How YOU can Vod Review and Improve

Rewatch your gameplay and improve all by yourself! 

Simply opening up your replays and looking at what you did is a great way to help yourself get better at the game. To get even more value from your time, though, here are some tips and tricks for vod reviews that'll help you rank up in no time!

While this guide is geared towards TETR.IO and Jstris players, many of these tips are applicable to vod review in general, so consider giving it a read no matter what games you play!

Step 1: Pick The Right Match

The most valuable matches are ones where you pop off, but it was still close. I say this every stream, and for good reason; You will learn the most about improvement if you always vod review these games. Even though you pop off, nobody's perfect, so watch it back and see how you could've done even better!

Some criteria to consider:

• Score: For a Tetra League match, something closer than 5-3 or 7-4.

• Opponent: Someone you should be able to realistically beat. No, czsmall0402 playing at 1pps does not count.

• Round Length: Unless you're trying to rank up using only DPC, make sure the set includes a few rounds longer than 1 minute so you make it to midgame.

Know when to make excuses

By reviewing your best games, you can focus on factors completely and directly under your own control. In a proper vod, mistakes you make are all your fault. Reality: a coach probably can't fix your broken spacebar, help you sleep more, or get you better Wi-Fi. When you're vod reviewing, try to attribute all decisions to yourself, both the good ones and the bad ones. Don't review that 5 AM drunk game. Or honestly, don't get drunk. Or play Tetris at 5 AM.

Other matches can be good to rewatch too!

While reviewing that close popoff game is great for overall improvement, don't ignore everything else. Stomped a lower ranked player? See if you can find some weaknesses in your offense and spiking. Got stomped? GG go next, but figure out why your opponent was better.

So now you've chosen a set, probably based on stats and what you remember happened. What now?

Step 2: What to Look For

Identify Trends

As you're watching, figure out what you're doing right and wrong throughout the match. Note down your bad habits, poor decisions that you're making over and over. A common example is panic downstacking: many players speed up when they get stuck, but become even more stuck as a result. At the same time, note down your good habits, things that you're doing well and should keep doing. Hype yourself up and appreciate your good plays! That fractal into combo into quad 40 spike? All skill baby, let's gooo!!!

Justify Everything

Retrace your thought process and try to figure out why you made the decisions you did. Do your best to understand yourself, reinforce your good intuition, and damp out the poor intuition. Ex: I keep building T-spins instead of downstacking. Why? Am I greeding? Tunnel vision? Or do I want to survive by canceling incoming damage? 

Also try to justify the outcomes of the rounds. Why did you win or lose this round? Did you get lucky, or did your opponent misdrop? Were you playing more confidently, leading to more aggressive play?

Note that, during a heated match, the vast majority of your gameplay is intuition based and not conscious decision making! If you have a bad habit, it's going to take practice and repetition to fix. Sometimes a lot of practice and repetition.

Know What To Ignore

Don't fixate on unusual situations you're unlikely to encounter again. Floating I misdrop? Opponent found an RNG All Clear spike? That's a gg go next. Don't read too much into lucky or unlucky situations; they're out of your control.

I can't see any problems!

NOW you need a coach! If you think your gameplay is perfect, but you're hardstuck and haven't improved in a while, then an outside perspective will absolutely help. Try asking a friend first though; anyone around your skill level will be able to give you advice.

Useful Tools

four-tris

My labbing tool of choice during coaching sessions! Able to import any Tetris board via screenshot, four-tris is publicly available on GitHub. Simply click on the camera, select your board of choice, then input the queue. Perfect for finding fancy downstacks, or showing CheezWhiz why the BT cannon isn't the right choice.

Sketris, ZZTetris

Browser-based blueprint tools similar to four-tris, for people who don't want to download four-tris or those using a Mac. Both offer image-based import tools via clipboard and paste!

Jstris+

Available for Chrome and Firefox, Jstris+ is most known for adding skill-based matchmaking in addition to other features. For our purposes, it provides powerful reviewing tools! After loading a replay, you can now access the snapshot and fumen features.  The former allows you to play from a given board state, and the latter sends the board state to the fumen Tetris analyzing tool.

Jstris+ is available for Chrome and Firefox, and also as a script for other browsers.

blockfish

A bot that specializes in cheese downstacking, the publicly available version of blockfish accepts fumens and downstacks them to the best of its ability. Try it out in my Discord server's bot channel!

Aight, that's all, thanks for reading!

And see you in X rank!