CTRank 2024: Intro & Honorable Mentions

We are pleased to present CTRank, the This Week in Tetris year-end rankings for 2024! Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll reveal our picks for the best open-playstyle competitive NES Tetris players of the year.

To arrive at these rankings, we had a panel of six Classic Tetris bloggers submit ballots. (We’ll reveal the rankings at the end of the series.) We each ranked the top 30 players of the year, and the top 25 vote-getters made the official list; be sure to scroll down to the end of this post to see our honorable mentions. We’ll reveal and discuss the players five at a time. Players had to play at least ten matches over the course of the year.

Please join our Discord if you want to talk about this post or learn how to contribute. Huge thank you to everyone who made 2024 a fantastic year for Tetris!

Ranker introductions

Arbaro is the editor-in-chief of This Week in Tetris, general manager of Tetris for the Non-Pros, and a commentator for the Classic Tetris League.

Marfram is the head of the match statistics database for CTM, CTWC, and CTL. She has worked with aGameScout on his content, including video script writing, pre shows for CTWC, and a spin off written column. In addition, she made foundational contributions to Liquipedia, and is one of the four pace record holders alongside theDengler, Gerald Freeman, and Sidnev.

Crinkle (a.k.a. catsugiri) is a chronically online community member and player who works in some capacity for CTM, CTL, TNP, and Gauntlet.

Lucy (a.k.a. pinescutely) helps proofread TWiT and maintain various statistics and leaderboard spreadsheets in the community. In addition to Tetris, she likes math, logic puzzles, and roguelike deckbuilder games.

Sonic (a.k.a. sonicthescrew) is a staff writer at This Week in Tetris, a washed-up Tetris player, a math graduate student who likes playing with numbers and computers, and the main editor of the DAS Statistics Project.

stolenshortsword is a staff writer at TWiT who probably likes to pretend they’ve been around longer than they have. They are Liquipedia’s newest editor who is trying to carry the torch left by Marfram and Grzechooo, and probably argues with Ryan in Beepomonk more than is healthy. Outside of Tetris, they are a science student at university who lives in Australia at UTC+10.

Honorable mentions

KunfusingPoke

K-Poke winning a Futures Circuit doesn't sound too impressive until you realize it was August's, which was perhaps the most stacked CTM of all time. Despite the high standard of competition, K-Poke would sweep shqdwnight, smoljordan (who had just beat brodindamp of all people), Challengers regular Peekayric, and none other than meme herself just before her absurd breakout. She didn't roll over and play like a Futures player either, making level 29 every game and even putting up a C28 in game 1; however, that was no match for Poke's absurd 1.71 million into 39. He rounded out the year with a couple more solid showings in Challengers and MinneD, and had a coveted Masters appearance in September. We hope to see him return to CTWC in June. -stolenshortsword

O

O took most of the middle of 2024 off from competitive Tetris, but his year was bookended by a couple of deep Challengers runs. Though he only played twelve matches, it never felt like he was in danger of being upset. His decider losses against Portal (Mega Masters Round 2) and Cobra (Nov CC Semifinals) demonstrated a combination of consistency and 29 play that would have certainly notched him some big wins if he had a few more matches under his belt. O dusted off the chef outfit to play in the first expanded CTM Masters Event; if he has the availability, expect him to be a regular ME feature and to contend with Chiller for the title of best Australian player in 2025. -arbaro

Redshurt

In the final months of the year, Redshurt used CTL to make a statement. The early part of the year saw him stick to big events like Mega Masters, CTWC, and the WPL championship, and though he didn't put together any big runs, he always went out against a ranked player. He started to get some attention after finishing on top of a tough nine-player Div 2 in Season 26, but he fully established himself as a ranked player after outperforming expectations in Div 1A the following season. Though the ride was a little bumpy at times, he produced enough high-caliber games to pick up wins against Nek0 and Sodium on his way to a 3-4 record. Those who face him expecting to play as he did a year ago will be in for a rude awakening. -arbaro

Sunny

One of the fastest rising stars at the end of 2023, Sunny looked poised to take the next step in the new year. He started the season with some promise, collecting three Masters berths while putting up respectable scores, albeit against stiff bracket competition.Then, following a difficult debut division 1 season in CTL, he would break a months long radio silence with his highlight of 2024 at the UK Championship. Sunny would upstage DanV and SV to take first seed in qualifying with seven maxes. He’d then charge through Equi, Deewee, and Hepps, only falling to SV in the finals after his seed forced him to take out Dan, perhaps prematurely, in the semis. Let’s see if he can take one home for Scotland next year. -Marfram

TetrisTime

One of the community’s longest-standing tappers, TetrisTime came back to shake the Tetris world as a roller in early 2024 after taking a break; his first appearance with rolling was in April’s CTM Community Tournament, and his gripswitch became a viral YouTube short during CTWC 2024. But it was after he switched to full roll in the last three months of the year that he began to shine. He had incredibly strong performances in the most recent season of Classic Tetris League: being hot on Dog's tail all three games in their match, winning against Coal, and setting an absurd PB of 2.4m (a jump from 1.5m!) in his match against Kitten. He’s landed comfortably in the top 25 and things are only looking up for him as we enter the new year. -sonic

Vicious Rhubarb

Rhubarb, while not the most active player this year, has had his fair share of impressive results. In August’s Challengers, he steamrolled his way through Masters regulars Sodium, Cheez, and DanV to take the title, finishing the finals with a sweep. Of his three Masters appearances this year, his performance in March’s Mega Masters takes the cake—a win against Coalbucket and a narrow decider loss to Blue Scuti is nothing to sneeze at. Coupled with a season in Division 1 and 24th at CTWC, his year-end FMS of 1.07m is the highest of the honorable mentions. All in all, he’s been a solid competitor when he shows up, and hopefully we see more of him next year. -catsugiri

Wallbant

Wallbant is an oddity. He was unusually prolific at in-person tournaments, (only Scuti attended more events) netting wins over Huff, DanV and Rhubarb to make the finals of Detroit and Boston and established his Ontarian supremacy at UWO and Montreal. He took Lazer to a decider in July’s Challengers finals and even showed some fight vs Dengler in CT12 to clinch a tied 25th on January’s Premiere Poll. Unfortunately for Wally, none of these games count for stats (and due to Fractal being Fractal, Boston isn’t even elo rated). What does count is his abysmal stints in CTL and Mega Masters that drag his FMS to 868k, below Eren, Koster and Peek. The rest of what’s tracked, however, is a pair of maxouts in No Cap November following a clutch PB in quals, and a fantastic run at CTWC that kept him in the conversation. He placed 17th at Pasadena, the best to be eliminated in the Round of 32, only falling to Huff in 5 games after eliminating doge. -stolenshortsword