16-year-old Tetris prodigy defeats seven-time world champion to become king of classic Tetris
Boom!
A 16-year-old Tetris prodigy has defeated a seven-time world champion to become king of classic Tetris.
Joseph Saelee, of Clovis, California, defeated Jonas Neubauer, of Highland Park, California 3-0 in the grand final of the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) at Portland, Oregon.
The CTWC revolves around the 1989 NES version of Tetris, which came out 13 years before Saelee was born. Saelee beat Neubauer to the top spot in a final 32-bracket seeded tournament, which took place on Sunday after a day of qualifying rounds.
The video, below, is the moment Saelee won the whole thing.
The moment 16-year-old wunderkind Joseph Saelee dethroned 7-time winner Jonas Neubauer (@neubsauce) to take the World Championship! #CTWC @TheCTWC @ArdaOcalTV pic.twitter.com/zsSwtGfHlB
— Tetris (@Tetris_Official) October 22, 2018
And here's direct feed footage:
Joseph wins the Classic Tetris World Championship in some insane high-level play pic.twitter.com/kUibFbdMuO
— Wario64 (@Wario64) October 21, 2018
For the main tournament, each match consists of up to three games, with the first player to win two games winning the match and going through to the next round. The players set their games to the rolled sequence and agreed upon level (15 or 18) and hit start at the same time. The player with the highest score wins.
Saelee, who took home $1000 in prize money as well as the CTWC trophy, may be young but has spent some time playing NES Tetris at a high level, publishing videos of his prowess on YouTube.
In September, Saelee achieved the first ever level 31 in the game, with an amazing 311 lines.
