Alex Thach

Thach was born on November 7, 2008,^{[2][failed verification]} and lives in the U.S. state of California.^[3]

Besides Tetris, Thach enjoys playing the video games Minecraft, Roblox, and Valorant.^[1] Thach also set a personal goal in 2025 to become competitive at rock climbing within ten years.^[1]

Thach first became interested in playing Tetris at 11 years old after being recommended a video of the 2018 CTWC finals in which Joseph Saelee defeated Jonas Neubauer.^[1][4] Still within the same year of 2020, he became the youngest player to ever "maxout" the game, achieving a score of 999,999 points.^[5][6] On June 2, 2021,^[7] Thach further became the first player to reach level 41.^[8] Thach became known to the Tetris community because of these achievements, and in 2022, was able to compete in the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC), but was eliminated early and placed 16th.^[9] Beginning around April 2023, Thach also began what later became his signature victory celebration of dumping parmesan cheese on his head after winning a match.^[1]

On March 11, 2024, Thach uploaded a photo showing a score of 9.9 million points,^[5][10] which surpassed the previous record of 8,952,432 points set by Andrew Artiaga (known online as "PixelAndy") on January 11 earlier in the year.^[11] Thach followed this game up by livestreaming a Tetris game lasting slightly over an hour, in which he broke the records for highest level and highest score reached at 235 and 16,248,080 respectively.^[5][12][13] This game, which was played on a modified version of the game cartridge to suppress crashes that normally occur in later levels of the game,^[14] won Thach a $2,600 prize created by the Tetris community for the first person to reach a score of 10 million points.^[12][15] Thach's 16 million high score was also recognized by Guinness World Records as a record for the modified version of Nes Tetris.^[11]

On April 3, 2024, Thach broke the original game cartridge records for highest score reached and latest game crash achieved, simultaneously becoming the fourth person to ever "beat the game" by triggering a game crash.^[5][6][3] He also became the first to trigger a rare visual glitch nicknamed "Summoning Satan" by the community.^[10] On April 15, 2024, Thach again broke the record for highest score reached on a modified game cartridge after scoring 16,700,760 points.^[14] On June 9, 2024, Thach beat two-time previous champion Michael Artiaga (known online as "Dogplayingtetris") to earn his first CTWC title.^[16] The golden J-Piece trophy was given to Thach's mother to give to Thach, instead of being awarded by the event's host.^{[16]: 1:03:30}

In March 2025, Thach appeared on German television channel RTL, participating in the game show (German: Drei gegen Einen, lit. 'Three versus One').^[8] On the episode, Thach won against the three game show contestants who challenged him in a competition where the first to clear one hundred lines of Tetris won.^[8]

From June 6–8, 2025, Thach again won the Classic Tetris World Championship, this time winning the event without losing a single one of his 15 games in five matches. Other records broken by Thach at the event included surpassing the 1.9 million points barrier in this match versus Willis Gibson (known online as "Blue Scuti") and setting a new qualifying record by tying the previous 16 maxouts, but improving the "kicker" score to 971,440 points.^[17][18] Upon these achievements, Thach was described in a 2025 interview by The Classic W as the "greatest Tetris player in the world".^[1]

Playing style

Thach began playing NES Tetris in 2020 using "hypertapping", a technique where the player rapidly vibrates their arm to press the buttons on the controller. This technique was used by Joseph Saelee in his winning 2018 and 2019 CTWC tournaments.^[19] Thach found much of his early success with hypertapping, but was compelled to adopt a new technique called "rolling" around 2023 and 2024, as hypertapping was becoming obsolete among top players.^[5] Rolling, which was created by fellow Tetris player Christopher Martinez (known online as "Cheez") before the 2020 CTWC, is a technique where the player rolls the back of the controller with all five fingers to position the game pieces more quickly.^[20][21]

In regards to attitude while playing, Thach often makes jokes and uses comedic body language, which he has admitted helps soothe his nerves when getting through difficult levels of the game.^{[13]: 46:44} Thach has also become well known for destroying his setup and dumping various odd items on his head to celebrate victories, most notably parmesan cheese.^[14] Thach has notably used this signature victory celebration after beating multiple records in his March 11, 2024, livestream,^[14] and after winning the 2024 CTWC. In the latter, an inflatable pool was brought out to collect the cheese as he was doused in it by his mother and the hosts of the tournament.^{[16]: 1:04:20} In a 2025 interview, Thach stated he continued to do his parmesan cheese celebration as it was "really funny and got everyone laughing".^[1]

This table lists notable Classic Tetris tournaments in which Thach competed in and their outcomes. It includes any appearances at the CTWC World Championship, CTWC DAS Jonas Cup, CTWC DAS World Cup, CTM Mega Masters, as well as high placings at related tournaments, such as reaching at least semifinals in other CTWC or CTM events. CTM results prior to 2022 only list the winner and runner-up, and information may be incomplete.^[22]