your reduction is crucial because it is easy to take out the winner ... i am pretty good at reduction , the better you get at it , the less you will take out the winner , but it takes practice , and even if you are good at , sometimes something very unlikely will happen and you have taken out the winner ... it's all part of the game ....
personally I only take out patterns that have all 3 ... like odd odd odd , even even even, line line line, curve curve curve ..... i learned my lesson taking out any other patterns because lets say you see there have been 5 patterns of HHL ... so you take out HHL and the state throws that pattern out 3 more times in a row ... happens all the time so gotta be careful with that ...