Six common beginner habits and how to fix them

Making holes, a tall middle, two wells, a covered well, soft dropping every piece, ignoring the next preview: six habits that hold you back and how to fix them.

October 5, 2026

When you are just starting out, everyone trips up in the same places. Most of the time the cause is not how fast you are, but habits in how you place pieces. This page covers six habits that beginners often have, and how to fix them. If any of them sound like you, fix them one at a time.

1. Making holes under your pieces

This is the most common habit, and the one that hurts the most. A row with a hole cannot be cleared until the blocks above the hole are cleared. Before you place a piece, look at the ghost piece (the marker that shows where the piece will land) and check that no empty cell will be left under it.

An L laid flat over a one-cell dip. The dip is covered and becomes a hole (red).

The same dip is filled exactly by a T pointing down.

“The seven piece shapes and where they fit” sums up which piece fits where.

2. Stacking high only in the middle

New pieces appear at the top of the board, in the middle. If only the middle is high, the place where pieces appear gets blocked first and the game ends, even though there is still room on the left and right. Use the board all the way to both edges, and keep the middle low.

A board that is high only in the middle. The sides stay low while the middle, where pieces appear, reaches the top first. The steps are big too, so there are few places to put a piece.

3. Opening two or more wells

Opening a well to go for Quads is fine, but with two wells you cannot clear a single row until two I pieces have come. Keep just one well, at the edge.

A board with two wells. Only an I can fill either of them, so not a single row can clear until two I pieces have come.

4. Covering the well

This is the habit of letting a piece that has nowhere good to go stick out over the well. Once the entrance to the well is blocked, you cannot put the I in, even if the rows below are complete. Make it a rule to put nothing in the well’s column until the I goes in. “Stacking for Quads: leave one well open and clear with an I” explains how to build up to a Quad.

A Z hanging over the well at the right edge. The four rows below are complete except for the well (red), but there is no way in for the I.

5. Soft dropping every piece

Lowering pieces slowly may seem safer, but soft dropping every piece takes time, and it leaves you no time to look ahead either. Once you have decided where a piece goes, check the ghost piece and hard drop it in one go. Use soft drop only for spots that cannot be reached from straight above, such as when you slide a piece under an overhang. “Basic controls: moving, rotating and dropping” explains this in more detail.

6. Looking only at the current piece

If you choose where to place by looking only at the current piece, you will more often find that the next piece has nowhere to go. Get into the habit of taking one look at the first piece in the next preview before you place a piece. Place the current piece so that it leaves a spot for the next one, and you will get stuck far less often. “Look-ahead and elimination: reading the queue” explains how to read the next preview.

If you do make a hole

It is best not to make holes at all, but if you do make one, clear the rows above it one after another. Once the rows covering the hole are cleared, the hole is exposed and you can fill it like an ordinary dip.

The hole (red) in the third column from the left is covered by the row above. Lay an I flat in the four empty cells of that row, and the row is complete and clears.

The row above has cleared and the hole is exposed. Now it is just a one-cell dip, which you can fill with a T pointing down, for example.

If you keep stacking pieces on top of a hole, the number of rows you have to clear keeps growing. When you make a hole, think first about clearing the rows above it, before you stack any higher.

Try to fix all six at once and none of them will be fixed properly. In Basic Practice, focus on just one per session, for example “no holes today” or “check the next preview today”.

Practice this