Alex Thach (November 7, 2008) is the 2024 Tetris World Champion and current score world record holder for Classic Tetris (16,700,760).
Alex started in the Tetris scene in 2020 using a technique called hypertapping. He became the youngest person to reach 999,999 points (a.k.a. a maxout) at the age of 11. The next year, Thach would become the first Classic Tetris player to reach level 41. Around this time, a new technique known as rolling was developed. While most players switched to that technique because it was faster, Alex was reluctant to transition, as he was still a very fast tapper. However, after losing to multiple rollers in competitions, Alex decided to learn rolling. He was the last hypertapper to win a Classic Tetris Monthly tournament in December 2021.[1]
Alex is known for his comedic and energetic persona, which he has stated has helped him calm his nerves. on his streams, he typically jokes around the entire game. He is also known for his quirky victory celebrations, such as dumping milk and parmesan cheese on his head.
Alex started playing in the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC for short) in 2022, however did not perform that well, despite having become a full time roller. 2023 was also not very notable for Thach. According to 2023 Tetris Champion fractal161, Thach had been talking about how he was losing motivation to play Tetris.[2] However, on March 11th, 2024, Alex posted a picture in a Discord server of a 9.9 million score, which would've have been one million points above the world record. The only problem was that the game was unrecorded.[1]
The next day, Alex would stream to try and match or break his unrecorded score. On this stream, Alex would destroy nearly every world record, including the score world record, which he nearly doubled, getting 16,248,080 points. He also broke the level world record and had the longest game of Tetris is Classic Tetris history, being over one hour long. Within the next few weeks, Alex would break the score world record again, this time getting 16,700,760 points and would also become the 4th player to ever "beat" Tetris, which he did twice in a row.[1]
For the 2024 Classic Tetris World Championship, Alex would qualify 3rd place, meaning he was able to skip the first round. Alex would make it to the finals where he would beat Michael Artiaga (a.k.a. Dog or Dogplayingtetris) 3-2. After Alex's victory a kids swimming pool was setup for Alex to sit in while he had parmesan cheese dumped on his head.[3]