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Upstacking

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Upstack refers to the pieces dropped onto the playfield.  Upstacking  refers to "stacking up" pieces to score larger line clears, usually on the bottommost rows of the stack. Note: I have ignored holding and soft dropping for this article. Their use can make some ideas difficult to explain. Aim to keep the stack open to multiple placement choices, since you won't always get the right piece. When pieces don't fit, you have to create holes and gaps. When you can't clear lines because of the holes, you must stack even higher. This ultimately leads to topping out. Build so that there is a good spot for any piece. Even better, build surfaces that will also maintain goods spots for any piece after receiving any piece. Good and bad surfaces The left surface below has no place for S-, Z-, T-, and O-pieces. The middle has no place for O-, L-, or J-pieces. The right has no place for S- and Z- places.  By having bumps and flat areas, you can accommodate all pieces. The O-p
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Downstacking

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Downstacking refers uncovering and filling holes in order to gain access to the bottom rows of the stack. Downstacking is a challenging skill to master and rich with depth. Inefficient downstacking is often the Achilles' heel of newer players.  Note: this article does not take into account details such as line clear delay and attacking power. Those matter when deciding whether or not you should try to group line clears together while downstacking. The primary goal is to lower your surface height. Doing so prevents you from topping out. Use as few pieces per garbage row as possible. Covering Holes The location of each hole tells you how to place pieces above them. The higher the hole, the more important it is to stack with it in mind. Simply put, try not to stack over holes. You must clear any upstack left above the hole before you can clear the hole itself. The extra upstack requires more pieces to clear. In this example, stacking over the bottom hole costs at least two p
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Building a Rating System for Competitive NES Tetris

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Over the last decade, a fantastic competitive scene has grown around NES Tetris. Every year, competitors travel the world to compete in the  Classic Tetris World Championship . Players go 1 vs 1, starting their games simultaneously. The player with the higher score wins. Typically, whoever wins best of either 3 or 5 games wins the match. The Database As an extension to the yearly tournament, there are qualifier events (played in real life), the  Classic Tetris Monthly  (played by streaming video of games played at home), and other smaller competitions. One member of the community took it upon themselves to document nearly every tournament match ever played . This is a great data set, and some community members have used it to track Elo ratings. There was talk of switching to something more advanced such as Glicko-2, so I offered to help out. Most of the games come from tournaments, which limits the size of the data set. Online games with automated record-keeping or chess organ
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