Even Tetris players don’t know what the future holds for competitive Tetris

engadget.com:

When you think of esports, Tetris likely doesn’t come to mind. Let alone NES Tetris played on original hardware. Yet, this weekend at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo a new Classic Tetris World Champion (CTWC) will be crowned, and it’ll likely be the most hotly contested, highest-viewed tournament in the game’s almost 35-year history.

Classic Tetris has seen an explosion of interest in the last few years but it’s fast approaching a crossroads. It needs to either professionalize or accept its destiny as a curious, if cozy, corner of the gaming world.

The trouble is, even the top players aren’t sure a professional league is realistic. “Do I think this could become a viable esport? Absolutely not.” Fractal161, a competitor with a very real chance of winning this weekend’s World Championships, told Engadget.

The annual event in Portland remains the game’s most prestigious tournament, but for the rest of the year, Classic Tetris fans can be found at CTM – Classic Tetris Monthly – a more informal, but arguably more important competition for the game.

“CTM was created by a streamer called Friday Witch in December 2017, and it was more just a casual kind of community thing.” Keith “vandweller” Didion, CTM’s current organizer and perennial host told Engadget. He took over the tournament organization in October 2018.

Since then, CTM has gone from barely scraping together enough players for a bracket, to hundreds of players competing in multiple skill levels every single month. The original concept was one 16-player tournament, but that meant anyone that wasn’t good enough would never get to play. “When I took it over my kind of pledge to the community was everybody who submitted a qualifier will get to play” Didion said.

Both CTWC and CTM