I've become quite good at reaching 500 in Death (in a recent session I got M in 12 of 34 games), frequently with a pretty manageable stack. But I always seem to choke up and die quickly afterward, rarely making it into the 700s. I know basically how to play in 500 speed, and the speed per se isn't beyond my ability, but I make frequent mistakes and have a really hard time recovering from them. For the current Death GM's, did you hit a wall like this? I suppose I should train 500 speed more but other than that I'm not really sure what to do other than just keep grinding away at it.
Death 500 is only a matter of focusing. What I do to be consistent... is playing like a madman with my stick: I litterally punch the buttons and destroy the joystick, which helps me to totally empty my mind. Counterpart is that as I play at the local arcade, I don't play death that much loool
1 M out of 3 games is pretty good. You should try to practice tons of death 500 speed (e.g with tex sudden, or mame with some cheat code). Death 500 is so different from regular sub 500 death mode, that you need to develop specific strategies. Once you've cleared a couple 500-999 you'll be more confident with it.
There are a lot of elements in Death Mode, especially 500... I think the most important one is trying to keep the stack clear, as low as possible and registering what a mistake means to your stack. Actually that bit of advice also applies to the first half, since you want to keep the stack low before the speed rises again. My personal thing is : Priority n°4 : A piece goes somewhere : Have you just lost it or were you out of ideas as to where to put your piece so it just stood there and locked itself? Priority n°3 : No holes nor overhangs : Are you making a flat formation? Will you be expecting a line piece or are you not making sure that some holes that were put sideways will be covered up nicely later on? Priority n°2 : Clear lines whenever possible : Could you do a double? A single? Did you instead stack up a well? Are you getting high enough so that you're already at the upper part of the field? You're considering a line clear that makes everything look like crap? Then refer to priority n°3 (even though that one occurs very rarely for me) Priority n°1 : No holes in the center : Did you make a hole in columns 4? 7? ... 6? That's bad. 5!? That's even worse, your T will get stuck on it, it might be a problem for the S, sometimes for every other piece, so you will need to get very lucky to cope with it. Did you cover that hole when you could have not done it? Go back to priority n°3. Sometimes you clear a hole by making another that's away from the center. Priority n°0 : Being fucking good at this fucking game : Maybe making a tetris is worth having a little hole in the center? Or you just feel better trying to build a well? Or you just play the moves you are more comfortable with. Whatever suits you best Also what everyone said before applies. Sometimes it's just about that split second! Every time there's a set of holes, I try to think of 2+ blocks that will solve the problem. You rarely have a drought of two different pieces at the same time. And don't make everything triple rotate, that will kill your brain in the long run, that also refers to priority n°3. Maybe I should see some of your videos so I can give clearer advice on some problems you are encountering
One thing for me that really helped my game: because you can't really afford to double tap to move pieces very reliably after Death 400, you have to avoid setups that will force you to double tap. Try limiting yourself to DAS-only and DAS + one tap moves. The worst is when a piece locks down when you don't expect it, because that can then screw up your next 2-3 placements. The triple-rotate J and L moves can be done, but do with caution. If you use all three rotation buttons, this is less of a problem for you than it is for me. While it feels good to go for tetrises at that speed, only do so if safe. Keep that stack clean, pyramid-shaped, and skim early and often. I like to keep my stack about 7-8 rows high if it's clean, so if I can make a tetris, I don't leave crap in column 10. If I have garbage to downstack through, my goal is to clear all the way down. Know the easy stability-boosting and finesse moves. O pieces once to the left. Tuck a J under an overhang by quickly tapping right, rotating clockwise, then left. On this same note, resist the urge to always IRS J's and L's, since they can actually travel farther in their spawn states than when IRS'ed. Rhythm is important, sometimes you'll see players IRS a piece and rotate back to spawn orientation. This might be because you can reset lock delay on the rotation. If a given piece won't reset lock delay (like moving an O once to the left) you might miss an IRS. Be careful.
In case you want to look, here's a 35-minute clip where I break 600 a couple times and then end with a 741. It's not my best playing but I think it's probably representative. I think my mic wasn't working because I can't hear it in the VOD but that's not important. Even looking back at it, I see lots of poor decisions... it's just really tough in the heat of the moment to see the right move to keep my stack stable.
TWF: At 10:30 around level 660: you had two consecutive I bars and missed the opportunity to fill that long hole on the left of the screen (that would have fixed a lot of things). That was doable simply by DASing one of them. As a general advice: the ARS rules in tap makes significantly harder to maneuver pieces in the left part of the screen than in the right part. At death 500 speed, due to the shortage of safe moves you can perform (i.e without risk: you want to avoid bizarre tap tap das stuff with fancy rotations); this effect is dramatically increased and in fact building a clean , healthy left side stack becomes very important (I remember Jago saying once something like: "If you don't have holes on the left you cannot die". Actually you need also to raise your left part a bit but you get the idea ). When you have such an hole you can build a little wall behind it (like you did) and put safely a I bar there (the idea of the small wall is to be able to rotate the I at that speed).
At 35:30, level 713: that I bar basically killed your game because you had lost the control of your left side permanently. Honestly I don't know what to do here; maybe put it on the left but horizontally (LOL I can plan stuff like that while not playing the game and having tons of time to think about it). Your overall play is pretty good and I have the feeling that most of the time you're victim of oversights, or panic or misdrops...
