Its great to see another good Guidelines player discussing these issues :-) Its clear you have a lot of experience in this matter.
You are correct in that TSpins are a great upstacking strategy. Tetris however is a downstacking / defensive strategy.
Consider a "Counter-Tetris": You clear 4-lines of garbage, while dealing 4-damage (+B2B). That's a "effective garbage differential" of 8-lines (+B2B) (you lost 4-garbage, while dealing 4-damage to the opponent). This ideal doesn't always happen, but its far more powerful than a TSpin Triple.
It is impossible to build a TSpin Triple out of garbage, you MUST create a specially crafted overhang. TSpin Triples always leave an overhang. As such, TSpin Triples and TSpin Doubles can at best, clear 1-line of garbage. (and a TST will block your garbage hole until the TST is executed AND the overhang is somehow cleared).
TST into 1-line of garbage is 7 "garbage differential" (2-lines of upstack, 1-garbage cleared + 6 damage sent + B2B). TSD into 1-line of garbage is 5 garbage differential (+B2B) (1-line of upstack, 1-garbage cleared + 4 damage sent + B2B).
Counter-Tetris is 4-garbage lines cleared, 4-damage sent+B2B (8-garbage differential). 3-garbage lines cleared is 7-differential, and 2-garbage lines cleared is 6-differential.
As such, even a 2-garbage + 2-upstack Tetris is more "garbage differential efficient" than all TSpin Doubles, while a 3-garbage+1-upstack beats a pure-upstack TSpin Triple.
Just don't upstack a Tetris, and you'll do fine. Upstacking for a Tetris is grossly inefficient compared to Upstacking TSD or TST.
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My recommended strategy is: TSD for upstack, Tetris for downstacking. TSD keeps the "hole" open for an emergency Tetris if the opponent starts to spike you (an incoming I OR T block can be executed).
A TST overhang blocks the hole however forcing ordering. (you MUST use a T-block), and the overhang will block the I-block until you clean it up somehow.
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Anyway, I argue that going for Tetris should be a stronger strategy... because "Tetris" is literally the name of the game. The "namesake" strategy is weaker than people expect as it is, weakening it further by using a full-randomizer would probably be a bad idea.
> Does the faster player get nothing in return for their speed advantage?
In Guidelines Tetris, you only deal damage if you do a sufficiently complicated maneuver. A Tetris (4-line clear), a T-Spin ("spinning" a T-block into place), or a "Combo" (repeatedly clearing lines non-stop). As such, you only can do a major damage from I-blocks (a 4-line clear / Tetris), or T-blocks (TSpins).
No other block in the game can deal major damage by themselves. So the placement of I blocks and T-blocks is fundamental.
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Also note: Garbage is a "comeback" mechanism: large amounts of garbage "feed" the opponent lines to perform a combo with. If you deal non-lethal damage to the opponent, it is common for the opponent to use the garbage you sent him to "combo" into a large amount of damage back to you.
As such: the game becomes more garbage is sent around. There is a chance the opponent can see a 12-combo through the garbage you sent them. Its difficult for the untrained players to see combos, but it definitely comes into play at higher-levels.
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The current system (including the bag-randomizer) has been carefully balanced between many issues, and playtested for years. Aside from occasional issues (ex: TSpin singles becoming too easy in an early version: leading to the development of "TSpin Minis" to nerf that technique), the overall Tetris Guidelines rules are quite good. I recommend playing a modern competitive version of Tetris and trying it out yourself.
Combo-play is definitely considered one of the strongest strategies right now. Moving to a true-randomizer will necessarily nerf Tetris / T-Spin play, because you can no longer predictably get Tetris or T-blocks.
In my experience, most players want to play Tetris: that is, create Tetrises (4-line clears). Combo play is certainly fun, but it makes sense to "buff" the canonical "Tetris" strategy of the game since that's what people expect. Tetris is the name of the game after-all, and you can only play "Tetris" if you have some kind of assurances that I-blocks are on the way.
Nerfing Tetris and buffing Combos seems to be the wrong direction for balance. If anything, Combos need to be nerfed.
Perfect-clear play is also lovely to watch. Computers are better than humans, but when a human perfect-clear player comes in, its truly intense and fun to watch (and play against). Perfect-clear play relies upon the bag-randomizer to a severe degree, and isn't even that strong of a strategy (a good perfect-clear player needs to threaten 3x perfect clears within 20 seconds to be competitive at high levels). Moving to "true random" would erase this obscure style of play completely.
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In any case, there's a big community which prefers to play with true randomizers: the "Tetris Classic players". They play by a separate set of rules entirely.
As a Guidelines Tetris player, I obviously have my bias. I think the game is more fun with Tetris, Combos, and Perfect-clear openings in play.
1. Center 4-wide combos: While largely hated, this is not a "luck based" strategy. Its memorization of the various forms that a center-4wide well creates, to maximize the quadratic damage formula of modern SRS Tetris Games with respect to combos. Perform the longest combo, you deal a LOT of damage.
2. Perfect clear players: I've played vs people who can consistently get 2-perfect clears at the beginning, and often times can hit me with a 3rd. Perfect-clears do 10-rows of damage (against a typical Tetris field of 22 or so), so 2x Perfect clears in the opening is darn near lethal. Regardless, the "Perfect Clear" is the epitome of "planning ahead".
3. DT Cannon: Amemitaya loves his TSpin Double + TSpin Triple setup, and can even perfect-clear or side-4wide afterwards.
4. TKI: A technique to get a TSpin-double within 7-drops. Its the fastest way to damage the opponent, and can stuff a Perfect-clear opening (it takes 10-drops to create a perfect clear. It only takes 7-drops to TKI).
5. BT-Cannon: The reversed DT-Cannon is a TSpin Triple followed up by a TSpin Double. It has different properties and its own set of followers. Honestly, I don't understand this at all, but that's the cool part of SRS Tetris: there's lots of different strategies!
3. Amemitaya usually does DT Cannon into various followups. I can't find any Amemitaya videos, but this guy on gets the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVN0Wlv-Uo
4. TKI followed up by King Crimson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXraaMWK6PI . You can see the speed at which TKI is executed, which makes it good vs Perfect Clear players.
There are a LOT of different strategies in modern "fast" Tetris games. You play vs the same opponent a lot, like first-to-20 or so, to figure out which openings they like and try to switch your openings to best theirs.
Anyway, the main difference between "Modern Tetris" and "Classic Tetris" is that the RNG of modern Tetris is far more forgiving. "Classic Tetris" is a truly random piece, with a lookahead of 1.
"Modern SRS Tetris" is a bag-RNG (every 7-pieces are permuted, and then given to you in a random order), ensuring an even distribution of pieces. Furthermore, you have a lookahead of 5, so you can plan out your strategies far more reliably in Modern Tetris.
I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I give credit to the classic-Tetris players. Due to the RNG being so much less forgiving in classic-Tetris, its an entirely different skillset and a different game. Furthermore, SRS Tetris is more forgiving with placement of pieces. SRS Tetris looks faster: but a lot of it is because its controls are easier.
Classic Tetris is kinda like watching a Street Fighter 2 player. Laypeople won't be able to tell how difficult some of those moves are. SRS Tetris is more like Dragonball FighterZ, with easier to do combos and automatic-tracking enabled. The combos are flashier and longer, but that's because they're way easier to do than SF2 combos.
Currently tetris players are not the ones winning usually. Combo is still really strong because it basically stun locks you by throwing garbage at you and a sufficiently strong combo player can make you top out from an empty playing field even if you clear three tetrises back to back.
Tetris players also get wrecked by t-spinners as t-spins do double damage compared to how many pieces you clear. The t-spin is the only piece that can send 6 lines back. And with about three bags worth of pieces you can do a t-spin triple + t-spin double + t-spin single = 12 lines.
Only way you can top that is with three all-clears which you most likely won't get.
With the current rules, if you wanna win, you gotta be either t-spinning or comboing in pvp tetris.
In modern ("guideline") tetris T-spins multiline clears tend to actually be the most point-garnering moves. It's a bit weird that the game named tetris went that way but oh well.
I think we had this discussion a year or two ago, but personally I find the guideline algorithm to be boring. It's definitely more oriented to PVP Tetris. Something like TGM would be boring if you can just execute builds instead of preparing your stack and play for just about anything.
It's true that there's a lot of different builds (I'm personally more partial to the albatross special than DT cannons) and builds are not only related to what you can build, also how you should respond to your opponent. Like, is the game even fun when you're just spamming t-spins with Tafokint's T-spin factory?
I'm a pretty highly ranked Tetris player, top ten in Finland in T99, Tetr.io and Puyo Puyo Tetris and somewhere in the top 100 as well, and in reality I think fancier builds like DT-cannons are too fragile and reliant on a clean-ish stack that they're not even viable in high level play. If you take ten seconds to set up a tetris or 15 seconds for a triple T-spin then you're gonna get spammed to death before you can reply with your fancy build.
In modern PVP Tetris I think there's only three tactics. If you're not too technical, you need be fast at tetrises and hope you can outpace your opponent.
If you're slower, you have to deal more damage in the same time or less = T-spins for double damage. It took me a year of practicing to intuitively start leaving t-spin doubles in more unconventional setups. There's the risk of being outpaced and spammed but the double damage mitigates it a bit.
Third option is comboing. I think it's the hardest to pull off but it's also the most effective. With a three wide hole it's fairly easy to get a combo going but there's always a huge risk of topping out by a badly timed attack from the opponent. Four wide is harder to keep going but it's safer.
Depending on the game and network code, combo builds can be game breaking and actually stagger the enemy so that they can't even reply to your attacks. It is however the least effective build in terms of how many pieces you need and the return damage for each clear and there's the most unknowns in how you're supposed to stack.
But to sum up in short, I don't think "builds" per se are the way to go in PVP. The "stack, attack and reply" formula simply leaves too large holes for your opponent to attack and it's not variable enough. Seeing parts of builds as patterns, like using a roof on a T-shaped hole to build a triple T-spin is useful if you can figure it out whilst clearing garbage and keeping a constant battering on your enemy going.
Personally, I think TTC forcing guidelines on single player games is boring. TGM TAP+ was the pinnacle in terms of game behavior and algorithms, IMO holds and the floor kicks in Terror Instinct made everything a bit too easy and all the difficulty comes from being ridiculously fast instead of being super meticulous and eloquent in your stacking.
I recently learned that the rules of Tetris are surprisingly subtle. For example, depending on how piece rotation is implemented, it may or may not be possible to clear three lines with a T piece ("T-spin triple").
Certainly the first thing that's apparent when watching pros play is their speed. However, after playing years of Tetris myself (though nowhere near pro level), I've really come to appeciate that speed is only a small fraction of what makes pros pro.
* Many multiplayer games give bonuses for combos (multiple consecutive line clears), T-spins, and Tetrises. Setting these up efficiently can require reading several pieces ahead and takes a ton of practice. An example where both players do a fairly elaborate setup, one with combos and the other with T-spins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mASSHXLTuU4
* 20G mode, made famous by games like TGM, drastically reduces the ability to manipulate the pieces. Even surviving takes new strategies (you're forced to play a lot of strange moves), much less making tetrises like the pros do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoU0DQh7zdU
* Some multiplayer games give difficult garbage, I'm thinking of Cultris 2 specifically. Clearing garbage efficiently, known as "downstacking", requires much more careful piece placement than regular play. It's hard to appreciate from video, but if you compare pros downstacking to a normal person, you can see they use fewer pieces to clear the same amount of garbage, which is a real competitive advantage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgK4aJ_3zCw
Strong players practice these loops all the time. Its possible thanks to the "bag randomizer".
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The BT Cannon is a TSpin double (4 damage + B2B bonus) + TSpin Triple (6 damage + B2B bonus), for a total of 11 damage.
The DT-cannon followup is a TSpin Triple followed by TSpin Double for a total of 12 damage.
Finally, the Perfect Clear is 10 damage, for a total of 33 damage per loop.
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Other players practice triple-perfect clear starts, for 30-straight damage in some ~30 tetriminos dropped. But the BT-cannon + DT Cannon -> Perfect clear setup is a beautiful arrangement.
The whole loop is carried out over 5 bags IIRC, or 35 pieces (5 bags * 7 pieces per bag == 35 sets of each piece). That's enough for the 4x T-pieces needed for the BT-cannon + DT Cannon (which offer significant amounts of damage)
35 pieces * 4 pieces == 140 minos, or 14 lines (the Tetris board is exactly 10 pieces wide). Which lines up with not only a perfect bag loop (the 35th piece finishes the bag, meaning piece#36 is a new bag, allowing you to loop), but also divides perfectly with 140 minos aka 14 lines, meaning the perfect clear is possible.
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Thanks to Tetris Guidelines bag randomizer, bag#6 is effectively the same situation as bag#1 (start of a new bag). So you loop the sequence and can continuously apply the BT-cannon / DT-cannon / perfect clear loop almost perpetually. In practice, its "only" a 90%+ chance of continuing each loop, but that's a high enough probability to effectively use the technique in competitive games.
EDIT: The existence of the "Hold Piece", in combination with the "easy to count" 7-bag randomizer, allows for some incredible feats in Tetris Guidelines that classic-Tetris players are unfamiliar with. Its a different game, more about quick-reaction speed and twitch reaction rather than the planning-centric classic-Tetris. But its these attributes that make Tetris-Guideline games better for player-vs-player setups. Practiced strategies are more reliable and less contingent on luck.
Some variations include T-spin and allow T-shapes to rotate in place and allow clearing 3 rows simultaneously, which in my humble opinion, make the game a bit more fun.
That's one of the main reasons modern Tetris plays extremely differently than old Tetris. The game generates a "bag" with a single copy of all 7 possible tetrominoes. It then randomly pulls from the bag until it is empty, at which point it generates a new bag. This means you're guaranteed all possible pieces on a regular cycle.
At high-level competitive modern Tetris this allows you to plan out complicated structures like the 4-wide (<https://harddrop.com/wiki/4-Wide_Setups>). Rather than a big empty column on the far-left/right, you leave four empty columns in the middle (or alternatively the side). Once you have the setup, you can rely on planning and foreknowledge of the Tetris bag to guarantee yourself a 20-piece combo of single line clears. Due to the way battling works in modern Tetris (clearing lines sends "waste" to the bottom of the other player's screen with bonuses for combos + other stuff) this can instantly cause the other player to "top out".
Contrast with classic Tetris where just surviving is hard because you don't have any guarantees about pieces.
This blogpost is a huge undertaking, but it is incomplete without a discussion of official "Tetris Company" Guidelines, the Bag system, and the SRS Rotation System.
For details on the official Tetris specifications, see fan wikis such as:
The official Guidelines set consistent colors on the pieces, various mechanics and details about where and how pieces rotate, as well as "bonus points" for TSpins, TSpin Mini, Neo TSpins, B2B rules, and more.
Not all Tetris games follow the guidelines (Tetris Grand Master is the most popular non-guideline game). But the vast majority of official Tetris games follow the guidelines.
But that's for PvP games. IMO, the problem with modern Tetris rules is that they're optimized for PvP modes at the expense of marathon mode.
In marathon mode, the only garbage blocks are the mess you create for yourself. These arise naturally from situations such as (1) receiving the wrong piece at the wrong time and (2) failing to maneuver a piece correctly before it locks. It is good for these situations to arise naturally during the course of the game.
If I was in charge of Tetris, I would retain Hold, EasySpin, and piece previews in PvP games where they make sense, but I'd disable them in marathon mode.
> as the net advantage of playing fast with the classic randomizer is still positive.
Only if T-blocks and I-blocks come. If there's a drought of T-blocks and I-blocks, then the combo-player wins.
Combo is currently the strongest strategy, under the current Tetris Guidelines.
If you have "too many" I blocks, you run out of Tetris room very quickly (You can only form a Tetris if you've built up 4-rows of 36-minos, with the last 4-square hole being where you use the I-block). If you have "too few" I blocks, you literally can't clear the hole and die.
My overall point is that the bag-randomizer "buffs" Tetris and T-spin players, while "nerfing" combo play. I argue that Tetris-players are the "main strategy", and probably should be buffed to be stronger.
For those unaware: modern Tetris games have the "Bag Randomizer", as well as major bonus points awarded for "Perfect Clears" and so called "TSpins".
The Bag Randomizer means that you get every 7 pieces (TIJLOSZ) before you get another one. So every 14-pieces, you are guaranteed to get two of each piece.
This infinite loop setup is possible because 5-bags evenly turns into 140-lines. 5-bags, 35 pieces, and 140 minos turning into 14 perfect lines. From my understanding of the discussion of this technique, there is only a ~99.3% chance that the infinite loop can be continued, assuming perfect play. But that's still more than enough to get a good 3-minute game going.
It takes a lot of skill, practice, and study to be able to perceive the perfect clear each time, but with study, skill, and practice, such feats are possible in modern Tetris.
For Tetris: keep two rightmost columns open, and always prioritize on laying flat than plugging every holes. That way, any blocks can be just hard dropped to that slot to immediately clear two rows on average, and keep depths of notches and peaks to around two as well.
Funny thing about this is how knowing these tricks completely change gameplay, and that everyone who knows always reserve up to ~15% potential for immediately presentable and tangible results, and it's naive hard working players who gets punished, and it has no promises that it always works, and that these facts adds so much Soviet-ness to the game!
> I don't think the scoring system is good. According to it the best behaviour would be to build all tetraminos on one side and wait for "I" tetramino to arrive and score 4.
Except, of course, that's exactly the way every single real game of tetris works.
The modern Tetris games include these versus modes, but they don't really translate well to a truly competitive playing experience IMO. It basically boils down to pure mechanical skill (who can send damage to the opponent faster) without much nuance beyond that -- there are no mechanisms to out-plan your opponent to a victory. Luck plays a huge factor as well -- if you send a bunch of damage to your opponent, you might give them a free Tetris just because of how the garbage randomly forms.
I think the NES Tetris score attack ruleset is better suited for pure competition. Both players receive the same pieces with the same RNG seed and it comes down to who can balance the management of their stack and maximizing the score the best.
Keeping the stack low is the easiest task in the game. Tetris scoring is designed to reward the risks involved in building a high stack.
You can't give 100% repeatable inputs as that opens the door to a fixed, hand-optimized placement pattern. If this is an issue, sample 100 runs and take one from the best, worst, and median cases.
What could be improved is to add some amount of "next piece" data. More data = more ability to use planning instead of probabalistic AI.
Initial configurations with garbage filling the bottom are a good way to test AI robustness, so I would recommend adding a mode for that.
Last, the most prestigious test would be to include the two-player modes. Like C-Robots or Corewars, but with Tetris :)
You are correct in that TSpins are a great upstacking strategy. Tetris however is a downstacking / defensive strategy.
Consider a "Counter-Tetris": You clear 4-lines of garbage, while dealing 4-damage (+B2B). That's a "effective garbage differential" of 8-lines (+B2B) (you lost 4-garbage, while dealing 4-damage to the opponent). This ideal doesn't always happen, but its far more powerful than a TSpin Triple.
It is impossible to build a TSpin Triple out of garbage, you MUST create a specially crafted overhang. TSpin Triples always leave an overhang. As such, TSpin Triples and TSpin Doubles can at best, clear 1-line of garbage. (and a TST will block your garbage hole until the TST is executed AND the overhang is somehow cleared).
TST into 1-line of garbage is 7 "garbage differential" (2-lines of upstack, 1-garbage cleared + 6 damage sent + B2B). TSD into 1-line of garbage is 5 garbage differential (+B2B) (1-line of upstack, 1-garbage cleared + 4 damage sent + B2B).
Counter-Tetris is 4-garbage lines cleared, 4-damage sent+B2B (8-garbage differential). 3-garbage lines cleared is 7-differential, and 2-garbage lines cleared is 6-differential.
As such, even a 2-garbage + 2-upstack Tetris is more "garbage differential efficient" than all TSpin Doubles, while a 3-garbage+1-upstack beats a pure-upstack TSpin Triple.
Just don't upstack a Tetris, and you'll do fine. Upstacking for a Tetris is grossly inefficient compared to Upstacking TSD or TST.
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My recommended strategy is: TSD for upstack, Tetris for downstacking. TSD keeps the "hole" open for an emergency Tetris if the opponent starts to spike you (an incoming I OR T block can be executed).
A TST overhang blocks the hole however forcing ordering. (you MUST use a T-block), and the overhang will block the I-block until you clean it up somehow.
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Anyway, I argue that going for Tetris should be a stronger strategy... because "Tetris" is literally the name of the game. The "namesake" strategy is weaker than people expect as it is, weakening it further by using a full-randomizer would probably be a bad idea.
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