#PastebinMonday 04/19/2021 Talkin' 'Bout Practice Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

Yes, I'm sittin' here, I'm supposed to be the defending Tetris Attack tournament champion, and I'm in here talkin' 'bout practice. I've been doing some practice of Tetris Attack V-Hard (even had the energy to stream it yesterday) evaluating how consistent I am at this point. Yesterday alone, I had an instance of six consecutive runs under 9 minutes and another of four consecutive runs. In the best-of-7 format that this tournament is, this kind of run would be good enough to win any match.

I have an idea of what I can do to make things easier on myself.  I've warned for years about starting up a new chain too quickly after the previous chain finishes. If you have combo garbage you're trying to drop on your opponent, it will not drop until you finish your new chain. This time around, I actually WANT to keep my combo garbage from falling at the same time as my chain garbage. The goal is two-fold: 1. to minimize the screen shake (aka invincibility frames) on my opponent's field with increased garbage; and 2. to not get my opponent's attention as quickly in addressing the garbage that would trigger if the opponent's field was full. With this in mind, as soon as I finish my chain, I want to make another combo when my garbage would drop to keep the combo garbage in the queue. Like a lot of strategies in these games, the success rate really depends on the state of the opponent's field. Fortunately, I am going to take the time this week to evaluate when to make use of this and whether it actually works. I need more data.

By the way, don't forget to watch the first round of the tournament's final bracket this weekend! We've got two rematches and two other matches expected to be especially close. Stay tuned to @PuzzleGeneral for when those matches will be shown.

I'm not sure what the bigger mistake is that I'm making this week: using up all of my good runs in practice or using Duolingo for the first time to learn Japanese. Yeah, I'm going to commit to it daily. I can't wait to find out later what bad habits I pick up from it.

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards