How do I get good?

[Wizard]

I think my problem is playing the field too much. I prolly should stack my own stacks more. Anyway I guess you gotta be fast as fak here.

[yodellingjess]

i focus on my nert pile, pulling from there, no matter what. It seems to work for me.

[sam]

Getting into a place where you can spend most of the time playing your own stacks, but still know enough of what's on the field to play to it is useful.

Headphones was a game changer for me, when I realised the noises are useful for keeping track of things, especially in the early game the announcements of suits so you can get your 2s and 3s out quickly.

[WarningTrack]

Yeah, prioritize any "bottleneck" cards first, which means your own stack or anything sitting alone on the right, since placing that means you get to take from your stack to replace it.

Other than that, I'd say always having a card (or series of cards) you're "watching" out of your periphery once they're one or two away from being able to be placed. With a little practice you can pretty easily monitor one spot while you cycle through your own cards. More than that is tougher and takes longer.

[LasagnaLicker]

Everyone is spot on here, just a few more thoughts:

You definitely want sound on to listen for aces. One less thing to keep track of.

You have to be able to know when to build a stack and when to leave it to put into community piles. You can and should build with any base card when you deem it necessary even if its low. If stacking a 2 atop a 3 frees up a slot, that's another card you can get out of your nertz pile which is +2 pts, and you have information on the next card in the series. The goal is always to free up slots. Scoring points is an indirect consequence; every slot emptied is another nertz card out which is +2, playing into community piles should be a tool to empty the nertz pile, not the end goal.

If two cards can fall in the same stack, like a black 10 and red 7, it's probably safe to build on that ten. A fast way to determine if cards can stack to find the difference between the card numbers(face cards are numbered 11,12,13); if this is even, the cards have to be the same color to stack, if it's odd, they have to be different colors. 10-7=3, 3=odd, colors=different

When running through your deck, aces obviously come out, but don't wait on certain cards to place them in community. See if the card is useful to build or not, then check community piles, and then move on.

And speed is very important, I only got faster through playing more