- I really gotta poop though.
- What?
- You're gettin' the sign.
- Oh, what are we doing?
Here we are, ready for the tournament.
- Tetris tournament.
Tetris World Championships number five.
(upbeat hip-hop music)
Tetris was always my favorite game
and I played all the time until I was about 16.
So I've been playing my whole life
and it took my whole life to get to
where I'm at now with it, being this good. (laughs)
I like the fact that, you know,
Tetris, is, like, kinda like life,
what ever comes at you you just gotta keep goin'.
You just gotta keep tryin' to make
the best of what's in front of you.
It's not like a bunch of aliens running at you
and all this, like, where you're just shooting people.
It's like a a pure mental exercise.
And I love that.
So, here we are at the Retro Gaming Classic.
You see a lot of old video game paraphernalia.
Castlevania, that game's legit.
What the hell is this thing?
(uptempo electronic funk music)
It's like Burning Man for video games.
- Right. (laughing)
It's the Burning Man for weird video games.
(uptempo electronic funk music)
- Okay, so the number one strategy
is you want as many pieces to be
accommodated on the board as possible.
So, like, you wanna be able to put...
any piece down at any time.
Or it doesn't matter how many lines you get,
what level you get to or how long you play for.
When you go head to head the person
with the top score wins the match.
(upbeat electronic funk music)
- Markstrom.
- 13 right now?
Wow, okay, this is, like,
way more competitive than ever before.
- Well, I got 600, that has me at 13th place.
Which is not where I wanna be 'cause you
don't wanna be, like, a 16 seed 'cause you're
gonna have to play, like, a one seed in the 2nd round.
So I'm gonna need to stay around here
and try to up my score a little bit.
I just played Tetris for, like, five hours or so.
I played for an hour on the rental station,
got about 540,000, that was not enough.
So I went through the lines and topped
my score out to 840,000, which is very respectable.
So I also learned that I don't have to
practice very day and I can elevate
my game to a pretty high level pretty quickly.
Which helps me in my relationship with my fiance.
(laughs)
- 'Cause then I don't have to play, like,
90 minutes a day like I used to.
- I used to play 90 minutes a day, every day, yeah.
In layman's terms Bulletproof Coffee
is like coffee on steroids.
- A tablespoon of butter,
a tablespoon of coconut oil,
tablespoon of MCT oil.
It's taking a substrate that you usually don't
have access to and taking it straight to your brain.
(mid-tempo electronic music)
They don't have it here.
So, I really want some,
so we're going all over Portland trying to find this stuff.
We're gonna go there next, right?
- Yeah.
Got it.
This is sick, I'm happy.
Yeah, this is the morning of the tournament, the finals.
And we've got the coffee from yesterday.
(grinding)
I said, "Oh, that's the secret sauce right there."
Today is day two of the Tetris tournament.
It's a 32 seed, best two out of three match play tournament.
- Eli Markstrom and Patrick Nyffler.
- [Voiceover] Take a few minutes to warm up, guys.
- Three, two, one, go!
- [Voiceover] There's one miss.
- [Eli] Ah, that was a horrible grind.
- (mumbling)
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] Three, two, one, go!
- [Voiceover] Score update, Patrick has a 65,000,
Eli's sitting with a 104.
Ooh, looks like Eli's advanced to level 16 speed.
He's got a 364, it appears that Patrick has
just topped out and Eli's ahead and Eli will advance.
Good job, Patrick.
- [Eli] Good game, man.
- [Patrick] Good game.
- [Eli] Now I can relax.
I got past my first match,
I won't be an embarrassment.
(laughter)
- Oh, come on, dude!
- [Voiceover] Okay, over here on the right side,
it looks like Cameron Eure has topped out
with an amazing score of 642 and Eli's gonna
try to close quite a gap of over 200,000 points.
- [Eli] Is that it?
- [Voiceover] Got it.
- [Eli] Got it.
- Eli Markstrom and Cameron Eure, game three.
Alright, quick update, Eli with 289
versus Cameron with 322, close match.
- [Eli] How many points do I need?
- [Voiceover] 30k.
- [Eli] When you're playing and after the guy tops out
and you've got points to make up,
this crazy adrenaline goes over
and it's, like, tunnel vision.
And I can't calm myself down,
so it's just like, my heart is racing,
I'm just like, "Okay, okay!"
It's like this other zone that you
can't replicate at any other time.
And it's really intense.
- [Voiceover] And Eli closes the gap with a 475.
- Oh, I feel like puking a little bit. (laughs)
I just finished the round of 16.
So now I'm in the elite eight against Alex Kerr,
who I've always wanted to play,
but he's super tough.
He's probably one of the best player here,
so I'm surprised and happy I made it this far.
And anything could happen at this point,
so this is great.
- [Voiceover] We're gonna count down from three to one,
you guys with me? Ready?
Three, two, one, go!
- First match I got a clean run.
I got out to a big lead,
I was like doubling his score and I was
just rolling, rolling, rolling.
He topped out, I won.
Second match I believe was pretty tight.
- [Voiceover] Three, two, one, go!
- Oh, my, God!
I had a misplacement in level 24
that would have put me ahead.
It was a Tetris, it was like a
bailout Tetris and I missed it.
- [Voiceover] Eli with (mumbling), if you get a long piece.
And, oh!
Missed drop by Eli, almost had it.
- So, that was, like, devastating
and I was like, "Shit!"
Like, now I gotta do the sudden death
and I just composed myself.
- [Voiceover] Three, two, one, go!
- [Voiceover] Eli gets a lead of 520.
Alex has a messy playing field,
I don't think he's gettin' outta this one.
And I think we have determined
our finalist is Eli.
- Woo! Feel good.
In the final four, unbelievable, just beat Alex.
He's, like, probably the 3rd best
player ever in my opinion.
Next up I got Harry Hong,
he's one of the, like, legends of Tetris.
I know he's pretty aggressive,
so that can be good and bad, you know.
- [Voiceover] (mumbling) let's go, now they're back.
Let's pull up to our stations.
Eli Markstrom and Harry Hong.
(uptempo electronic music)
- [Voiceover] The transition happened at
a very bad time and Eli tops out.
Harry takes round one.
Three, two, one, go!
We've got Harry Hong versus Eli.
(uptempo electronic music)
- [Voiceover] Couple lines, couple lines to stay in it.
Doesn't look like it's gonna happen, dude.
So close.
- That was an epic choke.
- [Voiceover] Say that again.
- I left it all on the field,
I'm exhausted.
Ready to drink some beers.
I blew that, I absolutely blew that.
And who knows what woulda happened in the third round,
but to go down like that is really hard
and even though, like, I wasn't really
expected to win or whatever,
I'm, like, crushed right now.
I should have at least taken that to the 3rd game.
- You got balls, Eli.
You got balls.
- Thanks.
- We learned that, you know,
you can just show up having not played
Tetris for two years and make the semi-finals
of the world championships with Tetris
when you got mad skills and I do.
So, it was awesome.
(mid tempo electronic music)
- (groans)
Bulletproof Coffee worked though,
I was focused.
Yeah.
A good game all the way to 29 is between
seven minutes and 30 seconds and nine minutes.
- [Voiceover] What's up, man?
- Not much, how are you?
- [Voiceover] Great, this is a great-looking costume.
- Thank you.
- [Eli] You hot in there?
- Huh?
- [Eli] Is it hot?
No, I said are you hot, is it hot? (laughs)
- Incredibly hot.
(laughter)