1.

Move for a move - When creating a match, you have to make sure that you are
going to create an another potential move by doing it, this will help preserve the
moves you can do on the board, making a gem match and losing a potential match/move
while doing so is considered a wrong move, and that could cost you your game.
2. Match from the top first - This is important, creating matches from the top or
upper section of the board while also doing the strategy mentioned above will help
you last for as long as possible in Classic mode until bad RNG kicks in, once you
are out of moves on the upper section of the board, that is where you can start
matching gems on the lower section.
3. Sacrificing - While it is indeed a very good idea to prioritize making special
gems, you have to make sure that you will be able to immediately activate the
special gems you make, or at least some of them when you need to scramble the
board, however in the event where you are met with situation where you either
choose between having an extra move or a special gem, ALWAYS go for having an extra
move instead, it is uncommon for you to be able to immediately activate your
special gem upon creating it (unless it is a Hypercube).
4. Gem arrangement prediction - Best partnered with Strategy 1, what this means is
that if you are going to make a gem match, check first on how it is going to
potentially affect the board and other gems around it, this will allow you to know
if the match you're going to do is safe or not.
5. Move preservation - If you have some other available moves on other portions of
the board, as much as possible it is a good idea to just leave it first and keep
matching on 1 portion of the board with the help of Strategy 1 and 4, once that
portion of the board already has no moves, you can then go to the other portion and
start matching there too, this is best done especially by saving moves where a
special gem will activate, particularly a Star Gem, as special moves are good at
scrambling the board for some extra potential moves.