but not limited to, the opening and/or use of multiple accounts, the use of unauthorized or altered software or hardware to assist play (including the use of bots, bot nets, collusion with bots and/or use of poker software or programs), intentionally poor play in certain games in order to achieve a broader competitive advantage, abuse of game credit requests, collusion with other players, the deliberate transfer of money between accounts (i.e. "money laundering"), harassment of other participants, posting of objectionable material, any breach of the Terms and Conditions, any breach of the security of your account or the Site, or any other act (whether through the use of automated technology or otherwise) that unfairly alters your chance of winning or constitutes the commission of fraud (collectively, "Abuse"), you shall be subject to immediate sanction (as determined by the Site in its sole and absolute discretion), including without limitation: (1) immediate termination of your account and blocking of Site access; (2) any prizes, winnings and any other representative of value (if any) that you may otherwise have been entitled to receive shall be void and/or forfeited; (3) any prizes, winnings and representative of value already received by you shall be subject to disgorgement and/or recoupment by the Site; and (4) in the case of money laundering, disclosure to the FBI in accordance with the terms of certain recently passed Federal legislation. Without in any way limiting any provision of the Terms and Conditions, the Site expressly reserves the right to institute or seek any injunctive relief, civil and/or criminal proceedings against you and/or any of your co-conspirators arising out of or related to your commission of Abuse, including the right to recover fees and expenses (including attorneys' fees) and the right report you and such abuse to any and all relevant regulatory authorities or governmental agencies.

GSN Fraud and Risk Department[/quote]
Before my account was banned, I got up to $40 (still on the initial $10 buy-in. There were pending payouts when my balance was only $.83). I beat the top players numerous times, so it's possible that someone reported me.

I was already blocked from participating in the biggest payout category. From memory, it was called Tetris Burst 5-Player Super-something. I can't check because my account is banned. Being blocked from that category is normal, as Goldenshadow encountered the same thing.

After that, I played the normal Tetris Burst 5-Player category. In total, I estimate I won 95% of my games. I regularly got scores of 70k and higher. The highest score that registered was slightly above 80,000. The average for my games was slightly below 40,000 though, due to the glitch that gave me a score of 1,000-2,000 on some games (about 30%).

The technique that I used to achieve high scores was Infinite TST. When the TST loop broke, I would sometimes switch to freestyle, and I would try to start the infinite TST loop back up as soon as possible.

Fortunately, they refunded the original $10 buy-in, so nothing was lost, other than time and effort. That being said, I have learned my lesson: Don't play Tetris Burst!

[SmartS101]

Reading Goldenshadow's OP I assumed he was some sort of grifter sent here to try and scam us based on the way the post read. I was very surprised to see that it was an officially licensed Tetris game. I haven't played Ultra in probably 6 months, so I wasn't going to gamble on my muscle memory like that. Glad to know that my intuition wasn't that far off.

Unrelated side note: Why are "Tetris" and "grifter" not accepted as words according to autocorrect?

[Okey_Dokey]

I was very surprised to see that it was an officially licensed Tetris game.

Meanwhile, there's also an officially licensed Tetris-themed slot machine by "Scientific Games". 2 minutes in the video, you can see how the player triggers a little jackpot.

[Goldenshadow]

Seems like they thought you were cheating. I don't think the world winner  people understand the skill level of some Tetris players. Either that or they can't fit highly skilled players into their money making algorithms, so they  make the game unplayable for them. Like I said in this earlier posts, I stopped playing over a year ago because they started to only match me against the same players over and over.

I remember also having scores repeatedly get flagged for suspicion of cheating.  I also had to email them to get those games refunded. It's another part of the reason why I withdrew all my winnings and stopped playing. It's unfortunate because there are some really skilled players in their other games, like bejeweled, but no place for the skilled players in Tetris.

[DarkWolfLP2014]

After what Morningpee went through, I'm very sure I'll be avoiding Tetris Burst like the plague. Banning users on suspicion of cheating on a broken website is just asinine. Seems just like incompetence on the part of the developers of Tetris Burst and outward ignorance of the skill level of other players.

[caffeine]

Seems like they thought you were cheating.

That's what I'm thinking, too. Although if they would've looked at his games closely, it should be possible to tell that it was real. Like you mentioned, they might not have the expertise to be able to tell the difference.

I'm guessing they plugged "morningpee tetris" into Google. On the first page, there's a Tetris AI video as well as morningpee's Lag-free TF extension.

[morningpee]

I went back to WorldWinner, and Tetris Burst is gone. I reached out to GSN (owner of WorldWinner) support for more information. Their response:

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Tetris Burst was retired back in December of 2018.

At this time Tetris Burst is no longer available on the site. [/quote]
Tetris Burst was an HTML5 game, right? It's a shame we lost it even before Flash becomes officially end-of-life. Maybe they took it down in anticipation of Tetris Online shutting down?