Catsugiri's Rankings for the July 2024 Premiere Poll

There are twenty-some-odd pollsters who contribute to the Premiere Poll, and many of them have very different ways of looking at the game. One of these rankers is Catsugiri, who was kind enough to share her thoughts and write a blurb for each player presented below. Cat watches a lot of Tetris and her rankings are saucier than average, so her explanations are a great read.

Numbers in parentheses refer to the (Premiere Poll ranking | Cat's rankings) for June. NR stands for "Not Ranked". If you're a pollster and want to share your reasoning on the blog (or even if you aren't and just want to get your opinion out there!), reach out on our Discord within the next day or two.

1 ALEX THACH (1 | 1)
I honestly don’t think there really should be any debate about putting Alex at number one. He’s won CTWC, he’s won CTM many months in a row, he’s gotten literally every single world record, and even just watching him play, it seems indubitable that he out of everyone deserves to be ranked number one. While I wouldn’t say it’s "far and above" everyone else’s, Alex’s 29 play is a step above for sure, and we all know that 29 is arguably the most important part of the game these days (given that you’re not a slouch on the pre-29 levels, which Alex most certainly is not).

2 DOG (3 | 5)
Dog put up an amazing performance in CTWC and he’s been putting up performances of the same caliber for months prior in literally every tournament he participates in. His 29 is only a step behind Alex’s, he’s consistent, he has amazing stacking, and his mechanics are the best of the best. He lacks nothing.

3 TRISTOP (13 | 14)
CTWC was the wake-up call we all needed to see Tristop’s real skill. He’s been plagued by consistent unfortunate Round 1 matchups in CTM, which have resulted in most of us not being able to see him play too much. In previous months, the people who play with him regularly have maintained the idea that Tristop is seriously crazy and that the rest of us just hadn’t seen it yet, but I needed to see it to believe it. Come CTWC, Tristop delivered. Combine incredibly solid stacking with newly improved 29 mechanics and you get the monster that Tristop has been in CTWC and in the recent Philly Regional. I’m not even sure what I can say to justify Tristop being behind Dog, honestly, other than the fact that Dog has done ever so slightly better in CTM than Tristop has.

4 BLUE SCUTI (4 | 2)
Scuti is obviously recognized by everyone as one of the best players right now, though this is mostly due to him being the first game crasher. However, this doesn’t do him justice at all. I used to have a weird misconception that Scuti’s pre-29 was a bit iffy and his 29 was what set him apart from everyone else, and this indeed may have been the case in the months leading up to CTWC 2023 (but not 2024!). However, this seems to have shifted in the more recent months. Despite his reputation, I often find that he’s not behind and many times even ahead of other players in the pre-29 scoring, and of course his 29 is still as good as ever. This, in my opinion, is what pushes him up this far. His consistency has improved along with his pre-29 play. Despite losses to Tristop, he has not been playing badly, not by a long shot.

5 THEDENGLER (10 | 10)
Perhaps a sleeper pick for top 5? Despite being known as "the pace player", I often find that Noah doesn’t have the crazy pace that many of us might expect from him going into 29. Sometimes this is due to going for adjustments and messing them up. However, while I think his reputation is a bit misleading for his pre-29 play, his post-29 play does not get nearly enough recognition, which I would rank as one of the best of the best. His mechanics are really quite solid and I don’t feel as worried about him missing 5-taps when I watch him compared to other top players.

6 GERALD FREEMAN (7 | 4)
Despite not being at CTWC, we’ve seen a lot of Gerald recently, and he can be weirdly inconsistent occasionally (mostly when playing Dan, but that curse has been lifted). Most of the time, though, Gerald is solidly… fine. He doesn’t really lack much, but no part of his play really stands out either. In the recent Philly regional, though, I was surprised at how solid his 29 appeared, which is why he gets placed at 6. If you’re hoping for a miracle against Gerald where he tops out early, you’re most likely not going to get it, unless you are Dan.

7 DAVIDMJ (NR | NR)
I originally had DMJ at 9th, but that was more just a "well I actually think he’s higher, but I don’t want to get crucified by people so I’ll lower him a bit" kind of placement (eventually I figured there would be no point in changing my ranking just because of peer pressure, since that defeats the whole point of this ranking). There was a period of time when he went to one or two CTWC regionals a few months before CTWC, and I’d always thought his performance there was incredibly solid, but since I hadn’t seen tooooo much of him, I always put him a little lower than I though he should be because everyone else was saying that he wasn’t THAT good. After that, he was inactive, so he stopped being on the lists. However, when he came back at CTWC, he was AMAZING. His qual was amazing. His matches were amazing. During the match against Alex, where he eventually was eliminated from the tournament, he kept up with Alex every step of the way. Despite being the most avid of Alex believers, I was genuinely scared that DMJ would win. I was also sitting next to Dog and Andy while watching that match and they kept saying that DMJ’s"fundies" were really good. Like, really good. They said it a lot. So I’m slightly reassured that I’m not crazy. Other than his... fundies, his mechanics looked super solid as well, and his 29 play was much better than I think anyone really expected.

8 SIDNEV (6 | 3)
Sidnev's CTWC performance wasn’t the best, but she is European and had jet lag, so I’m inclined to cut her slack for that. Besides that, she has been inconsistent but high-scoring in general. To be honest, Sidnev is a case of “It doesn’t feel right putting them this high because of [insert notable flaw in their game], but there is nobody else that I would put here either”.

9 FRACTAL (2 | 7)
Many were surprised by Fractal’s relatively early exit from CTWC. I wasn’t. Yes, I have consistently ranked Fractal much lower than most people would in the past few months. No, I am not a Fractal hater. In his peak, I would absolutely have ranked him first with zero hesitation. It just so happens that the month I joined the Premiere Poll was the month that other players started really stepping it up and Fractal began falling back a bit. I acknowledge that he was absolutely the most dominant player we’ve seen for a while. But Fractal being dominant in the past does not justify him being ranked first when we’ve seen more recent play that indicates that other players fit the spot better. The way I interpret this poll, it’s a rank of who you think the best players are currently. I know Pumpy gave us a general guideline to consider matches played in the last three months, but if someone’s relative skill level has considerably decreased within the last three months, I’m not going to rely heavily on the matches at the beginning of that time frame. Anyways, enough about the past few months. Fractal has seen some decline in his performance, but he’s still a very solid player. His 29 is just not as good as it was in his peak.

10 TOMMYNTG (11 | 9)
Admittedly, we really haven’t seen much of Tommy recently, especially because he wasn’t at CTWC, so the information I’m going off is not very plentiful (it consists mostly of relatively old matches and his recent CTM qual). Based on this information, it seems that Tommy has never gone as aggressive as most other top players have. This causes him to be more consistent but less high-scoring than the vast majority of them. In the last year or so, I’ve heard the sentiment that his 29 has stagnated while everyone else’s has skyrocketed, which has taken him from a super top-of-the-top level player to someone who’s more middle of the pack in terms of top players. However, I’m hopeful that this may change after seeing his recent CTM qual in which he got a 1.88 high score and mid-1.7 AO2. I hope he starts to up the aggression and work on his mechanics and 29 a bit more.

11 MYLES (9 | 13)
Myles did pretty well at CTWC considering the state he was in during the previous few months. He had an amazing 29 chasedown in one of his games against dog (I think???) and overall was just much more solid than he had been previously. It feels like he’s slowly returning to his peak.

12 DANV (8 | 8)
Editor's note: Dan and Cat are dating.
Despite recent allegations that I rank Dan too low in an attempt to be unbiased towards him, I truly think that I’m ranking him accurately based on what I see. However, there is some truth in the statement that I probably rank Dan lower, on average, than other rankers, and this is because I see more of Dan’s bad play than the rest of you do. In particular, I see a lot more early tops, wonky stacking, horrendous pace, and hilariously bad choices that leave me with my face in my palms. It’s difficult to not let this influence my rankings, because, well, it happens a lot. But when he’s playing competition, he usually shakes all the weird stuff he does in practice off and plays like a normal person, which is somewhat miraculous. Being European, I’m also inclined to cut him some slack for his weird performance at CTWC due to jet lag and arriving really late the night before. Also strangely enough, from CTWC up until now, when I watch him practice he has been totally all over the place, but somehow he managed to eke out a 1.7 AO2 for his CTM qual. This baffles me as much as the next person. Go figure.

13 IBALL (12 | 11)
I BEEN SAYIN THAT IBALL IS CRACKED!!! iBall has had some good results recently, but those are just symptoms of the greater… whatever the opposite of “issue” is. His 29 in particular is quite good; when I’ve seen him play 29 it usually blows me away. His consistency needs a bit of work, particularly on the pre-29 segments of the game, but overall he has so much potential to shoot up to the top 10.

14 PIXELANDY (5 | 6)
I know, I know. Yeah, this is whiplash from where I’ve ranked Andy in previous months. Soon in beepomonk I’ll be named "World’s Biggest Andy Hater" instead of the previous “World’s Biggest Fractal Hater”. But over the last month (maybe even more?) he’s been having controller issues and injuries that have resulted in a steep decline from the peak Andy we knew. His 29, which was once simply immaculate, is now far from it. His performance in CTWC was strange, to say the least—an underwhelming qualifying performance combined with mediocre match performances didn’t help his ranking at all. He finished in the top 16, but that was more because his opponents played really badly than because he played well. His consistency has taken a hit and so has his 29.

15 HUFFULUFUGUS (14 | 18)
Huff's CTWC qual was surprisingly good, but the rest of it was pretty meh. He almost lost to Wallbant, though this was more Wallbant playing really well than Huff playing terribly. He’s really not too shabby right now, but he doesn’t have anything to put him above the others. I’m also inclined to say that his mechanics are a bit iffy.

16 SODIUM (17 | 15)
Sodium had an amazing match against Dan at CTWC. He’s ranked #16 here but I would put him higher if I could (it’s a case of “the number 16 feels so low!!! but I also can’t justify putting him above all the other people…”). His match against Alex was... meh. Sodium has great stacking but can sometimes be inconsistent, especially on 29. I stand by my opinion that Sodium has so much potential though (it feels weird to say that someone who’s been on the top for so long "has potential", but you probably get what I mean).

17 SV (15 | 12)
SV was playing really weirdly before CTWC. He missed Masters, had a some really mediocre sets, and was overall just… weird. His performance at CTWC looked more like the old SV, though — the win against Lazer was quite solid with a decent 29, though he did also underqual. I’m interested in seeing whether he’ll bounce back from this strange slump.

18 RAHMATIONS (16 | 16)
Rah had a great qual during CTWC. Unfortunately, he also early topped multiple times to lose very quickly to Andy. Chalk it up to first-time IRL event nerves, maybe — I’m willing to cut him some slack for that. Rah has always had moderate to severe consistency issues, even online, though I’ve always thought he could be sooooo good if he figured those out. As of now, though, he can probably pop one or two decently high scores for every early top he gives up.

19 PORTALLL (18 | 17)
I’m inclined to say that Portal is an even more extreme version of Rahmations. He can put up crazy high scores and even crazy good sets, but then a day or two later he might early top something disastrous. Consistency is important, and if Portal can alleviate those issues even a little bit, I think he’d shoot up the rankings quite a bit.

20 ALLENBOT (19 | 17)
Another victim of low sample size and consistency issues, Allen has been playing pretty well in qualifiers but keeps getting knocked out in Round 1 of Masters. I still think his 29 has a lot of potential if he can get there with more than 800 or 900k every time. He has some wonky pre-29 sometimes and also has a tendency to top out immediately into 29, but if he gets past that initial difficulty then he can often make up a lot of deficit in seemingly no time. It’s just that we only see it very rarely.

21 CHEEZ (NR | NR)
22 LAZER (21 | 19)
Cheez and Lazer are two birds of a feather — players from an older era who have recently come back and are good enough to hang around with the top players, but not good enough to give them a real huge scare. They are both solid enough in the pre-29 stages, but their 29 hasn’t developed to the extent that the more active players’ play has, which results in a huge loss of potential scoring. I’d say inconsistency in competition also plays a part due to not having played high-level comp in forever.

23 NEK0 (24 | 21)
Neko is… fine. He has lots of potential, that’s for sure. I just haven’t seen much out of him yet other than him occasionally dropping a crazy invisible record or a wild pace game. He's not super active recently because CTL has been between seasons.

24 COALBUCKET (20 | 22)
Coal has always been pretty good, but he lacks that something that will push him to the top. While he does make some cool-looking adjustments, sometimes it would be better if he just did the default, either because the adjustment isn’t actually better or because he misdrops while trying to do it. This means weirdly sometimes-good-and-sometimes-bad stacking and misdrops that often cancel out to result in very mediocre pace. His 29 has been seeing improvement for sure, though. He sits in this spot because of it, in fact

25 SUNNY (23 | 23)
We haven’t seen much of Sunny recently, to be honest, but putting him here feels right. It wouldn’t feel correct putting anyone else in this position due to large flaws in their play, and there’s nothing to justify him being any higher than here. Sunny is solid. This is good.