Tetris novice, tspin help

Thread in 'Strategy' started by BulimicCannibal, 24 Jul 2012.

  1. I started playing tetris a few days ago, having ignored it in the past because I wasn't very fond of puzzle games and I'm struggling to implement the strategy seen in this link...

    http://www.urgametips.com/2012/03/tetris-battle-how-to-perform-double-t.html

    I understand the concept but I find myself waiting for crucial pieces only for them not to appear, this results in the left side building up and then I end up getting pieces that won't fit properly on the left side of the screen leaving me the option to either ruin my right/middle line or none fitting blocks on the left.

    Any idea what I could be doing wrong?
     
  2. For one, what Tetris game are you playing it on? If it's not a game that uses 7-bag for the randomiser then the ST setup is pretty unreliable.

    You need to make sure that almost all your S and T pieces go into the setup. This means that you also need to be conscious when building the main stack that you're not going to reliably have those pieces at your disposal. It's also better to try and avoid using hold if you can so that you can always have an S/T piece in your hold queue for when you need it. It's also more acceptable to make holes that require I-pieces than it is for normal stacking because you hardly use any of them for clearing lines.

    How to form the pattern on the side of the main stack is also something that takes some getting used to. Making the best use of O/Z/L/J pieces can take a bit of getting used to.

    Really though, you started playing days ago and ST stacking is a really tough stacking pattern to keep going without messing up. It takes a lot of practice and experience to be able to properly pull off, especially at higher gravity speeds.
     
  3. ST Stacking is tricky. If you started a few days ago, I'd focus on general technique before learning a specialty strategy like this one.

    However, it might come in handy to get a bit of background on why this particular method works. Most official Tetris games today use a so-called 7 Bag randomizer -- that is, it deals the pieces out in shuffled sets of the unique seven pieces. Barring some improvisation to balance things out as necessary, you can roughly divide each "bag" across the playfield -- cyan I, blue J, and yellow O pieces on the left, green S and orange L pieces in the center to build the notches, and red Z and purple T pieces on the right side to finish the spin setup and score t-spins.

    Sometimes you might need to "waste" or re-purpose certain pieces to keep everything working smoothly, which is why it's also useful to know the alternate methods of creating notches. Waiting on something specific when the sequence doesn't support it can cause imbalances, as you noted. That said, these adjustments must be made with the understanding that the space between two of the same piece can be anywhere from zero (one at the end of one bag, then one at the start of the next) up to twelve (one at the start of one bag, one at the end of the next).

    The ST Stacking Setups article on the wiki has more info about this particular strategy. However, it may be more useful to check out the T-Spin Guide for tips on how to spot opportunities during standard play.
     

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