The secret to consistency is to only play when you're at peak physical and mental performance. Play when you're well rested, and really feel like "hey, I want to play Tetris today!" To illustrate, I feel like this about once a week. If I play only during those times, I reach my optimal consistency, which is my qualified grade +/- 1. An average session when I'm in peak condition: S3 S4 S4 S3 S4 S5 S3 S3 ... and then I need to stop playing because my performance (and thus consistency) is going down. I might still get a high grade if I keep pushing myself (I do this when I absolutely want to get a qualification exam), but to be honest it's better to quit while ahead. This will also leave you feeling more positive, and give you more motivation and energy for your next session. From what I understand of it, this is loosely in line with Digital's "Break Theory" where long breaks between sessions promote better performance.
Sure the quality of the session is really important, but you still need to invest a lot of time every week in order to really improve. Look at professional Korean SC players. To maintain top level of play, they practice ten hours a day. Do you think they're feeling great during all those ten hours? It's an extreme example, but my point is that time-invested is very important in skill development.
You're all fools. The secret to consistency is press down, always. None of that pussy left and right and clockwise and counter clockwise crap. That's for inconsistent noobs. 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 etc
Extract to show my recent strategy for DEATH 300-500. I am happy to see that I am recovering my good time attack positions (M rank around 3:10) without too much forcing on speed, after 2 weeks of intensive work on my consistence. This is not to show how consistent I am on many attempt, but just to show the way I am using in order to get more consistency. Actually, my first session yesterday has been 2 m rank for 4 games, with another around 440, and a crappy one under 200 because of a missdrop. The video is an extract from the 4th game. PS : Thank you Lee_N and DIGITAL for the recorder tool of inp.. PS' : Watch carefully the move with the "L" at lv 599 c_t . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2k4pbtSqoQ PS'' : here is an example of the same move applied to sub-20G, but really much harder to perform with sonic drop than for DEATH 500 or SHIRASE 600.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy-LvbnPVnE
ah ha ha..So you noticed how much I paniced to find a solution on the left, I tried 2 times a synchro with a I, but no one worked.. EDIT : synchro ? Or 2x tap, rotate, DAS...I am not sure anymore now..
I usually double tap to do that. It's too hard to try and synch the I piece. Or is this too slow on that level?
You know, we talk a lot about consistency, but I was thinking, "what is consistency in Tetris"? Does it mean that you stay at the same level of performance? It's good to not do terribly every third game, but wouldn't a consistent player also never improve much? It seems to me that consistency is an easy goal to reach if you just put the minimum effort into every game (consistently bad playing). I gather you guys must mean you want to consistently play at a high performance level and improve. That sounds good, but is it any better than just "trying hard to play at a high performance level and consequently improving? The difference is that with the second, you can still take risks and make mistakes. You can explore new ideas, and it's okay if they don't work out. If they don't work you'll lose your "consistency," but maybe next time you'll find something that works better than before. See what I'm getting at? No, I don't think consistency is an important goal in Tetris. The main goal should be improving. If consistency is important, it's only important when you're already at the top skill level and want to stay that way.
We don't have more details, but it seems that during the last TGM event in japan, where jago was, the few best player did very successfully some demos on TGM, TAP and TI..we don't know if they playey few attempt or only one, but in the 2 cases, I don't feel able to do such a thing and get so good performance on one session..This a strong example of consistency, zab got two S13 in a limited session.. and ofcourse, no need to get 9/10 time between 80 and 90% of your best performance, but I noticed, with my case, that falling too deep in low consistency can be a real disaster, when I decrease at 4% of my sudden ti run at 300+ (really worst case), I got stressed because of the 96% of failed game, and have some disturbing thought like : "oh my god, finaly a good one, I must not lose..." you see the problem.. And a opposite and positive view of this fact can be the one which is happening currently to me, I am increasing my proportion of DEATH 600+ game without beating my old record (789), so I am less nervous, and that is begining to be more and more common to pass 600..in the past, DEATH 600+ was very rare, so I used to get very nervous approaching my record.
A couple pages ago in this very topic, colour_thief said yes, double tapping is too slow in Death and Shirase.
Recently I passed a 2x tap at SHIRASE 1200.. It is possible at every speed, but the mental and physical stress occured by this maneuver increases a lot the probability of failing the placement of the next tetrimino.
and there are few modes in which you can reach a pinnacle. guideline marathon for example (and maybe some of those crazy tetris party modes).
Just to add to what Amnesia said, if you are strong enough to plan ahead and to adjust your rhythm on demand, this type of placement easily becomes consistent. That little advantage in mental preparation and reaction makes all the difference. The technique is still not recommended though. I think the type of consistency discussed in the last few pages of the thread have been referring to the minimization of the gap between the upper and lower bounds of your performances. To answer your second and third question, I have to make a contradicting point. Players simultaneously aim to be consistent and inconsistent. You cannot become a great player without both. Decreasing consistency by increasing the upper bounds of your ability (therefore, widening the gap between upper and lower bounds), gives you more room to "improve." On the other hand, you can continuously increase the upper bounds of your ability, but if you do not bridge the gap between upper and lower bounds, you will end up having amazing runs mixed in with embarrassing crap.
Well, without consistency, you won't get good qualification exams in TI. The grade system of TI (and also tap) are designed to require consistency to obtain the rank of grandmaster. It's completely hopeless in TI unless you are actually that consistent.
After giving this thread a complete readthrough, I'm going to take Amnesia's punishment and play 10 no-quit games of TGM to see how I can do. In Texmaster, that is (easier and less laggy) I abuse the quick restart button too often if I make a bad misdrop or the stack is in bad shape; but at the same time I also tend to play a little bit too agressively in 0-50 and sometimes end up dying with 9 or 8 due to a drought of I pieces... ... My grade in Special Ti is, excluding aborted games, usually S4~S5 (best S6), and it's fairly constant; I usually die in the same spot. I'm still missing a lot of the ARS tricks and have really bad stacking behavior in 20G, so... we'll see. Results tomorrow, after sleeping
This fits well into what I was saying. At the top level of play (GM), you'd want to be consistent to stay at the top level. At all other levels, you'd really want to improve before becoming consistent.
if i regret at 0-100 i restart every time. but that's the only time. I agree with caffeine, you have to push yourself to get better and then adjust to the higher level you are trying to achieve. this is what I am trying to say with "if you don't mess up you're not pushing yourself." you have to take risks to learn to minimize the resulting danger of such risks.
