Can You Always Win a Game of Tetris?

[@CKTDabbler]

You didn’t take into account spins and tucks. That kind of removes the gap situations for the s and z pieces I would think

[@yash1152]

you mean ability to rotate pieces? yeah, i was also thinking about that... moving an s to bottom, and sliding just when it lands to fill the gap

[@clumsycuber3254]

Just about any game without 7 bag won’t have a spin system or kick table. Either way I’m pretty sure its not possible

[@kainuipenaloza9395]

It would never get all of the spots because the Z block and S block cannot face each other even on the ends so at least 1 gap will remain

[@lettuce1626]

In the s and z sequence, spins and tucks won't help

[@lettuce1626]

@@clumsycuber3254 nes won't have kick table but does have tucks and people have tspinned before in nes

[@rompis.a]

There's a life lesson in Tetris: Your successes disappear and your failures stack up.

[@kulupona]

thats awesome, thank you

[@reddicing]

holy shit ur right

[@amanvijayjindal5742]

Naah, your SURVIVAL AND HEALTH IS KEY INDICATOR OF SUCCESS

[@cram6916]

It gets more and more difficult and then you die. Same lesson in Asteroids and Pac Man.

[@Ramej]

nice

[@Temari_Virus]

I'd like to add that with holds and a 7 bag randomiser, it's not only possible to never lose, but also pretty easy to do so. I've made some extremely trivial bots with only 1 preview before, and they pretty quickly learned how to play indefinitely (I waited until it reached 10 million lines and decided it wasn't going to die anytime soon). I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible to play without previews or holds

[@goldeer7129]

Hi, could you talk more about the bot you made ? I'm actually quite interested in doing such things myself with AI/bots playing games and such. That could very well help for a school project about it actually (perhaps on a tetris bot...) I would geatly appreciate if you gould share how you learned about doing such things, what tools you're using and the way your bot is working.. Anyway, thanks a lot if you answer !

[@Temari_Virus]

@@goldeer7129 The "AI" was super basic, so I didn't really google anything for that part. I did heavily reference the 2009 Tetris guidelines, however. As for tools, the program was made entirely in C#, and being lazy I just "rendered" the game to the console. I'd suggest using whatever language you're most comfortable with tho (python seems popular for machine learning these days) Breakdown of how the bot works: The bot goes through all possible moves (well, almost all of them), and for each move, it looks at the resultant board and calculates certain features like height, bumpiness, holes, etc, multiples them by their respective weights, and adds them up to get a "score" for the new board. Then it makes the move that leads it to the highest score. To find the best weights to use, I had generations of 100 (iirc) bots, starting out with random weights (within a reasonable range ofc). Then I'd let them each play until they died, select the top few with the highest in-game scores, fill up the next generation with their clones, modify the weights a tiny bit, and repeat. I don't recall exactly how it took, but even with my slow implementation it only took a couple hours before it became hard to make progress because they were taking too long to die XD

[@nonyobisniss7928]

@@goldeer7129 A second question you could ask when doing such an investigation is how low can you keep the stack forever. The standard well is 20 cells tall, but there's a method (requiring the 7 bag and hold and detailed here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWjLaGqwl56gnZo ) that never gets above the 6th row. I'd guess 4 or possibly even 3 rows infinite play should be achievable.

[@Oneiroclast]

This is why a Tetris implementation needs to do one of two things: either speed up to a point where it's practically impossible for a human to react to, or simply end at a set line count or time limit. If neither of these things are done, the game reduces to a bladder holding competition.

[@PeterJavi]

@@Oneiroclast That's precisely why certain arbitrary limitations were introduced to the classic version of Tetris, as players found a way to negate the implemented speed increases.

[@lisamariefan]

I can't say I'm convinced that the all vertical strat is optimal, since it never considers horizontal configurations that allow for skims, nor does it allow tucks.

[@MrPointness]

Yeah. The video just proposed a strat and explained how it does not work. Demonstrating it is the optimal strat is a necessary step.

[@FrenchyMcToast]

The blocks in Tetris fall faster and faster the longer the game is played. There is a version of the game where, after you've played so long that the blocks are falling as fast as the game can make them, the falling blocks become invisible. I've seen people play past this point.

[@thatonethere7621]

Which version?

[@MetaBuddha]

Ya, which?

[@weichei8204]

@@thatonethere7621 nes tetris

[@weichei8204]

@@MetaBuddha nes tetris

[@kush6546]

in nes tetris the max speed comes at level 29

[@_abdul]

" Everything that can happen will happen Given enough time " You had us in the first half, not gonna lie

[@w花b]

So it's possible to get a girlfriend eventually given an infinite amount of time? Let's gooo

[@neoieo5832]

​@@w花b but you are going to die in finite number of time

[@kreuner11]

​@@w花b you need to make friends first

[@JannPoo]

@@w花b Step 1: become immortal

[@decodedbunny101]

​@@JannPoo Just read to you the immortal Or watch to your eternity

[@nivolord]

Interesting, I had a look at the paper since I found the explanation in the video lacking. But it seems that, regardless of the state of the game (previous blocks) before the S and Z block sequence starts, or the techniques a player can use, if the sequence goes on forever, you will lose eventually. A key argument the video is missing is the following thing mentioned in the paper: There is a maximum number of times you can place a block horizontally, since it will add more blocks to the middle columns then to an edge column, by shape. So however you place things, eventually you'll need to only place them vertically because the middle of the board has too much stuff, which leads to the problem discussed in the video.

[@beltkosen]

Also all modern tetris games use Super Rotating System which allow you to stack blocks in mindblowing places. Nowadays we have a lot of records where players clear 42690 lines in a row by "perfect clears" which means that after every 10th block the playfield becomes clear. There are many strategies to do that and theoretically the game can be endless, you just need to remember all PCs combinations

[@Hosef]

PC PC

[@csnoot]

@@Hosef pc loops do exist look up tetrio blitz wr

[@theantrules6436]

@@csnoot you do know youre talking to a pc god

[@ghostfjdgcsusvsgsj]

I discovered this channel through your website. Thank you Brian for the great content on cs50. Can't wait to explore everything on this channel.

[@nicowarantine9661]

When you need an i block but doesn't show, but when you block the slot for an i block, the i block will show

[@patcoston]

You didn't mention that you can slip under a gap for example the J block under the S or T block, or the L block under the Z or T block. You can also slip the I block under the S, Z or T block gap.

[@tfae]

There are many such algorithms for "playing forever" today. One recent example is the Ultimate Simplified Jigsaw Loop: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWjLaGqwl56gnZo For a modern Tetris player, the challenge is not in playing forever per se, but in maximizing the points earned while they play.

[@rosien8052]

yeah, but those take into account 7-bag; with that specific order of pieces, it’s not very hard to play forever

[@cube-nite]

That's assuming 7-Bag is being used. As there are seven pieces, modern Tetris has been made more consistent by having 'bags' of the seven different pieces. This allows for easily playing forever like with the loops you have mentioned. This video shows what could happen if pieces were completely random, like NES Tetris.

[@Charmlie.R]

@@cube-nite this is mentioned, yes. Without 7 bag its kinda obvious to anyone experienced with Tetris, that you cannot play infinitely and some combos just screw you over. With 7 bag, he mentions already that its possible to never top out, and this comment is just confirming that multiple such strategies have not only just been found, but see play in certain applications. There's a reason guideline is how it is haha

[@h20dynamoisdawae37]

SDPC - DPC GANG!!

[@cube-nite]

@@h20dynamoisdawae37 Try to hit a DPC loop on NES Tetris lmao. Be cool if someone calculated what the chances of that is.

[@jimmye3027]

I have been gaming for 23 years, make games as a hobby and ranked 10th on the leaderboards on Tetris before the bots took over so I can confidently say that I can play Tetris forever if I could react fast enough. At higher levels what gets you is not what blocks you have but the time you have to move them into the correct place. The speed increases with level so once you get to a ridiculous level the blocks come down way too fast to make any decision of where to place them. ( I wrote this video mentioned most games will let you hold a piece for later.)

[@josecampos7157]

The math has already been done on NES Tetris. Best I can remember it's game over on average at 2,000,000,000 lines. In that version there is no 7 bag system. It's 1 in 13 chance of getting the same piece as before and 2 in 13 for each of the other pieces.

[@tobiasgorgen7592]

Nice video. Found your channel through the mega fav number playlist

[@zemanntill]

I'm just about to finish CS50ai and clicked through your website to get to this channel. The funny thing is i already watched some of the videos without knowing who you were :D

[@MrElmattias]

I am a modern Tetris player, and I have been playing at grandmaster level for quite some time. I just saw this video, so I do apologize for not seeing this and commenting sooner. Couple things I noticed: 1 - I appreciate that you touched on 7-bag randomization which is the first way that breaks your theory. Secondly: if there were alternating S and Z pieces, a tetris player in modern would be able to "spin" one of the S or Z pieces UNDERNEATH another piece. I know this sounds really wacky, but with how the displacement of pieces work, you can spin entire pieces into places that do not appear they would work. Anyone who knows about spins would NOT have issue dealing with alternating Z and S pieces, and would end up flipping the board where they would have a double void and keep scoring doubles after a point. I would fall asleep doing this tbh. There is a point in classic, where you only have a single frame (1/60 of a second) to pull off the spin, but in modern it can be multiple seconds, or ages in a game of tetris, classic masters can still do it though, and would end up flipping the board given enough times. Yeah, it sucks, but it's far from impossible. This is also before we talk about modern's other addition not touched on: holds. You can "hold" a piece and swap it out whenever you would like, meaning you break the sequence as you see fit. I would argue in modern, you are not limited by the difficulty of the puzzle as much as the decision timer, which gets slower and slower, but time doesn't matter as much as knowing how to force pieces where to go and score higher points. sorry this was a huge post, I'm gonna go back in my hole and play more tetris now.

[@robertholtz]

Great points. This assumption that gaps are inescapable is simply incorrect and IMO it breaks the whole analysis. It’s beautifully presented though. I also see no benefit in stacking S and Z skew tetriminos into so-called lanes as the whole point of the game is to clear lines and keep the stack as far from the top as possible. A perpetual game, in my view at least, would have a low stack average. Speaking for my own play, I’m far from grandmaster level but I’m somewhere in the above average range, but what always eventually does me in is the decision clock which, as you pointed out, gets shorter and shorter. At that point, I get sloppy, pieces land in suboptimal positions I didn’t want, making gaps that force you to stack up before you can work your way back down, and eventually it’s game over. Doesn’t the decision clock eventually run out on everyone or is a perpetual single game actually possible?

[@angelmendez-rivera351]

Uh,... he addressed these things in the video, though. He literally mentioned holds at the end of the video too.

[@MrElmattias]

@@angelmendez-rivera351 not a single thing was mentioned on spins, tucks, or the fact that someone familiar with these very often used mechanics could use them to their advantage and literally mirror how a stack works in just a few moves. I gave them credit for blowing their own theory by talking about seven bag randomization (which is a rule that does not in any way apply in classic, btw) and simply stated the oversights I noticed. Holds was mentioned last because it was touched on after the Z/S "lane stack" meme was presented and not touched on and I started writing out my thoughts, sorry if I missed that 5 seconds at the end.

[@MrElmattias]

@@robertholtz it eventually caps, and is not terribly hard to train your brain for once you get used to stacking at those speeds. Tetris effect made grandmastery of the game accessible for anyone through master mode. Drops you in to an instant drop game where level one is a level 20 decision timer. Grinding for m30 is absolutely frustrating but damn when you hit it it's brilliant. I'll be up front I cannot at any point passed level 25 pay attention to anything other than stacking, most people cannot and those that do are probably lizards or at least have an extra thumb somewhere. 😅

[@angelmendez-rivera351]

@@MrElmattias They did not "blow their own theory," you simply misunderstood the entirety of the contents of the video, and then rushed to comment without carefully processing the fact that the video explicitly acknowledged that they way modern Tetris is played works nothing like what was stated in the video. You not having the composure to process the disclaimer carefully enough is not an oversight on the video's part. And, by the way, this analysis is not "the video's," it is an analysis that is well-established in the professional mathematical study of Tetris. If you look at the description of the video, which I know you never bothered to look at, you will actually find the published paper "How to Lose at Tetris" by Heidi Burgiel. What the video is doing is just relaying the contents of the paper in a fashion that the lay audience can understand, while also clarifying that you are not supposed to think that these results apply to games in practice. Anyway, I realize this conversation is going to be a waste of my time, so I will stop replying. I said what needed to be said, so I am done here.

[@cruiseelroy1679]

I'm a Masters student in computer science - and I still learn something new every time I watch a video from this channel.

[@addisonjones2712]

One common tetris strategy not mentioned in this video is the last second slide. in tetris there is a small window where you can move a piece even though it seems to be touching the surface it will rest on. You can use this to stack s or z blocks sideways rather than vertically. I'm pretty sure that using this technique effectively would make for a better strategy than the columns you mentioned.

[@mathematicalgamer7692]

it's called "tucking", not "last second slide"

[@addisonjones2712]

@@mathematicalgamer7692 yeah but tucking also means something very different so I'm not calling it that

[@lettuce1626]

When I read the thumbnail, I thought he was gonna touch on the math in tetris. I've been playing tetris for a while and I've noticed there's some interesting math in tetris that I don't quite know how to put into words. Geometry math of course. Like tspin towers are an interesting pattern and there's probably some math behind dpc Garbo talked about it back then. How broken dpc is because it's an infinite pc build and honestly it's so complicated I don't remember how it works

[@AshenYggdrasil]

The Closed Captions on this are absolutely wild

[@ericvogler6909]

Sometimes when I think about infinite-monkey type situations, I like to try to ground my intuition with some sense of quantity. In this case, my thought is: if every atom in the known universe could somehow play a 69,600 move game of Tetris, once every planck time, for the next 100 trillion years, that would be something like 10^150 games. It's an unfathomably big number, but compared to the odds of the unbeatable Tetris game happening randomly (from the start of the game), 2*(1/7)^69600 i.e. 10^58818, it's even more unfathomably small. This doesn't negate anything in the video, it's just something to ponder. P.S., great video!

[@elgatitokawai55]

as a 🤓, this is one of the most 🤓 ever. repost if you're a true 🤓

[@justingolden21]

You should show the pattern for continuing forever; it's quite satisfying : )

[@mkd0x]

You're amazing, I haven't watch but your pedagogy is out of this world. Instant sub. Ty for the great content I'll make sure to watch it. But right now I must go back to your courses, Thanks a LOT Brian Yu ! You're AMAZING !!!

[@jaks7309]

Your videos have been a godsend. Thank you for making these available to everybody. I really like the videos that explore different algorithms and graph theory in a illustrated way, and its helped me understand them on a deeper level. Coming from cs50x and wanting more im glad to stumble upon this channel.

[@rawdatadaniel]

Just because there is room for 5 S and Z lanes, doesn't mean you have to make 5 lanes. Just make 4 lanes, and then in your alternating S and Z scenario you could easily play forever.

[@joshuamason2227]

4:35 nice

[@sergiomatemago]

There is something interesting and it's in the T block since if you think of the screen as a chessboard, all the other pieces except the T cover two white squares and two black squares, adding the T makes it even more difficult to efficiently find an algorithm that allows you to play well.

[@Anonymous-jf2gy]

Hey, I miss your videos. Please start uploading again.

[@sophiatrocentraisin]

And now, the actually interesting question : what would be the minimum bag size that could give a sequence that would force a loss ?

[@aleksitjvladica.]

gay spotted!

[@richconnergmn2]

nice pfp

[@d4ve19]

Given that it's around 70,000 pieces, half of which are greens and red, which just need to factor in the other 5 pieces, so 70,000/2×7= 245,000

[@sophiatrocentraisin]

@@d4ve19 Well, not necessarily : this reasoning only demonstrates the existence of a losing sequence, thus only giving an upper bound for the smallest bag that can force a loss. There is probably a shorter losing sequence that doesn't just use S and Z pieces

[@robertholtz]

1:50 Looks like @CKTDabbler mentioned this already but you absolutely CAN tuck a next piece under an S or Z skew tetrimino. The gaps are NOT inescapable.

[@tylerhartman1630]

What do you do at the edge of the screen?

[@byronsmothers8064]

I once played a modded Tetris called stacked odds. Already knew the blocks can't be rotated, learned later the game analyzes your game state, determines an optimal piece & it's orientation, and gives you anything else, putting all odds against you. You never get the standing long block

[@weskingston264]

That sounds really interesting and incredibly frustrating. Haha!

[@bagofchicken]

I guess masochists play video games too🤔

[@d4ve19]

Google hatetris

[@keithchen2005]

Very insightful! Thanks!

[@swng314]

Would be interesting to see the proof that you can play forever, given 7 bag, previews, and hold.

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

Very easy. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqqQZZ2wiMp4b9E

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

And no, I'm not a bot. If you don't believe me, just youtube search "Tetris play forever" And it'll be from the user "Shuey187".

[@swng314]

@@Known_as_The_Ghost Good info. Interesting, I get the notification of your replies but youtube removes them so they aren't visible :/ spam filtered or something

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

@@swng314 That's the reason I made two comments. If they filtered the first one(because of the link), you can see the 2nd one. lol Makes me wonder why they even allow links, if it just gets removed.

[@Hosef]

PC PC

[@morosov4595]

My question is, what if we don't know the sequence? Are there 2 or more sequences that preparing the board for one, will result in losing at another?

[@KirkWaiblinger]

Yeah, I am very curious about this as well. The fact that there is at least one winning strategy for each possible sequence does not imply that there is a single strategy that can solve all sequences. Perhaps that is accounted for in the details he mentioned about needing to be able to see 3 pieces ahead and hold a piece.

[@KirkWaiblinger]

Ok I skimmed the paper he put in the description (it's pretty short and easy). This one does not addrress the 7-bag game at all, and I'm not sure what his reference for that is. It only contains the proof that you will eventually lose a game of alternating s/Z-tetrominoes. Of interest to the question you ask, though, is that the paper starts off by saying that it expands on a previous result, which found that the computer can definitely make you lose if it can react to your moves (which i am pretty sure is equivalent to answering the question of whether there are sequences for which solving one sequence will cause you to lose another; so, yes, they proved that such sequences exist, for the basic ruleset). The paper introduces the stronger notion that a sequence can be made to force you to lose, regardless of the moves that you make, which they do by explicit example of the s and zs. In other words, that there is a sequence with no winning strategy at all, not just a set of sequences with incompatible winning strategies.

[@morosov4595]

​@@KirkWaiblinger Yea thanks for the explanation, it definitely makes it easier for me wrap my head around it but that's not what I asked. So to use the analogy from the paper, if 2 perfect players play tetris, one is placing the blocks, 2nd is choosing the blocks following the rule of no repeats (can't repeat the same block until all have been chosen). Who would win.

[@KirkWaiblinger]

@@morosov4595 yeah that's fair. I really can't find his reference for the 7-bag game unfortunately 😔

[@morosov4595]

@@KirkWaiblinger Yea but now we have ourselves a game. And as tetris is not really a computationally demanding one, it can be simulated with machine learning for both players, to answer that question. If I'm gonna do it or not, is another question though :D

[@chaotickreg7024]

Modern Tetris fixes a lot of problems presented in this video and 10 Perfect Clears, something that brings you back to 0 as if you hadn't started, are doable by humans and so the game is already theoretically infinitely playable. There are setups for infinite play too for those who don't want to do PCs.

[@amogusisdeadbutistilllovei8173]

10 pc's doesn't bring you back to zero... 7 pc's does.

[@chaotickreg7024]

@@amogusisdeadbutistilllovei8173 I guess I'm used to 40 line clear where sometimes they do 10 PCs to show off.

[@Hosef]

PC PC

[@stanimirborov3765]

gotta share video to friends

[@RedBlueProductions1]

the question is very easily answerable with various guidelines mechanics, such as the SRS rotation system, the 7-bag system, holds, and various other mechanics that allow quite easy recovery from any bad situation, even for incredibly low-skilled players. anyone past a certain level of skill *can* indeed play indefinitely. said skill level is where the player just kinda understands how the pieces fit together. for the specific purpose of a clean, flat stack, there is no such thing as a bad bag, because each piece is guaranted to arrive every 7 pieces.

[@BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMval]

Oh youre the dominos computer guy!! Nice video man, i subbed

[@robertholtz]

3:47 Lanes are a terrible (and unnecessary) strategy as the whole goal of Tetris is to clear lines and avoid ever letting the pieces stack up too high.

[@MarkBowenPiano]

You rotate the piece and fill a hole with the lower horizontal part of either the s or z block. That can then sort of 'reset' the board again.

[@МаксимБратішко]

seeing your video first time. like it. subscribed.

[@Wilker_uwu]

cool video for discussion. one thing you overlooked though is, what is the spin table are we assuming such a game has? because even with true random, modern tetris adopts a spin table which allows a bunch of different piece rotations that makes them fit. so in a game where you only get S Z patterns, in the position shown at 2:32 you 're able to force a Z rotation in the bottom line to the left by rotating counter-clockwise, which moves the gap, and then force the rotation of 2 S pieces down to the right side by rotating clockwise, which clears a line and allows you to close the following gaps. for context, spin tables are extra calculations which allows for a more forgiving set of game controls, and can vary in inplementation between different historical releases of the game.

[@dysrxiaofficial]

i think the 7-bag randomizer plays a major role for tetris, because it can make or break the entire sequence of an opener, forcing you to change up your strategy. for example; the SDPC opener has 2 variations, which I use the easier one. this easier SDPC requires 3 7-bags in order to be fulfilled. one of the best 7-bag randomizers you can get for SDPC is this: I, L, O, J, S, Z, T, Z, S, J, O, L, I, T, T, J, I, O, S, L, Z; the reason why this is really good is because on the 1st bag, the O comes before the S piece, which can be a pain if you get the "S, T, O" or "T, S, O" sequence, because the hold queue can't hold 2 or more pieces; on the 2nd bag, the S, Z and J pieces come first because this way, the only piece you'll have to softdrop is the T piece; on the 3rd bag, you have to get a Z as late as possible (or in some cases, the sequence is Z, J instead of S, L) this is why SDPC is the best opener imo (as a B- rank on tetr.io)

[@zapper354]

Wow. Only 1000 subs. He’s a really good KZbinr

[@RUBBER_BULLET]

I've read that the the original Gameboy version had a faulty randomiser that gave too many O blocks and too few I blocks. From the endless hours that I spent playing that version, I can confirm that this is true and made it more difficult, especially on the highest level of the B game, which I strove to complete by scoring six Tetrises (four lines in one go), but to no avail despite countless attempts. Only once did I manage five Tetrises on Level 9, High 5.

[@debasis8523]

Hey Brian, followed you here from CS50 online course.

[@danielyuan9862]

Before I watch the rest of the video, I had tried to solve this myself just yesterday, and I got no. And my sequence is alternating 41 S-pieces and 41 Z-pieces, and you are guaranteed to die after 9471 blocks. Although that solution is far from optimal, it's the first one I came up with that would kill the player eventually.

[@danielyuan9862]

This is assuming you are playing on a 10-column, 20-row grid.

[@danielyuan9862]

Now the question is: what is the shortest sequence of blocks that can kill the player no matter what happens.

[@Voidling242]

Probably some alternation of S and Z pieces

[@chesswithlatios4277]

Are you the USAMO perfect scorer?

[@gobbergobberer4776]

As others pointed out, you forgot spins. They've been in the game since NES tetris in 1984, almost every tetris game has them, and they solve this problem.

[@19Szabolcs91]

I am not convinced. You show one logical-looking strategy and prove that that strategy doesn't work, but it doesn't prove that there isn't some kind of less obvious, but better strategy.

[@Khaim.m]

Yeah, a real proof requires a lot more work to show that no possible strategy can tile correctly. This is rather insufficient.

[@wildcatterry17]

The most important part was left out. The game speeds up the more lines you complete.

[@GCKteamKrispy]

Omg, I recognized this voice from the very beginning. Brian Yu)

[@dontmisunderstand6041]

It's a pretty simple thought experiment with a pretty simple answer. What happens if you only get z blocks? No matter how you handle it, there are spaces the piece simply cannot reach. It can never fill in the bottom row completely. In fact, if we view the entire grid as sets of 3 rows, the middle row is the only one that can ever be filled. Meaning it is guaranteed to fail at some point, and rather quickly.

[@jasonmetcalfe4695]

there are some variants where you can't rotate the pieces and others where once your score hits a certain amount the game speeds up the drop rate, forcing you to lose

[@ingridfong-daley5899]

If you did it 'correctly', it would clear 4 rows at a time every time you got an "I". Once you had it cleared after one of those, it was just a matter of maintaining.

[@Eric-yj5xg]

I looked everywhere for the tetris trick i used in tetris on ps3 to make the biggest combo. I just remember green blocks stacked together on 3 blocks wide (starting position). Still cannot find it.

[@cepahreinholt8710]

It's not just possible but quite easy to never loose at recent tetris solo games. I made thousands of lines before turning of the game.

[@CommentFactsAndNotNegativity]

Willis Gibson, has become the first player to officially “beat” the original Nintendo version of the game - by breaking it.

[@shubhamshinde1008]

hey, when placing the s block dows.. you can just slide in a z block at the last moment.. it worked for the Tetris game i used to play on an old phone

[@anthonycannet1305]

The proof that the 7-bag and 14-bag variations are endless is that there are exactly 28 squares per 7-bag, and after 10 bags that’s 280 squares which is exactly enough to perfectly clear 28 lines to start the next bag with an empty board just like the start. And if you account for the bag system there are only so many ways a bag can empty which you can use to your advantage to guarantee perfect clears of 40 squares (4 lines of 10 squares lines up with 4 squares per block). So you can basically form a perfect loop every 70 blocks

[@TheNameOfJesus]

The title was "Can you Always Win a Game of Tetris", and the answer @6:13 says "Yes", but no explanation was given as to how that would be done.

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

My GenX neighbour growing up had finished arcade Tetris. He said at the end it started sending down more than one piece at a time.

[@jonasgienger5140]

I was not convinced until you said "it was proven"😆

[@alexsnipes7119]

At the end you mentioned the concept we refer to as 7 bag but in classic tetris it is theoretically possible to have infinite of one piece

[@bobweiram6321]

Imagine if an evil villain made you play Tetris and he promises he won't kill you unless you lose.

[@insightphoto]

is this the same for the UK version where we have Zed blocks instead of Zee blocks?

[@bigmartin343]

So, you can only ever lose or quit is what I got from this.

[@houssemchr1539]

Thank you for this, which tools do you use to make those animations

[@RangerFrogLord]

Curious if there is a seed in the original Tetris that would allow such a sequence to appear? Great video though keep it up

[@inconspicuoususername]

In the original Tetris, the initial seed is actually constant, but updates at least once every frame that the game is on, so by strategically pausing (or just by placing your tetriminoes at strategic times), you could either force or forcibly avoid such a sequence. The fact that the inherent randomness of the player is utilized makes this impossible to realistically calculate. If we were to ignore that, though, the PRNG used has a period of 32767, so there are only that many different piece sequences it can generate on its own before going back to the start.

[@RangerFrogLord]

@@inconspicuoususernamevery interesting! Thanks for the detailed comment 👍

[@jetds8466]

Put an upside down T block under the vertical S and Z blocks

[@mute_ed984]

The increase in speed through the levels also is a great factor in how a Tetris game goes I think? Also is there a difference between the let’s say Gameboy Classic Tetris and a Console Version for NES for example? Other than the colours. I mean a TV screen is bigger than a Gameboy Display…. Have only handled versions so please forgive me the maybe stupid question

[@mikeCD62]

For a board of width 2N+1, it would be impossible to clear a single line if only given square pieces

[@CarlosRodriguez-mk2te]

How can we be certain that the lanes is the most efficient strategy? I would look at the full proof but the link is broken

[@yashikawadhwani5006]

I need more such videos😭

[@cheetahsflame1279]

i didnt pay attention for like a sec and my man begins talkin bout s and z lanes

[@blacklistnr1]

The practical answer is a bit more surprising: - The speed keeps increasing beyond human capabilities, so only bots are left - There is no built-in end, the score will continue reading memory as random symbols until it crashes - It uses a PRNG which has limited randomness, therefore it can be predicted and abused Put all of these together and you get that bots can play more Tetris than Tetris can generate. That is a win.

[@DrethPlusPlus]

Hmm, Tetris (at least the original version) works on a pool system. All pieces make up one pool, pieces are chosen from the pool, and every time a piece comes up, it is removed from the pool, once the pool is empty, a new pool is given. This is why you can’t get the same piece 3 times in a row.

[@debadityanath4398]

what about laying some of the pieces in a 3x2 fashion and others in 2x3 fashion. that means 2+3+2+3 = 10 so it fits, and wil last longer

[@JSRFFD2]

I enjoyed this video very much, but at the very end, it is asserted that random selection without replacement can be played infinitely. While this seems intuitively true, I'd be curious to see a proof of this, which I guess is that "in the 7! possible sequences, there is no way to arrange them such that the player is forced to lose" but I can't imagine what that proof would look like. I'd be very curious. Also, this "standard" piece selection implies that it is never possible to get the same piece three times in a row, and I suspect I've played tons of variants where I've gotten the same piece three times in a row.

[@teeks8713]

There is an infinite loop (which is literally called “playing forever) which guarantees you will never lose with a 7-bag system and hold piece. And an experienced player will easily be able to play forever even without patterns like this. And although all official modern games use the standard 7-bag systems, older games and bad clones might not.

[@bird9188]

tetris is a very skill based game even if it might look like rng, the average player very quickly gets to the point where they will never fail in classic tetris you will fail because of the kill screen but in modern tetris, you won't, unless you crank up the speed to insane levels but even at those levels some people can play forever

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

I think you missed the entire point. It's, "What if the player is TAS, and they get the absolute worst RNG, Will they lose?"

[@Invariel]

In NES Tetris, hypertappers have beaten the kill screen.

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

@@Invariel As well as TAS.

[@Invariel]

@@Known_as_The_Ghost TAS is hypertapping for left/right inputs. The rest of it is watching memory and manipulating the next pieces by pausing and unpausing on specific frames.

[@Known_as_The_Ghost]

@@Invariel I make TAS's. I know.

[@okeytay4]

Can't you solve the 5 lane problem by alternating one sideways block with one standing block. The problem then changes to filling in the gaps after completing a row. Not sure if this makes it infinite, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

[@user-xc1qy7ed8l]

2:05 they have a great time, better than all of us

[@marshallgraphic]

I want to build a JavaScript version, this provides good info

[@realityblooms]

“I really should get some sleep” Brain: HOW DOES TETRIS BLOCK SELECTION WORKRKRKRK???!!

[@thisislilraskal]

I thought you would've used the actual Tetris music as the background music

[@maxpoppe]

Keep in mind that random generators aren't true random aswell, this might have some consequenses

[@NStripleseven]

It’s very funny to me that there is a canonical Right Way to Make Tetris

[@rafaelgabrielgarlinidal-bo9496]

make a video for if is it possible to consistently make Perfect Clears 100% of the time with 10 pieces.

[@krbraveofficial]

I mean the issue of loosing tetris for skilled players is not the placing of the pieces but rather the fact that the speed increases, if the speed didn't increase then there would be actual real games of tetris that would go on for hours without end, some players are actually skilled enough to somewhat navigated the mex speeds, but even they will slip up because of speed not becuase of not being able to fit the pieces together

[@KayShawn_Maybor]

ive seen a guy doing every spin possible, that guy never lost a single time

[@daon23]

are you the guy from cs50 pset videos?

[@208jdog]

Forever.... until you overload the CPU on the old NES that a new block cannot be selected

[@jims888]

Is there a tetris game where the drop speed doesn't increase?

[@robertneely9766]

O block mentioned

[@hashem2911]

Nice man

[@litigioussociety4249]

NES Tetris is the big one that is competed in, and I was disappointed that you didn't explain how the piece selection works in it. The fact that an AI played the game until it crashed is proof that the NES version must not be completely random.

[@creeperhaed1267]

4:30 NICE

[@_rj261]

Oh, so I'm just bad at Tetris. Good to know.

[@gilly5809]

4:34 nice.

[@lemonbread378]

i feel like the title/concept of this video was missleading the concept in a modern setting was only discussed at the end for like 2 sentences saying "yep its possible" i was expeting something more like discovering/showing an algorithm or set of rules to never lose, like some sort of repeated pattern instead most of the video was spent exploring s and z pieces in a randomiser algorithm that most of modern tetris doesn't use the productions was very nice though, and maybe i was just misunderstanding the topic