General Questions

tip

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I'm a new player, where should I start?

If you are new to the game, play marathon mode, just try your best to survive. Tetris.com will work for this.

Once you are familiar with the game and its controls, try and complete a 40 line sprint using only Tetrises. Make sure to use both clockwise and counter-clockwise.

Once you can complete Tetris-only sprints consistently, try and lower your Tetris-only sprint to around 1:30 - 2:00 minutes.

Once you've done that, you're now ready to play versus.

Hop into a versus game and good luck!

Where do I find people to play against?

If your game has native matchmaking support, like tetr.io or puyo puyo tetris, you can use the matchmaking feature. Otherwise join the Matchmaking Central (MMC) discord, which has matchmaking based on skill level.

What communities should I join?

Who to watch?

What Tetris Resources are there?

The only real good wiki in terms of accuracy for vs is four.lol

Here are some other wikis that you can look at if you're just interested in look at setups.

warning

Looking at setups is a noob trap, use at your own risk.

Just look at the diagrams, it doesn't' matter if you can't read Japanese/Korean

How do I get faster?

Proper practice is key to improvement. Don't feel discouraged when you see people improving faster than you, you have to keep in mind the key factors to improvement:

  1. Time
    • If you don't actually spend the time to play the game, and review your own gameplay, you will not be able to improve.
  2. Efficiency of practice
    • Some ways of practicing make better use of your time than others. For example, someone who restarts sprint very frequently will get less practice per hour than someone who doesn't.

Keep in mind that there also is a difference between getting a new personal best and actually improving.

How to stack?

The best way to learn how to stack is to play a lot, and to review your own gameplay and the gameplay of people much better than you.

Experiment and try new things, and try to notice patterns.

You should have an intuitive understanding of how to stack, most specific guides and tutorials won't help, as it will limit your growth if you try to just "memorize" a list of setups.

As a general rule of thumb:

  1. Do not make piece dependencies.
  2. Plan ahead and make use of your piece previews.

What controls should I use?

Use what ever is comfortable :)

There are no "best controls"

Some common layouts are:

Default Tetris Friends
Split Rotate and move
Controller style (reversed)

What das/arr should I use?

In games where you can customize arr and das, arr should be as low as possible (0 or 1).

To pick a das start around 130ms / 8F (some games use frames which are 16.66 ms) and then keep lowering it until you cannot control it.

Most players will be able to use a das below 130 ms. While it is possible to play at the top level with higher settings, you should not unless you absolutely have to.

What is finesse? Should I learn finesse?

Finesse is the method of placing a specific piece in a specific location with predetermined set of key inputs.

There is a specific optimal sequence of inputs for every single placement in the game, this called perfect finesse / 2 step finesse.

People often mean "Perfect Finesse" or "2 step finesse", when they refer to finesse.

Lots of top players do not have "perfect finesse" but will still have a set way of placing pieces.

Whether you decide you want to use the most optimal set of sequences is up to you. (You should use both rotations though.)

Should I learn 180 rotations?

If you want to.

Learning to rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise is most important. 180 is extra if you want to, they don't exist in official games, however.

Some top players don't use 180, it doesn't make that big of a difference.

How many previews do I need to use?

In general you should use as many previews as the game allows you to use. Whether you're just checking previews for an upcoming piece or actually planning out all 5 pieces ahead of time. Most good players use all previews.

How do I use piece previews effectively? Dependencies?

To leverage piece previews effectively, you want to plan out your current placement in a way that accommodates your next pieces and avoids creating dependencies.

Consider this field, with your current piece being an L.

If your next piece is a Z, T, L you would probably place it like this

If your next piece is a J or I, you would probably place it like

If your next pieces are S or O it depends on the rest of your field.

How to hold effectively?

Hold is used effectively in the following scenarios:

  • Saving an I or a T piece
  • When you cannot place your current piece in a good spot
  • When you require your held piece before your current piece
  • Stalling

The biggest mistake people use hold for is to switch/shuffle the order of pieces, when the same placements are possible without holding.

Where do I look on the screen?

Depends on what is most comfortable to you. Some people prefer to use their peripheral vision to look at the queue/piece preview, others will dart their eyes back and fourth. See what works best for you, and try resizing the game window if that helps.

How to practice using... (both rotates, all previews, finesse, etc)?

Most of these "how do I practice doing x" or "how to practice using x" questions just come down to being disciplined. To practice using all previews, slow down and look at them. To practice using both rotates, slow down and rotate both ways. There's not really any secret to it.

How to practice?

  1. Play a lot
  2. Review your own replays and replays of people better than you
  3. If you get stuck see FAQ or try and ask a good question or buy coaching from me for 30$/hr

Should I learn how to ST stack?

No. "Repeatable stacking patterns" are bad to rely on.

If you insist on learning a pattern, learn the modern LST stacking.

Infinite stacking patterns like, ST, LST, infinite TST, are usually only good for the "Ultra" game mode. You will rarely have the opportunity to use them in versus.

How do I get better at Perfect Clears? Mid game PC?

Here's some tips by some of the best people at PCs, JimothyJimothy and Cosin307

As for mid game pcs, they are really rare and mostly luck, there is no way to get more lucky.

What is Parity? How do I learn Parity?

warning

TLDR: Parity is a nerd trap.

The use of parity in Tetris aims to solve the problem of "stacking" without holes. In reality just thinking about parity will not give you a conclusive answer as to whether a stack is good or not (ie. whether it is maintainable or has severe dependencies on certain pieces). It is still necessary to think about the dependencies themselves, thus making parity extra work for no reason.

important

Almost no good players actually think about parity, they are just able to evaluate stacks intuitively and can visualize piece dependencies through practice.

Explanation:

Parity is the mathematical concept of even/oddness. If you imagine a checkerboard pattern, you can see the "parity" of each piece by looking at the number of black and white squares it would occupy.

So using this we can discover that all the pieces have even parity, except for the T piece, which has odd parity (3:1 ratio).

So the only way to change the "parity" of a field in Tetris is either to use a T piece or to clear an odd number of lines. If you really can't help yourself but read more here is an article https://harddrop.com/wiki/Parity

Conclusion

Something about row parity ??

Does this setup have a name? Is this setup worth naming?

Most useful/practical setups have already been discovered. It is common for newer players to want to "invent" something to "become a part of Tetris history", but first you have to evaluate whether you setup is even worth looking at.

A good setup is usually has the following qualities:

  1. It is a flexible shape/setup leading to it. Example of bad:

  2. It is not a large commitment. An example of bad:

There are 220 possible board states in Tetris (240 if you include the hidden rows), most of them are not worth naming.

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