STRATEGY GUIDE

Anyone can drop pieces. Playing well is about three habits: keeping your stack flat, knowing where the next piece goes before it appears, and saving big clears for when they are worth the most. This guide starts with fundamentals and works up to mode-specific plans. New to the game? Read How to Play first.

STACKING FUNDAMENTALS

• Build flat. A flat surface accepts every piece; a jagged one only accepts a few. When you have a choice between two placements, prefer the one that leaves fewer bumps.
• Never bury a hole. A covered hole costs you every row above it — none of them can clear until you dig it back out. One avoidable hole early in a game is often the difference between topping out and surviving to the next level.
• Keep one column open. The classic plan: stack nine columns wide and leave one edge column empty as a well. When an I-piece arrives, drop it in the well for a four-line "Idyll" clear — worth 1200 base points, thirty times a single. Edge wells beat center wells because fewer pieces fit awkwardly against a wall.
• Watch NEXT, place for the piece after. The preview tells you what is coming. Strong players place the current piece to create a spot for the next one, not just a spot for itself.
• Use the ghost. The faint outline at the floor is exactly where your piece lands. Trust it and hard-drop — soft-dropping everything wastes time in every timed mode and wastes scoring opportunity in Blitz.

USING HOLD WELL

Hold is a one-piece insurance policy. The two highest-value uses:

• Bank an I-piece while your well is still shallow, then cash it in the moment four rows are ready.
• Escape a bad draw. An S or Z with nowhere flat to go can be swapped away instead of forced into a hole-creating placement.

The mistake to avoid is hoarding: a piece sitting in hold for fifty moves is doing nothing. Swap freely — hold refreshes with every new piece.

T-SPINS AND COMBOS

A T-spin means rotating a T-piece into a pocket it could not have dropped into from above. The simplest setup is a one-wide notch with an overhang: leave a T-shaped hole under a ledge, drop the T next to it, and rotate at the last moment so it twists under the overhang. Even a T-spin that clears nothing scores 400 base points, and a T-spin double (1200 base) out-scores a triple line clear. The lock delay — the short window after a piece touches down — is your friend here; the rotation has to happen inside it.

Combos reward clearing lines with back-to-back pieces. Each consecutive clear adds 50 × combo count × (level + 1). Combos favor a different shape than Idyll play: a tall, nearly-complete stack with a narrow channel where almost every piece completes a row. They shine in Blitz, where the clock makes steady clears more valuable than slow perfect ones.

SURVIVING HIGH SPEED

From level 10 or so, pieces fall faster than you can react — you have to act on the preview, not the falling piece. Three adjustments keep you alive:

1. Decide early. Pick the placement while the piece is still in the preview. At top speed there is no time to think after it spawns.
2. Use DAS, not taps. Hold the direction key and let auto-shift carry the piece to the wall, then adjust one tap back if needed. Tapping across the board is too slow.
3. Keep the stack low and central. Height kills at speed — a tall stack near the spawn point means new pieces lock almost instantly.

MODE-BY-MODE PLANS

• Marathon — points scale with (level + 1), so the same Idyll is worth 15× more at the end than the start. Play clean and patient early; the real scoring happens at the levels most players never reach. Survival is strategy.
• Countdown — the opening at max speed is the whole game. Expect to make ugly placements; just keep the stack low and dig out holes once the speed drops. Every 10 lines buys you a slower level, so early clears are worth more than pretty ones.
• Sprint — 40 lines, fixed speed, pure efficiency. Hard-drop everything, never soft drop, and don't chase Idylls if singles and doubles keep the pieces flowing. The clock only cares about lines, not points.
• Blitz — two minutes, and levels still rise as you clear. The compounding effect means fast early clears raise the multiplier on everything after them. Build a small well, clear constantly, and let combos and level growth do the multiplying.
• Cheese Race — this is a digging puzzle. Each garbage row has a hole; clearing the row above the hole exposes it. Aim every piece at uncovering the next hole, clear rows one at a time, and resist building anything tall — height in cheese is wasted work you'll have to clear later.
• Master — maximum gravity forever, ranked by lines survived. Everything from "Surviving High Speed" applies from piece one. Keep the two center columns as low as you possibly can, and treat every piece in the preview as the one you're really placing.

ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY

Stay flat, keep a well, never bury a hole, and make every decision one piece early — the rest is practice.