>>15472780
It's just a different game with a different goal.
The flashier TGM games are about speed, have very fluent and flexible controls and don't take away the player's agency to speed things up even further, until you hit the ending. There is nothing beyond bad planning that can make a state unwinnable, as the lockdown time is never instantaneous.
The version they're playing has very stiff controls, and the whole pace is locked in by the game. They're trying to optimize for points per line, which means getting as many tetris clears as possible. Each line puts the player closer to the next level of speed, and as the game speeds up, piece mobility is gradually diminished, from the point where it's impossible to maintain a high stack to where the game becomes unplayable as the edges of the well can no longer be reached.
It's a death march as opposed to a sprint. You can make up for time in TGM by playing exceptionally well or getting exceptional luck. You stumble on a rock in NES Tetris and it goes on your permanent record. Or, you only have a finite amount of resources/lines to spend on cleaning up after unlucky pieces. Use up too many of those and you just can't hit 999999 anymore.