Classic Tetris World Championship

Classic Tetris World Championship

Tournament information
Sport	Classic Tetris
Established	2010
Number of tournaments	14
Venue	Pasadena Convention Center (2024) Oregon Convention Center (2012–19, 2022–23) University of Southern California (2011) Downtown Independent (2010)
Purse	$10,000
Website	thectwc.com
Current champion
Justin Yu (2023)

The Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) is a video game competition series, hosted by the Socal Gaming Expo. The competition launched in 2010, during the filming of Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters to determine the world's greatest Tetris player.^[1] In its first two years, the competition was held in Los Angeles, California,^[2] but was moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2012, and was held there annually through 2023 (with the exceptions of the 2020 and 2021 tournaments, held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The 2024 edition will be held in Pasadena, California.^[3]

The contestants play the 1989 Nintendo version of Tetris on Nintendo Entertainment System consoles and cathode-ray tube (CRT) video displays. The final rounds are streamed online with live-edited screens and heads-up display to improve viewer experience. The tournament was initially dominated by Jonas Neubauer, who reached the finals in the first nine iterations of the tournament and won seven titles.

Following Neubauer's final win in 2017, before his sudden death four years later, the tournament came to be dominated by hypertapping, a style of playing in which the player rapidly taps the controller's D-pad to move pieces. This is in contrast to the delayed auto-shift (DAS) technique, in which the player simply holds down the D-pad to move the piece. Hypertapping was especially prevalent among a recent influx of younger players, a group largely inspired to pick up the game by Joseph "JdMfX_" Saelee, who won back-to-back titles while in high school, including a win against Neubauer in the 2018 final and one against Koji "Koryan" Nishio in the 2019 final. Thirteen-year-old Michael Artiaga "dogplayingtetris" won the 2020 edition of the tournament, beating his brother Andrew Artiaga "PixelAndy" in the final. Michael defended his title in 2021, defeating Jacob "Huffulufugus" Huff three games to one.

Although Huff fell short, he showed the effectiveness of a brand-new style of play, known as "rolling." Originally introduced by CTWC regular Chris "Cheez" Martinez, the playstyle involves partially depressing the controller's D-pad with one hand, while tapping the back of the controller with the fingers of the other, pushing the controller the rest of the way into the first hand and registering an input. The new strategy has brought in a wave of scoring records, with the world record more than quadrupling, and has seen former DAS players and hypertappers (including the Artiagas) adopt the playing style.^[4]

The 2022 tournament, held in Portland for the first time in three years, was dominated by rollers. Eric "EricICX" Tolt defeated Justin Yu "Fractal161" to win the title three games to one. The third game saw both players exceed 2.1 million points, with Tolt winning the game and later the crown.

The 2023 event saw Yu win his first title, coming from 0–2 down to defeat Eve "Sidnev" Commandeur of the Netherlands 3–2 in the final. Commandeur also set the qualifying record with 16 max-outs. ^[5]