- Who
- dogplayingtetris
- What
- 13 year(s)
- Where
- United States ()
- When
The youngest winner of the Classic Tetris World Championship is dogplayingtetris, aka Michael Khanh Artiaga (USA, b.20 November 2007), who was aged just 13 years 16 days when he defeated his 15-year-old brother P1xelAndy, aka Andrew Artiaga, in the tournament final on 6 December 2020.
Dog, as he's commonly known, only started playing classic Tetris on the NES in the summer of 2019, after watching videos of the 2018 Championship. In the 2020 final, he and his brother (each in a different room of their home) played to a fifth deciding set; they both reached the kill screen, but Dog scored a "max-out" (999,999 points) to claim victory and the $3,000 (£2,231) first prize. Dog also went on to win again at the 2021 Championships, defeating fellow American Jacob Huff by three games to one.
The annual Classic Tetris World Championship is a multi-day event that was first contested in 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA. Since 2012, it has been staged at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in Oregon, although the 2020 and 2021 championships were held online, owing to COVID-19 restrictions. The rules are based on those established in the 1990 Nintendo World Championship competition, where Tetris was contested using the original 1989 NES game systems, controllers and cartridges, although the format was adapted in 2020 to work for the online contests.