Hello and welcome to my CTWC thoughts 2025 edition.
I finally watched it live again. That's probably due to my huge interest on TGM4 listening to its OST and watching every pushing attempt, but that's topic for another day. Youtube on the other side, sensed my taste and started pushing everything about CTWC to me, from player interviews to day 1-2 qualis and of course, the finals on Sunday.
There were about 2k livestream watchers early in the finals. That number is surely much lower than the numbers we saw during 20-22 twitch live streaming, but that isn't a bad number either. It is hard to say whether it is better or worse comparing to 2024, this is something we can say much much later.
This year however, I would not cover anything further about change in popularity. I felt bad about missing technical contents in 2024. Sure I missed the tournament in live and surely wouldn't spend more than a few hours to re-watch the whole thing, but it is bad in the sense that the missing technical content created a hole, something hard to recover when I come back trying to figure out what was classic Tetris in 2024. Think about it -- I mentioned "lv29" ZERO times in my 2024 thoughts. How was that even possible?!?
I believe my argument on the tournament and my vision over the "endgame" is pretty well laid in the past years, so there is no need to emphasize that every year. Is the lv39 super kill screen killing all the fun? I might say yes in 2024 but this year I started to appreciate that -- we will talk more about that later.
As a compensation I want to simply focus on the players' performance and the shift in the meta. Let's start, shall we?
Gameplay before lv29
The community is getting so good that lv19 speed does not pose too much additional threat comparing to lv18 speed, so we may as well talk about both of them in one go.
Although I didn't say anything about gameplay last year, the progression from 2023 or since rolling is clear: optimize up to lv28 as much as possible. Given their ability to roll, it is possible to take near maximum risk and survive consistently.
This was a goal, but this is precisely what top players are doing in 2025.
The best example is Tristop with how he maintains crazy (80%+) tetris rate in the majority of games. He even entered second transition once at 1.3M+ score and another time at near 1.3M, both would be tournament record breaking. It is unfortunate that we don't see him progressing further, because his ability of taking huge lead would be such a big threat aginst those who survives up to high 30s to hope opponents to top out.
Second transition and so on
I think this is what truly separates very good players (say, the top 32) and champion contenders. Assume that everyone survives up to lv28 what would you do?
They would have taken the risk if they can afford to, but the speed is simply too much for most players. What you see in the tournament is basically what they think is the best balance between risk and reward for players' self. If their strategy is not aggressive enough they can only hope that opponent would unfortunately top out -- if your opponent out-maneuvered you from lv29, chances are there he holds the lead before lv29 as well.
And for those title contenders, what's fascinating is that each of them take enough risk so that they probably top out before lv39 aka the second kill screen. If you think carefully, reaching lv39 is actually a waste because that means there is space for extra aggressiveness for potential extra tetrises that are worth more than potential score you can get up to lv39. Very few games actually ends with double second kill screen. I shall appreciate that as medal of players seriously taking this game and format to a very competitive level.
In short, a player's potent under such format is decided by their effectiveness in the last 10 levels. If you read the games in that way, you won't be surprised that Alex T won the tournament unbeaten at all. He is the only guy who can not only comfortably survive, but also consistently turning mess into tetris ready shapes. Again I have to mention Tristop here, he is the only one who can outperform Alex before lv29 and then try to survive Alex T's counterattack. (What about Meme? I think he is very well-rounded, unfortunately weaker than Alex on every edge, putting him in a very bad position in case of 1v1 matchup...)
Qualification and seeding
Remember how seeding works? It is all about getting maximum number of maxouts within a time limit. For some time I do not treat an accurate way to assign seeding, possibly due to impression from distant past where all you need is to get a few maxouts and chill.
Not anymore now.
Getting a few maxouts merely gets you into the gold bracket...before getting kicked out by top rankers even if you survived the top 48 stage. You need to press really hard to score 12 maxouts which all top 16 did. The aggressiveness is precisely what is needed in the knockout stage.
I wasn't sure about the correlation between aggressiveness before and after lv29. Like...is it possible for a player to be very skillful that mastered lv19 speed but simply can't react after lv29? The tournament proves that these two are properly correlated i.e. it also properly seeds the player in the knockout stage.
At a point I wasn't sure about whether kicker makes sense. Is it better just to instakill a game to get a super small kicker (so that it isn't zero) than to lose intentionally at high pre-maxout score? Well I was certainly overthinking there. Most top players ended with a high kicker, not intentionally but the aggressiveness level naturally leave them a kicker like that. What about players with zero/low kicker? Well, that means they get an extra maxout instead of every single possible high kicker, which is, at the end of the day, more important.
The same qualification format has been used for a very long time, but I am glad to verify that it is actually a good one.
***
Before closing down my thoughts I just want to raise one last observation: lv29 gameplay is extremely stamina and concentration consuming.
This is quite easily overlooked when you thought players could play casually up to a few million points (in the unlimited format), even up to the glitched levels or even close to reborn. Not only that such high level gameplay only applies to a few players, it is also about tension and pressure from the tournament. Scuti is one example where he slipped and misplaced bad piece on column 2 forcing him into rescue mode. If that happens on a player who reaches reborn, the same could have happened to anyone else.
When it comes to extreme e-sport, I always feel stamina being a very important factor. RTS games, MUGs, and of course competitive tetris. Perhaps a secret of Alex T's domination is his training from other sports...?
That's all! Another year, another fun weekend to enjoy. I will see you again in 2026.
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