Arbaro's rankings for the June 2024 Premiere Poll

These June rankings double as the community's best guess about who's likely to bring a J-shaped trophy home from Pasadena. No matter who wins, it's going to be a huge story in the context of their recent play.

Numbers in parentheses refer to the (Premiere Poll ranking | my ranking) for May. NR stands for "Not Ranked". Want to argue about this? Join our Discord!

1 ALEX THACH (2 | 3)
Back-to-back CTM winner. World record holder. Only dropped one game in his CTL division for the second consecutive season (just don't ask what happened in the playoffs). Gets a rollover nearly every set. Hard to top this guy right now.

2 FRACTAL (1 | 1)
Fractal was beat three times this month, by Andy, Noah Dengler, and Sidnev. All three losses were in deciders, though, and he's still taking down plenty of top-level opponents. And a trip to Pasadena might be just the thing to give him a shot in the arm.

3 BLUE SCUTI (6 | 7)
Don't sleep on Blue Scooter. He's the only one in a bizarrely stacked Div 1B to take down a red-hot DanV, made the CTM semifinals yet again, and hit a terrifying streak of consecutive 1.5 comp games earlier this month. His 29 play looks aggressive, but his mastery of rolling and constent deep killscreen runs show that it isn't, actually. It's just less risky for him.

4 DOG (3 | 2)
In terms of this month's upsets, Dog's losses to Portal and iBall feel understandable; both are high-risk, high-reward players who he faced at the wrong moment. (He's also lost to Fractal and DanV, but so has everyone else, so, y'know.) His Season 24 CTL championship should still give him some momentum going into CTWC, and if he keeps putting up points and doing his thing, good things will come.

5 SIDNEV (7 | 6)
She made it through DanV and Fractal in her Masters bracket this month -- Fractal put up a 1.5 and 1.6 in the match and lost both games -- and handed Scuti his only loss of the CTL season. She ended up missing the playoffs after a fluke loss to Tugi and a slow start against Gerald (though she still threw a 1.7 into that match for good measure). She's been too good for too long to not take a big title home.

6 DANV (8 | 9)
Dan has upset so many top-level players that you can't call them upsets anymore; he's simply joined their ranks. Blue Scuti avenging his Paris loss was the only thing standing between DanV and a perfect CTL regular season in a division that also included Gerald Freeman and Sidnev. Since being knocked out of Mega Masters by Portal, all of this losses have been against players in the top eight. The early topouts that once characterized his game are becoming markedly less frequent. He just took down Dog to reach the CTL Playoff Semis, and there's no reason to think he can't keep going.

7 PIXELANDY (4 | 4)
Controller issues or not, Andy's been in a bit of a slump this month, not being able to get much done on 29 since knocking Scuti and Fractal out of the red bracket in April. He squeaked into the CTL playoffs after losing to Rah and beating SV in a decider and was ushered out of CTM this month by a monster game from iBall, but it's hard to imagine him taking too long to adjust and start scoring again.

8 GERALD FREEMAN (5 | 5)
Eighth seems very harsh for Gerald -- he had a big win against Sidnev and lost two different 1.5 games in his match against Scuti. Everyone else seems to be popping off, though, so he's stuck down here.

9 THEDENGLER (11 | 11)
Noah keeps getting knocked out of Masters in the first round, but it's been against big opponents that he's taken to deciders. He was just a hair short of taking Dog's place in the second spot of Div 1C.

10 RAHMATIONS (14 | 10)
Rah showed off some outstanding 29 play and got a rollover in his win against Andy this month, though his losses against SV weren't quite as impressive.

11 MYLES (14 | 10)
Myles' mid-table CTL finish wasn't what he hoped it'd be, with some uncomfortable wins against players near the bottom of the standings. He's putting up big scores here and there, but needs to find a bit more consistency to keep up.

12 TOMMYNTG (13 | 18)
Tommy's Masters games this month were among the only recent glimpses we've had of his game lately, and we saw some safe, consistent gameplay from him. He did have a 1.4 in his set against Alex, but almost fell to Portal after the latter kept putting up numbers.

13 HUFFULUFUGUS (9 | 8)
Huff didn't have a great outing in Motor City, and though that probably isn't very indicative of his overall talent, there's less and less recent material to judge him by as his Mega Masters run fades from view.

14 PORTALLL (18 | 20)
Portal's board often looks like a bell curve, but his world-class killscreen play means that, if he can survive until 29 most games, he can take down anyone. He beat Noah Dengler by getting a 1.7 in the decider, had two 1.4s in his win against Dog, and was a major test for Tommy in CTM, but every one of these matches featured at least one early topout, and he can fall out of contention quickly.

15 IBALL (17 | 16)
iBall is one of the biggest wild cards in Classic Tetris. He took down both Artiaga brothers in the orange bracket to set up a semifinal against Scuti, and pushed Alex to a decider once he got there. It remains to be seen if he can replicate the feat or start paring down those early topouts.

16 SVNESTRIS (11 | 13)
SV elevates setting up dirty to an art form, but his aggression can lead to early topouts and stop him from putting up numbers. He pushed an underperforming Andy to a decider in CTL and finished with at 4-2 record, but fell to Sodium in the semifinals of Challengers (which isn't a terrible way to go out, all things considered), and Coal, Peek, and Sunny all pushed him to deciders.

17 TRISTOP (15 | 12)
It's hard to make sweeping generalizations about Tristop when he keeps getting ushered out of CTM early on by Sidnev or Fractal or whoever and doesn't play a whole lot else, but he's consistent enough to make them work for it.

18 SODIUM (16 | 15)
Sodium got his first Challengers title this month, and had to fight through an incredibly stacked bracket to get it. His mid-level CTL campaign in a tough Div 1B met but did not exceed expectations.

19 NEK0 (NR | NR)
Neko was one of the breakout stories of the CTL season. Despite his 2-5 record, he swept Portal and put made a lot of the top finishers very uncomfortable, which a particularly impressive set against Fractal. He lost to eventual champion Sodium in Challengers, but we've seen enough from him this month to say that he has some staying power.

20 ALLENBOT (19 | 17)
Congratulations on winning Challengers last month! Your prize is getting swept by Dog in the first round of Masters.

21 COALBUCKET (21 | 23)
Coal got ushered out of Challengers first round by Kitten, and his CTL campaign contained surprisingly few maxouts, but he surivived to see another season. The real story for him, though, is taking the Motor City championship home. After strong performances in Motor City and Illinois, he's establishing himself as someone who overperforms in live events.

22 LAZER (NR | NR)
Lazer competed in CTM for the first time since 2022 this month after scoring a massive qual. He stacked cleanly and was for the most part pretty consistent, which was enough to take the decider against Sunny, but it wasn't near enough to match a rolling Scuti despite throwing in a 1.3.

23 SUNNY (22 | 21)
You really don't know what to get with Sunny. His CTL campaign wasn't necessarily great, but he did enough to stay up, and he had two of his patented weirdly impressive losses against Rah and SV. 

24 FUR OF KITTEN (NR | NR)
Kitten raised some eyebrows by almost hitting 1.8 in their warmup against Cobra, and then sweeping him despite Cobra not playing all that badly. They then went on to have a perfect match record in their CTL div and get themselves promoted to Div 1. Their big PB increases recently underline a huge jump in 29 play.

25 COBRA (25 | 25)
Cobra got a gnarly first-round match against SV in Challengers and missed the auto-promotion spot to Div 1 after Kitten's huge set, but their 29 play is clearly improving.

First five out: TUGI, SOMALIAN, JERPI, ANSEL, SAM FINCH