Entrants play "Type A" Tetris, starting on level 9 or higher, and are seeded based on their final score.

In 2022, the lines were discontinued and each player could register for a two-hour time slot in which to make as many qualifying attempts as desired.

[5] Forty-eight players qualified in 2016; the top 16 seeds automatically advanced, while the remaining 32 competed in "Round Zero" to fill the other 16 slots.

Both players in a match play "Type A" Tetris, beginning on Level 18, at the same time on separate systems.

[8] The inaugural Classic Tetris World Championship was held on August 8, 2010[1] at the Downtown Independent theater in Los Angeles, California.

[9] Modeled after the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, eight players completed three Tetris challenges to decide the two finalists.

Five of the eight seats in the semifinal were reserved for specific distinguished Tetris players: Jonas Neubauer, Harry Hong, Ben Mullen, Jesse Kelkar and Thor Aackerlund.

The tournament was attended by Henk Rogers and a film crew[9] for the 2011 documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters.

[10] The second annual championship was held at the University of Southern California's Bovard Auditorium on October 16, 2011[2][11][12] with financial support from Electronic Arts.

He prioritized learning a rare playstyle called hypertapping, which by 2017 had only been used competitively by two players – Thor Aackerlund and Koji "Koryan" Nishio.

[23] He initially exited the stage emotional and speechless; Neubauer took the microphone to praise Saelee's play.

The 2023 event saw Yu win his first title, coming from 0–2 down to defeat Eve "Sidnev" Commandeur of the Netherlands 3–2 in the final.

Commandeur also set the qualifying record with 16 max-outs,[29] which was tied by both Willis Gibson "Blue Scuti" and Noah Dengler in the 2024 event.

[30] In the 2024 tournament, held in Pasadena for the first time, Alex Thach claimed his first title, topping Michael Artiaga (dogplayingtetris) in a decider.

CTM is overseen and commentated chiefly by Keith "vandweller" Didion, who took over for Jessica "fridaywitch" Starr, the tournament's founder, in the Summer of 2018.

Starr premiered the tournament on December 3, 2017, on her personal Twitch channel, with 16 participants that had qualified in the few weeks leading up to the event.

Didion opened a Twitch account dedicated to CTM, called MonthlyTetris, shortly after he began hosting.

Additionally, the CTM Discord server is in many ways the center of the Classic Tetris Community, serving as its primary online meeting space.