Results from the 2013 Italy and Korea Pokémon National Championships
The last two weekends saw two separate National Championships on two different continents. On May 5th, 2013 in Seoul, the Korean National Championships determined the champions that would be sent to Vancouver, Canada for the 2013 Pokémon World Championships this August. A 64 person single elimination tournament was held in each age division and the last remaining player in each received an invite and trip to the World Championships. These players are:
- Masters: Sejun Park
- Seniors: “Alice”
- Juniors: Do Heun Kwon
Just one week later, the 2013 European Video Game Championship Series kicked off in Milan with the VGC ’13 Italy National Championship. For the first time, Europe saw a swiss tournament with a best-of-three single elimination top cut. Players were very excited to finally have a format that helped compensate for the variability in the game. How did things play out?
Masters
- [IT] Matteo Gini (Matty)
- [DE] Eloy Hahn (Dragoran5)
- [DE] Matthias Helimoldt (Tyvyr)
- [ES] Jordi Picazo
- [DE] Michael Riechert (Michilele)
- [GB] Barry Anderson (Baz Anderson)
- [ES] Miguel Marti de la Torre (Sekiam)
- [ES] Jose Garcia Mejia (Donstev)
- [IT] Alberto Gini (BraindeadPrimeape)
- [GB] Ben Kyriakou (Kyriakou)
- [ES] Javier Bellanco (bellanko)
- [IT] Carlo Arbelli (shinycarletto)
- [GB] Christopher Koryo Arthur (Koryo)
- [DE] Matthias Suchodolski (Uxie)
- [IT] Arash Ommati (Mean)
- [IT] Manuel Dellavedova
Seniors
Photo Credits: BraindeadPrimeape (Feature Image), Szymoninho (Masters Bracket)
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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#IDreamOfGini
who was using the perish trap team/what was on it????????
We were pretty close to having 3 Gini’s qualifying for worlds, with a picture of a banner with 3 Genies. Would have made quite a story.
Congrats to Sejun, and Matty for winning their Master’s Divisions, and congrats to all those who have qualified for Worlds.
Not sure what was on it, but I heard Jordi was the one using it.
Inb4 PerishTrap worms its way over to US Nats like Swagger did last year.
Hasn’t it already made it’s way over here? With Wolfey nearly winning the NB:I with it?
Great, now I need to memorize which Pokemon can learn Perish Song…
The European meta is the same as the US one anway, the only thing that seperated Japan/Korea so much is the fact we don’t play together often but most/all of the good european players play in US online tournaments and on the same simulators… Like R Inanimate said, perish trap is nothing new. Well done to whoever got 3rd with it though that’s pretty impressive
please try to perish trap me I need more byes
Also man, how good have the favorites been this year? Seems like a bit of a theme… there used to seem to be so many more surprise winners, but most of the Regionals in NA were pretty predictable and now with Sejun and Matty winning their Nationals… hell, even Katsumi winning the Japanese qualifier isn’t very surprising.
Congrats to Matty at any rate, happy to see him win.
Seriously, what is with all these weird perish trap teams popping up? Only a limited numer of players can use perish trap teams effectively and I keep meeting people on random matchup who have no idea how to use their Wolfe Glick clone teams. Just because a good player like Wolfe Glick uses some obscure strategy everybody suddenly starts copying him. Come on people, where did your originality go?!
Show some respect to Jordi at least, this post is incredibly condescending and just not necessary, and he is clearly one of the people who know how to use perish trap effectively. Wolfe’s team was also pretty unique (Kingdra, Gengar, Delcatty) and just because someone uses a perish trap team does not mean they are copying Wolfe 9.9
Congrats to Sejun and Matty and everyone else who qualified for Worlds!
Hahahaha ok deagle
Perish trap is probably my favorite team archetype and I’m really really impressed that it made it that far. It’s pretty much impossible to win with it in a bo3 and it’s still pretty hard to win against players who have played any team like it in Swiss rounds. I haven’t seen his team line up besides eviolite goth from one picture but I really hope he was using jigglypuff variant.
Congrats to bcaralarm for continuing his streak of choking at his first national of the year!
misery really does love company
Petitioning to ban Cybertron on being able to talk about originality.
Congrats to all the qualifiers.
at least I don’t tell other people to be original
You need to watch more high school specials.
Congrats to Matty, Sejun, and all the other guys who qualified! Dang, Matty and Sejun have very similar resumes:
Both won their respective country’s national championship in 2011, got 2nd at worlds 2011, qualified worlds 2012, won respective country’s national championship in 2013.
?? no more post of the participants?
I was one, a yamsing 46 place but… a lot of level, very lot of level: Matty, Bellanko, Kasty, Kyriakou,B.Anderson, Flash, Donsteve( I losed with him) Osirus… etc etc…
About Jordi, he is my friend, and have a few original PKMN, isn’t Wolfe’s copy, I know it, because I see the top 4 and I played against him in the plane coming to Barcelona, and have a lot of new tricks, Is so solid, but, with a few PKMN can be countered well.
Felicidades Jordi!! and.. Felizitacione Matty! what a PKMN player…
Hopefully this tournament make me the oportunity to meet a lot of players, of NuggetBridge (or isn’t) , all with a high level.
Thank you friends for let me meet you !
GG Foodking 😉
Fun fact about jordi:
Last year he took his father to the qualifier and stand next to him in the line to get a “first round bye” by playing against his own father. Loosing to Michilele in Round 2 was the end of his participation.
About his father, I don’t like this type of nasty methods. His father cannot participate without a trainer number.. and without a identification target, he has?
About losing in Round 2, I lost in Round 3 last year, and you cannot know if it was for HaX, or because Michelele is a very good player? maybe is this.
That was a really great and intense weekend!! Really happy to winning the final and finally becoming Italian National Champion!! I was really happy to meet all the european people fromthis community, and I’mm looking forward to meet the american guys at worlds too!! Thanks a lot for the support, it was really important for me!!
First at all congrats to Matty for his fantastic Swiss and finals.
I did Top 24 (Enzo Ferey). The level was very high but still a little bit lower than I could imagine before the tournament. I have been very bad lucky in the 5 first rounds where I got haxxed very hard although I managed to win 3 of 5 and I came back form 1 – 2 to 6 – 2. In the first round I got 4 crits against me and then I got time stalled against a Gastrodon (recover) with my +3 Calm Mind Suicune, I threw over 11 ice beams but I didn’t froze at any one or crit. Then the other battle I lost was against Deku who won a crucial speed tie (who won that speed tie, won the battle) and of course I didn’t u.u I also only met good players (3 spanish between them: Deku, K-OS and Misi) so I can say I have been bad lucky with pairings too….But it’s fine, I’m happy with my results and I hope come back stronger at Birmingham in 3 weeks, see you there !
Congrats to everyone successful! This was clearly the best European tournament up to now and I’m looking forward to see how they all will perform in Vancouver.
Despite the quality of the tournament being so much higher than ever, it also delivers good proof of my thesis that you simply can not win Master Division tournaments these days without being lucky (or not unlucky, however you may put it). Let’s start this with the champion himself: I think he used a pretty threatening team to achieve his first victory at an official live event but also a daring one: large focus on standard Kingdrunk, many Pokémon with Thundurus issues but no way to OHKO or even 2HKO him without Helping Hand, and a Breloom that’s susceptile to 1-turn sleeps and 2-hit Bullet Seeds to add to that. And then this strange top 8 match, of course, which I still confuses me in some ways… Now to stories of other players (keeping it to rain only just for the lols): Jordi’s Perish Song made it to Worlds while someone other’s Perish Song that I probably feared more than any other matchup there choked heavily in swiss — 5 Draco Misses throughout only 2 games among it, lol. I myself choked as well and this is how: I played a somewhat unorthodoxical rain team with a Timid Dragon Pulse Kingdra to give me an edge in mirror matches and the only rain mirror I played all day had an even faster Timid Kingdra troll me, while I’m sure that most of the top-cut rain teams had regular Modest Kingdra (though most of them were still well prepared for Kingdra mirrors, which certainly earns my respect), haha. That irony… Anyway, no johns. There was absolutely no way that some people expected to be successful wouldn’t perform badly and how is Italy even supposed to feel, being almost completely eaten up by foreign Europe again, with their only invitee being the same guy that was the only one to represent Italy at Worlds last year…
More off-topic, US nats as stand-alone tournament will be even more rough and unforgiving, but on the other hand the preliminary season will still be very meaningful… Man, I’d really rather have an equally structured Regionals circuit in Europe than outrageous prize support in a more credible make-or-break environment. Also, “good” job Pokémon not handing out Pikachu 3DSes as prizes, lol.
Back to the drawing board for Bochum, then. ‘Twill be my last chance to ever make it to a Gen V world championship…
What?! Are you serious?
Ok, its known that UK, Germany and especially Spain have a greater number of good players if compared to the smaller italian vgc comunity [specifying that i’m not referring in any way to the quality of the players]; despite this, this time 5/16 of the top cut was Italian, and i can confirm that our players were not ended up there by chance, we were some of the best, and this is also the proof that the new elimination system worked really well.
You said yourself that many players performances had been determined by hax,[I had been surpringly haxed out as well in my top16 match against Dragoran5 just when i almost had the game]. Please dont speak like if me, Braindeadprimeape ans Shinycarletto had no way to make to the top4, cause its not true at all.
Speaking of the National in general, i can say that i enjoyed it a lot, and i really dont suffer who complains about the organization of the event.
Yeah, there were many delays and stuff errors [and i am really the first one noticing them] but it seems that we europeans are just forgetting what our nationals were like until last year.
I have to disagree with Fatum as well. The top cut was very diverse and pretty even:
5 Italians
4 Germans
4 Spanish
3 Brits
The invites were pretty even as well with 2 Germans, an Italian, and one Spanish player. These are still essentially Regional events that are leading straight into the World Championships. Nobody technically has an invite until all three events are over.
Nobody? I think at least the 2 finalists have their invites for sure!
Haha, well yes
It should be impossible to lose your invite with 1st and 2nd (and very hard with 3rd and 4th) but you know what I mean!
I really love the diversity in the top cut, I hope we get that again in the next two Nationals and end up qualifying a decent variety of players to Worlds — this is what makes international competition fun. Heck of a tournament by the Germans though… they seemed to get the least hype going in but qualified the most players.
This made me smile. We’re kinda having the same problem in North America… it’s a little awkward, since things are so much better than before but we still want them to be better without sounding ungrateful. I don’t blame the guys who are complaining for wanting things to be a little smoother, but you’re definitely right.