With the first Qualifying session done, I was assigned to volunteer for the next sessions. I was the score runner, where I was in charge of collecting scorecards from the Qualifying judges and giving them to the Stats team. Specifically, I was collecting scorecards from the Qualifying judges on the Main stage (CT1 and CT2), so I got to sit in the front row during these sessions.
The second Qualifying session went without any issues that I had to deal with. For the most part, I just rooted for the players to get a maxout. (Players were seeded by number of maxouts, followed by their highest non-maxout score [kicker]). Once in a while, I would go up to the Qualifying judges to collect the scorecards that they filled out with the player’s name and their score. And then walk over to the stats team table to give the cards to Diane (Jaedheart).
Meeting a Tetris Prodigy
Eventually, the second session ended, and the third session began. As I headed back to my seat after delivering scorecards to Diane, I saw a kid qualifying on the station where Blue Scuti crashed the game. There were not enough stations for this session, so the Game Crash exhibit had to end.
aGameScout, who was watching the kid’s gameplay, informed me that the kid is 8 years old and is really good at the game. There was a Tetris prodigy among us.
Fire Alarm
When the third session was ongoing, the fire alarm went off. Unfortunately, players had to end their game, and everyone had to evacuate the building.
When we were outside, I helped Diane with score submissions. We were all standing, so I held onto Diane’s laptop while she inputted the scores onto a Google sheet that automatically updates the Qualifying ranks. All the current scorecards were accounted for.
I met up with aGameScout and Zrobot. I asked Zro what his PB was, and he said it was 930K. And then I asked when he started playing Tetris. Zro started playing Tetris around March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Later on, NGC Man came up to Zro to get a selfie with him. Yep, Zro was already getting famous in the Classic Tetris community.
When the fire alarm happened at 2024 CTWC, it only lasted a few minutes. This fire alarm caused a 40-minute delay, partially because the venue was much bigger.
Qualifying Session Resumed
Before the session resumed, Kingsman made an announcement. Players who had paused their game because of the fire alarm were allowed to resume that game and have that score accepted. With that, the session continued.
During the session, Xeno (one of the Qualifying judge informed me that one of PixelAndy’s maxouts had not been inputted. I let Diane know, and we decided to deal with it after the session.
The most impressive Qualifying run of the tournament happened during this session. Sharky finished his run with an impressive 6 maxouts in 90 minutes with DAS. He clinched the #1 seed and had a very good chance of winning the Jonas Cup.
With the session over, it was time for me to deal with PixelAndy’s missing maxout. Diane couldn’t find the missing card. I brought Xeno over to the Stats Team table. Xeno showed us the photos they took of PixelAndy’s 4 maxouts and what time those 4 photos were taken. Diane and I decided to input the missing maxout since we had proof of it. I later reviewed the livestream VOD and confirmed that Andy had 4 maxouts, instead of 3.
