slight delay making decision on NES 19

Thread in 'Strategy' started by corndogulous, 1 Nov 2014.

  1. Hey all, after watching many games at the CTWC as head ref/tournament director, I've noticed about a third of the top players take a moment before they*rotate their piece, even when playing on 19. I'm assuming this is so they can give themselves time to take the next piece into account and make better decisions.

    Is this something you had to train yourself to do, or did it evolve naturally? I seem to make knee-jerk decisions and start executing the move instantly, and can't stop myself.
     
  2. I'm not sure, I'm not always cognizant of it. In some ways, the "move, then rotate" movement schemes were something I already picked up from TGM. (Another benefit in games with movement like TGM -- although arguably secondary in the world of NES -- is "wall finesse," where you place a piece 1~2 spaces off the wall by letting the wall stop it before letting off the direction and rotating. Contrast this with timing the release or having to tap back.)

    You're definitely on point though -- you don't have time to make a radical change to account for the second piece, but you can take it into consideration for a slight adjustment. The piece has to spend some time in transit either way, so there isn't usually a strict need to input the rotation immediately. Even after transit, it still has to fall. This gives you some time to decide which way to rotate or whether to rotate at all.

    The piece I'd pay most attention to for this sort of thing would be the T -- the decision to "raise the flag" or let it sit flush can have a significant effect on the surfaces available to the next piece. (Ryan Heise's general stacking guide suggests to avoid "the obvious choice" of sitting flush as a perfectly flat stack leaves no options for S/Z, but situationally you may need to provide for L/J/O/I.) Another common case to be mindful of is filling 2-wide canyons with L/J alone or in combination (also addressed in Heise's stacking guide) -- whether you rotate left or right should depend on what you see come up in the preview.
     
  3. i believe we spoke about this the other day but i, like alex, am not always aware of it either. i have to admit i almost have my mind made up when the next box flashes. i know what i am going to to do, and if something else pops into mind ignore it and go with my first thought, even if it is worse than the second option.

    it may also have to do with the fact that some players rotate right before the piece falls, and others do it right away. my two cents.
     

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