The 2016 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco is coming to a head on the third and final day of competition with the Trading Card Game (TCG) and Video Game (VGC) finals starting 2am AEST Monday 22nd August. Across two days of competition, each age division (Juniors, Seniors and Masters) in TCG and VGC has been reduced to just two competitors who will battle it out for the title of World Champion. The regulations for this year’s video game championship which allowed for two restricted Pokémon (including Mewtwo, Groudon, Kyogre, etc.) per team to face off in a Double battle has made for an interesting world championships with some streamed matches determined by sheer luck and some even going to the timer. Learn more about the VGC regulations here.
Australia sent its largest contingent of players to the world championships yet with 29 players participating in TCG and 26 players for VGC thanks to the continued expansion of local circuit and community. Some performed well enough to finish in the top 4 (VGC) or top 8 (TCG) players in their division for the season in the Asia Pacific region to win a paid invite and a bye into Day 2 of competition. Of the Aussies that played on Day 1, only two were able to make it through the grueling Swiss-format rounds with two or fewer losses in Meaghan Rattle and Christopher Kan – both for VGC in the Masters division and joined paid invite winners Alex Poole and Sam Pandelis. 2015 Australian National Champion Matthew Roe and 2016 National Champion Philip Nguyen were among the Australians unable to make it out of Day 1 finishing with more than two losses.
In Day 2 of TCG competition, no Aussies were able to make the top cut with Junior player Lewis Stevens achieving the highest finish in 16th place, outside the top cut of 8 players. 2016 Australian Masters National Champion Jordan Palmer also missed out along with 2015 Worlds Seniors semi-finalist Brent Tonisson in his first year in the Masters division. Australia has tasted TCG world championship success in the past with Kaiwen Cabbabe going undefeated in the Seniors division in 2013.
On the VGC side, we had some success with Sam Pandelis able to finish Day 2 Swiss with a 5/2 record and place in the top cut. He won his first top cut match against American Andrew Nowak but lost next round to another American Justin Carris on stream to finish in the top 16. Sam earns a cool $1500 USD for his efforts but was hoping to go further than Australia’s best VGC placing of top 8 by Dayne O’Meara in 2014. Alex Poole, Meaghan Rattle and Christopher Kan did not fare as well against the world’s best finishing well outside the top cut. Junior paid invite recipient and multi-time worlds attendee Nicholas Kan could only manage 22nd place with a 3/3 record while Singapore’s Corey Yuen, who beat Nicholas Kan to become the 2016 Australian Junior National Champion in July, made the top cut with a record of 5/1, eventually losing to finalist Cory Connor from the USA in the top 8.
Also present at the World Championships for the first time was Pokkén Tournament which crowned its champions on Day 2 of competition. Potetin’s Chandelure defeated Azazel’s Machamp in the Masters division and Woomy Gun’s Charizard took out the Seniors division over Bolimar’s Lucario despite Bolimar resetting the bracket coming from the loser’s side.
The final day of competition is upon us with viewing starting off at 2am AEST Monday morning with the TCG finals for Juniors, Seniors and Masters followed by the VGC finals in what looks to be exciting viewing. Japan and the US dominate the finalists spots as usual with Denmark being the only other country with representation in any final. The matchups for each game and division are as follows:
TCG
VGC
You can catch all the competition here or we’ve included the Twitch stream as well below.
It's Black, Back Again.
Makes sense to us.