Michael Artiaga

Michael Khanh Artiaga (born November 20, 2007), known online as dogplayingtetris or simply Dog, is an American Tetris player from Texas. He won the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) three times, in 2020, 2021, and 2026. For the 2020 win, he became Guinness World Record holder for the "Youngest Tetris World Champion" at 13 years old.

From a young age, Michael and his brother Andrew Artiaga experimented in coding, computing, and gaming, alongside their father, a web developer. Practicing Tetris occasionally on their Game Boy, both brothers were inspired to pursue the game further after seeing 16-year-old Joseph Saelee's victory against the 37-year-old reigning champion Jonas Neubauer in the 2018 CTWC. After his victories in the 2020 and 2021 CTWC, Artiaga continued to compete in Tetris tournaments, and additionally founded his own tournament series titled "Classic Tetris Brawl" (CTB).

On October 6, 2024, playing on a modified version of the game, Artiaga became the first player to achieve a "rebirth" of NES Tetris after successfully clearing the highest level of the game, level 255, triggering the game to restart back on level 0. In the same event, Artiaga also broke the game's high score record at 29.4 million points.

Personal life and upbringing Michael Khanh Artiaga was born on November 20, 2007, to Van and Randall Artiaga and is from Fort Worth, Texas. He and his brother Andrew Artiaga grew up around electronics, as their father was a web developer. At 5 years old he learned basic coding, and further experimented in computing and gaming in elementary school.

Tetris career Artiaga was introduced to Tetris at 8 years old in elementary school, after playing it on the original Game Boy at home.

After purchasing twin famiclones, Artiaga began to compete in tournaments under the name "dogplayingtetris" or simply "Dog", in reference to his avatar being a dog holding a Nintendo controller, while his brother took the nickname "P1xelAndy".

"The key to success is watching how others play and learning what it is that makes them better than you." — Michael Artiaga — in an interview with The Guardian after winning the 2020 CTWC. Michael was the second-youngest competitor there After beating fellow competitor Jacob Huff (known online as "Huffulufugus"), His back-to-back win was in the 2023 edition of the Scholastic Book of World Records. On April 9, 2022, Artiaga set another world record for the highest-scoring game on a level 29 start with a score of 2.2 million. From June 7–9, he competed in the 2024 CTWC, where he lost to Alex Thach (known online as "Alex T") in the finals, finishing second in the championship.

On October 6, 2024, Artiaga became the first person to achieve a "rebirth" of the game after successfully clearing the highest level of the game, level 255, triggering the game to restart back on level 0. After achieving rebirth, he continued to play the game from level 0 to level 91, where he finally ended the game with a time of 121 minutes, a final score of 29,486,164 points, 346 levels reached, and about 3,300 lines cleared. The score of 29.4 million points beat the previous high score record set by Alex Thach by more than 12 million points. Artiaga, who had live-streamed the game on Twitch, celebrated by putting his hands on his head and exclaiming "Am I dreaming, bro?" and "I'm so glad that game is over".

From June 5–7, 2026, Artiaga won the Classic Tetris World Championship for the third time, defeating "Meme" 3–2 in the final. The victory made him the second player, after Jonas Neubauer, to win three CTWC championships.

Playing style

"A lot of people try to play it safe, but not Dog. He can be super high in his stack but he's still stacking up. He's waiting for the long bar. And when he does that, he can score so much you just can't keep up." — Andrew Artiaga — in a 2021 interview with The New York Times about his brother's playing style in classic Tetris. a playing technique which emphasizes vibrating the buttons rapidly over pressing them; a technique first popularized by Saelee in his winning 2018 CTWC tournament. His success with the technique led his brother to adopt it too, to keep pace with him before the 2020 CTWC.

Event host CTWC Classic Tetris World Championship held in-person CTM Classic Tetris Monthly held online

Default wins† single-dagger symbol high seed after qualifying round, awarding a single bye‡ double-dagger symbol high seed after qualifying round, awarding a double bye