CTRank 2024 Part 3: 15-11
Welcome back to a long overdue continuation of CTRank 2024. We arrive at the top 15: all these players have been ranked in the top 10 at some point this year, concluding at this point from wildly different trajectories. Our panel nonetheless evaluated them in 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.
Intro & Honorable Mentions | 25-21 | 20-16 | 15-11 | 10-6 | 5-1
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.
15 DANV
Don't be deceived by DanV's unfortunate record as CTM first round fodder (unhelpfully bolstered by defeating Allenbot, who has a similar reputation, in two of the times he made Round 2), because Dan holds the best win% against the top 10 amongst every player ranked 11th or lower (even holding a better one than Dengler). Although he's best known for his consistency scoring pre–29, sporting the 13th best FM29T and second best FM19T, DanV still had some CTM highlights, including a sweep over Gerald in April's Masters Event. That marked the only other time he made the second round, shutting out hopes of a comeback after an ET with his career CTM high score of 1.57m at level 38 in game 3. He then made his top 8 appearance count, pushing eventual winner Fractal to a decider by surviving 29 transitions that Fractal couldn't.
His most notable result last year though was defeating a post-crash Blue Scuti at Paris in February 4–1, perhaps marking some revenge for the Europeans who themselves have to travel the Atlantic, jet-lagged, to CTWC. (I think the scriptwriters were foreshadowing something…) Regardless of Scuti's circadian circumstances, Dan handily swept local French talent Nao and F1Prox 8–0, and never naturally topped out with lower than 1.1m in the finals.
However, It's in CTL where DanV really shined. He only missed playoffs on tiebreakers in season 24 and went to five games against Scuti in season 26. Season 25 was easily his most impressive outing all year. He left the regular season with an excellent 6–1 record with wins over Gerald, Sidnev and Sodium and popped off in the playoffs against reigning champion dog, defeating him in four games owing to a trio of D's on the screen.
In the Premiere Poll, Dan has never placed lower than 13th, peaking at 8th, consistently being a challenging benchmark for others to pass to enter the best-of-the-best. He shows up month-after-month, season-after-season, including when the stakes are highest: placing in the top 16 finishes in Mega Masters and Battle Royal 5.
Perhaps more incredible than any of his accolades is his longevity as a roller: at age 24, DanV is basically pushing 30 in a field of teenagers where being a high school graduate is middle-aged. (Whether he can become world champion simply by physiologically outlasting his competition as they're forced to retire remains to be seen.) Although he may not even be the best in his country-within-a-country, not even top 5 players can take wins over Dan V. Weller for granted. -stolenshortsword
14 SV
True consistency at the top level of NES Tetris is a Sisyphian task. The margins are too narrow and the variance too high to expect anyone, no matter how skilled, to beat everyone they're expected to beat every time. And yet, one player came within sight of this lofty goal, and that is England's own SV. Nobody ranked outside the top 10 had a stronger record against players outside the top 20, with only a single loss to Sam Finch keeping him from perfection. Included in that stellar streak were sweeps over players like Peekayric, doge, Sunny, K–Poke and Redshurt, establishing SV as one the scariest gatekeepers in the world.
His absolute peak performance came across his three seasons of Classic Tetris League. SV wrought devastation on every division he was in, winning fourteen cumulative sets compared to a grand total of four losses. He started strong in the first two seasons of the year, beating PanicPortal, Rahmations, Coal, and fellow Brit DanV, only to draw Scuti in the Season 24 playoffs and miss entirely in Season 25. Undeterred, he turned up the heat in Season 27, scoring wins on dogplayingtetris and MylesTheGreat and losing only to meme for a 6-1 record overall. He somehow suffered another first round draw against Blue Scuti in the playoffs, but he had already made his mark by then.
SV's other major stomping ground in 2024 turned out to be the LAN environment. He kicked off with a finals appearance at Austria, knocking down Mecex and DanV before running into Sidnev. He followed that up a few months later with a top 16 at CTWC, coming back from a difficult qualifying session to beat the dark horse Lazer. Then, after heading back home, he turned out for his home country's championship. It took a grueling decider against DanV and a finals against top qualifier SunnyD, but SV won the whole thing, firmly establishing dominance in the British Isles. -Marfram
13 SODIUM
Once the poster child of pacing exclusively pre-29, Sodium would go on to prove everyone wrong this year. Don't get me wrong: Sodium is still really good at pacing pre-killscreen. He had the highest Median 19 Transition out of all Masters players in 2024, the only one to break 600k; he was also fourth in Median 29 Transition, one of four players to cross 1.1m. But what has truly revolutionized Sodium's play this year was his 29 consistency; his Median 29 Score has increased almost four-fold, from 27k to 107k. On paper his Masters' record doesn't look the greatest一most of them first round exits, with a sprinkling of Top 8 appearances一but when you take into account the fact he's lost to Blue Scuti three months in a row from July to October, that can forgiven. Indeed, outside of the CTM Cinematic Universe is where Sodium has enjoyed the most success; he's done well enough to have had two CTL playoff appearances, both after CTWC, including a Top 4 finish in Season 26 when he upset Tristop in the Top 8. A player with a decent amount of live appearances, he also won Boston T-Parity all the way back in January and finished in the Top 16 at CTWC to go with semifinals appearances at the Columbus and Montreal regionals, both incredibly stacked events in the summer. With his strengthened 29 play, maybe 2025 will finally be Sodium's year. He's cracked into the Top 10 of the Premiere Poll already, and now that level 18 efficiency isn't his only calling card, there'll certainly be more to see. -sonic
12 MEME
One of the most iconic CTWC 2021 participants returned this April after 7 months of inactivity to cement her name in 2024's history books. She came back with a bang, winning the Midwest Regional right off the bat, but was taken out in the round of 32 at CTWC in June by Fractal. Her next notable tournament run was actually a Futures tournament in August—don't be fooled; this was not your average Futures. In the finals, she and her opponent, KunfusingPoke, each put up multiple 1.1+ scores with significant killscreen play, though she was eventually swept in an incredible set of games from K-Poke that included a 1.7. By no means is this her most significant performance, though—after two more regional appearances at Kansas City and MinneD, she made her first Masters appearance of the year in September and has qualified every month since. In fact, not only has she made it in, but she's actually gotten to the semis both months. In October, she dropped only one game on her way there (that game was also a rollover!!). But No Cap November was perhaps her most memorable showing of all—after relatively smooth wins against TetrisTime and Nek0 in rounds 1 and 2, she was due for another fateful matchup against Blue Scuti, who she'd lost to in the semifinals last month. In this mammoth of a match, she scored 2.2, 4.3, and 1.67 million and somehow still lost in a decider.
As if that wasn't enough, in the last few months of the year she also won first place in CTL Division 1, sweeping through everyone other than Dog and Myles and only losing one match due to fatigue since she'd just played the endless No Cap semis earlier that day. A whopping FMS of 1,322,060 places her fourth overall in 2024, slightly behind Alex T. She also has a FM29S of 291,670, landing third place for the year. With fair 19 and 29 transition percentages of 98 and 94 percent respectively, her performance in the last quarter of the year has been nothing if not consistent, and we hope to see her continue playing more consistently throughout this next year as well.-catsugiri
11 IBALL
For Canada's only top 25 representative from perhaps the second strongest classic Tetris nation, they put forward quite the dangerous player in iBall. In what could've been one of the most legendary runs to a Masters finals, iBall slayed both Artiaga brothers en route to a semis appearance against Blue Scuti in May, taking him to five games which he looked poised to take. It ended with a tragic L hang that would've been followed by a bar to create a 2+ tetris lead at level 33, but nonetheless was so close to his career best finish in one of the toughest bracket draws.
Despite his slash line illustrating some inconsistent streaks, they don't capture the hugely clutch high scoring moments he regularly materializes. In that Masters run versus dog, he pulled off a ridiculous level 34 rollover in game 4 that he intentionally topped out on because he had already lapped dog by 300k+ points. In July's Masters Event, he made the semis again to make it a back-to-back, this time with a more favourable path over Rahmations and Cheez, but still establishing dominance with a rollover into-39 in his decider versus Rah.
iBall also bookended the year with some impressive CTL showings, first by debuting in the playoffs in January and defeating an emerging Dengler in March, and returning in October where he finally broke through and cushioned himself in that elite top 8 in the Premiere Poll. In that 27th season, iBall was only second to Scuti in Division 1B by a single point with a 6–1 record. Even if you dismiss his dominant wins against Alex T due to controller issues, iBall still reverse swept Sodium and made nek0 and Rahmations look like cakewalks.
Although he couldn't make the trip out to CTWC due to extracurricular commitments from being too multi-talented (his 4x400m track team placed first in his province), there was still the Montreal regional where he was a two-time Canadian champion, barely failing to defend his home turf against invading Americans. iBall eliminated Sodium in 4, but lost to Tristop in a decider who was on his post-CTWC regional hot streak. iBall is always poised for an upset, and if all else fails, you can probably trust that he's the best pole vaulter in the world due to somehow also being elite at another NES game in SMB1. -stolenshortsword
we are so back!!!!! :fire:
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