The Classic Tetris World Championship: Vancouver (CTWC) made its debut at The Gaming Stadium this last Saturday, September 14th. The CTWC for the NES is held every year at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. This year, players competed to win a ticket to Portland with the first ever CTWC: Vancouver tournament.

The tournament consisted of a qualifying swiss round, a best-of-3 single elimination top 8, and a best-of-5 final round. All of the players who attended the event definitely put their best foot forward, and the top 4 had spectators on the edge of their seats. After an incredibly close finals match, NES streamer “NESCardinality” secured the victory.

NESCardinality’s story of success stems from a loyal twitch fan base and a bit of spontaneity.

“I stream Tetris on my Twitch channel and a few followers brought to my attention this event. “I worked yesterday I work tomorrow, and I was scheduled to work today so I didn’t think it was going to happen. But people kept saying ‘you should go you can win it.’ and I started thinking about it and I suddenly realized ‘why wouldn’t I?’ This is exactly the kind of thing I would do.”

In the Qualifying Round of the tournament, NESCardinality racked up an impressive 700k points, with the second place finisher having just under 500k points. He remarked that one of the best strategies that he used during the tournament was “hyper tapping.”

“Hyper tapping is when you rapidly press the arrows left or right as opposed to just holding them to make the piece scroll a little bit faster. If your hyper tap fast enough you can make the pieces move faster and it gives you an advantage. It’s not that easy to master. It took me a week to really get it down before my scores started improving but it’s been a godsend to my game, and I can’t wait to hyper tap and the world championship.”

This will be NESCardinality’s first Classic Tetris World Championship, and we are excited to see how his skills hold up on the world stage! The CTWC takes place on October 18-2oth, so make sure to tune in and watch our Vancouver representative compete. Can’t wait to watch him compete? Check out his stream at twitch.tv/nescardinality to watch him practice everyday!