CTRank 2024, Part 1: 25-21
Welcome back to CTRank 2024, where we begin celebrating the masters of the game we love with ranks 25-21, as determined by our panel. To recap, our six contributors submitted 30 player ballots, awarding points 30 points for first and 1 point for 30th: those who received votes outside of the Top 25 were given honorable mentions. We considered all open playstyle tournaments (and, to some extent, single-player accomplishments) in this calendar year, with an emphasis on the standard 1v1, 18 start, 39DKS ruleset. A minimum of ten played matches was required to qualify for consideration.
We're also proud to present a respective graphic alongside each ranked player, summarising their year. Some things to note:
- The W/L Record table shows how elo-rated matches and games they've won and lost versus those ranked in our top 10, top 25 (inclusive of the top 10) and the field (everyone else).
- The slash line sources from the Omni Match Statistics database, which tracks all premier CTM, CTL and CTWC matches. A player's ranking in each stat is among those with at least 21 games logged (equivalent to the ranked player with the lowest amount of tracked games), of which 40 players qualify.
- CTWC regionals and CTWC itself ranks players eliminated in the same rounds first according to games won and then combined losing score.
25 LAZER
Lazer was an unknown quantity heading into May Masters. Well-known as a prominent member of the cubing community, his only Classic Tetris matchup in 2023 was a one-and-done against Huff at WPL. He led off on the right foot though, impressing in a fun back-and-forth decider win against Sunny and pushing deep into the killscreen in all three games of his second-round match against Scuti. His biggest highlight of the year was his July Challengers campaign, where he put up some eye-watering scores (rollover against Coal, 1.5 against Night) on his way to the finale against Wallbant. After losing a 2-0 lead by topping out early a couple times, he was able to regain his composure and flex his 29 muscles to take the decider and a CC title.
Lazer didn't advance too far in any of the other tournaments of the year, though he always met his fate against very stiff competition, never dropping a match against an unranked opponent. His participation in competitive Tetris trailed off after a first-round exit against Myles in October's Masters, but he's disappeared and reappeared before. When he does come back, expect him to pick up where he left off. -arbaro
24 COBRA
Cobra's personal best shot up from 1.3 million to 4.5 million in the span of 2024; that's probably enough to tell you how rapid his rise to the top was. He began the year as a Challengers and Futures regular, and ended it in the Top 15, as his killscreen play and consistency has come on leaps and bounds. He only began landing on people's radars in April after a top 4 finish in Challengers, where he lost to eventual winner Allenbot. But it was after CTWC 2024 that he really began to pick up steam.
Cobra rolled over and bested DMJ to find himself in semifinals at Lone Star, where he showed a flash of potential in a game 1 win versus Scuti. Then it was off to the big leagues: making his Masters debut in September, winning the last ever Challengers Circuit in November, and finishing in the middle of CTL Division 1. In that CTL season, he had a key win over his contemporary Coal and took games off elite players like Myles, dog and SV. Even though he didn't have a glitzy win on his resume in 2024 (spoiler: this changed very quickly in 2025!), his “loss quality” has been impressive. He's a player who has a lot more potential; expect much bigger things from him in 2025. -sonic
23 COAL
Coal has been stellar throughout the entirety of 2024. He started the year off with a win in February's Challengers, dropping only two games total and landing him a spot in his first ever 16-player Masters. In CTL, a Division 2 win against nek0 was instrumental in getting him his first Division 1 promotion, where he's been a regular ever since. His first rollover, also in February, marked the beginning of a hot streak—he soon snagged his first in-person tournament victory at Motor City Mayhem in May, placed in the Top 16 at CTWC in June, and beat out Huff and Opaux in an 8-game Battle Royal testing consistency at CTW Live in September.
Results like these aren't possible without strong killscreen play, and this year's “new look Coalbucket” has gained that in spades. In his breakout Masters run in October, he surpassed a 475k 29 score vs. nek0 with an absurd 629k vs. meme in the following round to make her rollover look trivial. But it's not just his killscreen play that's landed him solidly in the top 25: every portion of Coal's game—18, 19, and 29—has seen significant improvement throughout the last year, and he's on the path to becoming an absolute comp demon in 2025. Just like his fellow 2023 TNP graduate Cobra, one can only imagine what things we might see from him next.-catsugiri
22 RAHMATIONS
Among the elite of Classic Tetris, few are as much of a loose cannon as Rahmations. He can, at any moment, throw down a monster killscreen run, so long as he makes it there. His first set of the year exemplified this, with a game 5 win over Myles, but he topped out well before 29 in both of the games he lost. Rahmations kept that momentum up with a top 16 berth in Mega Masters, scoring wins over Sunny and Jerpi, and capped off his first half with a monster run in season 25 of CTL. Rah went above and beyond with an upset against Pixelandy. He scored a 1.38 and a 1.45 in games 1 and 2, and utterly shut him down with a 1.68 million in game 5, barely falling short of playoffs in third due to game differential.
A rematch versus Andy at CTWC would represent the pitfalls of Rah's playstyle. He showcased miraculous digs on the killscreen reminiscent of his legendary B-type 29-5 clear, but after a solid 1.1m to open the set that fell short, he topped out during level 18 twice to place 32nd, last among those eliminated that round.
Rah would go on to qualify for three more Masters events to make six on the year, and would take a commanding win over Fractal in October. He rounds out 2024 by nabbing Top 4 at MinneD after sweeping K-Poke, and kept his spot in CTL Division 1 for two more seasons with a win over Cobra. This may be the last we see of Rahmations as he heads into a hard-earned retirement, but he and the Rahmation Nation have plenty to be proud of the legacy he leaves behind. -Marfram
21 DAVIDMJ
There is no greater wildcard than DMJ. He qualified into perhaps the most stacked Masters bracket of all time in August (and his only standard CTM appearance that year) as the 12th seed in just the first two games of his session, getting a 1.5 million average half an hour before quals ended. Ridiculous. His Round 1 match versus Sidnev was probably his best performance all year, with his lowest natural topout being at 1.12 million on level 32, and dueling a top 5 player all the way to level 38 with a world class 313k post-post in game 3.
Elsewhere, he notched sweeps over Rhubarb and an emerging Coal at Illinois. He had the toughest Round 1 opponent in Mega Masters in TimmyKim, who played perhaps his best career set. Timmy forced DMJ to spend four levels on the killscreen chasing down a deficit in game 5. But I’m being coy: the real deciding factor in his placement here is, of course, CTWC. If there’s any tournament to pop off, it’s this one.
In Pasadena, 11 maxes in his qual and a clean sweep of Somalian, capped off with a 220k mullen on the killscreen after game 3, set up a showdown with Huffulufugus. DMJ found revenge after Huff beat him twice and knocked him out of the tournament at Illinois, taking the set in 5 and surviving the pressure of the main stage owing to his level 19 proficiency. Against eventual champion Alex T, he rose to the challenge, playing his best match that weekend, being admirably swept with a 1.1, a 1.17 and a 1.35. There’s a lot of players that make you think how far they could go if they played consistently: DMJ is this archetype’s poster child. -stolenshortsword
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