Carl Best's Jezzball Story

Some Sound Advice
from Top Scorer
Carl Best

Submitted on 12-30-99
(just before the e-world would crash)

Hi, my name is Carl Best, and I live in Eugene, OR (just down the freeway from our host, David). I've been playing jezzball for about 4 years. I first found it on an AST Pentium 75 that a business partner of mine had. I obtained my own copy, and have played the game on and off to unwind in the evening.

I pretty much developed my own strategy, based on the "trapping" technique used in the later stages of the demo game. My son discovered the ability to trap a ball in one square, and from that point on, I thought I had it made, with a best score of 3.5 million points. On a lark, I decided that since I was the best (little did I know) that I'd set up a web page to tell the world how to master jezzball! I decided to do a search first and see if anyone else had already done it, and bang! there was www.jezzball.com in all it's glory! I had never been able to get beyond level 36 or 37, and I was shocked to see the scores that people were getting! I studied the tricks used by some of the masters on this web site, and realized that my ambition had been holding me back! I was trying to set traps that were too large for the higher levels of the game. After learning about the CTRL-SH-F12 dodge, I skipped up to level 49 and began to practice.

I can now say that I have it mastered. What works best for me is to set horizontal traps on the left side of the screen, starting at the bottom and working up. I can't reliably set traps of predictable lengths on the right, since there is a difference in where the red and blue walls start out from the cursor, so I leave the right side of the board alone. I set my traps two lines deep initially, and expect to lose one life for each trap. I just don't have the reflexes to master the "Thomas" method, although I am able to pull it off at least every 4th or 5th trap if I set my mind to it. I trap one ball in each of the first 7 traps, then go back to the bottom of the screen and begin lengthening the traps by two lines. This allows me to catch two more balls and still have a one line extension of the trap to build on. after I've extended all 7 traps, I am able to go for a little more length on my extensions. I don't like it when two balls trap themselves, because they often get stuck right at the entrance to the trap, which makes it harder for me to extend the trap as much as I want to. I prefer to trap all the balls one at a time on my own, so I never leave traps open in the early stages of the game.

I am currently in my highest scoring game ever (as of 1/1/2000), and I am still increasing my score. I realize that although the rules indicate that people are to send in screen shots of the game after it ends, I cannot bring myself to just "end" such a good game! As long as my computer stays up, I don't see an end in sight, and I feel quite comfortable now with level 49.

David was kind enough to allow me to enter the top 20 scores list even though I am still playing the game that qualifies me. This was because I applied on December 30th, 1999, and was concerned about a possible power failure or Internet shutdown on New Years eve, preventing me from registering my score. I am pleased to note that nothing happened!

I have developed a theory about the science of Jezzball that might be useful to other jezzfeaks: I prefer to not think of the game screen as a grid of squares, but rather a grid of lines. Notice that the wall builder is oriented for building the walls to cover lines, not squares, and that whenever a ball is trapped, it is stuck at the point where two lines cross, not the space between the lines! The balls will cross over the spaces, but their movement is dictated by the locations of the line intersections, and more often than not, when you pause a game, you’ll see all the balls hovering over the intersections of the lines rather than the spaces between the lines. Awareness of this may not have a significant impact on game strategy, but I am always cognizant of it, and when describing the game, I refer to lines rather than grid spaces.

I have noticed that in the early stages of the game, you can use the ratio of vertical versus horizontal lines to predictably trap balls if you build a horizontal trap 2 lines high in any corner of the screen. This is done by trimming the screen so that you have a rectangle with your trap extending out from it

and the aspect ratio of the rectangle is one vertical line more than the number of horizontal lines. If you do this, a ball will work its way around the screen two lines per cycle, until it drops into the trap. You can speed things up by trimming the screen down to as low as 73%. Note in my screen capture, that one ball has already dropped into the trap, and the second ball is following it in. You can also build another trap at the top of the screen, to reduce the cycle time in half.

This leads me up to my other theory; that the balls will always be predominantly travelling from upper right to lower left, or from upper left to lower right. Even when in the higher levels of the game, you’ll see this phonomenon. When I’m trying to set a first trap of a level, and there are too many balls in the lower left of the screen where I prefer to start, I know I can just wait a little while, and eventually it will clear enough to build my trap as the balls migrate towards the upper left corner. This movement is not easy to recognize when there are 50 balls on the screen, but it is there. It’s most obvious (and usefull) when there are fewer than 20 balls on the screen.

I hope that this information can prove to be usefull to anyone trying to master jezzball.

I suppose at this point that it’s appropriate that I let you know a little about me: The picture of my family was taken in November of 99, right after a family leaf raking session. That's my wife Anne, Sam, our 13 year old, and Katelyn, 9. Also in the picture is our two dogs, Stormie, the Australian Shepherd, and Pip, the West Highland White Terrier. The best and second best breeds of dog in existence (in our humble opinion!). The Best family Pip is hard to see, because he's doing what Westies are best at, that is burrowing into stuff looking for foxes and badgers (well, burrowing into the leaf pile, anyway).

I’m very much into vintage motorcycles, to the point where most people think it’s an obsession, you can see some of my bikes at http://www.efn.org/~best plus a few other things. I also have a 1949 Dodge Coupe which is now undergoing restoration, and a BMW 2002, but it hasn't gotten much attention lately, and isn't currently registered or insured. I'm also somewhat into art, as I majored in art in college many years ago (dropped out, though), and was a fairly accomplished cloisonne jewelry maker at one time.

I also play guitar and recently purchased a Fender Stratocaster, a small Fender solid state amp, and my wife got me a really nifty effects pedal for my birthday, all to replace the vintage Fender Duo-Sonic guitar and Fender Deluxe Reverb amp that I bought new when I was 15 years old. I still have them, but I felt that the new equipment is easier to use on a regular basis without worry about damaging my pre-CBS vintage Fender equipment. There's a hint about how old I am hidden in that. I'll leave it to you to find out the truth. I'm not a great musician, or even professional quality, but I can do a pretty good blues jam, and I know all the 1950's Rock and Roll riffs and licks. I'm planning on buying a National Steel guitar soon, which is what the old Delta Bluesmen like Robert Johnson, and Blind Melon Jefferson used. It's pretty amazing what the equipment you use does for your sound, the Fender makes a great rockabilly sound, but if I play exactly the same riffs on a National Steel, it sounds just like the old Mississippi Delta blues.

Oh, and what do I do for a living? I am currently employed at Lane Community College here in Eugene as a "Network Specialist" with the instructional computing department. I have been working with computers professionally since 1983, so I pretty much watched the PC industry grow up around me. My first contact with the internet was in about 1986 or so, when my wife got an account through the Springfield, OR School district (They were one of the first School districts in Oregon to get an internet domain, they have a class B IP domain, which means that they got in really early, as there weren't that many class B domains available) This was 7 years before the www first appeared. It's a different world now.

Before LCC, I was a self employed network consultant, and, although I don't consider it to be a big part of my expertise (nor am I very good at it), I have designed some commercial web sites; http://www.waterbrothers.com, the former is a construction company in Eugene, and I'm still involved with them, the latter is for a copier and imaging systems vendor in Medford, and I had a major falling out with them, not over the web page, which is mediocre, but servicable, but rather over a sales trip I took for them to Cheyenne Wyoming, when we had a disagreement over due compensation for expenses, and some unwanted requests for future travel. Anyway, there is no one there who is maintaining the site, and I noticed that there are some dead links. Too bad. I also built a web page for Oregon Vintage Motorcyclists (of which, I am a member), http://www.efn.org/~ovm/ which is almost an extension of my personal web site at www.efn.org/~best/ . I have some strong opinions about web page design, which I will not burden you with here, but I’ll be happy to share them with anyone who asks. I’ve been doing web page design since 1996. I am also serving as webmaster for a Eugene based Title and Escrow company at http://www.evergreenlandtitle.com although I didn’t design the web site. I work part time as their network administrator and one man computer support staff.

Also see my thoughts on personal Web Etiquette and You.

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