Japan’s Path to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships Announced
Since the cancellation of their Regional Championships in 2011, Pokémon players in Japan have had to deal with an online ladder-based tournament as their first step towards the Pokémon World Championships. This year will be no different as they play for 31 of the 32 spots available at Japan’s invite-only National Championships in the online 2015 Japan Cup. The final spot in the Masters Division will be determined in a different method to be announced at a future date. The top 32 Junior and Senior Division players in the Japan Cup will qualify for the National Championships with no other method of qualification announced at this time.
Players will only be able to play 10 battles a day over the four days the tournament will run for. It will begin at 9:00 AM on Friday, May 1st and end at 8:59 AM on Tuesday, May 4th. The Japan National Championships will be held on June 14th, 2015 at the Pacifico Yokohama Annex Hall.
We do not currently know the number of players from Japan who will qualify for the World Championships or how many of them will receive travel awards. The format of the National Championships has not been announced either. Last year, the qualified players played in a Round Robin stage separated into eight groups with the top player from each group moving onto a Single Elimination bracket. All games in both the group stages and elimination stage were best of one until the finals.
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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39 Responses to Japan’s Path to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships Announced
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I feel really, really sorry for Japan. They certainly deserve better.
Additionally, I strongly recommend suicide to anyone who thinks World’s Qualifications should be based on Wifi Tournaments.
Invites should be based on consistency over the whole season, with weighting obviously decided on things like the number of participants at an event. A 10 game a day cap over 4 days hardly makes for rewarding consistency, in fact it rewards luck. I feel sorry for the Japanese players who will miss cut because they lost 2-3 games over 4 days, whilst others sit on their ratings.
Chuppa is right, a random homeless man in downtown indy trying to get you to buy a snap bracelet for like $10 is a memory you just can’t get anywhere else
I don’t get how people can call someone stupid on IRC because they would prefer the Japanese system over the current North American system. Good thing people get to express their opinions here and don’t get their posts deleted because the moderator disagrees.
The Japanese system is fair for everyone in Japan. Is it fair that many people in North America will go the entire season without having a premier challenge within 200 miles of where they live? Is it fair that some premier challenges in Utah only had 3 masters and gave points to everyone who showed up? It definitely isn’t fair that some people get to attend 6+ regionals a year and other struggle to hit 2 or 3.
Look at the US nationals format, you play 9 games and need to win 7 to cut to top ~64. In Europe you get to lose 1 game before you are no longer guaranteed top cut. Japan’s system gives every player 30 games to cut to a top 31. Japan’s nationals will do a better job determining the best top cut than any other country in the world and it is free to enter. And Japanese players don’t have to worry about losing their invite because they didn’t attend enough events.
I wouldn’t worry a lot about the people that travel a lot to Pokémon events. Yes, it’s not fair that some of us can afford to go to 6+ regionals and other of us can only attend 3 but look at the fact that most of the travelers aren’t doing very well. 15 of the 27 players with +32 Play Points aren’t even in the top 40 in cp. That’s over half. Just remember to be consistent at the events you attend and you should be fine.
Here’s a link so you can look at people’s play points and their cp.
https://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokemon/pokemon-events/ratings-and-rankings/?division=master&product=vg&btn-search=Search&state=0&location=176&type=cycle_pp&cycle=12&page_1=1#1
Wow. Great argument.
Yes there are people who go to all these events and still don’t get an invite, but there are also those who could theoretically do well but simply don’t have the money, and that’s where it becomes unfair. Especially when considering that pokemon is mainly played by students.
The only chance then is to attend one national and hope to win it, which is obviously very unlikely, even for a good player.
You have to win at least 25/30 games to have a chance at all in Japan’s system. There’s one tournament that gets you any chance at a Worlds invite, you have to use one team and do well one time to prove you deserve a chance at going to Worlds. I get that it gives you a little more room for error and statistically speaking should produce more accurate results by the numbers, but in the end you aren’t forced to play all of those 30 games and can sit on a peak. I’m not sure it ends up being any more healthy than 9 rounds of Swiss that cuts all players x-2 and above.
I know there’s a lot of drawbacks to the system we have in NA right now, but there’s a part that’s also working. You have three Top 4 Worlds players in the Top 8 right now, and three others who have qualified before. I see your issue with the system looking down the list at the Top 40, but even with the areas with a plethora of PCs, you can’t take the current standings and use that to imply who will end up at Worlds before Nationals happens. There’s going to be positives and negatives here, but I think focusing on just the negatives isn’t going to give a proper perspective of where we’re at.
I know your main argument here is that more games = more chance the better players get correctly represented. The issue, though, is that the tournament is online, which means anyone could really be playing – any person can pick up their friend’s / sibling’s game and play for them and potentially get an undeserving player an invite. Also, anyone can work together with friends to make plays since there’s nothing preventing it other than “honor system” rules. You’re also losing out on playing the person as well as the player, since you can’t read body language and/or the personality of the person you’re playing (although I’m not going to argue this one much as I don’t think it’s a huge issue.)
I agree with you that PCs aren’t doing the game a whole lot of good this year alone and that more games played = more accurate results. I just don’t think the online system’s drawbacks end up being better than what we currently have here.
…and what exactly is so different about this than Japan’s system?
You don’t get an advantage by attending a lot of events, that’s the difference.
So whats this about players turning up to worlds on D1 and auto qualifying? Did I miss something?
Either way i think that this may be indicative that the japanese, with more invites, may be heading towards a new period of domination!
And good on them too! Go BIDC!