Teenager beats Tetris game older than he is to become world champion [video] | Hacker News Reader

Teenager beats Tetris game older than he is to become world champion [video]

bbc.co.uk

84 pointscjCamel68 comments

They keep taking the entire event down (~7 hours of competition) on the CTCW YouTube page, but luckily someone thought ahead and recorded the Semi-Finals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHMLwgE4ZG8

I've been following competitive Tetris for the past 2 years now. It slid into my YT feed and I've been hooked.

I got to watch the stream live!

Jonas is the man! He's won it multiple times and plays a beautiful game. I thought he had the kid, Joseph, for a moment with a +100k lead. But, as he topped out Joseph was able to keep his composure. I was beautiful to watch and I gave him a standing ovation (from my living room).

The cool thing is, the kid worked hard at the game for about a year before joining the competition. He studied videos on YouTube and just became obsessed with the game. He's the next wave (which the Tetris community had been discussing for the past few years), and its cool to see that this game is not dead yet. Its virtual chess.

The Tetris community is a good one. Its seems as if everyone backs everyone. There are no egos, just humble-pie Tetris. Jonas was a class act at the end congratulating the kid.

If you have a chance, please watch the video. You'll be amazed with the skill/tactics involved in this game.

edit Here's the winning match! Just watched it again. It give me goosebumps! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9rXBQLfjjE

For years I’ve been clamoring for competitive heads up Tetris...and I knew there would be an audience for it.

The crazy thing...what you link isn’t even the exciting 2 player mode. I’m not sure if it’s the nes or snes version but 2 player is more of a battle mode where your 2 lines, 3 lines and Tetris’ get included on your opponents side. The winner is last man standing (not score).

They use the original NES cartridge with slight modifications, according to this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/nes/comments/5b0b5l/anyone_know_how...

I've got some fond memories of bringing my (original grey) gameboy in to school and playing a few rounds of 2 player original tetris over cable link with my friend. I thought I was pretty good at it back then, no doubt it pales in comparison to what these guys can do.

The modern Tetris games include these versus modes, but they don't really translate well to a truly competitive playing experience IMO. It basically boils down to pure mechanical skill (who can send damage to the opponent faster) without much nuance beyond that -- there are no mechanisms to out-plan your opponent to a victory. Luck plays a huge factor as well -- if you send a bunch of damage to your opponent, you might give them a free Tetris just because of how the garbage randomly forms.

I think the NES Tetris score attack ruleset is better suited for pure competition. Both players receive the same pieces with the same RNG seed and it comes down to who can balance the management of their stack and maximizing the score the best.

Wait... whaaa??

1. Center 4-wide combos: While largely hated, this is not a "luck based" strategy. Its memorization of the various forms that a center-4wide well creates, to maximize the quadratic damage formula of modern SRS Tetris Games with respect to combos. Perform the longest combo, you deal a LOT of damage.

2. Perfect clear players: I've played vs people who can consistently get 2-perfect clears at the beginning, and often times can hit me with a 3rd. Perfect-clears do 10-rows of damage (against a typical Tetris field of 22 or so), so 2x Perfect clears in the opening is darn near lethal. Regardless, the "Perfect Clear" is the epitome of "planning ahead".

3. DT Cannon: Amemitaya loves his TSpin Double + TSpin Triple setup, and can even perfect-clear or side-4wide afterwards.

4. TKI: A technique to get a TSpin-double within 7-drops. Its the fastest way to damage the opponent, and can stuff a Perfect-clear opening (it takes 10-drops to create a perfect clear. It only takes 7-drops to TKI).

5. BT-Cannon: The reversed DT-Cannon is a TSpin Triple followed up by a TSpin Double. It has different properties and its own set of followers. Honestly, I don't understand this at all, but that's the cool part of SRS Tetris: there's lots of different strategies!

Some Youtube References for non-Tetris folk:

1: Wumbo does 4wide when he gets serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieLTP0mIV0o

2. Wumbo also does Perfect Clears sometimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YjTu0mByfg

3. Amemitaya usually does DT Cannon into various followups. I can't find any Amemitaya videos, but this guy on gets the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVN0Wlv-Uo

4. TKI followed up by King Crimson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXraaMWK6PI . You can see the speed at which TKI is executed, which makes it good vs Perfect Clear players.

5. BT-Cannon->CSpin Perfect Clear loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umNTGq9p0qQ

-------

There are a LOT of different strategies in modern "fast" Tetris games. You play vs the same opponent a lot, like first-to-20 or so, to figure out which openings they like and try to switch your openings to best theirs.

Anyway, the main difference between "Modern Tetris" and "Classic Tetris" is that the RNG of modern Tetris is far more forgiving. "Classic Tetris" is a truly random piece, with a lookahead of 1.

"Modern SRS Tetris" is a bag-RNG (every 7-pieces are permuted, and then given to you in a random order), ensuring an even distribution of pieces. Furthermore, you have a lookahead of 5, so you can plan out your strategies far more reliably in Modern Tetris.

I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I give credit to the classic-Tetris players. Due to the RNG being so much less forgiving in classic-Tetris, its an entirely different skillset and a different game. Furthermore, SRS Tetris is more forgiving with placement of pieces. SRS Tetris looks faster: but a lot of it is because its controls are easier.

Classic Tetris is kinda like watching a Street Fighter 2 player. Laypeople won't be able to tell how difficult some of those moves are. SRS Tetris is more like Dragonball FighterZ, with easier to do combos and automatic-tracking enabled. The combos are flashier and longer, but that's because they're way easier to do than SF2 combos.

I consider them two different games and I've been a member of Hard Drop for a long time.

I used to have Top 100 records on both Sprint (sub 50 seconds) and Ultra, and one day, confidently challenged a top-Classic player to a classic game and got crushed. So much respect to classic players.

Any serious Modern SRS Tetris player gives mad credit to the crazy people who prefer to play WITHOUT the "SRS Training-wheels". Lol.

Those classic Tetris masters are truly nuts. That game is way harder and less flashy. I'll stick to my SRS Bag Randomizer thank you very much...

On an unrelated note, dbfz is actually quite a good game and one I prefer over other fighting games. (As a casual player).

I also prefer the fighting games which are more forgiving with combos.

The only thing is: DBFZ and other Arc System Work games look like they're hard to play, with 20+ hit combos going off all the time. But people need to realize that a lot of it is auto-combo or auto-gatlings with very forgiving timing. And Arc-System-Work's hit-stop graciously extends the period for which you can extend a combo.

It really is a fighting game on training wheels. But that's what makes it more fun IMO, because you spend less time practicing mechanics or timing... and spend more time trying to read the opponent and interact with them.

I guess I should clarify that I quite enjoy SRS Tetris games as well and think of them as a mechanically distinct game from classic Tetris. Center 4-wide is kind of the culmination of the complaints I have about it in a competitive format though -- since it's so powerful, lots of top level matches basically only comes down to who can execute the 4-wide better, which to me isn't really competitively interesting. I think Puyo is the superior versus-style puzzle game, since there's a lot more thought that needs to go into stacking Puyos, sending harassments, timing attacks and managing your resources than in Tetris, where you basically just need to out-DPS your opponent with TSD/TST/combo setups as fast as possible.

I definitely have more traditional tastes when it comes to fighting games, though. As far as Street Fighter games go, I don't think anything has surpassed HF or ST, nor do I think anything ever will with Capcom's current fighting game direction. I do love me some Guilty Gear and Marvel 2/3, though. DBFZ was fun for a week and I LOVE the polish that it received from ASW, but the game itself is sort of bland and repetitive due to its simple universal mechanics.

My favorite competitive Tetris mode is the Co-op mode in the Tengen NES version. It's fun to cooperate, but it's extremely fun and challenging to aim for maximum personal score while impeding the other player. There's no immediate way of avoiding players ahead from killing the game so when I play it with friends I rely on good faith that our first goal is to survive together, before counting points of “who contributed most to that survival”. If there was a way of integrating that in the scoring/gameplay it might help make that game mode more mainstream. Afaik it is barely known, let alone played, and I highly suggest trying it out with your friends.

edit:

https://youtu.be/JPPEKVUlY9w this is an example video.

Maybe if the game was a RTF (“first to 1M points”) it might avoid players from aiming to kill the game early.

Tetris battle has long been one of my favorite games. Truly is a beautiful mind/strategy game.

Twintris on the Amiga had this as well. Probably my favorite Tetris clone ever.

> Its virtual chess

I was with you until here. I'm curious what you mean by this?

I would assume that it's because you have to plan ahead and think several moves into the future. Yes, you're subject to the pieces that the game randomly produces, but you do see one piece ahead.

A newer version of the game, Tetris The Grand Master 3, has a completely insane top end of skill. It also has a "Hold" feature where you can keep a piece and drop it later when you want it. Try watching this [0] YouTube video of someone who is very good at the game. If you think it starts out crazy, skip ahead to the 5:00 mark. During the end credit sequence of the game, you have to play without any of the dropped pieces being visible.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YOR-nAnj4I

Boom, tetris for Jeff.

Aren't there are more modern versions that might make more sense for competition (tetris with friends)? Is it always going to be the old school version?

The modern variants of Tetris are generally called "SRS Tetris" in the Tetris community (ex: Tetris with Friends", but also Tetris Ultimate, or Puyo Puyo Tetris).

Some people don't like the SRS engine however. A lot of things have been added to SRS Tetris, such as bag-randomizers, hold-button, and a slew of "twists" that help you recover from errors.

For people who want to play "original Tetris", it means you have to play the original NES version. And there is a large community of players who really prefer the original style... and not the modern direction that make up the rules of SRS Tetris variants.

As I said in another post: I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I also give a lot of credit to the players who prefer classic rules: the classic rules are way harder to play. And in some sense: more casual people have played Tetris under classic rules. (SRS Tetris is a newer variant, and a lot of casuals think of the "Hold" button as cheating in my experience).

Nowadays there's 3 competitive Tetris scene:

* NES Tetris: the subject of OP post.

* Standard Modern (or "SRS") Tetris. The game mechanics gives a lots of option to the player: pieces can slide after falling to the ground or when rotating against a wall, the RNG is optmized to give a uniform distribution of piece, etc. Since the speed of the game comes from the player himself, most people either play in a 1vs1 format [1] or in a solo 40 lines sprint [2]. It can get very fast [3] (an actual TAS looks like this [4].

* Arika Tetris (Tetris the Grand Master). A Japananese, arcade-only variant of Tetris. Here the game mechanics offer a lot of the same options (in spirit) as the Standard Modern Tetris, but the mechanics is tweaked for solo play. Not only it enables a high speed play, but forces you to keep up (otherwise it's game over). We got some good exposure some years ago thanks to the performance of Kevin et al. during the Awesome Game Done Quick Marathon a few years ago [5]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnFztv79N8

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llMQxWfI-Mg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyVh40sOav0

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqr69JJFa88

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwDUiCzPVU

The first thing I show people that don't believe me when I say high level Tetris is hype as heck is the Grand master Exhibitions during Summer Games Done Quick in 2015 [1] and 2016 [2].

My jaw fell to the floor when I saw them beat the game at near instant speed with invisible blocks. I just can't process how fast these guys play.

Really glad this community is getting more exposure and more young blood is joining the scene!

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwDUiCzPVU

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPQFeMRXwmg

This just in: Apparently every Chess and Go champion in the last millennia is younger than the game.

Yeah right? I don't see why they felt the need to include 'older than he is' in the headline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait

Same goes for any LPer, speedrunner, eSports player or gamer involved in playing basically any video game before the last generation or so.

Bet most Smash Bros Melee/GoldenEye/Ocarina of Time players aren't older than the games they're playing!

You'd be surprised, the Melee scene is fairly old on average. I compete regularly and I'd be shocked if even 5% of the scene is younger than Melee.

OP here. That isn't the title I submitted. Mine was pretty boring, but factual. Bit miffed that it has been changed to that (though I did forget the [video] tag).

The original BBC headline was "Teenager beats Tetris champion at game old than he is", which I didn't like.

I note they have now changed it to "Teenager beats man at Tetris to become world champion".

tl;dr headlines about retro computer game championships are hard.

My childhood claim to fame with tetris was to get a negative score on the windows 3.1 version. It turned out the points were stored in a 16 bit integer and wrapped to negative values above 32767.

For sure in that version the "hypertap" approach was superior to holding down the arrow keys. Even with the highest repeat key settings in windows you could get more moves per second by tapping.

Quadrapassel, a Linux/GNOME variant of the game suffered from this problem as well at one point. These games should look at raw key presses instead of relying on high-level keyboard repeat functionality.

At least in classic tetris and a few other games this has to do with controller polling. If I remember correctly it polls the controller at 30 or 60hz so you'd get the commands in at just before the frame redraws if you're tapping at that speed. I dunno about key repearters though.

The BBC website won't display the video of this to me unless I install their app. There's something deeply wrong with that.

It plays for me in Chrome for Android (on a UK mobile network connection).

No issues here with Firefox (with uBlock Origin) on macOS 10.14

> There's something deeply wrong with that

Genuinely curious what you think is specifically wrong with it? If the BBC feels the app provides a better experience isn't that up to them?

Can't tell if you're trolling, but the video player user experience has nothing to do with what app you're in. It's entirely reasonable to expect a good in-browser video experience. Additionally, requiring a domain-specific app to be installed is an extremely negative UX.

I’m not trolling, I simply disagree that a company making a decision about their own product is “deeply troubling.” A little annoying, perhaps.

So - watch Inventing by Principle, work out exactly what your principle is, and change the world. Good luck!

https://vimeo.com/36579366

Title makes no sense to me ("Teenager beats Tetris game older than he is to become world champion [video]").

I parse it as: This post includes a video of a teenager beating a tetris game which was released before the boy was born.

Well... football was also invented way before I was born... what a dumb title

The twist seems to be that he is not just play the original game, but also on the original hardware with the original software. It's like if people would play football with a 100+ year old ball and the original rules. Though, this is more an example for a well maintained videoconsole and some writer desperate for a quirky headline.

They are trying to say that Tetris came out before he was born. Very poor attempt at a sensationalist title.

It would be like "24 year-old Garry Kasparov wins world championship of 1500 year-old game."

"Golfer born centuries after game's invention wins tournament" would be another great headline.

Yeah, it is kind of silly, but I think the message they might be trying to get across is that the game should be recognized as a little more venerable now, that people still compete at it, and that future generations are playing it.

(Certainly people know about Chess, Go, Golf and Football — but depending on your definition, this could be considered a digital sport.)

People in this thread are missing the point. It’s significant in Tetris because he’s playing against people who have been playing since release, an advantage which he didn’t have.

The same thing is happening in the Super Smash Bros Melee scene right now, where a new top player is winning games, and he’s the only top player who hasn’t been playing since ~2001-2002. It’s pretty exciting to see someone new beat the old guard.

Young players will always have the competitive advantage in games requiring speed and dexterity. Just take a look at the age of Starcraft champions - with rare exceptions veterans stand no chance against the young blood

I think the dumb part that no one's talking about is it's a competitive game. It'd be like saying "the Eagles beat football to take the superbowl."

I remember some 15 years ago when I played few hours of tetris on fastest mode to see if I would be able to learn it. At first the game would last 3 seconds, but I managed to bump it up to some 10 seconds before becoming overwhelmed. It was fun exercise of learning process where rules and winning metrics are well defined.

That night while falling asleep, my mind was still playing tetris. I visualized the game vividly and could actually play it in my mind. Only later I learned this is actually called The Tetris Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect).

Chess is older than any chess world champion, older than the world as we know maybe. This part of the title is an absurd argument.

I agree that it's daft! Not the title I submitted.

I watch Ecstasy of Order (which features among others Jonas Neubauer, who lost in this case) at least once every 6 months. I'm glad to see they're keeping up the pace with these championships.

I've been watching these events since the first one as Jonas is a good friend. He's a fantastic person and now ambassador of Tetris. If you're interested, he regularly streams his play and analysis at:

https://m.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody

If you want to see an exciting documentary about how this all got started:

https://youtu.be/TiO1nCFeWvk

Tetris never dies. I know a lot of people are pretty excited for the Tetsuya Mizuguchi reboot Tetris Effect which launches Nov 9 for PS4. Particularly VR play, which seems to reliably induce out of body experiences ;)

The Tetris Effect And Our Boundaryless Digital Future

https://www.wired.com/story/tetris-effect-tetsuya-mizguchi-v...

The real puzzle is why there are so fewer young people playing Tetris-- a fairly recent game-- than, say, Chess-- which has been around for many decades. (An impressive 100% of known Chess masters are younger than the game.)

I'd venture to guess the graphics of Tetris already look outdated by today's standards whereas the realism of Chess is much more visually impressive.

That seems like a valid reason; for me, it seems that the competitive nature of chess and its pre-existing establishment in society as a measure of intellect determines its popularity.

Parents pay people to teach their kids chess. There are chess classes and there are large organizations devoted to chess. Chess is at a completely different league than tetris; it's ridiculous to compare the two scenes.

I can't tell if you're serious. Chess is a two-player game with centuries of theory behind it, tens of thousands of books, an incredibly competitive tournament scene with an international rating system. Moreover, it's a great spectator sport; watching chess helps you get better at chess.

Tetris, by comparison, is a single-player game (it has multiplayer analogues but they're very artificial) with extremely shallow theory. It is more akin to a puzzle than it is to a competitive game. Watching high-level tetris does nothing to improve your own tetris skill.

Watching high-level tetris does nothing to improve your own tetris skill.

Is that actually true? It's hard to believe. Surely you'd learn a lot about good strategy and other aspects of the game.

Chess is...a great spectator sport

Hmm yeah well...Watching someone think for 30 minutes about a move isn't that thrilling. Not uncommonly, both players will be away from the board at the same time. Most big tournaments seem to have hardly anyone actually going to them now - the experience of watching online with expert commentators is so much better. Even if you watch live in the room, you're looking at big screens on the wall, not the actual board.

Having said that, chess is the only game/sport I follow these days, I love watching tournaments and matches with commentary online, and analysis videos, banter blitz (grandmaster plays the public online while speaking their thoughts), chess lectures etc. I used to play a lot (it's extremely addictive) but gave up recently - playing (and peoples' behaviour online) can be quite disturbing, but watching is 100% enjoyable. I try to watch in Spanish when possible to improve my Spanish at the same time!

Here's the trophy the short article alludes to but doesn't show: https://www.dailyesports.gg/classic-tetris-finals-joseph-sae...

Any info on the hardware/software they use, rules and stuff like that?

Also, does anyone know of any good free software implementation of tetris? (no, don't suggest emacs :P)

emacs ;)

I believe they play on actual NES consoles, hooked up to CRT monitors. You can use an original NES controller or a functionally identical replica. I think they have modified ROMs with a hardcoded seed for the RNG, so that each player gets the same pieces. It can be pretty cool to how oftentimes players start out making identical moves, then slowly diverge.

I really liked the previous champion's sportsmanlike response to his defeat.

Wow, I love this. Brings back all the memories

why is the age of the player vs the game any significance?

Game of my childhood, besides PackMan. The saddest story - when the battery died on my portable tetris device. :) Good old days! Congrats to the kid!

I knew a kid who had one of the original GameBoys. I also had a friend with a GameGear. Those first and second-gen, fully-fledged portable console systems churned through batteries so quickly!

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