My Experience at the Classic Tetris World Championships 2018

this is me on February 17 2018 after being a fan of competitive NES Tetris for years I had just played the game for myself for the first time on an original cartridge clearly I had a lot to learn my goal was to see how good I could get in less than a year see david has a beautiful wall really high really clean oh no David this is me eight months later after flying almost 3,000 miles to attend the classic Tetris World Championships trying to stay alive in a 4-way match against some of the best Tetris players in the world right before leaving for Portland I uploaded a video to this channel explaining some of the history and the strategy of the tournaments that video has received an incredible response for which I'm truly grateful but the one thing that's always given me a bit of a heavy heart about it is that at the end I revealed that I was going to the World Championships and promised to make a second video about how the trip went that promise for a long time was left unfulfilled until now this finally is that second video and although it's coming very very late the silver lining is now that I'm not only able to include a bunch of really cool stuff that happened after the championships along with a special announcement at the very end there's also the perspective of just how much the 2018 tournament completely transformed the competitive scene this is the story of the year that changed the game so what made it so crazy I'll start with a little context quick recap for anybody who didn't see my first video [Music] [Applause] the tetris world championships were started in 2010 by Robin Mahara who had based the tournament in part on the 1990 Nintendo World Championships he had been and as a kid after seeing other classic retro games have established world champions he wanted to determine one for his personal favourite Tetris the format of the head-to-head matches is relatively straightforward both competitors play a game on the 1989 version of Tetris for the NES the same version from Robins 1990 tournament the goal is to score more points than your opponent before level 29 when the speed becomes nearly impossible or before you are too aggressive or unlucky and die early clearing four lines at once with a line piece a tetris scores over seven times the points of for single line clears so both players pushing each other to gamble with risky setups to get Tetris through punishingly random piece sequences is the source of the strategy in the drama in 2010 Jonas Neubauer won the first tournament beginning his incredible run of near complete dominance in the competitive scene over the first eight years Jonas came out on top almost every time losing only once to Harry Hong and 2014 it seemed like hardly anything could stop him not Center Wells not level 9 starts not even the power of booms however the thing is at the beginning the tetris World Championships were kind of like the World Series of baseball technically a world competition but basically everybody's from the United States with a sole representative from Canada but as the tetris tournament grew in publicity and popularity new players from all over the world started to emerge that had a shot at the title over in finland a guy named Yanni had been playing Tetris for well over a decade and entered the classic Tetris European Championships which started in 2015 inspired by the American tournament Yanni quickly rose to the top with an unparalleled intensity to his play [Music] Johnny won the 2016 European Championship but initially had a very difficult time playing in Portland due to a difference in frame rates between American and European TVs still the CTW sees first player from outside North America managed to do better every year coming within a single Tetris of making a semi finals in 2017 coming into this year he looked positioned to make the top four and potentially even beyond over in Japan Koji also known by the screen named cauri on have been mastering the tetris the grand master series a prominent version of tetris in the country he then set his sights on NES Tetris and resurrected the lost art of hyper tapping from Thor åkerlund the original 1990 Nintendo world champion where instead of holding down the buttons to move the pieces from side to side he would tap his fingers at speeds of over a dozen times a second allowing him to pull off moves that virtually no one else could in a dominant freshman showing chorion made the top four in his first year at the tournament in 2016 but went out in the round of 16 the following year after a very unfortunate double flip of a line piece near the top of the board coming in the 2018 though he was in it to win it massively improving his consistency of by using a game genie code to remove the score cap set an incredible new world record for the highest score with 1 million two hundred and fifty-seven thousand points yeah easier culminated in defeating Jonas in a highly publicized best-of-five exhibition match in Hong Kong even Jonas admitted in an interview that would you say chorion is the favorite going into 2018 I would I would interesting well the hype of 2018 wasn't just about chorion there were multiple new players with resumes showing they were worthy of winning at all coming to the tournament for the very first time back over in Europe's PAVA from Iceland had established himself as a worthy rival to Yanni winning back-to-back titles in the European Championship and achieving some impressive feats such as getting one of the earliest max outs ever in the middle of level 26 he had the skills he had the tournament experience the only question left was how would he stack up against the rest of the field on a world stage back over in Japan another tetris the grand master veteran had made the switch to NES Tetris nameless ageless and faceless he was only known by his online screen name green tea he wasn't a hyper tapper but he had better command of the delayed auto-ship and just about anyone beating 19-4 on b-type one of the rarest achievements in NES Tetris he was competitors in the classic Tetris monthly a smaller scale online tournament in the Tetris twitch community that informed to help tide over the year-long gap between the big annual one shrouded in mystery some suspected that Green Team might be queit in disguise another player that had a habit of using Center Wells with a history of false identities but this theory was quickly squashed perhaps most impressively green tea frequently played practice matches with quarry on through twitch and the games were generally evenly matched in a first for any formal or informal NES Tetris match both Korean and green tea recorded a maxout in the same game if green tea could go toe-to-toe with the tournament favorites there's no telling how he would do against the rest of the field but everyone would soon get to find out and finally tucked away in a city in central California a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore by the name of Joseph se Lee ordered a Nintendo Entertainment System in October of 2017 after watching the boom Tetris for Jeff Veen video on YouTube mr. Jeff Boyd Jeff he watched Jonas Harry and Corey odds twitch streams and used core Aeons ham cams as a guide to develop his own hyper tapping stance and play style five months later he quietly set a new world record for the youngest player to max out the game that video to this day still has barely over 12,000 views someone from the CTW c-- noticed and wanted to know if he will be attending the tournament and he said he would do his best over the subsequent months it became clear that the tournament wouldn't be complete without him as he achieved a level 19 max out the 300k sprint world record yet and the once thought impossible level 31 oh yes to put it briefly the talent pool had exploded from previous years and I was about to go out and try and face all of them so how did that go well on October 19 I packed my bags and headed to the Philadelphia Airport [Music] I think it's a bit of a magical moment whenever you meet an online community in real life for the first time arriving at the Tetris section of the Portland retro gaming expo was surreal dozens of people I had watched for years were all right there in person I talked with Chad News about box office predictions and been mulling about playing with known Xbox I saw Chris Tang sporting a new haircut and I saw Cory on who was dressed up his Couser in homage to Quaid's character Houser from the previous year after Quaid had given him the disguise I also got to meet a ton of people who had done a lot of very admirable work behind the scenes I met Friday which who founded the class of Tetris monthly online tournament and Chris Bidwell who had done commentary on the early rounds for years and was one of the few people who had seen when I explained video before the tournament one of the funnest parts though was meeting people who are also there for the very first time I met Joseph who was actually the one other person who had seen my explained video beforehand and had left one of the very first comments on it that morning I got to watch his hyper tapping in person to see that it wasn't some trick he really could tap that fast I met tons of people from the twitch community such as Barrett square wave and jazz thief 81 appearances can be a funny thing when you're meeting people in person I knew Trey Harrison was tall but Adam Cornelius Vince Clemente and Robin Mahara the core people that made the CTW see what it is today they're all really tall I found out competitor teri Purcell calls them the long bars and Jonas who for some reason I have thought was around five foot nine and five foot ten was actually around six feet tall I guess was the rhett and Link effect but perhaps the biggest surprise of all was meeting Green Team I don't know what I was really expecting but I guess after hearing from some people that chorion referred to green tea as his teacher I kind of pictured him as this really old sage a Tetris wizard of sorts but in fact he was young except for Joseph I think he was the youngest competitor there and instead of being stoic he was all smiles and ended up becoming a fan favorite so the first day of the Convention was reserved for three fun side events a dr. Mario tournament a known xbox Tetris tournament and a tetris speedrun from level zero to level 19 I never played doctor Mario before and I knew how deceptively difficult and known Xbox game could be so I signed up for the speedrun while the dr. Mario tournament was happening on the main stage I watched the known Xbox tournament which was definitely the funniest event of the weekend as the event organizers chose to have people start on level 18 even world-class Tetris players did not fare very well often only scoring of a few lines a particular highlight was when a match between Peter and Alex ended in a tie any amount of pushdown points from either of them which are usually negligible would have won the game Alex cheekily chose to push down the first piece in his next game to ensure this wouldn't happen again chorion eventually won after a hard-fought battle with sqr and not a single tetris was scored in the entire event I watched the first couple matches of the speedrun play out four groups of four were playing each other and the winner of each group would move on to the finals the goal was to just burn lines and get to level 19 as fast as possible which means that Tetris did help but only sort of and the main priority was just a stack fast I was immediately surprised by Joseph's strategy of building a super high stack in continually passing up on Tetris until I realized that this was actually the best strategy having to push pieces down was what was taking up most the time on slower levels so when I sat down I had an idea of what my strategy could be one thing that I immediately noticed was the bright lights shining on the chairs which definitely improved the lighting from previous years but was something that players would mention throughout the weekend as a distraction fortunately I was wearing a hat so it didn't affect me I was going to need any edge I could get I was facing off against Alex the runner-up from the previous year packy the dr. Mario world champion and green-tea who in this video at least needs no further introduction being a huge underdog my only goal was to either finish the speedrun or not finish last three to one and there we have it Adam and so begins our third of four rounds right after the race started though green tea notice that the down button didn't really work on his controller in the main tournament starting on faster levels this wouldn't have been an issue but in the speedrun is basically what has spelled the end for him except that Trey volunteered his controller to be swapped out in the middle of the race nobody considered it cheating since green tea had already lost a huge amount of time for me regardless and although he made a lot of smart plays to gain some ground he eventually topped out being on the far right the only other screen I could see was pakis so I dug in and try my best to speed up I felt like I played pretty well at one point stacking four consecutive L pieces on top of each other but on level 15 I made a fatal mistake I was trying so hard to play fast and catch up that I got in the mindset of just throwing down pieces where they would need to be fit and not thinking ahead when I saw this line piece coming the first thing I thought was just stick it over to the left not realizing that my current piece would open up my well again this was a situation where I actually needed to take a Tetris because level 16 was coming in just two lines and my stack would have been too high for that speed and Adam Cornelius over in the broadcast booth was probably shaking his head in disbelief really high really clean he could use a little help with the right piece he gets the Janey's and there's a long bar for David oh he chose to scoop it over a few lines later that was that first GG WC event I made it most of the way through but wasn't able to finish but his fish flake won 209 said nobody can take away from me the fact that I beat green tea I suppose almost immediately after the race it was time for the finals and it looked like chorion was well on his way to earning the Triple Crown known Xbox the speedrun and of course the main event later in the weekend Corey on blistered his way through the first few levels well ahead of the pace everyone else but a very unfortunate long bar misplacement closed off his left burn chamber and forced him to top out leaving Joseph to coast to an unexpected victory I had been talking to veteran competitors about Joseph and we agreed that he definitely had the town potential to one day win the World Championship but that it was cool that he was able to win one of the side tournaments on his first trip out it was also to talking to people in the first day that I learned about two of the most heartwarming stories to come out of people traveling to the convention earlier that morning Yanni had just missed his transatlantic flight to America arriving at the boarding gate five minutes too late the airline wouldn't be offering him another flight so it looked like Yanni who was a legitimate contender for the Final Four wouldn't be able to make it many people including of course Yanni himself were devastated but later that day a fan named Matthias also known as eros the Vorta on Twitch had decided to pay for the entirety of a new last-minute flight so that Yanni could make it the cost of the ticket was substantial to say the least but Mattias said knowing that one of his favourite players could compete is something that he would never regret Robyn Mahara who was hosting Yanni that weekend took out a collection to help recuperate some of the costs from Mattias the other story I learned about was that of Josh towles he had participated in the early years of the CGW sea but he hadn't been able to attend the past three years the only way he was going to be able to attend the 2018 tournament was if he won one of the new qualifier events regional mini tournaments where the grand prize was a free trip to Portland in a guaranteed spot in the tournament and he ended up winning the Midwestern qualifier I congratulated him on his victory and half jokingly asked him if he would just sit out and relax on qualifying day and head into the bracket at the bottom facing a top seed since the guaranteed spot was only at the bottom unless a player wanted to try and post a higher score he said he wouldn't mind playing a top seed because then they'd have to play him since the complete YouTube archive of past matches only went back to 2015 I hadn't really gotten to see him play before but his confidence in local tournament victory made me think that he might be better than unexpected and then next morning it was time for the big day qualifying so for the previous couple years this is how qualifying day had gone players would show up to wait in line and post a score on one of the stations after one game they had to go back to the end of the line and wait again for another attempt for an additional fee a side station could also be rented out for an hour to be able to get into a rhythm and not have to worry about the line at the end of the day the top 32 scores will be sorted into a 32 seat bracket for the final tournament the next day this year though the format had changed a little bit instead of 32 seats there were now 40 seats the length of the qualifying day was shortened and right after the cutoff time around zero would begin to whittle down the bottom 16 seeds to 8 in order to have a 32 round bracket again for the next day so although there were no more spots available there was now also more pressure for elite players to get a top 24 seed and a void round zero there was also the matter of strategy for someone of my skill level I knew I barely had a chance to get in this was the cutoff for last year's score at the time my skill cap was only a little over 500 thousand as an additional problem I couldn't reliably play past level 19 yet referred to as the transition where the speed becomes extremely difficult but I also wasn't skilled enough to play aggressive on level 18 yet so I would have to try plying on some of the lower levels extremely aggressively these are my thoughts the morning of qualifying day all right so it's qualifying day either by the end of today I will have not qualified I've qualified and gone out in round 0 or be a waiting facing and top seed in round 1 tomorrow with 40 seeds this year I'm gonna guess that I will need at least 500,000 my game plan going in I originally was not expecting to have a rental station I found out yesterday that there are way more rental stations than I anticipated I heard people signing up online that they were going on right away and since I'm not a top player I didn't want to take one of those precious spots so to speak but since there were tons still available I got one yesterday so before the tournament on Twitch I promised Harry that I wouldn't do any level 9 start some qualifying day because he doesn't really like that he thinks is too slow level Iassogna are the easiest to reliably get a high score so I think I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go in play a couple games initially an 18 then drop down to 15 maybe 13 for a little bit when I have my real estate in I'm gonna try to do a couple games on mine because I'm not affecting anybody else on my rental stations mine my goal is to get at least 400,000 very quickly and I would hope to get 500,000 by the middle of the day because then I can relax a little bit if I get 500,000 by the middle of the day the rest of the day will probably be level 18 starts practicing for the tournament itself yeah I will predict 500,000 cutoff for top 40 it's crazy I arrived right on time all the CRT screens were humming in unison and the Golden Tee block was awaiting the champion the next day and then it was time to start playing I kept track of every single game I played in line that day my first games were not good as I was nervous and playing overly aggressive so I didn't bother to submit my scores but by my fifth game I had a score of 325 thousand three hundred and thirty one I called a referees record my score and when I went to see my place in the leaderboard I wasn't even close to being in the top 40 whoops I would need to step my game up but even though I was spending most of my time in line the experience I was having in line was amazing I got to watch players qualifying attempts as I waited and saw chorion missed maxing out the game by just 200 points a little while later I heard shouts from the other side where the side stations were at Josh had become the first player of the day to max out the game maybe he could be a contender to win at all another notable thing I noticed while waiting in line was that although each station came with its own controller almost everybody in line had brought their own I had brought mine as the difference in button sensitivity between the different controllers actually did affect my ability to play some people however had not brought a controller I talked to a woman in line from the Portland area who had just learned about the tournament the other week apparently she played Tetris on her phone sometimes when she was bored and her son had told her about this apparently local Tetris tournament and suggested that she enter she had never played the NES version of Tetris before and when she saw the other people playing she remark goodness I know the scores would be this high I would have practiced more but she did get to have a special moment green tea got his first max out of the day right in front of her and she was so surprised that she took a picture of it a few minutes later green tea realized he had forgotten to take a picture of his own max out and she remembered that she in fact had taken one and green tea was very grateful he posted the picture later on his Twitter page there were a lot of sponsors there to a university had done research into tracking exactly how different people play Tetris in order to try and find insight into how human minds worked and there were demo stations of tetris effect the first virtual reality tetris game a month before it was going to be sold publicly I wasn't having much luck with my games online so I decided to try Tetris effect which was super fun before heading over at noon to my one hour at a rental station the rental station made all the difference without worrying about my promise to Harry I play many games on level 9 starts and 53 minutes in I got in my mind a decently respectable score of five hundred and twenty nine thousand five hundred and seventy eight this would definitely put me comfortable in qualifying range all right I went back to check on the leaderboard and I was shocked green see Harry Hong Joseph's Spa var and Josh all had max outs with Joseph having just on the first live public level thirty in history really good level thirty keep an eye on that folks three more lines one more line level thirty the first live level thirty of all time Corey on the tournament favorite was at the 16 still stuck with his score 200 points shy of a million and Jonas the all-time champion was down at nine see this was insane there was not a single other year where more than one person had maxed out the game now the top players were battling to see who could get the most max outs by the end of the day down the line I was inside qualifying range but only barely a thirty sixth seed it was 1:00 p.m. there was still three more hours left before the cutoff time for a lot of people to claw their way above me I wasn't going to be able to relax the next few hours were tends to say the least by two p.m. I had been bump down to the 40th seed and at 2:30 p.m. I was officially out of the bracket I would need a higher score in order to make it back in around me emotions were intense to chorion finally got a maxout and Jonah's got to max outs within half an hour I watched Joseph get his second level 30 right in front of me and he didn't even care because it wasn't a max out and he immediately dashed back to the end of the line on my 19th game of the day from the line late in the afternoon I finally got another level 19 transition over 500,000 and only needed to grind out 50,000 more points or so to make it back in right as I was approaching my old score I tried to tap a long bar over to the left and miss dropped very similarly to what happened in my overall PV game I finished less than a thousand points away from improving my score at this point there was barely any time left and unfortunately none of my games afterward were any better as for p.m. pasts I have failed to make it back into the bracket it could have been worse though the very last player of the day in line was bata strap the most beloved member of Jonas Neubauer twitch community for his hundreds of gift subs even having his own emotes he was also just outside the bracket I watched along with Barret square wave jazz thief Jonas and his wife Heather as beta Strep completed an agonizingly difficult post transition dig to scrape together 570 2767 just enough to put him back in as the 37th seed but in doing so he bumped Vince one of the original founders down to 40 first seat and out of his own tournament the final qualifying score chart was unprecedented seven players had achieved max outs and three at achieve to needing the third highest score to be the tiebreaker my score of five hundred twenty nine thousand which would have been good enough for 29th seed in 2017 nearly got me forty fifth seed in 2018 at least I had scored high enough to appear in the final image but there was barely any time for anyone to rest before the round zero of elimination began and immediately there was a huge upset non Tetris play but in beards Trey Harrison considered by many to have one of the finest beards of the tournament was immediately pitted up against up-and-coming player by the name of burke t kenny which mean how can you compete with that the guy is a beard world champion i mean he would have been more along the lines of what I was expecting green tea to look like in tetris though tre prevailed but not before burke got a perilous tetris at the transition to really excite the crowd Patrick in terrific position and now at the pyramid and that'll be it Trey moves on to the round of 32 and later I met up with Trey and beta strapped for a mini photo op of non beard world champion beards and the last match around zero was something pretty cool the first player was the guy I'd sat next to in the speedrun who also had a friendly rivalry with Vince in doctor Mario where was the current world champion he had bended the previous through Tetris world tournaments but had never quite made it into the bracket and then made the bracket in the West Coast qualifier but only to have two very quick top outs and here he was finally having made it in as the 39th seed facing none other than the founder of the tournament itself Robyn Mahara ended up sweeping two games to none in his inaugural appearance and moving on to the main events of the following day the round of 32 all right so it's the morning after the top 32 starts in half an hour I'm just about to head over i didn't qualify yesterday i came very close twice and i got bumped out because a lot of other great players posted great scores i can't be disappointed in myself after how i did i got my third and fourth best scores ever in a single day and that's not always going to happen i did about as well as I could have done and I still didn't make it which that's just a testament to again how great everybody else is this year which is fantastic because it'll be really exciting today so the final brackets after around zero yesterday has come out so I'm gonna quickly walk through my predictions right before it's about to happen okay so quadrant one chorion this year is in it to win it I wouldn't expect them to fall almost anybody this year so I have to pick him over quaint however Quaid is a great player with nerves of steel as many people pointed out so could be an upset quadrant - oh my gosh this this quadrant is the group of death I feel so bad for my man Joseph he is going to potentially have the most improbable impossible run to the finals if the bracket goes down how I would predict or how I think or if there's no upsets except for him he would potentially have to fight through yani in the round of 16 Harry in the round of 8 chorion and the semifinals and Jonas for green tea in the finals he would basically have to be all the other best players in order to win but if there's anybody who can pull magic out of a hat on one day it would be him and now if there's ever ever been i stacked quarterfinals match this would be it Harry versus Joseph I think each I pick it Joseph I so sorry I can usually see both of the winning Harry has so much eternity experience Joseph has so much talent this is so hard to pick okay so third quadrant dream team versus Ben I'm thinking green tea green teas amazing some people think he green tea can win it all Jonas versus Savar woo I'm gonna go Jonas just cuz he has more retirement experience but honestly this could be the year I feel like Jonas could go on the quarterfinals just seeing everybody play yesterday everybody throwing up max outs left and right it could be that Jonas is tournament experience pulls through and he definitely is you know just on another level when it comes to creativity but I the field is so good that leaves coriander soup in the semifinals this will be the matchup that some people have in the finals they got put on the same side of the brackets as the match up we've never seen before online we all want to watch the two hyper tappers that can play beyond level 29 I hope a matchup between them gets to happen and it goes all the way to level 29 and beyond I can't go Coriana I think Joseph internally is feeling my quarry on and win that matchup too but Joseph could pull it off but I have to go around for the bracket so then green tea versus Jonas in the semifinals again green tea could win this one gonna go Jonas just cuz the tournament experience nerves everything else that leaves choreo and Jonas which i think would be the most traditional pick based on past history for the finals and then I'm picking Corey on to win I just think he's gotten to another level with the ability of moves he could pull off with hyper tamping on level 19 he can stack higher he can have more creative freedom in his stacking Jonas is incredibly creative but it's within a lot of restrictions with DES I think Corey on surely he can do or earlier this year in Hong Kong but it could be possible that Jonas takes away with it for the seventh year or this at the 8th here I think yeah 8 here so yeah that's my brackets alright start some 17 minutes it's time for me to head now though let's go so at 9 I am wearing my Jonas shirt I had gotten during a TKO community game on Jonases twitch stream I headed over to the main stage early to make sure I got good seats and I actually ended up running into Jonas and Heather Jonas didn't have much of a reaction to my shirt but Heather thought it was great and she said she actually ordered the same shirt for Jonas but that it ended up being the wrong size Jonas was in fact wearing a different TKO shirt for the tournament and she later took a picture of Jonas bata strep and I all wearing our teeth shirts I ended up sitting in the third row of the crowd next to Barrett and beta strapped and both were awesome seat partners Barrett was very generous with his snacks and beta strep in true beta strep fashion bought both of us entries into the bracket pool telling us to just consider it another gift sub I fell down my bracket exactly the way I had predicted it earlier in the morning and learned that Jonas was the number one player most picked to win followed surprisingly by green tea and then before the games began everyone rose to stand for the tetris national anthem then it was time for everything to start best-of-three only 18 starts all the way until the finals and with up to three games going on at once with two on the main stage and one on the side stage it was difficult to even keep track of it all immediately Jeff the face of the memes was on the ropes losing a tough first game to Frank but battled back in the next two games for a come-from-behind victory into the next round Chris Brady who had won the East Coast qualifier and had come snazzle II dressed with Tetris cufflinks lost two games to none against Joey immediately busting my brackets Eli Markstrom the original person who got me interested in NES Tetris through the BuzzFeed documentary faced an incredibly tough opponent in Matt buco who triumphed in his first round of play teri Purcell and matt schoolmaster had probably the most competitive round of 32 net ever with both players taking it deep into the kill screen with mid 700k scores but teri ultimately prevailing even Jonas over on the side stage had his opponent Dave keep within two Tetris pace of him until level 25 the competition was simply on another level compared to the previous years and then there was versus Josh Josh easily took Game one but then built a huge lead after the transition in Game two he topped out leaving his fate up to whether Josh could catch up and after a moment of slippery TAS Patrick wins Game two barely yes take a deep breath sir you are in an elimination game in the CTW see although went on to lose Game three he ended up finishing by far the highest in the final results relative to his original seed number and it was really awesome to see how far he had come over the course of the year and then it was time for the round of 16 and when Matt bucco went up to face chorion he received a special greeting from part of the crowd which has a fun backstory in the very first year of the tournament a young quad showed up to qualify but didn't quite make it so him and his friends decided to just pick somebody to root for and they ended up picking Matt buco so every year since they've been shouting bucco crowd and this year was no exception they all came with signs and when our doe cow over in the broadcast booth asked them to do it for the livestream cameras they responded back we only do it for boots however even with the crowd support mat ultimately couldn't get past the tournament favorites and chorion triumphs two games to none Jeff faced his second fierce test in Spa var and Game one had a crazy finish with spa var being slightly ahead in pace going into level 26 and both of them succumbing to an unprecedented drought which is actually something I forgot to mention in my CT WC explain video when you're at home the peace order is being generated while you're playing but at the tournaments for the past few years they've actually been pre determining the peace orders before the start of the game so that they can guarantee the same piece sets for each player out of fairness before the tournament begins they randomly generate a thousand piece sets and then before each match a referee rolls the dice to determine which out of the thousand the players will get so Jeff and Slav are both got dealt the same brutal hand at the end of the game and spa var managed to squeak by with just a few more points beforehand incredibly in Game two Jeff continued the same style of aggressive play he's known for with this terrifyingly risky transition board that paid off with two Center while Tetris but spa var ultimately took the game and advanced to the next round over on the side stage the Harry vs. Terry match happened and at one point there was more loudness and excitement coming from the side stage than the main stage when Terry won Game two by only a few thousand points but Harry managed to pull through in Game three and earn the chance to face the winner of Joseph vs. Yanni which was an absurd matchup to have in the round of 16 it was really cool to see Yanni's signature physical play style live in person his head practically willing the pieces to the left and right but in the end Joseph prevailed he was having a stellar tournament debut already taking out a champion but his competition was about to get even tougher and then it was time for Ben and Josh and I had this to say in my predictions bad boy it's funny I was talking to them the other night brackets and I was like you know if you finished in the bottom of the 32 that's bad because you have to face top seed first round if you finished right in the middle you'll have to face the top seed second round there's like a sweet spot where you finish and you'll make it all the way to the quarterfinals without having to face a top seed and then was like figure out what that number is then get back to me and I'll get it and he got it he was the number 10 seed he will not have to face the one of like the truly elite players of the tournaments until the quarterfinals and well I was just not thinking about been running into the buzzsaw that is Josh who triumphed in two games and then we were on to the round of 8 which was easily the strongest top eight ever all seven people who had maxed out of qualifying had made it this far and really all eight of them could win Chris tang the announcer since the very first year came out to the commentary booth with James Chen first up Cory on versus played and although Quade kept his composure with maybe the help of a special substance I'm extremely hungover so well if you're hungover you're performing exceptionally yeah I usually do better when I'm hungover like the tournament favorite prevailed again and then there was farmer facing off against Jonas and if anyone could outdo Quaid's motionless expression it would be spa var but Jonas the all-time champion prevailed again Josef versus Harry was an incredible matchup on paper and Joseph grinded out a very respectable first game win but in games two and three Joseph and Harry traded early top outs and the deciding game was Game one the brutal reality of the random pieces is that an early top out can happen anymore but when the dust had cleared Joseph had somehow survived and taken out another champion and then there was green tea versus Josh I was trying to find a way to clean this out right now but you could sense a little frustration on us but that long Justin Josh played like an absolute madman watching his game play live made me so anxious I had no idea how he was surviving but it's not oh no I think he was trying that moment was probably the second most impressive moment of the entire tournament for me even green tea was looking over and smiling but eventually Josh couldn't keep up and green tea prevailed Josh had made it very far though and definitely stood out in my mind as one of the most exciting players of the tournament and then it was time for the semi-finals first up was Cory on versus Joseph and this matchup was incredibly special as mentioned at the beginning of the video Cory on was one of Joseph's idols he had even tweeted the month before the tournament that he expected Cory on to win the whole thing Game one Joseph's ran into a tough board high up near the transition and wasn't able to clear it topping out Game two Joseph and Cory on had surprisingly even paces and then khorium shockingly topped out at level 20 with Joseph in the lead and he looked not once not twice not three times but four times to make sure he could believe his eyes he was shocked to have taken a game from Cory on he had managed to survive to game 3 and in game 3 Cory on built up a substantial lead well on his way to the finals I thought well Joseph can be very proud of making it this far especially in his first year this is where I predicted he would be eliminated in my bracket there's no shame in going after Cory on and then suddenly after the transition Joseph started playing better it was as if he felt more comfortable on 19 speed than eighteen speed he slowly but surely clawed back and retook the lead from Cory on who was suddenly now under pressure around level 26 and with a mistre topped out and that is the face of someone who has just defeated their idol the entire crowd gave him a standing ovation the energy at the time was absolutely nuts but there was no time to lose to determine who would face Joseph in the finals there was green T vs Jonas neither of which had lost a single game all day game 1 green tea pulled off perhaps the most impressive move of the tournament this drop is piece that had to have been the last second tapping right there for a dance player a last-second tap is one of the most difficult techniques to pull off and is only possible a 19 speed in a one frame window the rest of the way green tea and jonas fought painfully close all the way to the kill screen where green tea was down 1 tetris and in one line left to burn and couldn't make it game 1 - Jonas game - Jonah's got mired up in a very sticky situation after the transition and incredibly managed to survive for a few levels but ultimately topped out leaving it all up to the final game in game 3 Jonas built a huge lead going into the transition but in another incredible comeback green tea fought all the way back to be only two tetris behind with the kill screen less than four lines away refusing to give up he passed up on a tetris to try and build a two tetris well before the kill screen only to get a second long bar a few pieces later and he decided to just go for it and try to play on the kill screen with gas and last-second taps which is madness green teas long bar to the left unfortunately slotted in the same place as a hole in the stack giving Jonas just enough points to scrape by this was by far the closest Jonas had ever come to being eliminated before the finals but somehow he and made it through again for the ninth year in a row and this moment I thought oh man the stars have aligned again for Jonas to win it all and here's the thing generally teams that dominate a particular sports aren't liked so much by the sports overall fan base and as part of that sentiment seem to carry over to the top world the crowd generally rooted for underdogs and in tournament history of course Jonas had been the ultimate anti underdog seventh Tetris world champion had a seven thank you later possum Road was different but the outcome was the same but after spending a year in his twitch community seeing how hard he worked every year training to be the best how accessible he had made his own strategies by making a YouTube playlist teaching NES Tetris and how graciously he had carried out the role of being a Tetris ambassador being incredibly welcoming to me and everybody else that was at the tournament for the first time I felt like if anybody was deserving of any so many world championships it would be him and even though he had taken out many incredible players I was happy to see him make it back to the finals the finals were a best-of-five I was pumped for this matchup Game one Joseph was caught off guard by the transition but managed to make some last-second adjustments to stay alive Jonas surprisingly lost control of dass and Game one went to Joseph I remember thinking well at the very least Joseph will be able to say he took a game off of Jonas to make things interesting but then in game 2 Joseph built a huge lead and suddenly the tone shifted - dang Joseph is making this interesting - wait could Joseph actually win Jonas eventually got stuck in this same situation green tea was put up against him in the semis behind by - Tetris is right before level 29 a long bar never came and the game went to Joseph suddenly Jonas was on the verge of being swept but he had been in this position once before in 2013 he was down two games to zero against Harry Hong in the finals and managed to come back in the next three games and win in Game three Jonas turned on another gear he played smart clean efficient Tetris in a way unseen in the day so far his skillfully managed play put him far in the lead on pace for an unprecedented 1.1 million tournament score knowing how dangerous a player Joseph was Jonas kept up the incredible aggression and had a drought destroy his board on level 26 causing him the top out early but still have the second highest score of the day so far only behind his own game three against Green T's simply amazing Joseph knew he had a lot of ground to catch up and not much time to do it and under the incredible pressure all eyes on him he perfectly pulled up some insane setups the stand out to me was putting this out all the way over to the left a move that would be impossible for a desk player and after running into a drought on level 28 Joseph's Tetris into the kill stream securing a game free victory and becoming the 2018 world champion blasting through everyone's pre-tournament expectations including his own Joseph was overcome with emotion during his victory interview absolutely a dream I gave it to this tournament just to qualify and so was I even though I had come just short of qualifying for the main event I had gone to see an unbelievable performance happen live right in front of me I was talking to Terry right after the event and he shared a sentiment I agreed with that he would have paid good money to see what we just saw and that we got to watch it for free I got to meet so many people and create so many unforgettable memories everybody had been kind and welcoming after a whirlwind of a weekend though it was time to head home but the tetris journey wasn't over now for Joseph Jonas chorion or myself [Music] one of the thoughts I remember thinking after seeing Joseph when the championship was that I had just seen someone's life changed forever I felt like he was about to become an overnight star but I couldn't have imagined just how big he was going to be immediately a clip of Joseph's victory shot to the front page of Reddit and from a narrative standpoint it really couldn't have worked out better for making an attention-grabbing title and then news sites from all around the world began publishing that headline nearly a decade in the making Joseph went from only one or two dozen average viewers on his twitch stream to hundreds and went on to shatter many new NES Tetris world records and after showing that a new player could win the tournament in his first year tons of people started playing in the months to follow directly inspired by him but Joseph wasn't done with the competitive scene not by a long shot he returned a competition in the 2019 West Coast qualifier and beat Quaid in the finals to win a trip to Portland and a guaranteed spot and if that wasn't enough he then set his eyes on the classic Tetris monthly which after the founder Friday which had handed over the reins to Keith aka van dweller had grown to become the premier NES Tetris tournament online and chorion had emerged as the Jonas so to speak of the tournament winning many many months in a row in Joseph's first appearance in the classic Tetris monthly since winning the championship wouldn't you know it he faced chorion in the finals and defeated him again in five games securing the Triple Crown and what about chorion did he fade away into the shadow of Joseph well not quite the next month chorion met Joseph in the CTM finals again which in an amazing role reversal he could have been considered the underdog this time and this time he defeated Joseph in five games with Game five being the highest scoring competitive match in the tournament's history not content with that chorion broke that record again with a newer player Richard just a few months later and Jonas he had something pretty unexpected happen back in 2017 a popular eSports announcer from Spain named Dubai recorded a tongue-in-cheek commentary video with a colleague of the 2016 finals pretending that Jonas was actually Hannes a 60 year old man from Alba sette s companies because of the language barrier as far as I know this was completely unknown by the English speaking tetris community until the following year when he buys fans requested that he make an updated commentary for the 2018 finals the resulting clip went viral and some Spanish news agencies mistakenly reported it as Jonas actually being from Spain and Josephine's some kid who plays fortnight and Jonas had joked about how in recent years it's been tough to get the crowds to root for him I feel like I got cheered on I had to pull some tears out to get some tickets and cheers but thank you guys very much nah I joked with of course the biggest meme of Tetris being how the announcer was more excited about his underdog opponent but now Jonas finally had his own meme of an announcer more excited about him and that began a whirlwind year for Jonas as a Tetris ambassador starting with being invited to Spain by the mayor of Alba set day then going to the Germany qualifiers the Taiwan qualifiers the European Championship and attending events such as the gamers Choice Awards and even being interviewed on SportsCenter when ESPN's the Ocho aired a half-hour special on the tournament it's just reflective of how NES Tetris is absolutely exploded this year there are so many new maxout players and top talent and new events I can barely keep up it's been awesome and not to be outdone by her husband Heather had her own special moments after training hard all year she won the dr. Mario World Championships in Pittsburgh to form the second half the champion couple and well what happened to me because it was clearly my weak spot I immediately went home and played nothing but level 19 for months and in January 2019 a wedding I was attending in California just so happened to be around the time with a West Coast qualifier so I decided to attend and this time I was able to play all of my qualifying games on level 18 get a much better score and actually qualify for the top eight seated bracket I had finally achieved my dream of playing in a real sea TWC competitive event and I was humbled by an unexpected shout out from commentators Jonas and Heather and if you haven't seen it he's put together quite an informative video about the CTW see that I think we can safely call must watch must watch so good luck facing Quaid's I knew I didn't really have much of a chance so I just tried to play my best and although I had an early top out in Game one I managed to make it well past the transition and Game two even though I went out in two games I had been able to put up a fight and two months later I just managed to qualify for the classic Tetris and monthly and got to play Joseph the world champion and although I went out in two games again it was fun when I realized I had scored exactly 400 thousand in Game two and although as you probably could have guessed I will be attending the CTW C 2019 in Portland again this year that's not the special announcement I mentioned at the beginning no the special announcement is that even after spending about an hour talking about Tetris there's so much going on that there's actually still a lot more to talk about so after this channel being dead for a year fingers crossed I'm hoping to put out weekly videos for at least the rest of the year let's get it see y'all in Portland [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: aGameScout

Views: 636,135

Keywords: classic tetris world championship, ctwc, ctwc 2018, ctwc 2019, asongscout, agamescout, asongscout tetris, joseph saelee, jonas nebauer, nubbinsgoody, jdmfx_, portland retro gaming expo, jonas vs joseph, boom tetris, boom tetris for jeff, jeff, albacete

Id: RfuDrcrGnVQ

Length: 53min 21sec (3201 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 13 2019