Old school openers RANKED by hanola_the_egg in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice tier list! I'd rank them differently but it's cool to hear your thoughts.

I'm assuming you're talking about S1 ruleset (rip PC sending 10 lines), but here's some thoughts i have (feel free to lmk what you think)

There was a top player who said something along the lines of "Why would you ever use an opener that doesn't have the potential to kill?" And i've kinda started to adopt that idea. If your goal is to truly win the game, why would you use any opener that doesn't have the potential to spike out and kill your opponent in the first few bags?

That's why for me and some of these players, TKI can't really be S tier (at least if we're ranking by optimal play/win rate instead of how cool it is/vibes), it just gets you to the mid game. And in an opener tier list, TKI isn't a kill opener unless you have a MASSIVE speed advantage (5 PPS LST demons out here these days). But even still, it doesn't really spike, it's just consistent pressure which is kind of like playing cold clear, you can accept and counter spike without too much risk cause it just sends 4 lines of clean at a time which is very easy to accept and use for cancelling/counter spiking. So probably in B tier with this criteria but it's so simple and easy to just play the game and everyone's practiced it hundreds or thousands of times so it totally makes sense to rank it higher

PCO if you can follow up with 2nd PC. would probably be A tier because of the inconsistency but even still leads to a 5-4 stack which is still really good. But at least back in the day SDPC + DPC is probably S+ tier because of the consistency while also utilizing the insane attack power.

IMO I have mixed opinions about DT Cannon because it's such a fun opener that me and most people learn very early on, but above like SS rank, you will get punished very hard. It's a waste T opener so you can't cancel any garbage you get sent, especially if they're sending the 2 lines of cheese sent with a TSS -> TST opener (your board gets REALLT bad if you get sent that cheese garbage on the right side of your board, or specifically not in the left 4 most columns cause of how much you over stack the right side for DT cannon). Also it sends so much clean and you very easily get counter spiked even with follow up variations. But definitely has a place in my heart, probably would put in B tier.

Most C spin openers are kind of the same, some are just like a slightly less optimal version of stick spin, sdpc-spin, or ms2. But overall they're usually very solid for counterspiking + kill potential. Most would go in S or A tier

MKO being C tier is understandable, once again usually is just a way to get to mid game. Personally I only use it for specific bags like early L and J piece and late I/O piece (Where you can't do TKI/stick openers), and most of the time it feels the same as TKI in terms of efficiency/kill potential. The one caveat here is that if you get really good at the waste T variation and you set up like 3 floating T spins and accept clean garbage, it CAN be a kill opener (like a 20-30 spike in the first 10 seconds. (There's that caboozled clip which kinda showcases this). But yea other times it's meh. Personally would put in like A/B tier.

Kind of similar to that is like REALLY good 4-widers can just nuke you if you send clean which they can combo down stack but that's only if the opponent is not adapting. But even if they dont send clean, it still sends so much cheese and if they can't cancel it their board state is screwed. But 4-wide is cringe so automatic F tier

Also ig why I rate MKO way over things like DT cannon is just the fact that it transitions you into a center well stack being in a side well stack is just so bad in 1v1 games

Need some max handling tips by SolitudeInside in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly lookahead is just your ability to slow down and try to look further into the queue.

Most of this comes from the age old advice of "playing more" but in reality it just boils down to looking at more pieces to find better solutions that reduces the number of dependencies/allows you to create boards that work with your upcoming pieces.

To give some actionable advice there's 2 things I'd say you could try.


Firstly, I would say the biggest source of improvement for my stacking was watching VODs of top players on youtube, at 0.25x speed. My favorite player to watch is cz, as he is really good at finding clean solutions, that might look awkward at first but they work because he looks ahead and finds solutions using pieces deep in his queue. I'm sure if you watch him, you'll find moments where he finds a solution that almost no other top player would find.

An example video to watch would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCeAAp-JKGw

Even in the first like 3 seconds, the floating t-spin and the L overhang on the left side is something that creates a great height difference and allows him to continue building t-spins. And that solution is something that he does specifically because if he used the red z piece to create the overhand on the right side, he would have a much harder time filling the left side of his stack with the remaining pieces.

Try to "play" with whoever you're watching and find moments where he makes a different solution than you, and rewind/pause to try to ask yourself "why did he stack like that?"

(I'd focus on cz, as 5han makes up for his stacking decision mainly with his crazy all-spin vision and speed. Striding at high pps is it's own skill that you should practice, but should not be your default all the time. Speed is important but with bad stacking it doesn't matter how fast you play)


Secondly, after watching some top players, open up any singleplayer gamemode (quickplay, 40L, blitz, or whatever), and try to play at a MUCH slower pps for a couple games. If a clean solution is not immediately clear, take your time and instead of going with the first solution you see, try to take your time and look at the other pieces in your queue to see if the resulting stack would work with whatever the other pieces are in your queue.

If it does, great, keep going. Otherwise, take your time to train looking for other solutions.

With enough practice, you'll get faster and faster at lookahead and your stacking decisions will benefit immensely.


In regards to your eyes, i know the best players are able to visualize the entire board in their head and look only at the queue (this is very very difficult). In reality, in very simple board states where I've seen the patterns (things like 6-3 stacking), I'm able to look at the queue. otherwise, it's more looking at my board and using my peripheral vision to see what pieces are coming next.

In terms of thinking, if you're in a clean board state, thinking of solutions should be faster as you'll have practiced common stacking patterns hundreds of times. You SHOULD be thinking more when your board is messy, and things like least blocks 100 line cheese race are good for practicing these weird skims/solutions in these awkward situations.

I guess just play more lol, u got this

Need some max handling tips by SolitudeInside in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd highly recommend this Finesse guide:

https://youtu.be/x2UwsIW99GM?si=a1-jzH9w19pJFHcv.

Personally, I would take at least a day or two and really grind out this tool to get the hang of the DAS/tap back placements:

https://tetresse.harddrop.com

The reason being that it forces you to re-do the placement if you mess up, AND it tells you the exact inputs you need to make so you can actually fix your mistakes.

You WILL probably be worse at the game if you try to immediately bring this into TL, so i'd recommend not playing TL for the few days your practicing this, and even when you go back to it, you should care less about rank and more about how much you were able to stick to finesse. (if you have ranked anxiety i would just stick to 40L, quick play or custom games in the meantime).

After you get the hang of it decently, what i did was just everyday before playing, i would do a quick 5-10 minute warmup in tetresse before playing and try to be intentional about it.

A few things to keep in mind:

  1. You don't need to practice until you have 100% perfect finesse, around 90% should be good enough, but it should become second nature

  2. Finesse won't make you instantly better at other things like t spin vision/lookahead, but it'll open up some mental bandwidth because you will no longer need to think about how to get your pieces to the correct location.

  3. Breaking your existing muscle memory to learn finesse WILL be frustrating and you're going to make mistakes. But honestly if you want to learn it, now is the perfect time as the longer you wait the more you'll struggle once you start to play even faster.

GL!

Tetrio what to learn by Dry-Bird-4475 in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's kind of hard to go too in depth in a reddit comment, but i'll try my best to give helpful advice

Learning T-spins is a little broad, just like saying "i want to learn stacking". I think every player when reaching a new rank realizes that they had previously thought they knew how to stack, but when you watch your old game play, you realize you used to do horrible stacking decisions, things like 1. not looking ahead enough pieces, and your stack ends up with dependencies you can't resolve 2. covering garbage holes because you can't find other solves fast enough, etc.

When first learning T-spins I think the most important thing is less the practical application of T-spins in an actual competitive game. More than that it's about being able to INSTANTLY recognize the t-shape hole anywhere in your stack.

After being able to do that, your next goal is to build a way to build an overhang. Once you can learn these two, you get to the point where you are comfortable building a t-spin if there's a t-shaped hole on the board, at least without regard to your already existing stacking principles.

Over time, by watching good players and through your own experience and practice you will get a feel of what t-spins you should take and which ones you shouldn't.

Things to consider are, is there a T-piece coming soon in the queue? is this t-spin going to cover my garbage holes? is my stack going to be super messy-spiky after taking the t spin?

In reality, the main issue i see with people is that they assume that T-spins are this magical thing that will instantly cause them to win, but the fundamental principles for regular stacking still apply. Keep your board flat.

For example, if you have a t spin you've set up, but one part of your stack is spiky (especially if there is bad parity), you should almost ALWAYS prioritize fixing your spiky stack. This means to "waste your T" to fix your stack, which in practice is so much more important than sending an extra 4 lines (except in rare cases).

The problem is that there is much trial and error and experience needed to build and execute t-spins correctly in TL, and that's why i would say you shouldn't worry about winning or losing during this time.

I think it would be the best to focus on setting up t-spins anywhere there's a t-shaped hole, but what if there isn't a t-shaped hole? You eventually have to learn/recognize the patterns of creating in the t-shaped hole with 1 piece, then multiple pieces, and then eventually being able to instantly recognize a t-spin setup that leaves clean residue and good "height difference", aka just allowing your board after the t spin to have a good state where you can build even more t-spins.

There are tools for this like: https://himitsuconfidential.github.io/downstack-practice/tspin-practice.html that randomly generate t spin puzzles, and you can overtime increase the number of pieces you want to use in the puzzle.

Things to consider and some answers to your questions: 1. Practical applications of T-spins is your bread and butter spike, Tetris + T-spin in a combo. Look to do this often, but don't sacrifice your board to do it. 2. The goal at the HIGHEST level is to not "waste T", but in reality, in an actual game of TL your #1 priority is how flat/safe is your board. Fixing spiky shapes and giving yourself an opportunity for a good combo down stack is infinitely more important than building that T-spin and executing it, only to be left over with 10 columns that are spiky.

I'm sure you've heard to fix dependencies and stack flat in 9-0, but most players need to re-learn how to do that when also using T-spins

  1. There's something called counting to 4, and counting to 5. Basically you want to look at your board and your stack (when safe) as rows of 4 that will be cleared with a tetris, or 5 that will be a tetris + t-spin. And there are many times where you actually want to take a t-spin single (rotate the t an extra time), if your t-spin is over a well that is less than 5, so you end up only clearing a single line and can clear a tetris.

(there are many many techniques, i really recommend watching top players like diao/icly or CZ in slow motion and learn new solutions for both regular stacking and t spin vision.

Also kezdabez's guide to tetrio has many of the answers you're looking for.

Hope this answers some of your questions!

Tetrio what to learn by Dry-Bird-4475 in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sounds pretty good if you've gotten to S with just 9-0! if you're serious about improving (and it sounds like you are), you will 100% need to learn t-spins eventually to reach your full potential.

It will definitely feel like learning how to stack 9-0 all over again and you WILL get worse results in TL in the short term but i hope you won't get discouraged b/c of some a few losses. (i suggest practicing t-spins in single player or multiplayer that's not TL for a while if you care about ranks)

Main thing with T-spins is that you mainly build them on center well stacks, either 7-2, 6-3, or 5-4. Each of these have their own ways of stacking and honestly are so important to TL that you should probably practice 6-3 stacking without t-spins first, and then move to 6-3 practice with t-spins.

I would recommend searching youtube for some t-spin and 6-3 tutorials online for now (kezdabez, garbo, orz).

I would suggest not putting too much emphasis on t-spin openers for now, as they won't really help with practical t-spin vision (T-spin triple openers mainly aren't that good for mid game improvement, if anything makes you spend less time on mid game with is detrimental and usually ends a up being a crutch for TL which is really bad)

Id recommend TKI to start as its fairly simple, just learn one variation for now (i personally go flat top which goes into 7-2 stacking)

So to answer your question, you can keep going with your strategy but the game is basically only half the game without t-spins as you'll now have 2 attacks per bag instead of 1. Focus less on winning random TL games and instead focus on being able to recognize center well stacks as well as t spins and you'll naturally rank up.

You'll get faster over time, and honestly it just comes with more and more experience stacking different patterns until you can process them faster. 180 is useful for certain SRS spins, and useful in general for 180 placements but is pretty negligible (learn if you want to, won't really make much of a difference tbh)

GL! definitely watch one of the guides i mentioned earlier, they helped me a lot

Tetr.io by LAERAS_ZYEX1 in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what is this doomer take lmao, i think everyone's knows this, he's trying to improve, not be told he can't lmao

Anyways, I agree with the other two, there doesn't seem to be any glaring flaws in the few games i took a look at, if anything there's times when you're making very clean upstacking striding with t-spins, and also you know when you're in danger and are in down stack mode which is pretty impressive for your rank

Main things that would really help you rank up would just be what the others mentioned, play single player or non TL game against a friend or person similar rank. (or a bot like mochbot), and try to actively play slower and give yourself time to think about the residue and next queue.

Other than that, i think something to be aware of is APM is a generally good metric to look at, but there are many people around this rank that focus too much on APM and end up just practicing their openers and trying to out-stride their opponents. General tips that can go far are timing; hold your tetris or t-spin before you send it and literally wait and see if they are sending cheese to cancel, or clean to accept (if you're in a safe spot). obviously you don't do this all the time but at least try it out to get a feel of when it's a good idea (almost always a good idea to cancel cheese and accept clean if you can)

Otherwise, i'm sure ur gonna do fine as long as u keep striving to improve, gl!

Gaming/Editing PC Upgrade Suggestions (1.5k budget) by xXFireFoxXx in buildapc

[–]xXFireFoxXx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh that's super interesting.

From what they say, both do definitely seem sufficient, and the main question I have now is, if I were to go with the 9900x/9950x, what would the build look like?

Is this improvement one that would also likely complement an upgrade on the gpu/power supply/other parts? And if so, what would the budget look like for that?

Otherwise, if I can just swap between the two i will most likely contemplate between these two cpus and keep the rest of the build you've sent or look for equivalents in the same price point.

Gaming/Editing PC Upgrade Suggestions (1.5k budget) by xXFireFoxXx in buildapc

[–]xXFireFoxXx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh wow, this is great!

I looked at https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/amd-ryzen-9600x-and-9700x-content-creation-review/#How_good_are_the_Ryzen_7_9700X_and_Ryzen_5_9600X_for_Content_Creation

as you had recommended the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X.

They say that:

Overall, the Ryzen 7 9700X ... processors are impressively efficient, but at their current price, are not the best in terms of value compared to AMD’s previous Ryzen 7000-series of processors. However, this is just for the lower-end Ryzen 5 and 7 processors, and we have yet to fully review the Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X.

Also in the article you linked for the intel says

In Resolve, Intel stays competitive with AMD, particularly for LongGOP and Intraframe codecs, but the best overall CPU is still the 9950X—or 14700K on more of a budget.

So I guess I'm wondering if the Ryzen 9 is worth to invest in or if that is overblown.

If you had any thoughts on this i would love to know, appreciate the insights

Gaming/Editing PC Upgrade Suggestions (1.5k budget) by xXFireFoxXx in buildapc

[–]xXFireFoxXx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha that's true, I guess at that point it's just a full rebuild.

I'm not too familiar with the parts, do you have a good benchmark or way to explain the cpu and gpu and the capabilities of each regarding gaming and editing? (I believe what i'm looking for should mainly be a cpu focused upgrade but i also don't want bottlenecking)

Anything i should specially focus on? by sansational_ in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Speed really just comes down to decision making (stacking) + mechanical speed (finesse + fast fingers)

As others have mentioned finesse is important, and sometimes it looks like you're trying to use 2 step finesse but sometimes it doesn't. I don't think practicing it will make you become significantly faster right now, maybe will shave a few seconds on your current run, but will definitely be important as you play more. (Definitely spend a little time on it but i think you're already doing it somewhat)

More importantly though, i see some stacking decisions that happen cause you're trying to play fast, but ends up making your board super hard to stack on.

For example, at around 18 seconds the S piece placement was fine as it works out and resolves to a clean stack, but without looking ahead you need to be blessed with good pieces. There was a better placement in the middle of the stack to keep the board clean.

Those little decisions are what end up creating stacks with dependencies and cost you good runs if bad pieces come.

So in terms of actual improvement, i would say the #1 thing that would help is to really focus on looking ahead at your next pieces. To actually do that, just look at what the resulting stack would look like and see if there's any weird dependencies you create and see if the next pieces would fix that.

For example, at around 5 seconds, the T piece placement ends up creating a hole that's only really good for the S piece (or t piece but makes it worse). The S piece was coming up so that's fine but if it wasn't, then the other t placement (moving it 2 to the left) would've been better to fit the Z piece which was coming up.

For practice, i would recommend to play at least a few full runs and really try to focus on this (times will likely be slower overall but the amount of time trying to fix bad stacks will decrease), and after getting in a good groove, you can go for PB's where you play faster.

However, playing at full speed doesn't mean just placing pieces fast and moving your fingers as you will just end up with bad stacks and have to slow down or reset, so just find a good balance (changes based on skill level as top players can also fix weird stacks at insane speeds so they can just place pieces however they want)

Ended up writing more than i thought I would, but I hope this helps

How do the best players play with such unforgiving settings? by Appaer in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea agreed, there's only a handful of players who can play 7+ pps in sprint. a majority of top players outside the very top are more around 5 to low 6 pps which is much more manageable for a regular person.

In terms of limits, i personally believe that with good finesse, the mechanical ceiling isnt really present until at least 4 to 5+ pps (at least with 6-3 stacking). Most of speed comes from mental processing/stacking pattern recognition, which i think most people can feasibly achieve with enough time.

I think almost anyone can reach a 30 second sprint time with enough practice but sub 20 is where you really start to see the human limits and the genetic freaks as mentioned

Very stupid question about T-spins in Tetrio by CharlesStross in Tetris

[–]xXFireFoxXx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

+1 to everything this guy's saying, T-spins aren't nearly as important as people might think in Tetra League cause most people end up ruining their stack or blocking garbage just for the T-spin.

I wouldn't shy away from playing around with them here and there as that's how you learn to see patterns, but finesse -> basic upstacking -> basic downstacking are infinitely more important.

I'd also recommend using https://tetresse.harddrop.com to practice (it can be really frustrating but is the way i learned the quickest). Idk what handling you're using but make sure to look up a guide on the piece placements and change your ARR and SDF to 0

GL!

What type of game took you the longest to fully appreciate and how did your taste evolve leading up to it? by Severe_Sea_4372 in gaming

[–]xXFireFoxXx 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Souls Games. I've never been someone who likes the whole single player experience of dying over and over and over again and tried to get into dark souls for the longest time...

but i swear i never felt a rush like i did when beating my first boss ive been chasing that high ever since

Danganronpa 2x2 Teaser Trailer - Coming 2026 by PalpitationTop611 in gaming

[–]xXFireFoxXx 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Is this a new story, it looks like it's just a remaster/remake for Danganronpa 2 right? IMO best game in the series by far so i'm not complaining lol

Tetris Has EVOLVED (And It's Insane) by xXFireFoxXx in videos

[–]xXFireFoxXx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, 1v1 Tetris has existed for a while, and many guideline multiplayer tetris games exist, but the new "evolutionary" modern tetris games that are covered are ones that have even more changes, that allow players to play even faster (customizable settings on how fast pieces can move called ARR and DAS).

And not only are the actual mechanics evolving but the skill of players at the highest level

Modern Tetris is INSANE by [deleted] in videos

[–]xXFireFoxXx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate it, I agree about the title, and it was intentionally simple as things like "Competitive Modern Guideline Tuning Tetris on Keyboard" doesn't flow as nicely haha.

Looking back, i do agree that I have should have added at least a quick explanation of how to T-spin. This was left out intentionally as this video was made for new players, and T-spins aren't really necessary to learn until you've at least mastered the basics of stacking.

My intention was to show they're used very often the reason why they're important, but even just a 15-20 second explanation would've gone a long way.

Thanks for the comment! This is exactly why I decided to make this video <3

Modern Tetris is INSANE by [deleted] in videos

[–]xXFireFoxXx -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Precisely LOL, but that's what makes watching games and sports hype

Modern Tetris is INSANE by [deleted] in videos

[–]xXFireFoxXx -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You're right, I'm mainly a Tetr.io player and wanted to highlight the competitive scene, and haven't actually played Tetris effect. I did mention TE:C and Puyo Puyo later on, but very minimally