Anyone can pop three bubbles of the same colour. Getting through all 100 levels, or beating a room of other players, comes down to a handful of habits that experienced players use on almost every shot. This guide collects them, roughly in the order they are worth learning. If you are new to the game, start with how to play.
A popped bubble is worth 10 points; a dropped one is worth 20, and in a multiplayer game every dropped bubble also counts toward the attack you send. More importantly, a drop can remove dozens of bubbles in one shot, while a pop removes three or four. So the first question on every shot is not "where does this colour match?" but "which match, if I popped it, would leave the most bubbles hanging from nothing?"
Look for narrow necks: places where a large cluster hangs from the ceiling, or from the rest of the board, through only one or two bubbles. Pop the neck and everything below it falls. Levels are often designed around one such point, and finding it early can turn a hard level into two shots.
The launcher only fires in a straight line, but the side walls bounce bubbles cleanly, and a bank shot reaches places a direct shot cannot: behind an overhang, into the side of a group, or to the far corner when the middle is blocked. A few things to remember:
If you are still learning the angles, the Aim guide option draws the line your shot will follow, bounces included. Runs played with it on do not count for the high score tables, so treat it as practice.
You always know the next bubble, and with Swap you can hold a third. Before you fire, check what is coming: if the loaded bubble has nowhere useful to go but the next one would set up a big drop, put the loaded one in the pocket and take the drop now. If the loaded bubble is the colour you need in a few shots' time, park it in the pocket and keep it there until the spot opens up.
When no shot pops anything, place the bubble where it builds toward a future pop instead of wherever is closest. Two of a colour sitting next to each other are one shot away from popping; a lone bubble of an unwanted colour buried in another group is a problem you will have to dig out later.
The game only deals colours that are still on the board. Once you clear the last bubble of a colour, it stops coming, and every shot after that has fewer possible colours and a better chance of matching. Late in a level it is often worth spending a shot or two to finish off the last two or three bubbles of a rare colour rather than chasing a bigger pop elsewhere.
In the 1-player game the ceiling comes down one row every nine shots. That puts a price on every shot that does not pop anything. Keep an eye on the row of lights that counts down to the next drop and try to time your big clears so the board is shallow when the ceiling moves.
The hurry timer is the other limit. Thinking is fine, but if you take too long the game fires for you, often somewhere useless. On a hard board it is better to make a reasonable shot early than a perfect one late.
Clearing a 1-player level within five seconds is worth a 5,000-point bonus, falling by 84 points for every second after that. On the points board that bonus usually matters more than the bubbles themselves, so a player chasing a high score plays quickly through the easy levels and saves the careful thinking for the hard ones.
Against other players the same skills apply, with a few more on top:
The multiplayer guide covers these rules in detail.
Two modes exist mostly for practice. Random levels deals an endless series of new boards, good for learning to read a layout quickly. Multiplayer training puts you against the clock with attack bubbles on, scoring the attacks you would have sent, which is the best way to get used to multiplayer pace without an opponent. Both are in the 1-player menu.