Nugget Bridge Invitational – Season 3
This August 2nd at 12 PM PDT the third Nugget Bridge Invitational will begin. After a long and grueling season, 32 of Nugget Bridge’s best players will square off in a live tournament to determine the Nugget Bridge Invitational Champion. Not only are the players battling for prestige, there are over $1,000 in cash and prizes to fight for.
Since this tournament is happening live, you can get in on the action by watching on Nugget Bridge’s Twitch channel. Featured commentary will be provided by Nationals and Worlds commentators Scott Glaza, Evan Latt, Duy Ha, and Justin Flynn to keep you informed and entertained.
The 32 players have all qualified via various Nugget Bridge Tournaments, so let’s take a chance to view the list of competitors and their qualification method:
Nugget Bridge Invitational 2 Finalist
Dodrio Cup Finalists
Nugget Bridge Major 3 Top 8
Nugget Bridge Circuit Top 16
- PM649
- Technoz
- R Inanimate
- Simon
- Lajo
- LPFan
- Massi
- Biosci
- Legacy
- Hibiki
- TheBattleRoom
- 13Yoshi37
- Zach
- Baz Anderson
- Boomguy
- LudiImpact
Pass Down Invites
- EmbC (pass down invite from makiri)
- emforbes (pass down invite from Scott)
- Szymoninho (pass down invite from Plusle)
Now of course the thing you are waiting for, the bracket!
How will this bracket end up shaking out? Well you can voice your opinion by entering the prediction contest. The best score after all is said and done will win a code for Pokémon Battle Trozei for the 3DS.
Start times for reference:
Pacific 12 PM
Central 2 PM
Eastern 3 PM
UK 8 PM
Central Europe 9 PM
Eastern 5 AM
About the Author
makiri started playing VGC in 2008 and has been an advocate for VGC play since then. With three Regional Championship victories and multiple other high placings, makiri is a seasoned competitor ready to impart knowledge of the game to others.
Related Posts
Nugget Bridge Update →
GS Cup Announced as Pokémon’s 2016 Ruleset →
2016 Pokémon World Championships Date & Location Surfaces →
I have excitement! *marks calendar*
Good luck to all competing!
Should be some good practice for Worlds.
Or some really short lived practice, as my record in NBI so far is an excellent 0-1.
Either way, I’m excited to play in this. And hopefully bring in a bit more darkness around, not much of it was had during Nats. Not by me anyways.
Good Luck guys.
What a frightening bracket. Good work to everyone and good luck.
Well, I’m excited. Awesome way to kick off the week leading up to worlds!
Thank you to all here on the site that make this kind of thing possible. You’re all doing something pretty damn cool.
I’m just super happy that I managed to qualify for this tournament as it was one of my goals for the season. I look forward to the challenges of this tournament
Can Aaron and I duke it out in VGC’11? (jk XP)
Of Course I face my brother round 1 what a coincidence. What are the odds.
1/31
I got paired with a cute white girl round 1, gee gee no re
Hey guys, people have been really terrible about expressing a willingness to stream their matches for this. I understand — even though you’re playing in a tournament at no cost to you for free online where you can win amounts of real money equal to or better than what you can win in most of the official events, you feel entitled to optimize your odds at the expense of the community that allowed for that prize money to exist to begin with.
And that’s fine! It’s up to you guys. However, how we distribute the money Nugget Bridge earns is also up to us. And since we’re pretty sure the thousands of users who are not in the tournament would prefer we invested this money into something that actually gets them a decent show, here’s how this is going to work. If we end up in a round where no one is willing to stream, the tournament immediately ends. If it’s before top 4, no one gets the money. I guess those of you who aren’t willing to stream even though you’re on our stream tracker or have streamed in international friendlies before better hope the handful of people like Yoshi, Massi, and Hibiki have good runs!
Good luck to all the competitors — many of you are going to need it!
Going to stream my matches if needed, sorry for not offering earlier. I had some concerns about the commentary situation which made me not want to, but Makiri helped me understand the situation at hand and I’m completely comfortable now that I do understand it.
Apparently the main concern keeping people from streaming is scouting. Honestly, sure it could be an issue, but letting people watch the event live increases the desire to qualify for these in the future and can only help grow the community. I know there’s $500 on the table, and I know you think it’s okay if you’re just one person and you’d like to optimize your chances, but this isn’t about you. Don’t be a grimerbag about it and help grow the game a bit. I wouldn’t blame the admins at all for ending the tournament and cancelling prizes if it came to that; if you care about growing the game and the community, there’s no excuse for being able to stream and not doing so.
I’m really excited to be the defending champion going into this. With this being my 3rd invitational, hopefully everything will be even better than the previous tournaments. Good luck to everybody!
I understand the argument your making but by us players streaming this live tournament, wouldn’t that allow other players in the tournament to see our teams and strategies before we go against them. I think this may be the main reason why many people are against the whole streaming thing.
So?
If anyone here wants to bow out of this tournament for fear of getting scouted I’m willing to take one for the team and sub in here.
So people are gonna know what your team is all about! For example, if you have a trick room gallade, not many people will see that coming since it’s not common. But if they saw your previous match, than they’re going to know that you have a trick room team and gallade is your main tick room setter.
what about when they see your previous game because its a best of 3
Are you really that worried about people, who should be concentrating on their own battles, trying to put in the extra effort to try to watch and take notes on a stream for opponents they may not even face?
And if this is about people telling stuff about other people in between rounds… then it wouldn’t be that much different from a live event, and also isn’t really relevant to the players streaming.
Can we stop thinking about our selves for once and think about the Pokemon community instead? The Invitational is supposed to be one of the highlight tournaments that Nugget Bridge has to offer. This is not only one of the most entertaining live tournaments for the Pokemon community, but also a way for newcomers to get interested in Pokemon. The streaming of this invitational is essential for more people to get interested in Pokemon, especially following the momentum of interest Pokemon has gathered this year. Worlds might be soon, but the more Pokemon live stream exposure we get, the more this community will grow. Tournaments have been streamed in the past and they will continue to be stream. Is there a risk of scouting? Sure. Does it matter? No. A true invitational participant like yourself should know how to play your team at a slight disadvantage. You made the team, you should know it better than anyone. The streaming aspect should not change the way you play unless you are not confident in your ability as a player.
Here is the reality of video game tournaments: they are as much about spectators as players. The players aren’t really the ones who support events, the viewers and the community at large are. I think this game’s community has had a hard time getting their minds around that. Pokemon has certainly grown a lot again the last couple of years. Players here are benefiting from that with higher prize pools than last year because of Nugget Bridge’s viewership increasing and allowing for it, and similarly in real life stipends have certainly increased since 2012. These sort of expansions won’t continue or even be sustainable if the game at its higher levels doesn’t keep getting out there to keep people tuning in to and reading about VGC and Pokemon in general. This is why we’re pushing the streaming pretty hard here as we always do and is basically why you can’t opt out of the stream or the TVs at real life events, either. When you get spectators involved, tournaments are about more than just the players competing. For the real circuit obviously it’s an arm of marketing so there’s more to consider, but with the NB Invitational it is much simpler: it just doesn’t make sense for us to give money away if we aren’t getting anything for our viewers out of it. Especially given that, like with the real life circuit, it pretty obviously isn’t good value from a promotional perspective to give this much out for one stream. Players in tournaments, in that sense, are already getting an awful lot more than what is “fair”.
All games here are best-of-three series. Opponents can’t change teams to adapt to information gained during and between rounds. And frankly in real life, if you’re using something that bizarre, the entire tournament knows basically immediately. You aren’t going to win on a surprise if it isn’t good enough to outmaneuver opponents who know what it is.
Regardless, it doesn’t really matter. The stipulations here have been set. Players have been invited for a chance to win a sum of money they’re clearly pretty interested in competing for. That money came from the community visiting this website, and as such the stipulations of acquiring that money are tied to helping ensure that community gets a good product here. If you aren’t interested in that, you’re welcome not to participate. Those are the options.
Let’s face it, scouting will always be around in anything competitive. If you reveal a secret tech anywhere in your matches, it should be assumed that the person you played will probably tell someone after the match. Nothing is secret once it’s revealed, even if it behind the “closed” doors of a not streamed match. I knew most of Ashton’s team after Day 1 of Nationals and I did not even play in the tournament.
And if anyone thinks that revealing your “secret” automatically puts you at a disadvantage, it’s all about how you play it out as a player. At the last premier challenge I played in, I pretty much told everyone that I was going to use Scarf Aurorus and Mega Pinsir and their movesets. I was able to beat Huy (who built my team for me), TFC (who I have never beat before), Rastacharmander (who is one of the best upcoming players in my opinion), and Badintent with a little bit of luck (the #1 player in the country at the time).
Let’s do this for the community and grow the game. This has the possibility for the most HYPE online tournament ever.
I’m not complaining about the streaming stipulations and have even told the administrator that I’m willing to stream. I was simply giving an suggesting why some people may not want to stream and gave an example because that’s how I felt about the whole streaming thing at first. Scott mentioned many players didn’t wanna stream so it’s not just “one person” and if you were referring to me, again I DO PLAN ON STREAMING!
I agree that streaming is priority number 1 and agree with the decisions made. With that said Im going out of my way to get chibos capture card this friday and take a crash course in streaming so I can stream my games and maybe simon’s if he wants (since he will be at my house during the invitational)
This event looks awesome, congrats to all who made it this far after a really strong season! As a spectator, really appreciate the opportunity to watch some great matches from the best competitve Pokémon has to offer. On the whole “could-stream-should-stream” thing, to me it sounds like a normal tournament, with the same information war and inevitable, delicious mind games as any other live event. So let’s hype this up! I for one look forward to revelling in all your hopes, glory and salty, salty tears – with a beer, in the comfort of my bedroom. GO SPORTS!
Ok, so as someone who is physically unable to stream, what do I take from this? Am I expected to forfeit my spot or lose my top 8 match, in case I get there obviously, intentionally in order for the tournament to finish? I fully understand that we all want to see this tournament be streamed all the way till the end, but on the other hand streaming ability was never officially made a requirement for players in order to enter Nugget Bridge events, or play them to the maximum extent. (And it probably shouldn’t… Let’s face it, we’re mostly looking at Game Freak here to finally give us a spectator mode — or at least an easy way to bring the game onto an ordinary TV and then go from there.) On the scouting thing, there have already been posted a good number of arguments for why it doesn’t/shouldn’t matter. (However, to make people more aware of that, I’d actually support some kind of tournament in the future where people are required to submit the team they use and then all who reach the second stage get published before the matches continue.) But adding to that, it’s also noteworthy that, at official events, there are full nights between some matches that do allow for massive and potentially unfair theorymoning, but this here NBI isn’t even gonna last as long as a big tournament’s Swiss stage, and people are still unable to change teams. But for anyone who does want to feel the unprotected sting of informational warfare and heavy counter-teaming for the sake of the actual experience and comparison, go play in the NPA!
That being said… If I am allowed to play in the tournament unrestrictedly and happen to win it, I’ll spend the prize on a second 3DS and a capture card.
Can someone explain to me why we are forced to keep the same team in between rounds? The whole stream and get scouted argument is voided by being able to switch teams. Why are we trying to simulate a real life tournament when there is no reason to?
I hope everyone brings a nice boring consistent team because what the viewers want to see is 4 kangaskhans in the top 4… The game will definitely grow a lot more if a player who is used to singles watches the stream and thinks “wow there are tons of team options here” rather than “wow vgc is stupid everyone uses the same pokemon.” If people weren’t penalized for using an eccentric pick and getting scouted, I am sure there would be a lot more variety in this tournament. It looks to me that the tournament isn’t designed to maximize viewer enjoyment or grow the game.
I imagine someone who adamantly won’t stream even though they’ve streamed repeatedly in the past would be an expert on the subject. If it was up to me, you wouldn’t even be in this tournament any longer. Don’t push your luck.
Fatum, we’re sorry about the position this puts people like you in, but the EnFuegos of the world have forced our hand.
Honestly this whole “being scouted” issue is just silly. I have found VGC to be to play the player not the Pokemon themselves. If you become severely disadvantaged if your opponent knows a secret niche on your team. Then there has to be a problem with the player.
Hopefully this tournament goes through completion, it is things like these events that help the community, if I was in it I would even go and buy a capture card.
The reason to simulate a real life tournament might have something to do with this website’s Vision to teach and educate people about the real life tournaments.