Running a Classic Tetris competition

[Johnno73]

Hi guys.

As the topic suggests, I'm looking at running a classic tetris competion.   I would really like to do so with the blessing of the good people at CTWC though it's not a make or break having their involvement/sanctioning of the tournament.

I have emailed them at the address on their website a few weeks back without much luck, is there any way to get a hold of those that run the CTWC?

Any other advice also?

Looking at running the PAL version on NES.  Most likely with open qualifying (any start level) with either top 16 or hopefully top 32 qualifying for the day 2 knock out which will be best of 3 with the grand final being best of 5.

Thanks for any help.

[Okey_Dokey]

I have emailed them at the address on their website a few weeks back without much luck, is there any way to get a hold of those that run the CTWC?

Can't answer the question. I only know that Vince Clemente, Trey Harrison and Adam Cornelius are the guys behind CTWC. You could try asking kitaru (Alex Kerr). You can find him on Discord. Generally speaking, tetrisconcept.net is the better place for NES Tetris related questions. They have different leaderboards for PAL and NTSC. I think this Tetris Discord is also related to them.

Looking at running the PAL version on NES.

So, it's in Europe? There're also the Classic Tetris European Championships running in Copenhagen since 3 years.  Main event is PAL NES Tetris. CTEC is not really affeliated to CTWC but one time Vince Clemente and Adam Cornelius participated. Also note that CTWC has some worldwide qualifying events where the winner gets a flight to Portland. I think there's been one somewhere in the USA since years. This year, the CTWC guys were approached by a guy making a retro exhibition in HongKong, so there was also a qualification event in Hong Kong (+ Jonas Neubauer vs Koryan showcase). Said guy from HongKong made another very small qualification event at the GamesCom in Cologne where only Germans were allowed to participate.

Most likely with open qualifying (any start level) with either top 16 or hopefully top 32 qualifying for the day 2 knock out which will be best of 3 with the grand final being best of 5.

Top 16 is probably better. Let the highest chosable starting level be 15 (I mean in the top 16, everybody will start at level 9 in the qualification). I think it's better to force the top 4 players (semi-finals & finals) to start at least in level 10 (or 13) or you will get long and boring to watch matches. 2 different days seems a little much, if you don't have any side tournaments. You could hold a SNES multiplayer tournament because that's also interesting to watch and SNES Tetris uses the same rotation system as NES Tetris. Somehow, there are barely any offline guideline Tetris tournaments (guideline = Tetris games from the last 20 years, e.g. Puyo Puyo Tetris), although that's what most skilled Tetris players play nowadays. However, Europe is probably not the best place for that (the vast majority of guideline players comes from America and Asia).

[Kitaru]

I'll try to find out if there is a preferred way to contact the CTWC team. I would think the contact info on their website would be the primary method, or perhaps sending a direct message to their Facebook page or Twitter account.

I think this Tetris Discord is also related to them.

This is an independent chat, founded by Chaf and currently administrated by Makiki. tetrisconcept.net only has the forums, and IRC channels on QuakeNet.

[Okey_Dokey]

This is an independent chat

I was aware of that. I meant that the chance to run into people from tc.net is very high there. There should be barely anybody from HardDrop because of the HardDrop Discord.

[Johnno73]

Can't answer the question. I only know that Vince Clemente, Trey Harrison and Adam Cornelius are the guys behind CTWC. You could try asking kitaru (Alex Kerr). You can find him on Discord. Generally speaking, tetrisconcept.net is the better place for NES Tetris related questions. They have different leaderboards for PAL and NTSC. I think this Tetris Discord is also related to them.

Thanks, I'll check out tetrisconcepts.

So, it's in Europe? There're also the Classic Tetris European Championships running in Copenhagen since 3 years.  Main event is PAL NES Tetris. CTEC is not really affeliated to CTWC but one time Vince Clemente and Adam Cornelius participated. Also note that CTWC has some worldwide qualifying events where the winner gets a flight to Portland. I think there's been one somewhere in the USA since years. This year, the CTWC guys were approached by a guy making a retro exhibition in HongKong, so there was also a qualification event in Hong Kong (+ Jonas Neubauer vs Koryan showcase). Said guy from HongKong made another very small qualification event at the GamesCom in Cologne where only Germans were allowed to participate.

Australian tournament, but since we use eurpoean standards, it will be PAL most likely.

Top 16 is probably better. Let the highest chosable starting level be 15 (I mean in the top 16, everybody will start at level 9 in the qualification). I think it's better to force the top 4 players (semi-finals & finals) to start at least in level 10 (or 13) or you will get long and boring to watch matches. 2 different days seems a little much, if you don't have any side tournaments. You could hold a SNES multiplayer tournament because that's also interesting to watch and SNES Tetris uses the same rotation system as NES Tetris. Somehow, there are barely any offline guideline Tetris tournaments (guideline = Tetris games from the last 20 years, e.g. Puyo Puyo Tetris), although that's what most skilled Tetris players play nowadays. However, Europe is probably not the best place for that (the vast majority of guideline players comes from America and Asia).

Top 16 or 32 will depend on numbers I guess and player ability.  I've only just got a few people onto the idea of classic tetris and so far we don't have any > 200k players.   Would also like it to be an open compeition and allow as many people as possible to qualify.   I think choosing a starting level for finals is really going to be dependent on how qualifying goes.   If we don't have any scores over say 200k on PAL, then it's probably going to mean most players are not good enough to start on level 13 let alone 10 - or the games could be over in the matter of minutes.

Maybe 2 days is too much, but I'll just wait and see for the moment.   It's primarily about having fun, nothing too serious at this stage, but who knows who we might find.  There are a lot of people to this day that don't know about sites with Twin Galaxies and just how good they are at games they grew up with.

Thanks for your help.   I hope to be able to announce an event sooner rather than later.

[Johnno73]

I'll try to find out if there is a preferred way to contact the CTWC team. I would think the contact info on their website would be the primary method, or perhaps sending a direct message to their Facebook page or Twitter account.

Thanks very much.

I do know there is a tournament being run on October 4 here in Australia at an arcade callled "1989 Arcade Bar & Kitchen" which is billed as being the Classic Tetris Aussie Championship which shows footage from the Ecstacy of Order movie and also says it has teamed up with CTWC.

Obviously if CTWC has sanctioned this event as the offiial "Aussie Championship" I don't want to step on toes, but I would really like to have CTWC involved if at all possible.

[Kitaru]

Obviously if CTWC has sanctioned this event as the offiial "Aussie Championship" I don't want to step on toes, but I would really like to have CTWC involved if at all possible.

Gotcha. I think right now they may have one main "sanctioned" qualifying event per geographic region, but they may still want to keep in touch as things grow. Having more league events and tournaments of various sizes and scopes seems like a good thing as the community scales up.

This is an independent chat

I was aware of that. I meant that the chance to run into people from tc.net is very high there. There should be barely anybody from HardDrop because of the HardDrop Discord.

In my experience, the rate to run into folks "from" TC, HD, Reddit, and various other places is roughly even. It's really just a chat.

[caffeine]

Obviously if CTWC has sanctioned this event as the offiial "Aussie Championship" I don't want to step on toes, but I would really like to have CTWC involved if at all possible.

If you can't get in touch with them and you want to hold your own tournament, I can't imagine why there would be anything but good vibes (so long as it's clear it's a separate tournament). More Tetris events can only be a good thing. I know there are plenty of great Australian players out there, and apparently there's even a regular Australian Tetris meetup going on.

[Johnno73]

If you can't get in touch with them and you want to hold your own tournament, I can't imagine why there would be anything but good vibes (so long as it's clear it's a separate tournament). More Tetris events can only be a good thing. I know there are plenty of great Australian players out there, and apparently there's even a regular Australian Tetris meetup going on.

We will be running a competition one way or another

Hoping to announce a date in the coming weeks.

[Okey_Dokey]

I do know there is a tournament being run on October 4 here in Australia at an arcade callled "1989 Arcade Bar & Kitchen" ...

This other Australian NES Tetris tournament happened today and it was streamed on the CTWC Twitch channel. Here's the VOD. From this forum, XaeL and Jono/M.Bison participated. (Some people may have seen a video of Jono on Youtube which went viral (1+ million views) after he reached a 25.xx seconds at sprint around 10 years ago.) Jono got first place in qualification which was level 9 start (pieces fall down every 5th frame). 32 players qualified for the playoffs. Round 1 and 2 were fixed level 15 starts (pieces fall down every 3rd frame) and round 3 to round 5 were fixed level 18 starts (pieces fall down every 2nd frame). XaeL and Jono met each other already in semi-finals. Jono was the favourite and made more Tetrises but XaeL took the match because Jono topped out too early. The finals was then an easy victory for XaeL.

Congratulations, XaeL. If you read this: how many hours had you practiced NES Tetris beforehand?

I've only just got a few people onto the idea of classic tetris and so far we don't have any > 200k players.   Would also like it to be an open compeition and allow as many people as possible to qualify.   I think choosing a starting level for finals is really going to be dependent on how qualifying goes.   If we don't have any scores over say 200k on PAL, then it's probably going to mean most players are not good enough to start on level 13 let alone 10 - or the games could be over in the matter of minutes.

Quoting for emphasis. As far as I know, Bison vs XaeL was the only match were a player reached more than 25 cleared lines (one time 100+ lines for XaeL). In all other cases, one of the 2 players topped out after just a few lines and the other player could stop playing because of a higher score (so many people who didn't look at the next piece while placing the active piece  ; also: so many people who failed to start a game 10 levels higher). So, the tournament was a disaster regarding the Tetris rules. The commentator had no real clue of Tetris, too. Stream quality (video & audio) was pretty good, though; and the tournament had some decent prizes (including 150+ Australian dollar prize money because of the entry fee). I just don't understand why PAL tournaments are so often run with mediocre rules (I look at you Classic Tetris European Championship). I mean getting a good stream should be more difficult than elaborating good rules, right?

Anyway, when starting at a fixed level (players unable to choose the starting level), then I think this would be good choice for an Australian tournament:

• level 9 start in qualification (so scores are comparable with PAL NES leaderboards)
• every player has 3 tries in qualification, highest score counts
• only 16 players participates in the playoffs
• level 9 or level 12 start for round 1
• level 12 start for round 2
• level 15 start for round 3 (semi-finals)
• level 15 or level 18 start for round 4 (finals)
• finals are best of 5, all other matches are best of 3

PS: original poster and Jono have the same prename but I think this is just coincidence.

[XaeL]

Congratulations, XaeL. If you read this: how many hours had you practiced NES Tetris beforehand?

Hi, no idea how i missed this entire thread!

I had played nes tetris for around 20 minutes a few years back. It was on keyboard though, so tap tap tap was my strategy back then. My score (3-4 years back) was (and still is) 420k on a level 9 start, i think i had two attempts and then never played again.

There were quite a few players that were definitely better than me, who were playing level 15 and could probably score above 200k. I lucked out in the bracket, with m.bison knocking out lana who was stacking brilliantly, and then m.bison whiffing on me lol. I actually only competed because i saw players warming up on level 15 and dying at 0.7pps lol. The event was a sell out but 9 people didnt show up, so i got free entry. I didnt warm up, i played more nestris in the tournament than all the time i played before the tournament.

Level 18 was definitely tough! with no keyboard, and slow das i went for singles only, since i can't tap very fast on a nes controller.

Since the tournament finished I haven't really played nestris since (i picked up retroarch and played a bit but it hasn't been fruitful so back to guideline i go). I know that Lana is now actually playing lots on stream and i've been keeping an eye out, no idea about m.bison. So hopefully one of them maxes out before next year and we have a proper finals with scores above 400k