I really like the sportsmanship of the fella who was out first. He looked genuinely happy for his opponent for beating that record.

I dislike how when you have a record, you stop playing and raise your arms. CONTINUE GETTING THE BEST RECORD.

I recall years ago someone set the world record for the 100M sprint, and they were so far ahead they raised their hands a couple strides before the finish line. Olympic world record. I was like, motherfucker, your record would be more significant if you just ran it full out. Now we'll never know how fast you could've beat it.

Okay why are they holding the controllers like that and flicking the back of it with their other hand

Its how they press the direction dpad so quickly. Instead of just pressing with your finger directly down, they "roll" bottom of the controller while having your finger pressing just hard enough on the direction you want it to go, and every "roll" is an input movement. They are not allowed to use modified controllers so this is the fastest way to move your tetris pieces during the high speed portions.

Here is a interesting video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BZ5-Q48lE

I think the goal is to score as high as possible in a set amount of time or lines.

The game was over when he raises his hands. You can see the screen going white.

I think it's called rolling.

Basically, they are holding their fingers and the gamepad surface still and rolling the entire back of the controller around the gamepad surface.

This allows them to move the controllers super fast.

Since NES gamepad buttons and surfaces are pretty small, they are pretty hard to manipulate really quickly. By flipping the controls and moving the back of the controller and keeping the gamepad surface still, they can make bigger movements, faster.

I think you need the insane speed to get near max input speed (I believe max speed that the game enforces is 12 inputs a second but my memory might be wrong.)

Edit: https://youtu.be/n-BZ5-Q48lE that's an explanation of the physical play techniques the best players use to get world records in Nes Tetris.

I like the smile of utter disbelief when his opponent scratches his nose.

Boom Tetris for Jeff.

> someone

Homie. That was mf Usain Bolt!

Naw, way before then. It was either Ben Johnson or Donovan Bailey that I'm thinking of.

I see the shapes stacked on each other (since he dropped the controller) until he dies which is when the screen goes white. From 0:50 and forward in the video.

You are right. He stops after he exceeds the other player's score.

Eric's world record by himself (not head to head) is much higher than the score he posted on the clip, so he could have theoretically kept going.

I read the official rules and the judges can let him keep going if he wants to run up a high score. I think he stopped to save energy because the head to head matches are best of five and he had more matches afterwards?

> I think he stopped to save energy because the head to head matches are best of five and he had more matches afterwards?

That makes sense, yeah.

Honestly, the game is sorta broken at this point due to rolling.

The speed is high, sure, but it's manageable for any top-tier Tetris player. It's basically just a matter of stamina at this point.

I just watched the HBO Tony Hawk documentary this weekend and one of the people in it was talking about how one thing they loved about skating competitions is that its's the only sport competition that the other competitors are rooting for you to do well too.

This definitely reminded me of that too.

someone in that chat said "THIS IS TETRIS LEAGUE!" lol.

Don't you get incredible monetary incentive every time you break any record in sports?
At that point, you've got only yourself to beat.

Because players are reaching higher levels than ever before the tournament was concerned about time and specifically asked for people to not continue playing after winning a match, known as Mullening in classic tetris, the tournament ended up going over time by several hours.