With the Qualifying rounds over, there were photo shoots for the players that made the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Bracket.
I was sitting at the stats team with Marfram, giving myself a nice view of the stage and giant LED screen.
The commentators on the CT3 and CT4 stations (where Silver and Bronze Bracket matches were happening) had separate Google Docs open. I was tasked with giving player info to the commentators through those shared Google Docs. Most of the time, I ended up telling them the qualifying scores of the players because those players typically didn’t have much match stats recorded on them.
I was also tasked with updating the brackets by inputting losing scores on a Google sheet. Once in a while, I would receive scorecards from the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Bracket.
Watching the Round 0 Matches
Besides doing the stats work, I got to watch the Gold Bracket matches happening near me.
The very first games of the Gold Bracket had some epic moments. SaltedSofa, a DAS player, managed to win the first game against DanV, a Roller. Meanwhile, Winterra lost their game by 120 points against Terence Y. DanV and Winterra recovered from their first game loss by winning the next three games in their respective matches to advance to the next round.
Another set of matches that stood out to me was “Opaux vs RedShurt” and “Nowi vs Doge”.
Ava was on stage sitting behind the players, supporting her partner, Opaux. The first game between Opaux and RedShurt went to Level 29. At Level 33, Opaux couldn’t get the T-Piece all the way to the right. It led to him hanging the I-Piece, leading to a topout and losing the game. Ava knew it was over for Opaux once he hung the I-Piece.
aGameScout, who was one of the photographers, stood at the edge of the stage to take a photo of Ava’s reaction to the first game. He showed the photo to Marfram and me right afterwards.
After 3 games, Opaux was at match point, leading the match, 2-1. In Game 4, Opaux topped out with the lead, putting RedShurt in a chasedown situation to stay in the tournament. Opaux and Ava watched as RedShurt got closer to beating Opaux’s score. But RedShurt fell short, giving Opaux the match victory.
As for the match between Nowi and Doge, they were in a Game 5 Decider. They both reached Level 29. Nowi topped out at Level 30 with about a 142K point lead (about 3 Tetris lead). This put Doge in a chasedown situation.
When I had watched Doge’s Qualifying run the day prior, there were games where he would struggle to line out (scoring singles and doubles) on Level 29 speeds to get a maxout.
This time, he needed to perform well at the Level 29 speeds to stay in the tournament. He scored a Tetris to close in on the lead and continued to line it out. By Level 36, he couldn’t rotate the I-Piece in time which caused him to top out and lose the game, falling behind by 28K points (a 1 Tetris difference).
Two Lifetime Achievement Awards This Year
There was a short break after the Round 0 matches were finished. During the break, I found out from staff that there were going to be 2 Lifetime Achievement Awards given out this year. One for this day and the next day. Marfram talked about how it became necessary because there were so many people that deserved the award, mentioning how aGameScout hasn’t received one.
Vince Clemente went up on stage to present the Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the things I like to do is see how quickly I can figure out who it is when Vince describes the person. Once Vince started talking about camera setups during early CTWC years, Marfram figured out that it was Chris Higgins.
Sure enough, the award was given to Chris Higgins.
Breaking CTWC Records in Round 1
The Top 16 seeds had byes to Round 1, making their first match appearance in this tournament. Each of them was facing a Round 0 winner in their respective matches.
One of the first matches in this round was Alex T vs Hepps. Alex T, the reigning champion, won the first 2 games. In Game 3, Hepps went pedal to the metal, reaching the Level 39 Super Killscreen with a 1.3 million score. But Alex T was also on his A-Game, reaching Level 39 with a massive score of 1,762,960 to sweep the match. Hepps smiled knowing that there was nothing he could do to win Game 3.
To give everyone an idea of how impressive Alex T’s score was, it was the third highest score achieved in a match at the Classic Tetris World Championship, with the Level 39 Super Killscreen implemented. (A Level 39 Super Killscreen was first added at the 2023 CTWC to prevent players from playing indefinitely. This encouraged them to go for Tetrises at Level 29 speeds.)
Marfram typed that information in a shared Google Doc to let the commentators, Sharky and James Chen, know. Sure enough, James Chen mentioned it after he read Marfram’s note in the Google Doc.
I was impressed that Marfram was able to get that information right away. She showed me that she had a Google Sheet ready that showed the CTWC All-Time High Scores with Level 39 Super Killscreen in match play.
Later on, there was a matchup between Blue Scuti and Opaux. From the first game, both players went all the way to Level 39. Opaux finished with a 1.6 million score which would have won most games at CTWC, but Blue Scuti had a CTWC record breaking score of 1,882,120. Blue Scuti went on to win the next 2 games to sweep the match.
All Eyes on the Silver Bracket Finals
Eventually, the Round 1 Gold Bracket matches were completed. The next round will continue on the next day.
When the Gold Bracket matches were done for the day, the Silver Bracket Finals was the last Tetris match of the day. The crowd gathered in front of the CT3 station, where the Silver Bracket was happening. We were all watching the match on the TV located in front of the table.
The Silver Bracket Finals was between Tyler (Tytris) and Armstrong. Tyler was a Silver Bracket Runner-up last year, who was seeking a win in the Silver Bracket.
The hype continued into the night as the match went to a Game 5 Decider. Armstrong topped out at Level 19 with about a one Tetris lead.
Tyler had a doable chasedown. His board was low and all he had to do was clear a few lines and score a Tetris. When he was in Tetris range of the win, he set up a right well and waited for the I-Piece to show up. Commentators were begging for the I-Piece, which showed up shortly afterwards. Tyler scored the Tetris to win the match and become the 2025 CTWC Silver Bracket winner.
While the crowd cheered for Tyler, I was on my laptop, updating the Silver Bracket to show Tyler as the winner.
With my laptop open to the updated Silver Bracket, I decided to show Tyler the bracket and get a photo of him with the bracket showing that he won. I didn’t have the best pose for the photo.
It was getting late at night when the competition was over for the day, so I went back to where I was staying to wind down and get ready for the next day.
