Look-ahead and elimination: reading the queue
How to start looking ahead: use the five next pieces, hold and 7-bag elimination to decide where your pieces go several moves in advance.
Beginners think only about where to put the current piece. As you improve, you place the current piece having already decided where the next piece and the one after it will go. That is look-ahead. Look-ahead is not a talent; it is a habit of where you look and how you count. This page explains how to get started, step by step.
You can see up to seven pieces
The screen tells you quite a lot about the pieces you are about to use.
- The piece you are controlling now: 1
- Next preview: 5
- Hold: 1 (if you have stored one)
That is up to seven in total. On top of that, the way 7-bag works lets you narrow down even the pieces that are not on screen yet. Start by looking at just the next one.
Step 1: decide the next piece’s spot in advance
Before placing the current piece, look at the first piece in the queue. Then choose the placement that makes the next piece easy to place. Here is an example. The current piece is T and the next is O. They go on the flat area on the left, five columns wide.
Both placements are fine for the T itself: neither makes a hole. The only difference is whether you looked as far as the O. Simply thinking of “the current piece + the next piece” as a pair cuts the number of holes dramatically.
Step 2: move your eyes to the queue before the piece lands
The biggest reason people cannot look ahead is that they follow the falling piece with their eyes. Once you have decided where it goes, move your eyes to the queue before it lands. With hard drop and the ghost piece, there is no need to watch it fall.
- Look at the queue and decide where the current piece and the next piece go.
- Move the current piece and hard drop it.
- By the time the next piece appears, its spot is already decided. Your eyes go back to the queue.
Step 3: read the pieces you cannot see by elimination
With 7-bag, each bag of seven pieces contains one of each of the seven kinds. So if you count the pieces that have already come out of the current bag, you know what is left.
At the start of the game, the six visible pieces settle the seventh. In other words, you know all of the first seven pieces before you place any of them. This is what makes setups such as the opening perfect clear and the DT cannon possible.
In the middle of a game, keeping track of where each bag ends is hard work. To begin with, count the I only. Just knowing whether the I has already come in this bag lets you decide whether to keep a well open and wait, or give up and fill it.
Step 4: include hold in your plan
A piece in hold is a “next piece you can bring out at any time”. Do not wait until an awkward piece arrives to worry about it. Decide “this one goes to hold” as soon as you see it in the queue.
Hold is also your way out when your look-ahead turns out wrong, but it only has room for one piece. Store a versatile piece (I or T) early on, and you can bring it out to get past an awkward spot.
How to practise
- Turn gravity off and, before each placement, say “the next piece goes here” out loud, or point to the spot in your head.
- Once that feels easy, decide two pieces ahead. If you can decide three pieces ahead, you will be able to build plans for perfect-clear stacking.
- Leave speed for later. Once you can look ahead, you hesitate less and get faster naturally.