Minutiae: Izzy15 all-clear after WumbOJ20

Earlier, I discussed the WumbOJ and its all-clear on piece 20:

    

This is a No-I all-clear, and gives us an I in hand as we go into our fourth deck.

Not wanting to go into excessively deep detail, I only gave one Izzy15 I-fill all-clear we can do 15 pieces later. This is the one I use most:

    

But hey, I'm posting minutiae now! I should note a couple other all-clears I use here. This simple change swaps the position of I and JJ:

      

This can come in handy if we want to place our I on the O instead of on the S, which we may need to do for certain deck orders.

There's also this entirely different path, used if we get the O as the last piece in our fourth deck:

    

Here, we substitute a LIJ 2x6 for the O+JJ in the above variant, and instead place the O on the right after we've taken our T-spin. Depending on which comes first, we can place the first I either on the L or the Z. This one doesn't come up as much, but it's awesome to know.

If we have to place the I very early, e.g. with a fourth deck starting T, I, we can use one of these which place the I on nothing at all:

    

    

    

    

    

We only get one T-spin on these paths, but they're still pretty good.

One more which isn't part of my current repertoire. I learned this I-fill today from a game against Kirito (キリト), the current world #2:

    

This is nice because it leads easily into a repeated T-spin pattern if you miss the all-clear. In terms of option coverage, it handles needing to play the fifth-deck O very early, but has a lot of ordering constraints. I'm not sure it's that useful in this context.

While in my initial post on all-clears at 15 and 20 I discussed the most used Izzy15s, there are a whole host of them I skipped over, keeping it overview-level and giving the reader room to explore for himself. In a future post, I'll whip out more different variants from my files.

Comeback post! Edits and minutiae to come.

I took a bit of a break from this blog while my Switch was warranty repaired. As I come back to Puyo Puyo Tetris, the first things I want to write are actually edits to existing posts.

I came back to a new set of people in the top 10, and in one of my first few games, played Mahoroa (マホロア), current world #1. He did this Ace against me: (Sequence: JSZ)



This works by doing a double S-spin to get the S into place, then doing a Z-spin to fit the Z. I hadn't thought of that before. I added it to the Ace post.

While practicing transitions, I came upon the asymmetry of the hook I-spin. Example:

    

On the left, we need to hook spin from the third state with B, so we do AAB.
On the right, we need to hook spin from the first state with A, so we do ABA.

Note that we need a two-high hook on the right, since otherwise we can't bellyflop spin into the first state. On the left side, a one-high hook suffices. It's kind of epic that you do exactly the opposite thing on the left side and the right side. I plan to edit a more filled-out step-by-step into the Spins post.

I also did a bunch of experimentation regarding the T-block Ace, particularly the 20 piece all-clear. I actually ended up really liking this opening because the midgame it transitions to feels very smooth. One thing I noticed on the T-block20 is that you can end up with the T in hand going into the fourth deck after the all clear. I'll have to think about what openings are good for taking advantage of this. My current thought is that one might be able to do a 10-piece Basic Ace with much higher frequency, since the T makes for numerous epic ways to all clear. And then, you end up with a T in your pieces next deck, for a quicker followup. I also have an inkling this might give a high-percentage Jail15, with a fallback to two quick T-spin triples if missed.

Most of my posts up until now have been in the realm of Epic Important Information In Overview or In Depth, but I think perhaps I'll take a hiatus from that and do a bit of more frequent posting of minutiae that isn't so important for winning lots of competitive matches. There's lots of very beautiful stuff in Tetris, and talking about it is fun.

Openings: the T-block Ace

Continuing in the specific opening discussion, here's the T-block Ace:

  

This is an alternate way to all-clear at piece 10, with lower probability but better fallbacks than the standard Ace. Given the first deck build, we get the piece 10 all-clear two times out of seven, but when we don't get it, we usually get to T-spin with both our first two Ts. Not bad.

I call this the T-block Ace both because when I originally wrote this I'd only seen it played against me by a player named T-block (#1 in Canada at the time) and because it's built around two T tetrominos. Let's look at how it's built.


1. The first deck



Constraints:
L < Z, J < S

We see from the picture that we can do this whenever we can play L before Z and J before S. This is much like the Justice/Elvis and somewhat like the Left-O in its constraints, and significantly rarer a situation than the basic Ace, so this opening does not add much option coverage. But if our opponent plays way-too-many multispins, it may be worthwhile to do in lieu of other openings which don't counter multispins as strongly.

I've faithfully reproduced the first deck as played by T-block. But I should comment that this does not appear to be the fastest variation. For example, we can swap the positions of the I and O:



This allows us to place both the I and the O by hard-pulling to the right edge. For the O we just hard-pull and hard-drop, for the I we hard-pull, hit B (counterclockwise spin), then hard-drop. This naturally places us two spaces away from the wall. Of course it might be easier to just move the I to the right twice and hit A.

Additionally, we could instead play the mirror of this:



This allows us to instant hard-drop the J, since it starts in the correct position, and gives us an easy placement for the S on top; B + hard-drop.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Playing T-block's version has advantages, such as being able to place the second-deck J/L in the O-hole if we're not all-clearing.

Note: since writing the draft of this two months ago, I've seen this opening used against me by Maguro ( まぐろ ), then ranked #3 in the world. He used this variant, matching the logic above, but curiously didn't do an all-clear even with applicable pieces:




2. The second deck: all-clear at 10

      

It turns out we can all-clear at 10 whenever we have both T and O in the first four pieces of the second deck. The above show all-clears with the S, Z, J,and L; every remaining piece except I. After playing the T in-hand there's no ordering constraint, and even if we get an I in our first four pieces, the other piece we get is guaranteed to be one of those 4. The probability of getting both the T and O in the first four pieces of a deck is 4/7 * 3/6 = 2/7.

It should also be noted that given the S or Z, we can do a two-line clear with our first T and still all-clear. This will put a line of damage on their screen at piece 7, which should zone out an opponent's basic Ace opening--or against Puyo, it's a nice four blocks of damage and some animation delay. Having T, O, and S or Z in the first four happens 20% of the time.

For those interested in squeezing every last percentage point out, it's also useful to know these ones, which use J, L, and O:
  

These require holding the T while playing the J and L, and add another 1/35 chance to our all-clear, bringing us to 31.4%.

3. The second deck fallback: T-spins

The general rule here is that if we get an S or Z before our next T, we get an easy two T-spins. If the T happens first, we may have to take just the one. With the S or Z, we could set up a quick two T-spin combo:

  

Of course, doing our first T-spin in row 3 and 4 requires a few pieces before we play the T, with which our second deck might not cooperate. If we just have S,T or Z,T as the first two pieces as our second deck, we need to start by T-spinning in row 1 and 2 before we are forced to play our next T:

  

    

If our second deck starts with a T and we can't all-clear, we'll just take the one T-spin here:




4. Beyond

Beyond the all-clear is much like the Ace, but we know a lot more about the pieces we have remaining in the deck: we'll have used the T and O, and not used the I. Given that we'll always have the I to play, we can usually set up a variant on the Izzy with our four remaining pieces. For example, after Acing with TOS:



In the next deck, we'll take our T-spin. This will leave us with (4+7)*4 - 2*10 = 24 squares of material, which is about right for starting a repeated T-spin pattern. For example:




Beyond the T-spin fallbacks, we can again start repeated T-spin patterns, or do a Tetris Tea pattern in column 7 or 8. Our worst variation, where we get an early second-deck T and just get the one T-spin, will probably see us switching into a Column 7 Tetris Tea pattern at least for a cycle.

      

        

We can also all-clear at 20 in our most common T-spin fallback in various ways:

  

      

I haven't done much experimentation on the frequency with which these can be achieved, but it does lend us some hard-counter potential against openings like the Long Combo. The second, third and fourth look to be pretty darn achievable, with O < J the main constraint if we place the inverted L first.


Analysis

While we all-clear less than the basic Ace, when we don't get the all-clear, we do almost as well as more standard quick T-spin openings. However, unlike an Izzy or WumbOJ, we sometimes end up needing to waste our first T. Our first attack also happens later, but this doesn't matter much: if we see them doing an Ace, we can just do a two-line clear with our T at 7 to stuff it. Since this two-line clear happens in pure hard drops, it should always be fast enough, unlike a move 7 T-spin. And of course it's often followed up with an all-clear of our own.

Speed-wise, we're quite excellent. Our all-clear can always be achieved in pure hard-drops, unlike a basic Ace. In our recommended first-deck variant, our piece placement is optimized to not need any particular finesse--almost everything is either an instant drop, or a drag-and-drop. We don't have any particularly difficult constraints, and don't need any fancy spins to get our setup.

Counterpunch-wise, we're well behind the Izzy and WumbOJ in our T-spin fallback. We generally end up blocking any damage blocks we might wish to clear throughout our first few T-spins, not opening up our board until we do a Tetris or a weaker clear.

Enough talk! Let's grade:

Damage: B
Speed: A
Followups: B+
Counterpunch: C-
All-clear: A-
Anti-all-clear: A+
Flexibility: B+
Explosiveness: B

Now let's look at TvT opening matchups, theory-Tetris-wise. + is "slight advantage", +++ is "major advantage".

Tetrises: ++
Izzy: - The quick T-spin zones out our initial all-clear possibility, and we end up being a worse T-spin opening head to head.
OJ: - See above.
WumbOJ: - See above.
Ace: +++  They should not be able to all-clear us, but we can all-clear them.
Long Combo: ++ Here, speculating that the 20 all-clear is sufficiently achievable to make the occasional hard counter in the T-spin variant as well as seriously denting the Long Combo game-plan with the piece 10 all-clear. If the 20 all-clears are impractical, count this as a mere single +.
Left-O: ++ Multispins can always get hit by our all-clear, and our T-spins are at least as good as theirs. Furthermore, even the fastest Left-O piece ordering doesn't really have a speed advantage versus our fastest variant.
Jail: ++ See above.


Conclusion

This is a very middle-of-the-road opening, soft-countering multispins with its occasional fast all-clear possibility but being slightly weaker head-to-head against other quick T-spin openings. As such, it's worth doing against those who do too many opening multispins--most of the current online ladder--and theoretically as a feeling-out opening against an unknown opponent. However, against someone you have a hard read on, it's likely more viable to use a harder counter. In an optimal metagame sense, middle-of-the-road openings are not required since we can just mix it up with hard counters. Thus I don't feel this opening a necessary addition to one's toolkit and will probably not add it to my usual repertoire at the current moment.

For those confident in their greater speed and skill who just want an opening that won't leave them too far behind and might put them well ahead, though, this opening could be a good choice to lead to consistent wins. If you end up adopting it, let me know how it does for you.

Madwands and the Art of Tetris

Note: this post is philosophical, and contains no specific Tetris tactics.

1. Madwand.

In 1981, Roger Zelazny wrote a book called Madwand. Zelazny has been called one of the great jazz masters of Science Fiction, due to his tendency to create brilliantly new worlds in magical directions very different from the Science Fiction standard, improvising, mixing and matching breathtaking ideas from far afield. In the plot of Madwand, there was a system of magic with classically trained magicians and "Madwands", who largely learned on their own, had their own ideas of how things worked, and improvised new magic on the fly. It was said that Madwands tended to be some of the most powerful magicians--the ones that survived and grew to their full potential, anyway. This parallels the divisions between classically trained musicians and highly improvisational jazz musicians, as well as Zelazny's own position within his genre of writing.

Once, when someone asked me about learning guitar, I talked about the desire to figure things out on one's own initially and learn one's own style--in electric guitar, individual artistry is highly prized, just as much as technical mastery. Not entirely coincidentally, the protagonist of Madwand also is an improvisational guitarist. Awesome.

I'm writing this blog as a Madwand, really. Come up with your own ideas by thinking on your own and observing things, without reading others's writings--that's the Madwand way. And it's the way the majority of people play video games, though many group-thinkers may not realize this. If this is the only post of mine you read, and you are inspired to avoid any writings on specific Tetris tactics and figure out as much as possible yourself--AWESOME! You'll come to a deeper understanding than if it were just handed to you. Maybe you too can write a blog on Tetris tactics, from purely your own perspective, once you've gone deeper. I'd love to read your ideas and original thoughts from outside any groupthink, one day once I've written my own out. If you're reading this because you've enjoyed my specific posts on tactics, don't feel bad that you're not a pure Madwand. What I've written is a bag of tools and ideas from which to riff off brilliant improvisations of your own, and build your own castles upon. I don't write these things to be followed dogmatically, but to inspire others with the beauty of Tetris and allow them to create their own beauty that comes from 7 Tetrominos, a 10-wide board, and the on the fly interaction and improvisation of two players competing at a high level.

2. Primary, Secondary, Tertiary.

Once upon a time, history classes would teach about primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Primary sources did it or saw it themselves, secondary sources heard from primary sources, and tertiary sources knew what someone else told them someone else told them. In those days, primary sources were most prized, expected to hew closest to the real truth, secondary sources were less so, and tertiary sources were viewed as tools with occasional utility, but not to be used for serious research.

In recent times, due to Wikiality <tm>, the poles have been flipped in the global groupthink. Original research, direct experimentation, and writing what one has observed by oneself is disdained in favor of "cite a source." Hey, it's HIS observation--HE IS THE SOURCE! I feel like if that phrase was shouted in people's ear at high volume every time "citation required" or "cite a source" came up, human knowledge and discourse would advance significantly. Fortunately, unlike Wikipedia and other wikis, most legal systems still recognize that eye-witness testimony is infinitely more worthwhile than hearing what a friend of a friend has heard from a bunch of other people, though I do worry that this is gradually changing.

If you too want to write about Tetris tactics or anything else, I encourage you to do it as a primary source. Figure it out yourself, observe with your own eyes, do your own experiments, try stuff out. And write about it. You might catch some flak from members of various groupthinks, for writing from outside their groupthink, not using their terminology, or even just being on their turf. But, as they say, "screw the haters." I, for one, will be cheering you on.

Don't be an echo chamber of tertiary sources, and avoid reading stuff that smacks of that. As a wise man once said, "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." An issue with groupthink is it tends to make its members believe very strange things, while simultaneously believing themselves to be the entire world, and believing all their beliefs to be perfectly correct. Blech.

Conclusion

This one goes out to all the independents, all the people who want to try it themselves, everyone who's played a video game without reading the manual, strategy guide, or watching the speedruns on youtube. This goes out to everyone who just wants to understand a bit more so they can come up with their own brilliant direction. This goes out to everyone improvising, making it up as they go along, and trying a promising direction anew. This goes out to everyone going their own way, figuring out their own ideas, and standing far away from the roar of the crowd. This goes out to all those who have never read a strategy wiki and never will. This goes out to the madwands, to the jazz musicians, to everyone who has played by ear or sung an awesome song of their own devising. Keep being awesome. Nullius in verba.