I went to the SoCal Gaming Expo the day before the tournament was to begin, because there was a staff meeting that was going to take place.
There was a sense of familiarity when I entered the Tetris area of the expo. Last year, I was very nervous entering the area because I wasn’t sure what my interactions with the Classic Tetris community was going to be like as it was my first time meeting them. I wasn’t too nervous this time, since I’ve met a lot of the players in-person before.
Although there were some players that haven’t been to the Classic Tetris World Championship before. ChaoticHazel and her father, Tetris Ranger were new.
Hazel was full of energy, very excited to be here. She had been to previous CTWC Regionals, but this was her first time at the World Championship. It reminded me of how excited I was at last year’s CTWC.
Coalbucket brought Hazel up on stage to meet the players.
I talked to Tetris Ranger who had been following CTWC since 2015. He mentioned how it took the Blue Scuti Game Crash achievement to get Hazel into the game and eventually show up to a CTWC event.
We then discussed our personal best (PB) scores in NES Tetris. I found out that we had similar PBs, which were in the 600K. Neither of us can play on Level 19 very well. Knowing all of this, he was going to have a chance at making the Bronze bracket.
Afterwards, I chatted with other people. Last year, I was very nervous to be here because it was my first time here. This time, I was more comfortable interacting with others.
I talked with Doge and his fiance, Vivian. (They had gotten engaged a few weeks prior in May 2025) Vivian talked about flying a small propeller airplane.
Eventually, other players joined in the conversation circle and other fascinating topics were discussed. I won’t disclose it because they were very personal.
As I walked around the Tetris area, I was bumping into other players. CTWC President, Vince Clemente, was thanking me for the work I exported over 1,500 hours of CTWC Twitch Highlights to the CTWC Archive YouTube channel. Twitch was very mean to only give people 3 months to save the Twitch highlights before they were deleted.
Chris Higgins was back, it was nice to see him again. After a brief chat, one of the staff members needed him.
As I returned to the audience section, Danidoodles saw a backpack with a bandana on it. She asked me if that was my bandana, I said no. I thought she was concerned that someone left their bandana on the chair – that wasn’t the case.
She replied to me, letting me know that I needed to get a yellow bandana so that I can be identified as a CTWC volunteer.
I spotted Diane (Jaedheart) and her husband, Kiernan (kirnmx) at the front desk.
To give some background, Diane had discovered CTWC after Blue Scuti’s Game Crash made World Headlines and discovered aGameScout’s videos later on. From there, she and her husband attended the 2024 Jonas Cup in September. That was when I met them. Kingsman introduced them to me because Diane and I were part of the stats team.
It was nice to meet them. I remember explaining some of the inside jokes, such as the Buco chant. Long story short, it was nice to meet these fellow Canadians.
Seeing them several months later, it felt like yesterday when I last chatted with them.
Staff Meeting
Kingsman and Birb went up on stage to begin the staff meeting. Birb was holding a tablet containing notes for Kingsman.
Although the tournament format was the same as last year, some roles has extra steps to make things easier for the stats team.
Marfram, main person on stats team, introduced a process that makes is easier for everyone to keep track of the number of maxouts achieved.
We had a set of small stickers. Last year, we had players stick their name tag on the CRT TV. This time, the judges would use small stickers to write down the player’s name and place it on the TV.
Those stickers would also be used to tally the number of maxouts achieved. When we take a picture of the player’s game, we include the sticker in the photo. These photos will be used as evidence in case there were any discrepancies.
As always, we wrote down the player’s score on a scorecard, which would be submitted to the stats team.
Marfram handed out a sample scorecard for us to look at. It gave specifics on what to write and where to write.
It was the same as last year, except we had to tally the number of maxouts achieved. This makes it easier to catch maxouts that were not submitted by the judge.
During the meeting, Dani (Danidoodles) was sitting in front of me with a tablet. She was creating graphics that showed the schedule for 2025 CTWC, which would be posted across the CTWC Social Media account. As part of the Social Media team, Dani was in charge of posting Instagram stories throughout the tournament.
Stats Team Meeting
After the meeting, Marfram had arranged another meeting for the stats team. So, Diane, Lucy, and I walked over to the stats table to meetup with Marfram.
Marfram had made improvements on the spreadsheet. During the qualifying session, someone would have to type in the player’s name along with their score. This time, there was a dropdown menu in each cell that makes it easier to input the player’s name.
Next on the agenda was what to do during the bracket rounds. Our role was to update the bracket by inputting the losing scores. The other task was to provide info to the commentators.
Commentators had a separate laptop on the table with a shared Google Doc open.
The Stats team would use the Google doc to share info on the matches.
Marfram showed us how to use Liquipedia to find past matchups between players.
With the meeting stuff done, I headed back home to rest up for my qualifying run which was happening the next morning.
