CTRank 2024 Part 4: 10-6
We are back! Welcome to the fifth installment of CTRank 2024. This is the cream of the crop here; all of these players had very good 2024 seasons, and some of these votes were down to the wire. 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.
10 GERALD FREEMAN
Gerald has always been the poster boy of consistency and discipline. Call him a lineout merchant, sure, but clearly it works; his loss quality is usually very high, as evidenced by his January and February Masters exits to the Artiaga brothers. (The one exception to this rule seems to be DanV—in February, Gerald gave up a set to him in CTL, and this became a trend for the rest of 2024.) The rest of the early year went swimmingly for Gerald though, with wins against Portal and Dengler in the same month.
March's Mega Masters was Gerald's absolute best tournament of the year. He qualified 2nd, with an AO3 just 1k short of a rollover. A bit of luck did come into play in his bracket run—he managed to avoid an incredibly stacked top half of the bracket with Fractal, PixelAndy, and first seed Alex T all at peak strength as well as Sidnev and Dog—but that doesn't mean we can just write off a sweep against Sodium, a win against Huff (who had taken out Myles), and a semis win against Blue Scuti. He faced Fractal, who was riding off the high of winning the last two Masters events in a row, in the finals, and ended up losing in an incredibly close decider. In fact, every one of those last three matches was a decider, and it's a testament to Gerald's iron mental fortitude that he was still able to play to his normal standard in such a high-stakes situation with tens of thousands of dollars on the line.
Amidst all the Mega Masters hubbub, he continued his CTL hot streak with sweeps against Doge, SV, Chillalla, Ansel, Tugi, Sodium, and Dengler (again). He also came up with a win against Sidnev in the regular season, made the playoffs of Season 25, and immediately swept the first seed—Alex T at his peak—in what was a huge Round 1 upset, typically rare in CTL. He'd go on to finally beat DanV in the playoff semis after facing him three times earlier in the year and losing all three times. He fell to Blue Scuti in the finals, but not without making a statement, dropping two 1.5s and a string of high scores in the set.
Gerald also achieved another significant milestone during 2024 by making it out to his first ever live event. He swept his way to the finals of the CTWC Philly regional in late June, plowing through Opaux and Coalbucket, before losing to Tristop, who was in top form. After beating Dengler again in July's Masters and then being eliminated by Alex T, he officially retired from competitive Tetris, citing graduate school as the main reason, and he's been inactive since then, though he has posted the odd game on Discord. His rank overall for the year has suffered from having five whole months of inactivity, but in the end he's still a top tier player no matter how you slice it. With a FMS of 1,251,780 and a F29S of 204,980, he's 7th for the year overall and 6th in 29 play—more or less what we'd expect from a player so strong, and though we're not sure whether we're going to see much of him in the new year yet, we certainly hope that we do. -catsugiri
9 THEDENGLER
If he was known for being a master pacer in 2023, Dengler has made himself known as much more than that in 2024. His 2024 season has been dazzling: Top 4 at CTWC and three Masters events, winning his first regional at Hartford, making it to the glitched colours on a level 29 start. All the while he was still very, very good at pace: he got a 1.5 into killscreen and a perfect maxout earlier in the year, held all three major pace records at various points in time (maxout, rollover and 29 maxout), regularly pumps out 1.4 into killscreen games (for scale: at some point he had more than twice the total number of 1.4 into killscreen games by everyone else). His competitive statistics also reflect this; he is in the top 3 for both competition into 19 and into 29 scores, and despite not making the top 10 in fair median 29 score (where he placed 11th), ranks 10th overall in Fair Median Score.
Dengler's year began with a CTM Challengers Circuit win over O in January; the next few months saw him being round 1 fodder in Masters, going out to Gerald in February, Sidnev in April and Blue Scuti in May, finishing in the Top 16 three times in a row. The latter two were decider losses, though, and he was emerging as a top player. He also had some success in CTL, finishing in the Top 6 in Season 24 and Top 8 in Season 25, and finished in the Top 16 of Mega Masters for the second year in a row. In this time frame, it was perhaps his “extracurriculars” that was making headlines; he got the first ever perfect maxout in April 2024, but his competitive results weren't close to matching his pace skills yet.
The turning point for Dengler was no doubt the Classic Tetris World Championships in June. Seeding second for the second year in a row, he would sail through the competition with wins over EricICX, Dillan and Sidnev, before facing Dog in the Top 4. Although he was later swept by Dog, his performance still led him to place 4th overall, a huge feat considering the talent pool at the competition and him having never progressed beyond the first round in CTM Masters in the last year.
Dengler was pretty much on fire for the rest of the year, with his consistency kicked up; after another early exit to Gerald in July's Masters, he would manage to make the Top 4 of Masters three separate times, including a huge win over Dog in October, his first ever win after losing to Dog in two CTWCs and multiple masters appearances. He also won the Northeast regional in Hartford in the summer, and would wrap up his year winning the 2024 Classic Tetris Level 12 tournament in December. Perhaps part of it is also due to his solo play, as he began going for longer games instead of efficiency records. It paid off not just in his competitive consistency, but also his overall level and score PB; he reached the glitched colours for the first time in September on a 29 start, and his regular start level PB is just a little under 7 levels off. He's no longer exclusively a master of pace after this year; the 2024 season has told us that he is so much more. -sonic
8 PIXELANDY
By this point, most people should know about Andy's 2024 season- breaking the overall score world record, rebirth-chasing on stream while enjoying competitive success, only to injure his hand before CTWC and proceed to steamroll the entire DAS scene in the latter half of the year. But I'm not sure how many people truly appreciate how good he was, in the four-ish months that he was active and healthy in the open playstyle circuit. His peak overlapped with Fractal and Alex's peaks (which were higher), but when you look at the numbers, he was putting out extremely impressive performances in that window. His fair 19/29 transition rates in Masters are incredibly high, ranking in at 4th/3rd respectively, only behind Fractal and Dog; in fact, he's ranked in the Top 10 in every single category (including games played!) on the CTM leaderboards, despite only having half the season most players did.
Andy's 2024 kicked off with a splash: he got his own game crash shortly after he began grinding for it on January 4th, a matter of hours after Fractal. He went on to take the overall score world record two weeks later, in a stream that was supposed to be his warm up for CTL. He would end up winning that CTL season, his third ever Division 1 win, as well as the Heart of Texas regional in Waco, a stacked event that featured heavy hitters like Blue Scuti, Dog and Myles. He was less successful in Masters during that time period, but that mostly chalked up to facing an undefeated Fractal multiple times, leaving him with a Top 8 exit in January and March. Despite this, he was considered the 2nd best NES Tetris player in the world in those first three months; he was ranked 2nd on the first ever Premiere Poll in March 2024, before being overtaken by Alex in April (but still staying in 3rd place). His most insane sets, however, probably came in April's Masters- he dispatched Blue Scuti in the Top 16 with a rollover and an F81, before dethroning Fractal, who hadn't lost a single match since losing to Alex in December the previous year, in the Top 8 with two 1.7s.
And then he got injured. There's a very clear line between pre-injury Andy, at the peak of his powers, and Andy post-injury, who couldn't really play consistently on 29 anymore, and it was heartbreaking to see the decline. Despite this, he still had a few wins after the injury: making the Top 16 at CTWC after underqualling, Top 4 in CTL Season 25, and of course the now-infamous ModRetro tournament. Nursing an injury, he'd go on and tap his way through the two regionals he attended post-CTWC, putting up Top 8 finishes at both Lone Star and Stillwater. The Stillwater performance was especially impressive, where he held Coal to a decider, and was enough for pollsters to keep him on the Premiere Poll as a tapper. But roller Andy was no more after CTWC, and at the time of writing it is still unclear whether he will return to open playstyle competitions as a roller in the future.
Even if he doesn't, though, his stellar 2024 farewell season is one hell of a year to remember him by- as a consistency monster under the 39 cap in competitions, and with no linecap on his frequent Twitch streams; for his heroic match performances that included multiple rollovers; and for forcing us all to rethink how we've treated player health and fatigue in the Tetris community. And we'll still have his DAS heroics to enjoy, so all is not lost. -sonic
7 MYLES
Myles has been one of the most consistent participants in Tetris tournaments all across the board in 2024—and consistently good, too. He started his year with a run to the CTL playoff finals, plowing through top players Sidnev and SV before eventually coming second to PixelAndy. His monthly Masters appearances and scattered Gauntlet matches consistently showed good performance throughout the beginning of 2024, with a highlight win against Blue Scuti in Gauntlet. In February, Myles traveled to California to participate in the first CTWC Genesis regional, where he battled his way to the top 4 before losing to Alex T and then Blue Scuti in the 3rd/4th place match to place 4th overall in an insanely stacked field.
Following this, Myles had a decent CTL season, as well as an appearance in March's Mega Masters, where he won against former Masters winner HydrantDude before being taken out by Huffulufugus. His year continued without much of note—consistent round one exits in Masters and wins against nek0 and Portal in CTL—until the world championships, where he had an amazing showing. Victories against HydrantDude and Cheez propelled him all the way to the top 8, where he lost to Dog (who would eventually make it all the way to the finals) in a battle that could only be described as a nail-biter and an extremely fitting way for such a strong player to go out.
After CTWC, things returned mostly to normal until CTM's Lone Star championship, where Myles once again put his best on display. Victories against (tap) PixelAndy and a 3-0 sweep against Dog before a loss to Blue Scuti landed him 2nd place at this prestigious regional. Less than a week afterwards, he bested Dog again in Masters (before also falling to Blue Scuti again). In October, another streak of CTL wins against top players like iBall, Tristop, and Portal was enough to get him a spot in the CTL playoffs once again, where he had another amazing showing, beating Sidnev and Sodium to get to the finals. Unfortunately, this match was against none other than Blue Scuti, who Myles had lost to twice recently, and this match would prove no different, though Myles did manage to claw his way to a decider. Still, his amazing performance in the rest of the CTL season meant he would place second once again—a testament to his consistent high performances throughout the season.
For Myles, the tail end of the year brought one more amazing tournament run in none other than October's CTM Masters, in which victories against Lazer, Rahmations, and Dengler brought him to the finals. It was his furthest run in Masters all year, but of course, his opponent turned out to be none other than Blue Scuti, who took the title in a sweep. For the rest of 2024, Myles continued to perform well in CTL and consistently qualify for CTM, though he was unable to make another deep tournament run. He also made it to the CTL playoffs another time, though he would lose in the first round to Dog.
Overall, Myles has been in the world's top 10 for more or less the entire year (and potentially even higher, depending on who you ask). Surprisingly enough, no single one of his stats particularly stands out; in categories like 19 transition or 29 transition, he's actually outside of the top 20, but his well-roundedness and ability to recover quickly from bad streaks lands him a Fair Median Score of 1,234,481, which is 11th overall. He also has the third-most games played throughout the year, which is understandable given his incredibly frequent Masters, CTL, and regional participation. It's looking like he's continuing to stay very active in 2025 so far, and we're so glad to see it! -catsugiri
6 TRISTOP
2024 was the year Tristop believers finally saw their favorite player rise to the top the way they'd always known he could. At the beginning of the year, Tristop's participation in competitive Tetris events was sparse; his only regular appearances were in Masters, where he went out in round 1 the first two months of the year. Unfortunately, he didn't fare too much better in March's Mega Masters: after nabbing 32nd seed, he had to face first seed Alex T (who was at absolute peak performance) in the round of 32, where he lost in a sweep. Notably, Tristop was able to score a 1.79 in his round one matchup against Peekayric and a 1.5 in his February Masters match, but the rest of his games looked relatively normal. April and May didn't go too differently; Tristop took a win against Huffulufugus in April before falling to Sidnev in four games, and in May he lost in round one to Fractal, the Mega Masters champion. But things were about to change drastically—and Tristop's first game crash in May, which made him part of a very elite club of the most proficient 29 stackers, was only the first sign.
In June, it seemed like a switch had flipped. Tristop showed up to CTWC looking almost like a completely new player, dropping a 1.47 and a 1.55 immediately in his round of 32 match against Cobalt and taking the set in four games. Next up was the previous year's world champion Fractal, who Tristop also defeated in four, much to the shock of the gathered audience. After he emerged victorious after these two matches, it was obvious to onlookers that he was not the same Tristop they had known during the first few months of the year, and with his next match against Blue Scuti, this would only become more clear. Tristop would take another four-game set with two 1.5s, besting the boy who beat Tetris (and one of the top contenders to win the title) in one of the most exciting matches of the whole tournament. Tristop's closest friends literally shed tears over how proud and glad they were that he was finally showing his true prowess and getting the results to match.
His insane Cinderella story would finally come to an end in the semifinals in a decider against eventual winner Alex T, but not before dropping another 1.46 and a 1.5. This CTWC marked the beginning of Tristop's ascension from a middling top 15 player to well within the top 5 in the coming months. And he'd start off this new era of his career with a bang at CTWC's Philadelphia regional, where he would again beat Blue Scuti as well as Gerald Freeman to take his first ever long-awaited regional title. He was in prime form—and now he had the results to show it, too. He signed up for Classic Tetris League for the first time in several years after Philly and quickly racked up wins against Masy, Curi, Portalll, Coalbucket, and iBall. In Masters, where he would frequently exit in round one, he also began to make deeper runs.
But perhaps some of Tristop's biggest successes around this time were happening at the live events. After his win at Philly, Tristop traveled to CTWC's Ohio regional in August, besting top players like Coalbucket, Sodium, and Huffulufugus to take another title. A few weeks afterward, he did the same in Montreal, this time emerging victorious against Wallbant and iBall. Three regionals, three first-place titles—not a bad record. Still, he did find a fair amount of success online, sweeping Blue Scuti in CTL in August to make it to the playoffs. There, he was unfortunately taken out early by Sodium in a somewhat surprising loss, but he would make up for it by fighting his way into the semifinals of August's Masters event. He'd also get his revenge on Sodium during No Cap November, taking him out in the round of 16 before being eliminated himself by Scuti to finish off the year.
Tristop's Fair Median score of 1,268,060 puts him at 6th overall in 2024—a fittingly high placement for someone who popped off so hard in the latter half of the year. Consistency is definitely one of his strong suits: Tristop comes in first overall for fair 29 transition percentage. He's also got a quite respectable fair median 29 score of 187,900, which places him 9th overall. Despite juggling the heavy workload of being a pre-med student in college, Tristop still finds ways to stun the Classic Tetris community time and time again. -catsugiri
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