Pokemon World Championships

This last week I went to San Francisco with my two boys for the Pokémon 2016 World Championships. The two have been working toward this for nearly a year since they watched the 2015 World Championships streaming video from Boston (and learned there was a World Championships). My older boy especially made it a goal.

It’s been a long year. The process for qualifying for Worlds is a multi-level progression in which a player must accumulate a specific number of “Champion Points”. There are League Challenges, City Championships, State Championships, Regional Championships, and National Championships. A player can only count their six best finishes from league challenges, four best from cities, four best from state and regionals, and one national. There is a maximum number of points available at each level, from 15 points for a league challenge to 500 points for a national championship–for first place. Lower rankings may earn a lower number of points depending on how many participants were involved. For example (as which happened frequently) at a City Championship if there were four players the top two would get points (50 for first, 40 for second), but for third or fourth to get points there would need to be eight participants.

Anyway, with that background out of the way, my two boys were in different divisions this year; my older boy was in Seniors, and the younger in Juniors. Juniors had to accumulate 200 points, and Seniors had to get 250. They got off to a bit of a slow start. The younger didn’t really take it seriously at first, and didn’t participate in many of the League Challenges. The older tried every one he could and soon maxed out the points he could earn from them.

Then came cities season, which played out over November, December, and part of January. The younger won the first he tried and then got busy with tennis and didn’t try any more for a while. The older went to every cities he could, but kept running into the same three other players who he had a hard time beating, and since they seldom had eight or more players, he’d usually get shut out of points. He was getting pretty frustrated. The younger then came back for a few and picked up a few more wins–and points. By the end of the cities season the youngest had enough points he could reach his qualification total simply by maxing out his league challenge points. But the older was just ten points shy.

Next came our State Championship this spring. There would be more players, so it would be easier to get points–and all he needed was ten! But the older one did poorly, not picking up any points at all, while the younger got second–and many more points than he needed. We then tried the championship for the next state over. The younger got first, and the older still came up short. Much consternation abounded. Not that there were hard feelings between them–the younger would gladly have given points to his brother if he could.

The older’s last shot came at Regionals a few months later. Finally the roles reversed; the older got seventh, and more than enough points, while the younger finished below point level. But at least they were both in.

Of course just to make things more suspenseful we had troubles with the Pokémon Company itself. At one point one of the older’s city wins got lost and left him even shorter on points. That was eventually worked out. And then this summer, just before the final list for Worlds was posted, the younger’s entire point total went missing. We still don’t know what happened there, but a week before Worlds (and a couple weeks after his brother) he got his invitation anyway. A bit of a nail-biter there. His points still don’t show anywhere.

And then came the Big Event last week. We tried to manage our expectations–this would be the Main Stage of Pokémon, the best of the best, not an easy win to be found. They would have to do their best to even get very far. But hope springs eternal.

The World Championships is made up of two days. The first day is for all the general qualifiers to battle it out for the top spots that get to move on to the second day, where they compete against those who secured their second-day berths with wins at national championships. Since we didn’t even go to Nationals, both boys had to battle it out on Day One. The older son was up against around 204 seniors vying for 30 spots. The younger was up against 178 juniors for the same number of spots.

The younger came in 58th overall for the day. He was a little frustrated along the way–certain decks opponents can play can be horribly annoying, so I don’t blame him. But he went 3-3-0 for the day and finished in the upper third. It just wasn’t good enough. After the initial frustration he seemed to take it pretty well. He did the best of any of the competitors from Utah in his group, after all. But he would be a spectator on Day Two.

The older son got off to a flying start, going up 3-0-0 in his first three rounds. If he got four wins he’d move on to Day Two automatically. But then things got tougher and he lost the next two rounds. He started getting frustrated, but fought it off before his final round, where he pulled off the Pokémon equivalent of a last-second touchdown pass to win the game. He ranked 10th overall for the day and won a berth in Day Two.

Day Two didn’t go as well. He started off with a tie, then won two games, then lost the next four. His final ranking was 85th.

But with the pressure off and the competition finally over (for them), both boys perked up immediately and were quite satisfied with what they accomplished. And they should be. They did better in their first year of competition than many kids ever do, and made it farther at worlds than many of their peers. I’m quite proud of them–both with how they did and how they handled themselves. They’ve matured a lot over the past year, and now they have a better idea of what it takes to play at the top levels. With the exception of one other player (in my older son’s division–and one of his Day Two  losses was to him, which he felt just fine about) our boys did better than anyone else from our state for the card game. The one other player made it to 17th place on Day Two–just missing the finals.

From not even being on the radar last year, my boys have established themselves as respected players. Masters level players take them seriously and treat them as comrades-in-arms. Just about everyone who plays competitively in our area knows their names. It’s pretty cool to watch, and gives me no small amount of satisfaction as a parent–especially that they have a reputation of being good kids and good sports, not just good players.

What does next year hold? Beats me. Pokémon is changing up the tournament structure, so it may be more difficult for them to qualify. We’re still waiting to find out what the changes will mean. There’s also the added problem the younger “graduating” into the same division as the older. Two of the top players in the senior division just moved up to the Masters level, but it’s by no means certain they’re both going to dominate. And frankly the younger’s commitment level isn’t as high as his brother’s. He’s still got tennis, where he’s just as lethal, if not more so (I know this from hard experience).

All I know is that it’s going to be an interesting year. It’s harder to read the younger son, but it’s quite clear the bug has bitten my older son. He wants another shot at Worlds, and he’s already gearing up for it. He was sick to death of the deck he took to Worlds last week, but within a few hours of our getting home he had already taken that deck apart and started putting together a new one for the next tournament.

And so it begins.