POV: The 2019 CTWC - The Year of Upsetris
Following on from last week’s article covering the Classic Tetris World Championship, it is time to share the results!
It took place from the 19th - 21st and I was following it the whole way. Friday started fairly low-key. A quick Dr. Mario tournament followed by a speedrun competition in Tetris: first to level 19. Surprisingly, last year’s champion, Joseph Saelee, lost quite early on in the speedrun contest... I guess he was just warming up for the real action.
Saturday was the first day of qualifying, in which there were some very notable highlights. Firstly, Joeseph qualified first (surprising no one) but to everyone’s amazement he did this with at least 3 max outs, (the max score you can get is 999,999). The qualifying had many fresh young faces, including Batfoy... who would go on to come 4th place which will be covered later. Many people are accounting the reason for this influx of young players being the success of 16-year olf Joseph Saelee last year. Following this trend of diversity. it was nice to see more women take part, including one player’s wife who managed to demolish him in qualifying.
The Sunday was the real show though, top 36 the clash of the titans. The day started with two major upsets. Two of the three previous winners Harry Hong and Jonas Neubauer both were knocked out at the start of the day. This shocked the Tetris well, causing everyone to dub the tournament as the tourney of ‘upsetris’. Even weirder still is the player that beat 7-time world champion Jonas did not manage to get through to the next round.
Top 8 was wild. A showdown of veterans, Terry and Koryan, showed the world how big of a skill difference can come with continued practice. Koryan practices every day, even when he is not playing Tetris he taps a portable button to keep his fingers fast. This was evident in the absolute destruction that was Koryans 3-0 victory over Terry. Joseph went against Green Tea in probably the best match of the tournament. The first game saw both players get to the kill-screen (the end of the game which is so rarely reached in tournament). The next game saw Joeseph get the first-ever max out in a head-to-head tournament setting, causing the commentators to go crazy. But nothing would prepare them for the next game which saw a max out from BOTH Joseph AND Green Tea - truly extraordinary. Batfoy the 15-year-old newcomer was sadly beaten by 40+ year old veteran Koryan. This meant that Koryan met joseph in the final. A hotly contested match was finally clutched out by Joseph, winning by 3-2 when Koryan topped out early at 200,000 points. Joseph was awarded a beautiful trophy and $10,000 by Alexy Pajitnow, Tetris’ creator. An emotional moment and a great competition by all!
