Gonna be honest, it took me a bit to break my Tetris habits and learn how to actually play the game xD. Also, I didn't realize that there were bombs or lasers until my third run through, although I'm not sure they helped me. By the time I actually had to use them, things were already falling way too fast for me to keep up anyway.
I have to ask though, how does the chain detection work? It seemed like sometimes the game would clear some blocks outside of my intended chain and sometimes they wouldn't. Did that mean there were other chains the game noticed that I didn't?