Stickspin & SDPC
Tetris, one of the most popular games of video game history, remains to stay popular after nearly four decades since its creation by Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. Since then, countless spinoffs from the original game have been developed; Nintendo’s Tetris 99 places 99 players to clear and send lines to 98 opponents, Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) tests players’ reactions and foresight to stack and clear lines, and Tetris Effect fuses interactive music into Tetris and takes the players on a sensory trip of dazzling colors and interactive sounds.
Most of the 200+ Tetris reinventions can be classified into two types: singleplayer and multiplayer.
In single player Tetris, the objective is to survive. As a player plays the game, the gravity increases, which is the speed at which tetrominoes fall down the board. The faster the tetrominoes fall down, the harder it gets for players to decide where to place the piece and mechanically move and rotate the piece to the correct place.
In multiplayer Tetris, the gravity mechanic stays, but there is another objective: sending lines to the opponent. Players can send lines, also known as garbage, to the opponent by clearing lines of their own. If the opponent cannot clear lines faster than they receive garbage and top out (when the place the tetrominoes spawn is blocked by pieces), the opponent loses.
In this multiplayer setting, there are two stages to the game: opener and midgame. The opener is similar to an opening in chess: players place tetrominoes in predetermined positions when the game starts, like how chess players memorize the best sequence of moves in the opening to gain an advantage.
Midgame is everything after. As players receive garbage and tetrominoes in the queue become unpredictable, players must adapt to their board and create attacks they can send to their opponent. Both the opener and midgame are important in winning a game of Tetris.
So how do you win a game of Tetris in under ten seconds? Many openers allow its user to send a huge attack, and two of the easiest and most popular ones used in multiplayer Tetris are the Stickspin and SPDC. Both send a total of 22 lines, and considering that the Tetris board is 20 lines tall, they are both very powerful openers that allow for no margin of error for the opponent.
STICKSPIN
TSS
Stickspin starts with a T-spin Single (TSS). This TSS is set up by placing the pieces in these specific positions. Note that the O piece must be before the S piece, or the Z piece if you choose to mirror the opening. It is not recommended to learn both normal and mirrored versions, however.
It is also possible to switch the L and J piece like so:
The TSS is then done by spinning in the T piece into the orientation shown.
This sends two lines of garbage, which is useful as it prevents the opponent from sending a massive attack using the garbage that got sent.
TSD
The next T-spin Double (TSD) can be set up like shown. This sends five lines of garbage.
This is, again, an alternative way by switching the L and J pieces:
Then, the T piece is inserted like shown:
TD
Finally, a TD (T-spin Triple above T-spin Double) or C-spin is built, sending 15 lines of garbage. Four.lol explains it quite nicely:
Here are some examples on how to build the shape:
More examples can be found in Harddrop’s Stickspin wiki.
Put together, here is Stickspin in action:
SDPC
TSS
SDPC is very similar to Stickspin, in that their beginnings are basically identical. But instead of the T facing right, the T faces down. This, again, sends two lines.
TSD
The next six pieces are placed as shown to make a TSD, sending five lines.
PC
The next six pieces are placed to achieve a Perfect Clear (PC), also known as All Clear. This is when a player clears every line in the board so that there are no pieces left on the board. This sends ten lines to the opponent, which is half the entire board height. One downside is that the probability of getting a PC is not guaranteed. Although learning all 23 solutions makes it to 97.18%, it is advised to learn just two easy solutions which together has a 75.6% of working:
Photo courtesy: Four.lo
Here is a video of the first and second, respectively:
First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k7XeAcraFU
Second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l_qeu6VhXo
And because there was a Stickspin in action, here is SDPC in action as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMAkuxnLCaU
When these two openers are placed against each other, they usually cancel each other out. Here are three videos showing that in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrL7NOPY9G0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1hPquhlNYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzGGg9291JI (This is not sped up.)
While these openers are powerful, by no means are these two openers the answer to Tetris or something you should rely on for every one of your games. In fact, being only good at the opener will often result in the player berated for being an “Opener main,” who is bad at midgame and can only win by abusing overpowered openers. Like many other things, there should be a balance between different parts of the game, from calculating downstacks, finding T-spin setups, timing garbage, and yes, learning a good opener.
Lastly, a good Tetris player should keep multiple openers in their portfolio. I, for example, have Stickspin, PCO, 2nd PC, DT cannon, 4 wide, and Gamushiro in my portfolio. Knowing more than one or two openers can be handy when the opening bag (the first seven pieces of the game) doesn’t allow certain openers to be played.
With very minimal memorization, any player can learn the Stickspin and SDPC opener in no time, two very powerful openers used by both intermediate and the best Tetris players. The next time you are playing Tetris with your friends to pass time at school, try the openers out at an unsuspecting friend and impress them with your hidden genius in Tetris.