The Secret Strategy Used by Tetris World Champions

Breaking down a rarely discussed strategy that is being used to gain an advantage in Classic Tetris matches.

Video clips used, in order:

[CobaltTetris]

I do a different type of screenlooking, where I simultaneously play the game and binge Scout's content for maximum efficiency

[Fleetato]

joseph’s face when hes screen peeking is so funny he knows he’s up to some shit 😭

[SuperTwonky]

I like having that strategy as an option. It’s little things like that that make it feel more like an actual match against another player rather than two people playing their own games individually and seeing who has the better score.

[Supershocky]

I do use this strategy in Classic Score Attack occasionally, but it also brings up some really interesting playstyles. If both are aware of the strategy, it may be advantageous to burn your first line to stay behind, and to continue stacking low.
On the other hand, if I think my opponent is playing right behind me, I start soft dropping a lot to hopefully get far enough in the sequence so that they can't follow it. However, it still gives the slower player the knowledge of whether or not a drought is coming. It's interesting to play around with it for sure!

[misternoone]

My main complaint about competitive Tetris is that there isn't enough interaction between the players; it can just feel like the competitors can completely ignore each other sometimes. SPS and screenlooking add to the competitiveness, and I wholeheartedly support them!

[llkurofoxll]

Excellent thumbnail, Joseph's eyebrow has always been an important strategy

[ChristoCerv]

Although I don't compete in NES Tetris anymore, using screenlooking to your advantage in an SPS scenario sounds like common scenarios in competitive 1v1 games, such as in Super Smash Bros when you listen to your opponent's controller if you have them in a state where they are required to mash buttons in order to escape. Using environmental knowledge in competitive gaming is common, so I think this was an inevitability. As for SPS itself, its use in online tournaments seems like a Gentlemen's Clause, where players either play one way or another. If SPS is enforced in IRL events, then using environmental knowledge is another part to a player's skillset, something already done in other competitive 1v1 games.

[gnochhuos]

In my opinion, SPS and screenwatching should be allowed in matches, and scoring in matches would be separated from scoring in casual gameplay (kind of like separated categories: multiplayer and singleplayer).

It's quite obvious that we can not remove the "multiplayer" part out of a match. Let the players sit separately? They can still hear the commentator speaking about whether their opponent is in a drought or how many lines have they cleared. No commentators as well? It would be boring as hell.

Therefore, I think a match should allow each player to gain information on the opponent's board state, piece queue and lines cleared, making a kind of new "multiplayer" gamemode. If we simply let two players play the same seed separately without acknowledging each other playing, then you might as well host a CTWC where all players compete in a predetermined set of seeds, and whoever has the highest total score win.

For the separate scoring part, it's obvious that players in multiplayers can have an unfair advantage (knowledge of droughts, seeing pieces ahead) compared to players playing alone, so I suggest that highscores and records in these two categories being treated differently.

[Xplayer]

Losing because your opponent screenlooked >>> Losing because of RNG

[yaakovbelfer]

I have no idea how YouTube suggested Tetris videos to me but five videos in and I'm all for it !! Love the community vibes and friendly but fierce competition!

[goSciuKM]

I think in puzzle games, screenlooking is a vital part of your strategy. Pretty sure, it's done a bit in modern Tetris, but a better example (by far) would be Puyo Puyo. It uses same pieces for both players and droughts of specific colored Puyo are quite common. It's good to slow down, look at opponent's Puyos and decide whether you should go for the chain you wanted or maybe you should set it off in a different way. Something similar would be nice for Tetris games.

[svnestris]

New scout video, today is a good day.

[TTParadigm]

South Korean esports introduced booths a few years back I think, to mitigate crowd noise that can affect team comms in team based games. The immediate thought to me would be to do something like that, but I have no idea if that would be cost effective.

To another point, I think some competitive fighting games will also have players be across from each other, rather than being right next to each other when playing (think the setup on 4:20 vs the CTWC 2018 finals). If the setup where similar to them being across from each other, you could have them avoid screenlooking, but also potentially avoid using sound queues if you have the players play with noise cancelling headphones (whether it be game audio and/or music of their choice) or something to that effect.

Could be a nice way to keep the SPS fairness in tact, while also not mitigating strategy? Just kind of spitballing ideas, since I'm willing to bet soundproof booths aren't going to be the best solution lol.

[azurillkirby]

If there was an easy and convenient way to prevent this strategy, I'd think that it should be implemented. But if it is not both easy and convenient, then yeah, let the players do it all they want.

[SpiderWaffle]

There's pros and cons to both schemes, two of the things I don't like about same piece sets is that it gives a sizeable advantage to the player that is behind in the piece sequence which usually means the player that is also having an easier go of the sequence based on the subtle differences in how they chose to stack and how the order of pieces consequently played out, so the luck gets double rewarded. Perhaps more significantly though, this also rewards more conservative styles and punishes more aggressive, higher stacking. The later being something generally more desired for entrainment. The other big downside I see, is for online matches, players with high download latency will be at a disadvantage, and lower upload latency or packet loss and downtime in uploading gives the player an advantage. This is the exact opposite of what is better for spectator viewership; being closer to live, responsive, and without downtime are all very desired qualities. Unfortunately these qualities in stream are punished and players are rewarded for having worse uploads. All of the above is true for any scheme of handling the piece sequences but much more so for same piece sets compared to both independently RNGed. It's hard to think of other schemes that wouldn't also have the same or similar problems, perhaps to a higher degree even, or anything that could combine more of pros and less of the cons from both of the predominate schemes. No such ideas have come to light that I am aware of, though this doesn't mean it isn't possible.

[fwop]

Coming from the fighting game community, this seems like a brilliant step forward to develop a metagame in Tetris. This just seems way more exciting to watch.

[TetraKael]

The more the scene progresses, the better.

Screenlooking is definitely a viable strat that competitive players on any skill level should learn.

In fact, the modern tetris scene also does this. So who's to say the Classic tetris scene shouldn't?

[sanseverything]

I say keep the shared pieces in. The 'peeking' doesn't really seem to be that big of an issue (yet) and I'd hate for the contestants to have to do what other esports do where they are wearing noise cancelling headphones and/or locked inside a booth like in Starcraft.

[gbpooky]

i personally like this. maybe somewhere down the line of competitive tetris, this could become metagame centralizing, but as far as i can tell this just adds an extra layer of gameplay onto an already great competitive game

[bloodspatteredguitar]

I think it's great to have more complex strategies, and if the meta develops into trying to play slower than your opponent to gain information, that's only an invitation for them to start pressing down to rush so far ahead that the information you're getting isn't relevant.