Of course there is no way to ever guarantee winning a live leaderboard competition, as there is always some degree of luck involved: It depends on who you are up against in the final round.
Some leaderboard competitions produce 10,000 winners, so chances of winning these will be many times better than in All Stars, where there are just 10 winners.
Obviously no matter how good you are there will be others as good or better to beat you amongst the millions of other competitors, that must be remembered.
But I do usually succeed with my strategies, so here are my latest tips taken from my own recent experiences.
The qualifier/knockout rounds
To get one of the qualifying places you would need to play between 2-3 episodes per day. Players who usually play this much will find it easy to qualify and can play using their usual style and strategies. Qualifying rounds are about how much time you invest in the game. Players can scrape through these rounds with perseverance and determination, just by spending hours playing the game.
Here some tips:
- Choose your starting time wisely: Avoid the first couple of hours of the round's start because the keenest "mad crushers" are more likely to be joining early. If you do start early you might be up against more active and competitive players.
- Whenever you start: Make sure you have the time to play 3 episodes per day until the end of the round
- Don't worry about coming first, just check you are within the qualifying zone
- Choose one of these two methods to ensure you qualify: Either move way ahead in first place (if you have double the points of others you are safe) so that the others will give up and fight it out for the minor qualifying places, or: Stay near the other qualifiers and go for the sprint finish. Check the leaderboard regularly and set your alarm to play the last two hours of the round at maximum speed
The finals
These are much more competitive than the qualifiers and knockouts since only the best players remain.
Finals are not about how many episodes you crush, but how fast you crush through them. Finals are about speed. As a rough guide: You need to play one episode in under twenty minutes to win the top prize.
In cash prize competitions the finals are brutally competitive, so even very fast and experienced players will lose out. There is a lot of luck involved because you cannot control who else is in your group competing for the one top place.
- Know your own personal top crushing speed and accept your limitations
- Set your budget: Make purchases before you start. Load up with gold and boosters and don't make purchases during the final
- Be prepared to play for long hours. (In a 24 hour cash prize final you have to play the entire 24 hours to win.)
- Be prepared for the sprint finish. Even in the boosters/gold bar prize finals the best players will come in during the last few hours for a sprint finish. So set your alarm and play the final two or three hours.
- Know when to give up. If you are up against a player who is faster than yourself you cannot win
If you want to win the grand prize you have to practice and know the game well.
Do not rely on cheats. Most experienced players know some tricks to beat the game and King know about most of them too, so they try to catch players out who use "unfair" methods of play during major events.
Aside from the fact that using cheats in a competition against other players is unfair, you may find that you get knocked out of the competition by the app. The app runs most smoothly if your clock is permanently set to "automatic" and you are playing online connected to King's server.
Read the terms and conditions for all major leaderboard competitions. Make sure you understand them.
