A Guide for Finding your Best Finesse Scheme

[caffeine]

In Tetris, finesse means the way you get tetrominoes to their final resting place. Not only will good finesse make you a more efficient player in terms of keys per tetromino (which can also lead to playing faster), commiting to a certain finesse scheme will make your movements more confident and consistent. This is because you will know exactly how to get a piece where it needs to go, and with enough practice, with muscle memory.

Before we start, you should already be using both rotation buttons--never needing to rotate three times (T-Spins, other twists, and high gravity mobility trickery aside), and you should be proficient enough to know how rotating the S-, Z-, or I-tetrominoes a certain direction can be better than the other direction when moving left or right. (Here you want to rotate in the same direction as you move in order to save one column's worth of movement). Once you have this down, you're ready for the next step.

In any SRS finesse scheme, the most you should ever need to move a tetromino is five spaces, so first find a timer and time how long it takes for a J-, L-, or T-tetromino, whose pointy side is facing left, to move all the way to the right wall (five columns). Next, time how fast you can press a button on the keyboard five times (with the fingers you use to move left and right). Do multiple trials to get a reliable estimation.

If you cannot beat the in-game autorepeat, then that means you should use it to move a piece five columns (which isn't often). If you can beat the auto-repeat, then that means autorepeat is useless in this game, and you should always tap tap tap in any situation. You'd be surprised at how many TTC-licensed games exist that have an autorepeat feature that is simply obsolete altogether in high level play.

So say it's better to use autorepeat than to tap tap tap when moving five columns. The next step is to test out moving four columns. If five columns autorepeat is faster than tapping, but tapping is faster than four column autorepeat, then only autorepeat when moving five columns, but not for anything else.

Continue to do this until either you find a point where tapping is faster than using autorepeat (and stop there), or you get to the point where autorepeat is faster than tapping three times. If the latter is the case, then learn two-step finesse. You see, with SRS you can place a piece anywhere on the board using a combination of up to two movements and smart rotations. This is best used, however, when autorepeat is always faster than tapping three times, which is very rarely the case in TTC-licensed games (unfortunately for us high-level players).

Two-step finesse is too complicated to teach using only words, but luckily there's this wiki article explaining it. Just keep in mind that when moving two times to get somewhere, and it's possible to get there using for example left-then-left as well as autorepeat left-then-right, it's better to use left-left.

If you're lucky enough to be playing a game where you can customize your autorepeat and delayed autorepeat (AR and DAR) and you want to use two-step finesse, then I recommend that you set your AR to as low as the game will let you. Then, set your DAR to a comfortable level. You want it as fast as possible, but not so fast that you will ever risk making a misdrop. The difference in speed is not significant enough to justify risking a misdrop.

[Blink]

Nice writeup, I still don't have finesse down but now I know how to start testing to get it down.

[Someone2knoe]

very helpful, learned some things about finesse that i didn't know, maybe i can increase my speed even more because i have hit a wall at 145-155!

[jujube]

i wish i had learned this a few years ago. i have some bad habits now that are hard to break. this would be a good thing to work on as soon as you're comfortable rotating both ways.

[GoldPlatedDish]

Is it okay if I only learned rotation finesse for T, J and L-pieces?

[caffeine]

You can benefit from learning all the tetrominoes. Are you sure you have those down, though? For L/J/T, the "autorepeat to the right wall, CCW rotation, then tap left once" is especially unintuitive.

Other tricky ones include the verticle I-tetromino positions as well as horizontal I-tetromino left-left (the tendency is to autorepeat left then tap right, which is slightly worse, and this goes for other tetrominoes too).

[XaeL]

wow i wish there was a summary of these.

For example i'm pretty sure my L/J/T are correct, because i use das to wall then tap off wall.


but didnt know about the I hax (left-left)

[AS999]

Let's me see if I got it right, finesse is using the autorepeat instead of taping in case it's faster? But if I do so, how am I ever going to get faster at taping if I stopped practising?

[caffeine]

Let's me see if I got it right, finesse is using the autorepeat instead of taping in case it's faster? But if I do so, how am I ever going to get faster at taping if I'm stopped practising?

If you've replaced a particular placement (for which you used tapping) with now using autorepeat, because it's faster, why would you need to get faster at tapping for that particular placement? No point in practicing an approach you no longer use.

[Magnanimous]

Granted, tapping is occasionally useful in games like Tetris Friends or Game Boy Tetris...

[AS999]

Exactly, I'm playing on Tetris friends. Where the autorepeater speed can't be changed. It is possible to be faster than it. So, using it instead of practising taping is not a good idea, at least not in the long run. I don't think it's that hard to understand... Hope I'm right.

[caffeine]

Okay, I see what you're saying now. This is a dilemma I've been dealing with for years. I've gone between fast autorepeat, slow autorepeat, and middle autorepeat finesse schemes. It really messes me up. But it's funny you mention the "long run," though. Tetris Friends is currently beta testing customizable DAS and autorepeat, so who knows. Maybe practicing tapping is bad for the long run, after all.

[Someone2knoe]

Well tapping will always be useful, even with fast autorepeat.

[solo2001]

It's funny you mention the "long run," though. Tetris Friends is currently beta testing customizable DAS and autorepeat, so who knows. Maybe practicing tapping is bad for the long run, after all.

TF finally got customizable DAS! ...crap.

[larrytetris]

Can we get this stickied?