After losing like $200

[mrnoodle]

I'm coming here to learn how to play.

I have played something like 700 games at world winner (mostly bejeweled and big money, with the odd word game). I thought it was random. I certainly never saw any way of predicting how the gems would fall or anything. I won plenty of games in the lower skill brackets just by luck, but then when I saw gamergoddess' bejeweled video, I was like O_O

So I'm here looking for strats and help

[Jacob]

Keep watching Bejeweled videos on YouTube, learn how to set up hyper gems and learn how to spot chain combos...you'll get there.

[mrnoodle]

it's hard -- i have a tendency to shrink my field of view down to 4-block sections of the board. sometimes i'm focusing on a single gem to the exclusion of anything else. i have to try hard to even see normal 3-gem matches.

i think it's a brain thing xD

[mrnoodle]

i'm also thinking too hard..

[Jacob]

Yeah, I used to be like that...you'll get to a point where your field of vision is the entire board, and you can easily tell how many moves are left. After a while you'll very rarely need to use your hint button to find a move.