Tetris Burst Thoughts

[Goldenshadow]

Just discovered Tetris Burst a couple hours ago....

Pretty sure everyone on hard drop wishes they could get paid for their Tetris hours. Well.. here it is. I think this is pretty much the most exciting thing to happen for Tetris players in a long time. The Tetris Gods must be saying we had some good Karma coming our way after that whole Tetris "Ultimate" thing.

Gameplay:

As far as the game mechanics go it's a pretty decent game. It's basically Ultra mode with some items thrown in. In the 5 player games it is Ultra with no items. The progressive rush games have items included. There is a DAS option in the free to play games, but not in the cash games, as far as I saw. I didn't see any options for key configuration. The game does slow down when you use your items but it's not very noticeable.

Strategy:

Strategy wise there is nothing new for the 5 player games, it's just regular 3 minute Ultra. But the items games are actually fun because of the "double points" power up that lasts 10 seconds. There are 3 types of items, but the only one you want to use is the double points. The other two power ups are for clearing your screen to fix your stack, but for any decent Ultra player it will actually hurt you to use them because it's losing potential points.

My strategy for items games was to stack to the middle of the screen and set up a Tspin double into a Tetris, right as I was tspinning I would activate the timer. Then I would use the remaining stack to set up another couple tspins and a Tetris before the timer ran out. Then rinse and repeat. I bet the best strategy for it would be to ST stack then activate the timer at the top of the screen.

Making Money:

Don't quit your day job, folks. They stopped placing me in games after about 2-3 hours.
Here's the message they sent me:

Unable to provide a match
We are sorry, but at the current time we are unable to match you with similarly ranked opponents. Accordingly there are no tournaments available to you in Tetris Burst. We encourage you to try your hand at one of our other games. If you would like further information please contact player services

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=oieqsx&s=9#.VrNcFEuTTfh

After about 20 5 player matches, where the prize is about $6 per game, they said there were no more players at my skill level. Then the same thing happened after with 5 player matches with the $3.50 prize for first place. Then finally for the progressive rush games where the prize was up to $36. I guess, some things are just too good to be true .

The highest score I saw for other players was 29,000. Which is pretty low for most Harddrop players, especially for 3 minute ultra. If you feel like making some quick money you could probably earn $200-$600 pretty quickly depending on how many of the higher prize games you can play before they stop allowing you to play. If you're confident in your score don't choose to claim your prize money before all the players have played. It's instant gratification, but not worth it to lose the extra money you would get from a little patience.

If you're really amazing at Tetris I'd recommend playing as many of the progressive tournaments, during times where a lot of people are playing, as you can before you get locked out. Even if not many players players join you still make like $10 for first place- not bad for 3 minutes.

It's possible that once enough good players will start playing burst that it will start letting me play again, but I'm sure the earning potential will have gone down by then. It might possible that you could 'cheat' the system if you artificially keep your ultra score between 25,000 and 35,000. I saw a decent amount of players with that score, so it might not lock you out of tournaments for being too good. Then you could continue playing and making money on a consistent basis. That does seem rather... dishonest though. Boring too.

It's probably the end of my short but sweet Burst journey. It was pretty cool to make some money playing Tetris, though. But 'easy come easy go' as they say. On the bright side, I never thought I would make hundreds of dollars before breakfast today, so that's a plus.

[XaeL]

It's probably the end of my short but sweet Burst journey. It was pretty cool to make some money playing Tetris, though. But 'easy come easy go' as they say. On the bright side, I never thought I would make hundreds of dollars before breakfast today, so that's a plus.

Yup. Basically the way the ranking system works is to try and get everyone to 50% win rate. This means that if you win half your games and lose half your games, you slowly lose money.

If you beat everyone else (i had scores of around 48-55k) then you just keep winning. I withdrew after $50 usd.

I imagine a good score would be on the order of 135k (for the top level st stackers who get 90k in 2 minutes). This is of course without powerups.

When i played (a few weeks ago) there was no DAS. That's a good addition that would increase my score from like 48-55k to maybe 65k.

[bigwig]

I've made $600 because I got in on day one and most of that was from one time promotional tournaments, but now with more competition it's difficult to make more than $5-10 a day. I average 40-45k. I really need to get back into the Tetris Friends days when I was good at b2b tsds, hopefully then I can get to 50k+.

There is also a bug where t spins that don't clear a line break the b2b.

Full disclosure: I've also lost over $50 on bejewled lol.

[Kevcel]

There is also a bug where t spins that don't clear a line break the b2b.

Could also be intentional
Edit: actually, no. Nvm, my previous statement makes no sense at all

[Goldenshadow]

It's letting me play tournaments again now. I was able to get in another 10 matches of each game type before it locks me out. I don't see how this game can possibly have a negative expected value for a player than can get 50-60k every game.

One thing I've noticed is that I will see the same players in most matches I get placed into.  I feel guilty beating the same people over and over again :x.

[bigwig]

It's letting me play tournaments again now. I was able to get in another 10 matches of each game type before it locks me out. I don't see how this game can possibly have a negative expected value for a player than can get 50-60k every game.

One thing I've noticed is that I will see the same players in most matches I get placed into.  I feel guilty beating the same people over and over again :x.

Ya, you keep taking my lunch money! Time to go on a diet...

[Goldenshadow]

Lol sorry Bigwig, we need more people playing in the 30-60k range.

If it's any consolation I'm sure it won't be long before the Ultra players better than come along and do the same thing to me.

Edit: For those who haven't signed up yet for GSN, it might be worth it to go through a site like mypoints or sendearnings. They give you extra rewards back for your games played.

Also, does anyone else feel that this site is well... dirty. The way they manipulate the ranking system makes it pretty much inevitable for the vast majority of players to lose money. I mean, that's nothing new for the casino business, but it still makes me question whether or not I want to continue using the site.

[Okey_Dokey]

Is this asynchronous gameplay? That means the people you play against aren't probably online, you rather play against replays of previously played games. I don't think enough people play that game to have tournaments around the clock. On the other hand, with asynchronous play it's harder to ensure that in average people lose money.

I think, Tetris is too much about speed and skill (rather than luck) to be a good choice for that platform. Once, there was another site where you could theoretically earn money by playing Tetris: King.com, see this thread. Be wary until you are paid out.

[Note]

Looks cool, but I wish it was possible to change your controls.. O~O

[Goldenshadow]

Is this asynchronous gameplay? That means the people you play against aren't probably online, you rather play against replays of previously played games. I don't think enough people play that game to have tournaments around the clock. On the other hand, with asynchronous play it's harder to ensure that in average people lose money.

I think, Tetris is too much about speed and skill (rather than luck) to be a good choice for that platform. Once, there was another site where you could theoretically earn money by playing Tetris: King.com, see this thread. Be wary until you are paid out.

Let me preface this post by saying it is pretty long.

Yes, it is asynchronous gameplay. They match you with people based on their "FairRanking" system. And hey, they call it 'fair' ranking, so it must be fair right? Well, not really. They will put you in matches that have scores similar to the one you scored for that game. So, basically while they might make it seem random who they pair you up with, they try to limit the winning potential by not letting you play with people you'd win more than 50% of your games against. That way, they can continue to get the fees they take out of every match while letting you think you have a chance.

But if you are one of the top 1-2 Tetris players on the site it won't matter who you are matched against. You will win the vast majority of the games you play. Even if you are matched against people in your ranking category you will still make a continuous profit because you won't lose.

Consider that you join their 5 player tournament that costs $1.85 to enter, and pays $6.20 if you get first place.  You will have made a roughly $4 profit for that game. If you are able to play 15 games an hour (since they last about 3 minutes each), then you will have an expected profit of $60 for every hour you play.

Of course that is taking it for granted that you win every game. The reason I can play without thoughts of losing any money is because I've only been outscored a couple times. Even in those matches I was able to get the second place payout which was more than the entry fee, so there was no money lost.

However, if there are more than 2-5 people better than you on the site it will be much harder to make money. They will keep matching you against those same couple people who can beat you. It still might be possible to make a profit, but it will be much less than if you were unbeatable.

However, even if you aren't the very best on the site it will still be possible to make some money in the short term.  One way is taking advantage of the initial sign up bonuses and rewards points they give you.

Here's how to take advantage of the sign up bonus. Just by signing up they give you $30 entry fee credit. So, if you play 16 of the 5-player matches that cost 1.85 you will have used the credit up. Even if you lost every single one of those matches you could cash out and and not have lost a single dollar of your own money. If you won all of them you would have made about 60 dollars profit.

Another more complicated way to maximize your profit is the reward points they give out every time you play a match. That same 5 player tournament I was talking about gives you 100 points every time you enter it. So if you enter 20 of those tournaments, you get 2000 rewards points. You can then spend those rewards points on their sponsored gift cards. The best deal for rewards is their $100 amazon gift card. It costs 65,000 rewards points.
So, if you play that rewards tournament 650 times (an estimated 43 hours of continuous play), you would get earn that $100 gift card.

There are other sites like sendearnings.com or mypoints.com that you can use to get further rewards. For example, sendearnings.com offers 14% cash back on entry fees. So for every dollar you spend in entry fees, you get .14 cents back. So, if you played 650 of the rewards tournament you would make the $100 gift card plus the cash back from sendearnings, $168. 35 (650*1.85*.14=168.35). For a grand total of 268.35 value plus or minus the profit or loss you had from your results in those 650 matches.

The biggest payout is if you win the 18 or 24 player tournaments. The 24 player tournament costs 1.95 and the first prize winner gets $20 for the 24 player tournaments if 24 people join. So for 3 minutes of play, you made a profit of $18.00 if you win.

The thing they are doing to limit the earning potential for the very top players is limiting the number of games they can play every day. Your expected profit per game won't change, but you might be able to play only 10-20 games in a day.

On a personal level, I'm sure that the earning potential will drop off very soon. All it will take for me to stop having such a high expected value is for 4-5 really good ST stackers and ultra players to come along and play the site regularly. And yes, I knew beforehand that by making this thread I was increasing the probability that they will find out about the site .

As a warning to people thinking about joining I want to make one thing really clear. The owners of Tetris Burst care about one thing only: making money. It's no different from entering a casino. They will use everything in their power to entice you to other games or to make you lose money somehow. Don't put anything past these guys, seriously. If you know you have weak will power, or trouble with gambling STAY AWAY. These people are experts at at taking money from people. I made this post to help people who want to navigate the site and are having trouble.

Personally, I have withdrawn all of my profits except for $30 to mess around with. The way I see the game now is just a fun way to pass the time, any money I make in the future will just be an added bonus. I'd encourage anyone joining the site to see it a similar way.

Edit: I Forgot to mention a piece of advice, in most cases it is not worth it to reenter tournaments. They give you an option to 'increase your score.' However, what they don't tell you explicitly is that when you try to increase your score it recharges you the entry fee. So if you enter a 5 person tournament 3 times, even if you increased your score enough to win you will have made little profit since the total entry fees would be about $6.

Also, keep in mind that they can choose to pay you through a check if you don't connect a paypal account, which will take about a month to arrive in the mail.

[Okey_Dokey]

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

[bigwig]

They really tightened up the matchmaking. I'm only getting matched with the same three people and it won't let me open more than 2 of the same type of competition at once. I can't even lose more than $12 a day now.

[Goldenshadow]

They really tightened up the matchmaking. I'm only getting matched with the same three people and it won't let me open more than 2 of the same type of competition at once. I can't even lose more than $12 a day now.

They are only letting me play about 5 games a day now. Also, making money off of playing Tetris tournaments seems a little weird. I know there are plenty of gaming tournaments around the world that charge an entry fee, but something feels a little off for some reason. Maybe its the format of GSN. Even if GSN starts letting me play more matches again I don't think I will.

[TheUltimateSpicy]

Yeah, I made like $35 in an hour and then it finally found some of GoldenShadow's scores and I stopped winning about half my games XD. I gotta learn to ST stack, not that I'll beat other people necessarily, but hey, if it makes me like $5 it's probably worth it lol.
Also, ggs goldenshadow(i guess lol, we didn't really play each other, but you did beat me in score)
I kind of want to actually play you in a vs match some time

[jackh1771]

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