Classic Tetris World Championship


The Classic Tetris World Championship is a video game competition series, hosted by the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.
The competition launched in 2010, during the filming of to determine the world's greatest Tetris player. In its first two years, the competition was held in Los Angeles, California, but was moved to Portland, Oregon in 2012, and has been held there annually since.
The contestants play the 1989 Nintendo version of Tetris on actual Nintendo Entertainment System consoles and CRT televisions. The final rounds are streamed online with live-edited screens and Head-up display to improve viewer experience. The tournament has been dominated by Jonas Neubauer, who has reached the finals in nine out of ten iterations of the tournament and has won seven titles. Since Jonas's last win in 2017, Joseph Saelee has won two straight, including a win against Jonas.

Competition

The competition takes place over two days, with the Qualifying Round on the first day and the Main Event on the second. Contestants are allowed to bring their own controller, but it must be either an original, unmodified NES Controller or an aftermarket unit that is a faithful reproduction of one. At the conclusion of the competition, the champion and 2nd place finisher are awarded a golden and silver T-piece trophy respectively.

Qualifying Round

Qualifying takes place on a fixed number of NES stations. Entrants play "Type A" Tetris, starting on level 9 or higher, and are seeded based on their final score. Once an entrant's game ends for any reason, his/her score must be recorded by a tournament scorekeeper in order to be valid. Entrants may make as many qualifying attempts as they wish, but must return to the back of the waiting line for each one. Entrants may also pay a fee to rent a station for one hour, which allows unlimited qualifying attempts.
The top 32 scorers are seeded into a tournament bracket for the Main Event. In 2018, 40 players were allowed to qualify, with a "Round Zero" play-off held for the qualifiers seeded 25th through 40th to reduce the field to 32. In 2019, 48 players qualified with Seeds 17 thru 48 competing in "Round Zero" for the remaining spots in the Top 32. In the event of multiple players maxing out, their second highest score is recorded to determine their seeding. This was especially utilized in 2018, when seven players maxed out, four of whom maxed out twice. Thus, the officials needed their third highest scores just to determine the 1st to 4th seeding.

Main Event

The Main Event is a single-elimination tournament consisting of five rounds of head-to-head matches, with seeds from opposite ends of the rankings pitted against each other in the first round. Matches are played with specially modified cartridges that can display seven-figure scores and give both players the same sequence of randomly determined blocks. Prior to the 2016 tournament, the Main Event was played using unmodified cartridges.
Both players begin to play "Type A" Tetris at the same time on separate systems, and the game continues until one of the following occurs:
During the first round, the higher-seeded player in a match chooses whether the first game will start at level 15 or 18. The lower seed chooses for the second game, and the higher seed for the third. Starting with the second round, all games begin at level 18.

Rule Changes by Year

The tournament rules have been subject to change as seen in below:

2010

The inaugural edition of CTWC had the flavor of an invitational tournament due to its original concept; five spots were automatically filled with the world record holders Jonas Neubauer, Harry Hong, Ben Mullen, and Jesse Kelkar, and the 1990 Nintendo World Championships champion Thor Aackerlund. Three spots were remaining for qualifiers: top 3 players in the "Type B" games in a certain period could join the semifinal.
The 8-player semifinal consisted of three rounds of "Type A" games to decide two finalists: The first was for most lines, and the last two were for most points. Calculated by the percentages of lines or scores compared to the best player of each round, the top two players advance to the final.
The final was the best of three head-to-head matches by using "Type A" games.

2011

In the qualifying, top 8 scorers of "Type B" games advanced to the main tournament. An additional 100,000 points were awarded for completing Level 19.
The main tournament was a single-elimination tournament consisting of three rounds, and all matches were the best of three.

2012

As the tournament moved to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, the rules were renewed and established as the current rules:
A slight change was applied in determining the rankings: if players are tied for rounds advanced and games won in a losing match, the sum of two games in the losing match plus qualification score was used. However, this rule was used only in 2015 and 2016.

2016

From 2016, the contenders play with specially modified cartridges during the main tournament. The modified cartridge can count the score in 7 digits and enables each player to receive the same order of pieces, in order to avoid the inequity of I-piece supplies and the periods of I-piece droughts. The referee rolls two 10-sided dice before each game to determine a random seed.
Qualifying games are still played with the original unmodified cartridges.

2018

The number of players for the main tournament draw was expanded from 32 to 40, with a "Round Zero" play-off introduced for qualifiers ranked #25 to #40. The winner of each "Round Zero" match faced one of the top 8 seeds in the first round proper

2019

The number of players for the main tournament draw was expanded from 40 to 48, with a "Round Zero" play-off for qualifiers ranked #17 to #48. The winner of each "Round Zero" match faced one of the top 16 seeds in the first round proper
Matches in rounds 0-2 are played best of three while rounds 3-5 are played best of five.

2020

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the event will be held online with a different set of rules from the in-person tournaments.
Qualifying
Double-Elimination Playoffs
Single-Elimination Playoffs

Official Rankings each year

Source:

Notable achievements

Since 2015, a Classic Tetris European Championship has been played annually in Copenhagen. The tournament follows a similar structure, but is played on the PAL version of NES Tetris rather than the NTSC version. Due to the difference in framerates, the two versions of the game are balanced differently; pieces do not fall at identical speeds on the same level between the two versions. At higher level play, this leads to significant differences in strategy and outcome.
During the expo there have been several tournaments on other systems over the years.
There is also a once-a-month online tournament called Classic Tetris Monthly that is hosted on the same Twitch channel as the CTWC. Competitors routinely compete from around the world in CTM, which is streamed remotely and thus allows for great flexibility on the part of the competitors. CTM is overseen and commentated chiefly by Keith "vandweller" Didion, who took over for Jessica "fridaywitch" Starr, the tournament's founder, in the Summer of 2018. Starr premiered the tournament on December 3, 2017 on her personal Twitch channel, with 16 participants that had qualified in the few weeks leading up to the event. Harry Hong, the 2014 CTWC champion, was the tournament's first victor. Didion opened a Twitch account dedicated to CTM, called MonthlyTetris, shortly after he began hosting.
In January 2019, due to increased participation, two CTM tournaments were played on different weekends, dubbed the Main Event and Community Tournament. The former was for more experienced and skilled players, and the latter was designed for beginners and early amateurs. The next month, in February, CTM was hosted on the ClassicTetris Twitch channel, the same channel that streams the annual CTWC. Originally intended to be a one-month occurrence, the tournament never moved back to the MonthlyTetris channel.
Over the next few months, all matches prior to the quarterfinals began to occur independently, streamed on community members' Twitch channels. In September 2019, a third tournament, the Challengers Circuit, was added for players at the very top of the CT, which was once again growing beyond a reasonable scale. In January of 2020, a fourth tournament, the Futures Circuit, was added to account for the first month with 100 submitted qualifiers.