Pokémon TCG Jakarta Regional Champion; Thoughts on the 2018 Tournament Structure

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Well, *THIS* is the post that I have been dying to make. Two weeks ago in anger, I told myself and a few others that “I swear to god I’m going to show TPCi how stupid this fucking tournament structure is.” I also said some other things that I’ll leave to your imagination. In response, one of my friends told me that if I’m so angry about it, then I should “put my money where my mouth is.” So here we are.

First of all, I made a post on my personal Facebook wall with some thoughts on my list, some shout outs, and some congratulations. This post is not going to be about that.

I want to start off by commenting on the event. Overall, the tournament was an enjoyable experience to attend. In particular, the three catered meals (2 lunches and 1 dinner) were great; it was even better that the meals were included in the ~$20 entry fee. Overall, the judges were adequately staffed and all staff members were very polite and professional. There were also some hiccups, such as some last minute furniture rearrangement and a broken air conditioner causing delays, but I think these growing pains are to be expected in a country still developing their organized play. Overall, I’d give a resounding endorsement to the tournament organizers, venue, and city. I would love to be back next year… but hopefully I won’t be able to come back.

Why? Because I believe it was an utmost oversight by *someone* in charge that I’m even allowed to play in this tournament in the first place.

I believe that “top 16” should be a proxy of the best 16 players in North America who are willing to do some traveling around NORTH AMERICA to play Pokemon. It should not be 16 reasonably above-average players who have a flexible job and an adequate bankroll to fund international travel. The foundation of my arguments below is based on the competitive fairness of having the “top 16” be based off of skill more than money and time.

Let me go further into the reasons why I think I should *NOT* have been allowed to play this past weekend in Indonesia. Or, at least the championship points that I earned this weekend should not have counted toward the North American top 16 chase.

1. The fact that people with more time and/or money can travel intercontinentally to get CPs is extremely unfair to the other players in a region who have other obligations—like a job, family, or school—which prevent them from traveling. This concept is so simple to grasp that I don’t feel like I even need to explain this further, so I’ll give an example instead. I left the U.S. for 5 days on a trip planned a week ago without having to take a single day off of work. Almost nobody else can do this and keep their job. This is very unfair to other players who don’t have the same luxury that I have.

2. If the goal of providing additional prizing in the form of stipends and day 2 worlds invites is to incentivize more people to join the top level competitive circuit, then the existing structure accomplishes the opposite of the intended goal. “Sam will travel to Indonesia to play in Regionals, but I can’t; even if I’m just as good as him, I’ll never be able to compete with him because I don’t have the time.”

3. I can only speak for myself, but I do not feel that I deserve my current “top 4” placement on the North American leaderboards. The top 16 competition this year has been pay-to-win, especially for me, given what I just did this past weekend. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either ignorant or lying. TPCi is building a reputation among casual and veteran players alike that “this game is about paying time and money more than skill.”

4. I effectively took away someone’s invite in Oceania. A top 16 berth in an Oceanic Regional is worth just about 1/3 of a Worlds invite, and I took that away from someone. I actually feel really shitty about this, but a point had to be made. There is already a scarcity of events in the region for local players to try to get points, and I just casually siphoned 200 CP from Oceania. Letting foreign players come in and siphon away championship points is completely antithetical to TPCi’s presumed goal of growing the game in underrepresented areas.

5. I have talked to about a dozen parents of juniors and seniors currently competing for a top 16 berth. Among them, there is literally not a single parent who is happy about the amount of travel that is required to compete for top 16 this year. The most common complaints that I hear are the number of weekends that must be committed to the chase and the number of days off of school that must be taken. There was even a parent who recently had to have a conversation with school administration about her son’s potential truancy due to Pokemon. The fact of the matter is, TPCi has designed a tournament system that adversely affects the academic performance of their top Junior and Senior players. That’s just bad.

Granted, every case is different, and different people travel for different reasons. There are people who come to the U.S. from the Latin American rating zone because there aren’t enough events in their native rating zone. However, this is a case where players in an *easier* area are going to a much harder area to play. What I did past weekend was an example of someone in a *harder* area going to a much easier area to play. This causes many of the problems I listed above, and should absolutely not be allowed if TPCi even gives half a damn about competitive fairness or “spirit of the game.” (Fairness is literally one of the six principles covered in SotG.)

For those of you that are friends with me on Facebook, you might have seen my post at the beginning of the year about my 4 Pokemon goals for 2018. A couple of those goals were about campaigning to fix the tournament structure, so I’ve been thinking about and discussing potential fixes to the system for a while now. Given my experiences so far this season, I’d like to share some of those ideas:

• Points that are earned in a region should stay in that region, except for designated events like Internationals and (rarely) select Regionals; a 75 person Regionals in Asia should not count for points in North America.

• There needs to be region-locked SPE/Regional-level events in countries where there is already a scarcity of events as to provide local players with a chance to earn invites and grow the game.

• There needs to be a recalibration of rating zones such that the distance traveled to play at in-region events is minimized, where possible.

• There needs to be clear and explicit communication, at the beginning of a season, that lists *EVERY SINGLE* SPE/REGIONAL OR HIGHER EVENT that a player can participate in to gain rating points for the “top 16” chase; the “oh by the way there might be a SPE/Regional later in the year” bullshit needs to stop (in particular for the non-North American regions).

• The event page for Regionals on the Pokemon website needs to be updated promptly whenever new information is available.

• Consider reinstalling the best finish limit, but partner it with the region-locking of most SPE/Regional or lower level events.

I readily admit that this list isn’t perfect, and others may have better ideas than I do. Nonetheless, I think no matter what you feel about the specific ideas I’ve listed above, it’s fair to say that the current system is competitively unfair and needs to be reformed. I understand that it is good marketing for the game that top players travel around the world to compete, but top level players should be on the same footing as they compete intercontinentally. At the beginning of the season, TPCi should specify which intercontinental events players can participate in as part of the top 16 chase. There should not be a Regional in Indonesia announced in the middle of the season with 3 weeks’ notice where North American players can get points.

I have tempered expectations, but I trust the competence of leadership at TPCi to give us a tournament structure brings competitive fairness back to the top 16 chase. At least, I really hope TPCi cares about competitive fairness. It’s definitely possible to design a system that simultaneously facilitates the growth of the game and avoids this intercontinental insanity.

Currently, there is a very small minority of players who actually benefit from this pay-to-win system. As one of the select few who benefits from this broken system, hopefully my words and actions carry a little more weight than someone who’s just “complaining because they’re not benefiting from the system.”

Obviously, there’s nothing that TPCi can do mid-season. The structure is already set. However, even if one person who reads this—no matter if it’s a TPCi employee, TO, judge, parent, or player—can influence how the tournament structure is designed in the future, my crusade over the past week will have been well worth it.

Thanks for reading, and see everyone in Sao Paulo.

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