I am going to share my Tetris strategy, just so the rest of you suckers have a fighting chance.
You already know that you need to leave a thin hole in the side so you can wait for a stick and get big points. But, maybe you have had the frustration of not getting a stick, or you get a piece without a proper place to put it. Whoops, now you have a mess. Game over! The solution is to expand the top of the hole. After 6 or 7 rows of a 1-column hole, expand the mouth of the hole to two columns. After that, you can dump any piece (except one) inside the hole and still keep the hole. It is a way to cut down on excess rows and make use of otherwise-inconvenient pieces.