Can You Always Win a Game of Tetris?

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  • čas přidán 6. 09. 2020
  • If you played the game perfectly, could you always win a game of Tetris? Or is there some sequence of blocks that could force you to lose the game, no matter how good at the game you are? Here, we take a look at some of the mathematics behind a theoretical game of Tetris and reason through whether it's possible to win.
    For the full proof described in this video, see Heidi Burgiel's "How to Lose at Tetris": citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...
    ***
    Spanning Tree is an educational video series about computer science and mathematics. See more at spanningtree.me
    To be notified when a new video is released, sign up for the Spanning Tree mailing list at spanningtree.substack.com/
    Spanning Tree is created by Brian Yu. brianyu.me/
    Email me at brian@spanningtree.me to suggest a future topic.

Komentáře • 393

  • @CKTDabbler
    @CKTDabbler Před 2 lety +2180

    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
      @yash1152 Před 2 lety +294

      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
      @clumsycuber3254 Před 2 lety +113

      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
      @kainuipenaloza9395 Před rokem +99

      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
      @lettuce1626 Před rokem +63

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

    • @lettuce1626
      @lettuce1626 Před rokem +38

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

  • @rompis.a
    @rompis.a Před rokem +1657

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

    • @kulupona
      @kulupona Před rokem +29

      thats awesome, thank you

    • @reddicing
      @reddicing Před rokem +18

      holy shit ur right

    • @amanvijayjindal5742
      @amanvijayjindal5742 Před rokem +12

      Naah, your SURVIVAL AND HEALTH IS KEY INDICATOR OF SUCCESS

    • @cram6916
      @cram6916 Před rokem

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

    • @Ramej
      @Ramej Před rokem

      nice

  • @Temari_Virus
    @Temari_Virus Před rokem +241

    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
      @goldeer7129 Před rokem +8

      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
      @Temari_Virus Před rokem

      @@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
      @nonyobisniss7928 Před rokem +3

      @@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: czcams.com/video/s7h77zb9mg8/video.html ) that never gets above the 6th row. I'd guess 4 or possibly even 3 rows infinite play should be achievable.

    • @Oneiroclast
      @Oneiroclast Před rokem +15

      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
      @PeterJavi Před 7 měsíci +1

      @@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.

  • @jamesbooty
    @jamesbooty Před rokem +366

    One thing you didn't mention - In at least some versions of the game, you can slide blocks before they are cemented in place. This means that if you get two S blocks in a row, you can let them fall without rotating them, tuck the tail of the second S under the nose of the first S, and not be forced to have an un-fillable space right away. Even so, alternating S and Z blocks would still be impossible to stack without creating some voids, and this strategy may actually not be as good as creating "lanes," so I'm not sure that it would affect the outcome in the end. However, in a randomized game, the ability to slide blocks before they stick probably makes it less likely to have voids than is depicted here.

    • @MD-vs9ff
      @MD-vs9ff Před rokem +25

      Tucks don't help the S-Z sequence because they accomplish literally nothing. If you tuck an S into an S, you get rid of the old gap and create a new gap with the new piece. One step forward, one step back. Same with tucking a Z into a Z, or any other tuck you try to do with them.

    • @KinuTheDragon
      @KinuTheDragon Před rokem +3

      However, "less likely" is still not 0, so this strategy will still result in a loss eventually -- it would just take longer.

    • @david203
      @david203 Před 11 měsíci

      @@MD-vs9ff True, but tucking an I piece DOES accomplish somthing!

    • @Dexuz
      @Dexuz Před 9 měsíci

      Tucking is possible in old Tetris too, you can keep the directional unputs pressed before the piece touches the bottom.

  • @FrenchyMcToast
    @FrenchyMcToast Před rokem +82

    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.

  • @lisamariefan
    @lisamariefan Před rokem +24

    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
      @MrPointness Před rokem +1

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

  • @_abdul
    @_abdul Před 3 lety +222

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

    • @whannabi
      @whannabi Před rokem +13

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

    • @neoieo5832
      @neoieo5832 Před rokem

      ​@@whannabi but you are going to die in finite number of time

    • @kreuner11
      @kreuner11 Před rokem +2

      ​@@whannabi you need to make friends first

    • @JannPoo
      @JannPoo Před rokem +6

      @@whannabi
      Step 1: become immortal

    • @decodedbunny101
      @decodedbunny101 Před rokem

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

  • @tfae
    @tfae Před 2 lety +267

    There are many such algorithms for "playing forever" today. One recent example is the Ultimate Simplified Jigsaw Loop:
    czcams.com/video/s7h77zb9mg8/video.html
    For a modern Tetris player, the challenge is not in playing forever per se, but in maximizing the points earned while they play.

    • @rosien8052
      @rosien8052 Před rokem +16

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

    • @han-huo
      @han-huo Před rokem +10

      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
      @Charmlie.R Před rokem +3

      @@han-huo 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
      @h20dynamoisdawae37 Před rokem +6

      SDPC - DPC GANG!!

    • @han-huo
      @han-huo Před rokem +3

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

  • @beltkosen
    @beltkosen Před rokem +27

    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
      @Hosef Před rokem

      PC PC

    • @csnoot
      @csnoot Před rokem

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

    • @theantrules6436
      @theantrules6436 Před rokem

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

  • @nivolord
    @nivolord Před rokem +16

    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.

  • @patcoston
    @patcoston Před rokem +10

    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.

  • @ghostfjdgcsusvsgsj
    @ghostfjdgcsusvsgsj Před 2 lety +42

    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.

  • @josecampos7157
    @josecampos7157 Před rokem +8

    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.

  • @mkd0x
    @mkd0x Před 3 lety +15

    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 !!!

  • @addisonjones2712
    @addisonjones2712 Před rokem +6

    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.

  • @tobiasgorgen7592
    @tobiasgorgen7592 Před 3 lety +5

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

  • @zemanntill
    @zemanntill Před 2 lety +3

    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

  • @jaks7309
    @jaks7309 Před 3 lety +18

    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.

  • @jimmye3027
    @jimmye3027 Před rokem +5

    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.)

  • @lettuce1626
    @lettuce1626 Před rokem +6

    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

  • @MrElmattias
    @MrElmattias Před rokem +10

    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
      @robertholtz Před rokem +2

      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
      @angelmendez-rivera351 Před rokem +2

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

    • @MrElmattias
      @MrElmattias Před rokem

      @@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
      @MrElmattias Před rokem

      @@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
      @angelmendez-rivera351 Před rokem +1

      @@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.

  • @keithchen2005
    @keithchen2005 Před rokem

    Very insightful! Thanks!

  • @cruiseelroy1679
    @cruiseelroy1679 Před rokem

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

  • @justingolden21
    @justingolden21 Před rokem +2

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

  • @joshuamason2227
    @joshuamason2227 Před 3 lety +8

    4:35 nice

  • @user-up8po5qj7w
    @user-up8po5qj7w Před rokem

    seeing your video first time. like it. subscribed.

  • @houssemchr1539
    @houssemchr1539 Před rokem +3

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

  • @ericvogler6909
    @ericvogler6909 Před 3 lety +39

    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!

    • @No_king1143
      @No_king1143 Před rokem +1

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

  • @sophiatrocentraisin
    @sophiatrocentraisin Před rokem +19

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

    • @aleksitjvladica.
      @aleksitjvladica. Před rokem

      gay spotted!

    • @richconnergmn2
      @richconnergmn2 Před rokem

      nice pfp

    • @d4ve19
      @d4ve19 Před rokem

      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
      @sophiatrocentraisin Před rokem

      @@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

  • @sergiomatemago
    @sergiomatemago Před rokem +1

    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.

  • @MarkBowenPiano
    @MarkBowenPiano Před rokem

    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.

  • @stanimirborov3765
    @stanimirborov3765 Před rokem

    gotta share video to friends

  • @RedBlueProductions1
    @RedBlueProductions1 Před rokem

    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.

  • @debasis8523
    @debasis8523 Před 3 lety +1

    Hey Brian, followed you here from CS50 online course.

  • @GCKteamKrispy
    @GCKteamKrispy Před rokem

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

  • @insightphoto
    @insightphoto Před rokem +1

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

  • @swng314
    @swng314 Před rokem +10

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

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

      Very easy.
      czcams.com/video/Hy-4jzSeE9o/video.html

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

      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
      @swng314 Před rokem +1

      @@knownas2017 Good info.
      Interesting, I get the notification of your replies but youtube removes them so they aren't visible :/ spam filtered or something

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

      @@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
      @Hosef Před rokem

      PC PC

  • @CarlosRodriguez-mk2te
    @CarlosRodriguez-mk2te Před rokem +1

    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

  • @Anonymous-jf2gy
    @Anonymous-jf2gy Před 2 lety +2

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

  • @KenDebono
    @KenDebono Před 4 měsíci +1

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

  • @chaotickreg7024
    @chaotickreg7024 Před rokem +6

    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
      @amogusisdeadbutistilllovei8173 Před rokem

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

    • @chaotickreg7024
      @chaotickreg7024 Před rokem

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

    • @Hosef
      @Hosef Před rokem +1

      PC PC

  • @morosov4595
    @morosov4595 Před rokem +6

    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
      @KirkWaiblinger Před rokem +1

      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
      @KirkWaiblinger Před rokem +2

      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
      @morosov4595 Před rokem +1

      ​@@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
      @KirkWaiblinger Před rokem +1

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

    • @morosov4595
      @morosov4595 Před rokem +2

      @@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

  • @Wilker_uwu
    @Wilker_uwu Před rokem

    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.

  • @rawdatadaniel
    @rawdatadaniel Před rokem +1

    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.

  • @robertholtz
    @robertholtz Před rokem +3

    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.

  • @AshenYggdrasil
    @AshenYggdrasil Před rokem +1

    The Closed Captions on this are absolutely wild

  • @jasonmetcalfe4695
    @jasonmetcalfe4695 Před rokem

    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
    @ingridfong-daley5899 Před rokem +1

    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.

  • @nicowarantine9661
    @nicowarantine9661 Před rokem

    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

  • @yashikawadhwani5006
    @yashikawadhwani5006 Před rokem

    I need more such videos😭

  • @Eric-yj5xg
    @Eric-yj5xg Před rokem +1

    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.

  • @robertholtz
    @robertholtz Před rokem +2

    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.

  • @19Szabolcs91
    @19Szabolcs91 Před rokem +2

    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.

    • @DavidGuild
      @DavidGuild Před rokem

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

  • @danielyuan9862
    @danielyuan9862 Před 2 lety +14

    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
      @danielyuan9862 Před 2 lety +2

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

    • @danielyuan9862
      @danielyuan9862 Před 2 lety +4

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

    • @Voidling242
      @Voidling242 Před rokem

      Probably some alternation of S and Z pieces

    • @chesswithlatios4277
      @chesswithlatios4277 Před rokem

      Are you the USAMO perfect scorer?

  • @shubhamshinde1008
    @shubhamshinde1008 Před rokem

    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

  • @byronsmothers8064
    @byronsmothers8064 Před rokem +6

    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
      @weskingston264 Před rokem +1

      That sounds really interesting and incredibly frustrating. Haha!

    • @bagofchicken
      @bagofchicken Před rokem

      I guess masochists play video games too🤔

    • @d4ve19
      @d4ve19 Před rokem

      Google hatetris

  • @wildcatterry17
    @wildcatterry17 Před rokem +1

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

  • @RUBBER_BULLET
    @RUBBER_BULLET Před rokem

    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.

  • @gobbergobberer4776
    @gobbergobberer4776 Před rokem +2

    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.

  • @mute_ed984
    @mute_ed984 Před 2 měsíci

    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

  • @user-dg3dm4iw2t
    @user-dg3dm4iw2t Před rokem

    Nice man

  • @alexsnipes7119
    @alexsnipes7119 Před rokem

    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

  • @BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMval
    @BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMval Před rokem

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

  • @zapper354
    @zapper354 Před 3 lety +2

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

  • @RangerFrogLord
    @RangerFrogLord Před rokem +1

    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
      @inconspicuoususername Před rokem +1

      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
      @RangerFrogLord Před rokem

      @@inconspicuoususernamevery interesting! Thanks for the detailed comment 👍

  • @blacklistnr1
    @blacklistnr1 Před rokem

    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.

  • @emondhara6645
    @emondhara6645 Před rokem

    How do u animate like these bro??

  • @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.

  • @okeytay4
    @okeytay4 Před rokem

    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.

  • @jetds8466
    @jetds8466 Před rokem

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

  • @zombathinlostleghackercat5233

    Song name?

  • @mikeCD62
    @mikeCD62 Před rokem

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

  • @danieltdp
    @danieltdp Před rokem

    It's way better do lay Zs and Ss rotated so you don't get two squares on top of the gap. It makes easy to clear them afterwards. But I see that with only Zs and Ss falling down this doesn't matter much

  • @TheNameOfJesus
    @TheNameOfJesus Před rokem

    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.

  • @pingnick
    @pingnick Před 3 lety +1

    🤯 thanks

  • @debadityanath4398
    @debadityanath4398 Před 3 měsíci

    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

  • @cepahreinholt8710
    @cepahreinholt8710 Před rokem

    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.

  • @anthonycannet1305
    @anthonycannet1305 Před rokem

    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

  • @JSRFFD2
    @JSRFFD2 Před rokem

    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
      @teeks8713 Před rokem +2

      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.

  • @daon23
    @daon23 Před rokem

    are you the guy from cs50 pset videos?

  • @maxpoppe
    @maxpoppe Před rokem

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

  • @marshallgraphic
    @marshallgraphic Před rokem

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

  • @jonasgienger5140
    @jonasgienger5140 Před rokem

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

  • @robertneely9766
    @robertneely9766 Před 22 hodinami

    O block mentioned

  • @thisislilraskal
    @thisislilraskal Před rokem

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

  • @DrethPlusPlus
    @DrethPlusPlus Před rokem

    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.

  • @bigmartin343
    @bigmartin343 Před rokem

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

  • @Ggdivhjkjl
    @Ggdivhjkjl Před rokem

    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.

  • @bobweiram6321
    @bobweiram6321 Před rokem

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

  • @208jdog
    @208jdog Před 4 měsíci

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

  • @bird9188
    @bird9188 Před rokem +1

    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

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

      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
      @Invariel Před rokem

      In NES Tetris, hypertappers have beaten the kill screen.

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

      @@Invariel As well as TAS.

    • @Invariel
      @Invariel Před rokem

      @@knownas2017 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.

    • @knownas2017
      @knownas2017 Před rokem

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

  • @cheetahsflame1279
    @cheetahsflame1279 Před rokem

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

  • @rafaelgabrielgarlinidal-bo9496

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

  • @NStripleseven
    @NStripleseven Před rokem

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

  • @realityblooms
    @realityblooms Před rokem

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

  • @Frisbieinstein
    @Frisbieinstein Před 7 měsíci

    Someone proved that an unwinnable game was possible. Tetris added some code to prevent this highly unlikely event.

  • @lemonbread378
    @lemonbread378 Před rokem

    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

  • @zombathinlostleghackercat5233

    O block. O block. O block. O block. O block.

  • @Wyld1one
    @Wyld1one Před rokem

    Anyone make 3D Tetris like puzzle out of business cards? I did.one piece only had three cubes, but the rest had four.only two folds are needed for each card. 6cards made a base cube. 6 more could cover the faces.you join base cubes first to desired 4cube shape, then cover fases. Final assemble cube was 3x3 sized.

  • @SilverSerpent705
    @SilverSerpent705 Před rokem

    There was a flash game like this. a tetris that tried to give you the worst possible blocks every turn. AFAIK that's not quite beatable