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Published on July 3rd, 2014 | by Scott

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2014 United States Pokémon National Championships Preview

We’re just a day away from play beginning at the 2014 United States Pokémon National Championships, which is noteworthy, because tomorrow is a Friday, decisively not the day the tournament normally starts! Hopefully everyone has already preregistered, since you probably needed to do that before you read this article. At the time of my writing this we were already over 600 Masters preregistered, which would make this the biggest National tournament in VGC’s history. Players have been competing all year to try to get enough Championship Points to qualify for Worlds and have earned travel awards and stipends totaling over $300,000 over all age divisions between VGC and TCG . This weekend players will have their last chance to boost their point totals to secure invitations and trips to Worlds. For those of you who won’t be able to attend, which better be because you don’t live in North America or you’ve recently been hit by an automobile or something, there’ll be a stream on Pokémon’s Twitch channel. The plan is to stream VGC from about noon to 5 PM EDT on Saturday and from 2-5 PM EDT on Sunday, which should cover all of the tournament’s most important matches. Tune in if you can’t make it out in person!

Tournament Format

The format of the tournament is vastly improved for Masters US Nationals this year compared to last year (which was still better than in the past), and I think it is fair to say it is the best tournament format I have ever seen used for an event of anything resembling this size in Pokémon. The format and schedule this year is the following:

Thursday

  • Check-In from 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

Friday

  • Single game matches.
  • Swiss Rounds. It seems likely there will be nine rounds and two flights, but there may only be eight rounds.
  • Instead of cutting a predetermined amount of players, everyone with 2 or fewer losses moves on to Saturday.

As someone who has failed to cut this tournament by one player twice with an X-2 record, it is difficult for me to put into words exactly how much better the 2014 system will feel to players. There is no worse feeling in Pokémon than being eliminated from the most important event in the circuit because you lost out on Opponent’s Win % instead of on actual wins. I think it is understandable that a tiebreaker of some sort has to be used at the Regional level because of the time constraints married to a one day tournament.With how much more time Nationals has, and with the general volatility of best-of-one VGC play, cutting on Opponent’s Win % was always something I thought was lazy at the National level. I think I speak for us all when I say I’m very glad to see it removed from Friday’s portion of the tournament. Every year a bunch of X-2 players do extremely well in the second stage of the tournament, and it is a little silly that all X-2 players don’t get that same opportunity. We sort of lucked into only X-2s cutting last year, which I think all the players sure seemed to feel led to a more fair cut than in previous years, so it is good to see precautions have been taken to ensure we end up with the same fair Day 1 cut no matter what this year. Here’s hoping the flights end up a little more even than in past years, though!

Saturday Swiss

  • Best-of-three matches.
  • Six or seven Swiss rounds featuring the players who had two or fewer losses on Friday.
  • Records are reset from Friday; all players start at 0-0 again.
  • The top eight players move on to Top Cut

Saturday Top Cut

  • Single Elimination
  • Best-of-three matches.
  • Only the top eight and semifinal matches will be played on Saturday

Players should recognize the tournament format here: it’s actually exactly the same as the World Championships, with an extra round of Swiss potentially added in. I think for the VGC circuit to have reliable results, a tournament that awards such a large amount of Championship Points needs to use a format that is likely to produce results that put as deserving of players as possible deep in the tournament. This is maybe the first year that I don’t think anyone can doubt that all of the players who make top 8 this year will have played exceptional tournaments and will absolutely be deserving of their positions. Going 7-0, 6-1, or even 5-2 in a field full of the country’s top players through grueling best-of-three rounds will be an extremely impressive accomplishment. There’s no hiding in that many best-of-three matches: you’re not going to get by because you got easy opponents in a couple best-of-three rounds or because you survived day 1 Swiss on some gimmicks. It will be an incredibly steep challenge to try to come out on top of this one.

The one drawback is that since we have a cut of eight players instead of all of the players with a specific record, this time Opponent’s Win % will come into play. This is one case where we’re not likely to end up with an amount of players that can be cut on record efficiently and we will have used two days of time to get the tournament through 16 rounds, so a cut does need to be made somewhere. I’m very glad that this situation is coming up on Day 2, where at least more players get the chance to fight for the bigger CP and prize pools in a more reliable format. Perhaps a potential improvement next year would be to apply Day 1 Swiss records only when breaking ties, in order to bring some importance back to performing well in the tournament as a whole while keeping the more reliable best-of-three Swiss weighted more strongly. For now, this format is a massive improvement.

Sunday

  • Each age division’s finals will be played consecutively
  • Best-of-three matches

There isn’t too much to say here other than I’m very thankful the finals are once again happening consecutively instead of simultaneously. With the stream, this is sort of be the way things have to be, but I actually really enjoyed the Junior and Senior division finals at Nationals last year. I was grateful I actually got to watch them, which I didn’t in past years, when all the finals were going on at once.

Prizes

1st Place

  • A Pokémon VG National Championships First-Place Trophy
  • 480 Championship Points
  • A Nintendo Wii U 32GB Deluxe Set
  • A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
  • Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

2nd Place

  • A Pokémon VG National Championships Second-Place Trophy
  • 440 Championship Points
  • A Nintendo 3DS XL system
  • A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
  • Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

3rd & 4th Place

  • A Pokémon VG National Championships Semi-Finalist Trophy
  • 360 Championship Points
  • A Nintendo 3DS XL system
  • A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
  • Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

5th through 8th Place

  • 210 Championship Points
  • A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

9th through 16th Place

  • 150 Championship Points
  • A combination of 18 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

17th through 32nd Place

  • 90 Championship Points
  • A combination of 8 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

33rd through 64th Place

  • 30 Championship Points (if division attendance is 128 or greater)
  • A combination of 4 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

65th through 128th Place

  • 15 Championship Points (if division attendance is 256 or greater)

Byes

In addition to the travel award and stipend, one of the advantages of finishing in the top 16 in North America for Championship Points after Spring Regionals is a round one bye at US Nationals. Each of the following players will have one less round of potentially having an unfortunate matchup against another top player, one less round where the wonderful RNG in Pokémon could happen to them, and one more round to relax to start the day. With opponent’s win percentage out of the equation on day 1, each of these players will only need go 6-2 over the last eight rounds instead of 7-2 over nine to reach the second day of play. Achieving a 6-2 record is a task that should be very achievable for these accomplished players.

The Metagame

There are still a handful of questions to be answered in this format. On some level I just want to throw out Japanese Nationals because the best-of-one format is so unlike the World Championships, but even in Europe I think there were enough mismatches and questionable circumstances in top cut that we didn’t learn quite as much about the format as I would have liked to. With Days 2 and 3 of US Nationals mirroring the format of Worlds, this tournament should be a good barometer of how effective many Pokémon will be in August. With US Nationals in front of us leading into Worlds afterward, here are some things to keep an eye on this weekend for what they could tell us about the metagame and the true strength of some Pokémon in this format.

kangaskhan-mega

Always the first story when it comes to discussing Pokémon in this format, Kangakshan is the fulcrum upon which the metagame balances. The fun of the big tournaments is that all of the serious contenders are completely aware of that. When you have a Pokémon as powerful as Kangaskhan in a format, you really only have two appropriate responses if you’re trying to end up on top. The first response is the most common, which is using Kangaskhan yourself and focusing on using it better than other players, creating a positive matchup in mirrors and dealing with Kangaskhan’s counters as efficiently as possible. We’ve seen a lot of that this year, with Kangaskhan winning a massive chunk of events. The alternative is to gameplan against Kangaskhan, knowing it’ll probably be on at least about half of your enemy teams. Teams looking to do so try to exploit the Kangaskhan matchup as much as possible while still having enough power on their team to handle everything else. I’m expecting to see much more of that second category here, and it may be Mega Mawile or even dark horse Mega Lucario who takes it all this time.

charizard-mega-y

I am very curious if Charizard’s more common Mega is as dead as it appears. It’s very rare to see people trying to build around it presently, though I’m sure some players will try. The metagame isn’t focusing on it nearly as directly as it was earlier in the format, so it may have enough room to surprise people if the right team is built around it. Still, there’s still no shortage of Pokémon like Heat Rotom, Garchomp, and Tyranitar left in the metagame to give Charizard trouble. Based on the past couple of months, Charizard looks like it will be Mr. Irrelevant in this tournament. Especially given that it started the year in contention for best-Pokémon-in-format to some players I think the penultimate tournament in Charizard’s VGC 2014 adventure will be very telling one way or the other.

smeargle

Another one of those Pokémon that always enters the conversation in this format, Smeargle’s relative lack of success when it counts in this format has made its still significant impact a little deceptive. In spite of Smeargle’s massive perceived threat, there have been relatively few strong players willing to chance it with Smeargle so far. It will be interesting to see if the increased focus on best-of-three, where the odds are more likely to even out, will bring a few more Smeargle out of the woodwork this time. The thought players may have here is that the impact of single Dark Voids or Moody boosts are lessened in an environment with more games. Smeargle players are likely to have a very nerve-wracking Day 1, but if they get into Day 2 I am curious if they won’t find a relatively underprepared field given Smeargle’s lack of success in the big events this year.

talonflame

Another controversial Pokémon in this format — though in this case, it’s more controversial in the sense Gastrodon was controversial. Talonflame is certainly a Pokémon that is objectively above average based on its usage and results, but also a Pokémon that a lot of top players think is absolutely terrible. Talonflame’s performance on Day 2 is something that should be very telling. I am personally expecting Talonflame to wilt on Day 2 and to be dead weight for a lot of teams that make it to that point, but if we see even two or three Talonflame make it through to the top 8 after having actually been selected by the trainers repeatedly on Day 2, I think everyone will have to admit Talonflame is for real. If Talonflame does hold people back on the second day… well, at least the format won’t be as crazy as it has seemed in the way it has elevated some Pokémon to stardom that don’t fit the usual mold.

salamencehydreigon

It seems like every format we start out using a special Dragon-type other than Hydreigon. In the past it has been Latios, and this year it has been Salamence. Yet in every format toward the end of the year, the usage of other Dragons seems to decline in favor of Hydreigon. We saw Hydreigon appear in both the Senior and Masters finals of Japan’s National tournament, and I would expect to see more Hydreigon than we saw at Regionals at US Nationals as well. The difference between 2014 Salamence and 2012-13 Latios is that a big part of why Salamence used is that in spite of its inferior damage output it provides some team support with Intimidate in a metagame where Intimidate support is very strong. Intimidate may cause Salamence’s usage to be a little more resilient than Latios’ was. Hydreigon gobbling up the omnipresent Aegislash is something I expect to appeal to many players.

(Trick Room)

All but forgotten for the early months of this format, Trick Room has slowly trickled back into relevance. Trick Room achieved a handful of decent finishes in Europe and some excellent finishes in the last set of North American Regionals, mostly through TheBattleRoom. I think Trick Room is good enough that it has a chance to be a big factor here, especially if someone is clever enough anti-metagaming with it. I don’t think anyone expected something like Enosh’s Trick Room team last year to do as well as it did, but there it was in the finals. It is another strategy to keep an eye on this year.

The Big Picture For Players at US Nationals

While all the players playing this weekend will be playing with the dream of becoming a National Champion, with the preview this time I thought I’d take a little different approach. I’m going to focus on the other important part of US Nationals: determining which players qualify for the World Championships. Only one player can become National Champion, but sixteen players will clinch their invitations to the World Championships and four will win paid trips there, so there are high stakes in many, many matches other than the finals. Rather than just rattle off some good players like I’ve done in the past with these previews, I’m going to touch on some players in each CP range I think have much better than average odds of getting enough points to make it to the World Championships or who have a particularly interesting story to draw out. As always, please try not to be offended if you’re reading this and are expecting to be written about and don’t see your name. I can’t write about everyone, and certainly there will be surprises who make it deep in Nationals this year, as there are every year. I think with this being the first Nationals of a new generation, much like in 2011 some legends will probably begin this weekend. I’m excited to see which players I’m wrong about, as some players will definitely blow us all away by how good they really are this weekend. Since it’s kind of lost in the rest of the prizes earlier in the article, here are the Championship Point payouts from Nationals:

Finish CP Payout
1st 480
2nd 440
3rd & 4th 360
5th-8th 210
9th-16th 150
17th-32nd 90
33rd-64th 30
65th-128th 15

Working off of Gavin’s work here, the actual bar for Worlds could be anywhere between 243 and 428 in the apocalyptic scenarios in either direction. However, the expectation is that the bar to make Worlds will be in the range of around 302-322 CP. I am personally of the opinion the expected bar there is a bit low, but I’m going to write this article based on it being about 320.It should be noted that the scenarios in Gavin’s article are a little more specific than what I’m going to present here: if you want to familiarize yourself with your specific scenarios as a player and you’re in the middle of the pack, his article is what you should be reading. The goal here is just to guide the preview by identifying what each player probably needs to do to make it to Worlds and to draw out the players I think have the best chance of winning the North American invites to the big dance in Washington DC.

Working from an expected cutoff around 320 CP makes things a little simpler. We can then assume that the last four players remaining will make the World Championships, as the 360 CP from top 4 is over our expected bar. We can also assume idle Enosh Schachar (Human) at 345 CP will make Worlds, and if Omari Travis doesn’t finish in the top four, that he accounts for another invite sitting at 362 entering the tournament. This leaves 10 of the 16 spots to go to players who finish in spots other than the top four, and thanks to 5th-32nd giving dramatically more points than they did last year, many more players will still have hope even without a top four finish this year. Ray Rizzo at 310 and Wesley Morioka at 303 are the only people with CP totals that fall in the middle of Gavin’s projected range, but they are lower than the bar of 320 I am playing with here, so it is fairly likely 14 of the 16 players who make Worlds will at least have needed to gain some points from US Nationals this year. Even fewer players are likely to be safe this year than last year in spite of there being four more invites for the region: once again, US Nationals is by far the most important tournament in the circuit.

Players who will probably make Worlds finishing 65th or worse:

362 CP — Omari Travis
310 CP — Ray Rizzo

Worthy of their own section both because they’re among the favorites to win the tournament and because of their domination so far this year. Omari’s case for Worlds, as I wrote previously, is already closed: no realistic scenario has Omari missing Worlds even without playing in Nationals. Ray’s case for Worlds is a little more interesting.

With about 600 people registered as of when I’m writing this, we’d end up with about 300 players in each flight and 9 rounds of play. If we had exactly 600 players, there would be about 54 players who finish 7-2 or better and about 98 more who finish 6-3, getting us to a total of 152 players who are 6-3 or better. This is really only relevant for Ray, who may make Worlds without showing up and will almost definitely make Worlds with that +15 CP. The odds of him finishing among the 24 lowest 6-3s is pretty low with the round one bye giving a big win percentage boost, so from a practical perspective Ray only needs to go 5-3 to make it to Worlds. I think we’d all be shocked if that didn’t happen. He’s basically clinched.

The bigger impact of these two is that if they do well and deny huge chunks of CP, they make things much easier for the rest of the field with fewer players vaulting way up. However, my read on both of these guys is interesting in that I don’t expect to see them in the top eight of the tournament. I know this is a controversial stance, but hear me out. I think the CP system is in general pretty good at tiering players, and these guys have both proven themselves. Omari has the most Regionals CP anyone has ever acquired in one season, with 350 of the 360 possible CP from two wins and a second place finish in four Regional attempts. Ray, as a three-time World Champion, is undeniably the best player the Video Game Championships has ever seen. However, I think both of them have big question marks about their preparation for this tournament and that there is a good chance it will hamper their performances. In Ray’s case, he was focusing on an actuarial exam until Sunday and probably hasn’t played a game of Pokémon since the last time he won a Regional. Admittedly, he’s gotten away with doing this all year, but this is a harder tournament and he’s pushing even closer to the last minute. In Omari’s case, I know he’s been on social media hiatus and I think his reclusiveness is a big mistake in a game like Pokémon. It’s a very socially-oriented game, and while I’m sure he’s been practicing, cutting yourself off from potential information and the community at large is dangerous. He’s certainly at a point in his career where I’m sure he knows what works for him, but this is going to be the most difficult VGC event he’s played in since Worlds in 2010 and I think that will catch up with him a little bit.

I can’t imagine either of these guys doing worse than 6-3 unless something crazy happens, but I think there’s a very real chance of both of these guys missing cut. I think the most probable scenario for both of them is a finish somewhere in the middle of Day 2 Swiss. I’m expecting them both to do better at Worlds than they do at Nationals.

Players who will probably make Worlds finishing between 33rd and 64th or worse:

303 CP — Wesley Morioka
292 CP — Collin Heier

While Wesley is most likely OK with +15 for a cool 318, and 30 clinches in all realistic scenarios. Collin’s 322 only ends up a little bit on the right side of the expected CP range with +30, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume he’ll be OK with it if he gets it. In a practical sense, finishing in the top 64 to get these 30 points will require these players to go 7-2 on Day 1 and make it to Day 2, since even with only 600 competitors, which may wind up being low, only 10 of 98 6-3s would get the bonus CP from top 64, a particularly unsavory gamble.

I expect both of these players not to have to worry about it. In Collin’s case, getting 210 CP over two consecutive Regionals is almost unmatched, and having done so on the two most recent weeks of play in North America surely is as strong an indicator as you’re ever going to find that Collin is hot going into Nationals. In Wesley’s case, he’s been a little up and down depending on the event, but he’s one of only six players who have seen the finals of two Regionals this season. He’s also a former National Champion, and while that was a few years ago in 2010, you don’t win a tournament like US Nationals without being a clutch player. Both these guys are really excellent players and have done well in XY events, and I think they both have fantastic shots of making it deep runs on Day 2. As with the last two guys, I think it would be pretty shocking for them not to get what they need to make Worlds, but in this case I think they’ll actually have the better Nationals finishes of the two groups and deny some meaningful CP from the competition.

People who will probably make Worlds finishing between 17th and 32nd:

286 CP — Michael Lanzano
278 CP — DeVon Ingram
278 CP — Mike Suleski
273 CP — Zach Droegkamp
271 CP — Gavin Michaels
266 CP — Blake Hopper
256 CP — Stephen Morioka
256 CP — Greyson Garren
253 CP — Benji Irons
249 CP — Aaron Zheng (Cybertron)
248 CP — Ashton Cox
243 CP — Trista Medine
242 CP — Toler Webb (Dim)
240 CP — Thomas Mifflin
232 CP — Wolfe Glick (Wolfey)
230 CP — Paul Hornak

17th-32nd gives a pretty substantial 90 points this year, which is the same amount of CP 9th-12th received last year. Assuming about 54 players playing, 18 or 19 players will finish 4-2 or better and about 17 will finish 3-3. What this means is that to finish in this range, players would have to go 7-2 or better on Day 1 and then finish as one of the weakest 4-2s or as any but the weakest 3-3s, as 13 or 14 or the 17 3-3s would finish in this range. The other possibility is that we have enough players to have seven rounds of Swiss. Assuming 65 players, the minimum for seven rounds of Swiss instead of six, about 15 players will finish 5-2 or better. 17 or 18 players will finish 4-3, which winds up almost perfect with the actual numbers — basically, 32.49 players will finish 4-3 or better. While it’d really be a bummer to be that one 4-3 player who didn’t get the extra CP if it mattered, for the most part a winning record on Day 2 with 7 rounds means top 32. Even with the maximum amount of players of 72, which would come off a maximum attendance of 800, all but four 4-3s would finish top 32.

The deviation on what could happen here is pretty large. Given the previous sections’ four players and the top four from the tournament being nearly guaranteed Worlds, obviously if these 16 players were actually all within the 17-32 slots, the guys toward the bottom would not make Worlds and a big chunk of this group would whiff. However, in real life, that is not what will happen. Some of them will choke and not even make Day 2, some of them will blow Day 2, and I’m sure at least one of them will get that big bag of CP loot for finishing in the top 4. Aaron Zheng is also a bit of a misnomer, as he already has a Worlds invite from his top 4 finish at last year’s Worlds and is just playing for a trip.

Frankly, to me this is the most dangerous group in the tournament. Very few of them actually won Regionals, which almost makes them scarier — most of them didn’t get here on one or two big finishes, they got here by being consistent throughout the year. On the flipside, two of the people who did win Regionals in this group made it to the finals twice, with two wins for JiveTime and a win and a loss for Benji. It’s hard to imagine anyone in this group faltering too hard, though surely, some of them will. However, if you look at this group, I think you see most of the star players in Pokémon, so it’s really hard to put too much doubt on anyone.

The players without the byes — that is, the ones who have their aliases attached above because they hadn’t been mentioned in the article yet — are certainly the most vulnerable in theory because of needing to win the extra round on Day 1. I still think they’re among the least likely to actually miss when you look at who doesn’t have a bye. I think Aaron Zheng could go either way since he doesn’t really need this tournament, but he seems like he’s been working hard to shake off the rust before Worlds and I can’t imagine him missing Day 2 unless he ends up in a situation where he mysteriously loses to a friend who needs it more. Toler Webb is a former Senior World Champion and Wolfe Glick is both a former two-time National Champion and a Worlds runner-up, and they built their résumés by being better players than most of the people around them. Toler was inches away from taking Aaron out in the last round of Swiss in Worlds last year, and perhaps if we had I would be writing about his already secured Worlds invite instead. While Wolfe had an off year last year through trying a little too hard to break the format, I think both of these guys are going to come in hungry this year. They’re among the best in the game when they are on their game. The early rounds are going to be key in Toler’s case after a shaky last couple of Regionals, but in Wolfe’s case I think he’s almost a lock for a winning record on Day 2 and maybe the player in the field with the best odds to win. If you were to make a short list of players that seem to have all the right factors present to be real threats to win this event, these guys have it all.

There are a lot of other really interesting players in this group. DeVon Ingram is a rookie Master, but I think he shocked all of us by how well he played in a losing effort in the Senior US National Finals last year and he’s had another year to continue improving. He’s one of the only first year Masters I’ve ever come into a season expecting to make Worlds, and he’s well on pace to do so. Defending National Champion Gavin Michaels is also in this group, and he is another interesting case. He had a really interesting team that dominated the field except for players using starters last year, but if he’s actually using the team he says he’s going to use this year, I really have some doubts about his ability to go deep again. Michael Lanzano is looking for his first Worlds appearance, which is sort of bizarre to say because I think he’s actually probably in the top handful of Regionals players in the country. Something about this tournament never seems to go well for him, which has kept him off of Pokémon’s biggest stage. He’s certainly had his best year so far, so if he’s ever going to shake his Nationals curse, this is should be the year. Another player looking for his first Worlds appearance is Blake Hopper, who had started to gain some notoriety online from some exciting performances, but hadn’t quite been able to turn it into anything in real life prior to this year. It seems like he and some of the other younger Magma guys have been working together more this year, which certainly seems to have really taken all of them to the level they needed to be at to be serious contenders for the best players in the country.

Zach, Stephen, and Trista all made Worlds last year, and I don’t have much to say about any of them specifically beyond that they have all proven they are excellent players over a pretty significant amount of time now and just need to get the job done at Nationals. Stephen is probably noteworthy for being the top player in Swiss last year, avoiding losses completely until facing Randy Kwa in the round of eight. I think if there’s one player the community at large would expect to fall off here it would be Ashton Cox, who got a bunch of CP using Pokémon that went against the conventional wisdom of a lot of the more experienced players. I’ll be very curious to see if he can get it to work one more time here and make it to Worlds without a major deviation in his strategy, because if the way he was playing is as flawed as people think it is, it definitely won’t survive enough best-of-threes to stay afloat on Day 2. Greyson, Mike, Paul, and Thomas have all made Worlds in the past, but it’s been a few years for all of them, and I think that always raises a few question marks. Mike does have that former National Champion label, so I guess if I didn’t hold the gap in time against Wesley for that reason, I can’t hold it against him. Thomas is the one I worry about a little — he’s very much seemed to be Raying it this year by not appearing to practice much but somehow being excellent on game day. I think that’s going to be a hard plan to execute for both of them this time.

People who will probably make Worlds finishing between 9th and 16th:

225 CP — Matthew Carter (mattj)
214 CP — Andrew Burley (Andykins)
212 CP — Alex Ogloza (Evan Falco)
211 CP — Tony Cheung (Chinese Dood)
190 CP — Alberto Lara
190 CP –Matt Souerby (matt)
190 CP — Tiffany Stanley (shiloh)
182 CP — Randy Kwa (R Inanimate)
180 CP — Tommy Cooleen (Tman)
177 CP — David Mancuso (Mancuso)
174 CP — Matt Coyle (PrettyLittleLiar)
171 CP — Bridger Snow (squirtwo)

While the dreaded bubble is certainly not something to aim for, if it gets you into Worlds, it’s hard to be too upset. To finish in this range, players are going to need to go 4-2 or 5-2 on Day 2 of Swiss and 7-2 on Day 1, which to me is the bar for a strong Nationals performance this year. Top 16 awards 150 CP, which is worth more than a Regional win, and I think given the format that’s probably fair. At this point in the preview, for the players involved to achieve the needed finish is a pretty herculean feat, so I’m going to focus on explaining why some players can accomplish this rather than going through all the players who it doesn’t seem realistic for. Top 16 is going to be a hefty challenge this year, and it’s hard to predict that finish for players who that finish would be the greatest achievement for to this point. After all, if they had been consistently putting up finishes this year that indicated they would pull this off, they wouldn’t need so much CP to clinch Worlds to begin with!

There are several players here who stand out as realistic contenders for top 16 or better. Randy Kwa is perhaps the most obvious one. One of the game’s most popular players, he’s a little lower on CP this year than he was last year thanks to the reduction in Wi-Fi tournaments for him to dominate and with his home region being short a Regional this season, but he’s still in striking distance here. He ended up finishing Top 4 at US Nationals last year and finishing 3-3 at Worlds after a hot start, so he’s certainly been able to acquire plenty of high pressure best-of-three experience, which will be vital. Matt Coyle is another player with tons of experience in situations like this, having top cut Worlds in both 2011 and 2012. I feel like whenever I write one of these previews I hype up how good he is and then he finishes like 64th or something, but he’s finished mostly toward the top of the field this year in spite of some unfavorable situations and he is clearly more than capable of succeeding here. Tony Cheung is a former National Champion, but it comes with the asterisk of being a Canadian National Champion. I think that still earns him a lot of respect, as does his win in the sizable Seattle Regional. The sample size of Tony against the bigger sharks in North America other than beating up on poor Randy nearly every time they play is small. If Tony makes Day 2, this will be a cool chance to see how he really matches up with the rest of the region. The last really noteworthy player here is Alex Ogloza, who had an excellent shot of making Worlds last year if he’d attended Nationals. Maybe this time?

People who will probably make Worlds finishing between 5th and 8th:

There are roughly 40 players between 170 and 110 CP, which would put them in this range. I’m going to list only the players I will write about this time as the list is outrageously long.

169 CP — Chuppa Cross (Chuppa)
161 CP — Matt Sybeldon (bearsfan092)
152 CP — Kamaal Harris (FonicFrog)
148 CP — Joey McGinley (joej m)
114 CP — William Hall (Biosci)

Depending on the amount of people in the tournament and the number of rounds, anywhere from one to four X-2s will make top eight, but the only way to safely land in this range is to finish with one or fewer losses. I don’t know if anyone can really go into the tournament expecting to do that well, but hopefully whoever does so and then loses in the round of eight will be at this point on the list or higher, because a performance like that deserves a spot in the World Championships. Top eight awards 210 CP, which would rescue most players who haven’t completely taken the season off.

Anyone needing this many points is a massive longshot, but I think these guys are all interesting. I also think there’s a good chance they all fail to get to Day 2 completely — which is why most of them are in this bind to begin with — but they’re all capable of getting hot enough to pull themselves out of this, too.

Chuppa had been one of those players that was about to break out for what seemed like forever before he finished 2nd to Ray Rizzo in Sturbridge in the Spring. I think doing well that late in the season is a good step toward doing well at Nationals, and the Northeastern events are always especially difficult to do well in. Matt Sybeldon and Kamaal Harris are having very similar seasons in a lot of ways. They both got big chunks of CP from the Regionals in the Fall that were still on BW2, then failed to continue progressing meaningfully. In Kamaal’s case it’s been because he’s had trouble adapting to XY, and in Matt’s case it’s been because he can’t seem to close the final rounds of Swiss. They’re both capable of better: Kamaal was definitely one of the best players in North America last year and had the Worlds invite to prove it, and Matt is a former Regional winner. If they can get back on their games, they’re still capable of saving their seasons.

William is a weird case in that I think his play in some unofficial events would indicate he should be doing better in real life than he has so far. He never seems to play a full circuit of events which doesn’t help either, but he’s someone I always feel like is right on the edge of being able to bust out a great finish. Joey is someone I wouldn’t have believed I was going to write this about unironically a year ago, but he sure seems to have done a lot of growing up since this time last year and it is reflected in his Pokémon game. The only finish he has on the board is from a Regional is a win, but he has big chunks from Premier Challenges and Wi-Fi. When I’ve played against him on Battle Spot the games have been ..strange… but I’m not really sure what he’s capable of right now, which is both exciting and worrying. He is one of the players I am most interested in seeing at Nationals.

People who will probably make Worlds finishing between 1st and 4th:

Everybody else! Some notables:

102 CP — Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor)
74 CP — Simon Yip (Simon)
60 CP — Ben Rothman (Ben7000)
50 CP — Harrison Saylor (Crow)
30 CP — Arbin Tumaneng (Cypher)
30 CP — Gerry Thompson (Thage)

Perhaps the most important thing here is who the top four spots actually go to. Whoever makes it to the top four will almost certainly make Worlds thanks to a minimum of 360 points, but if any players currently in the top 16 get these chunks it makes the job a lot easier for everyone else by preventing someone from vaulting over the entire field. Inversely, if these guys or anyone else this low on the CP ladder top four, you can expect some people in that giant third group of players to fall out of Worlds as a result. As with the previous set of players, the players here almost have to go X-1 on Day 2 of Swiss to get to top eight, and then they have to win yet another best-of-three against another player who was good enough to do the same thing. Whoever gets to this point will absolutely deserve to play for the United States (or maybe Canada) at Worlds.

Once again, this is a finish that is hard to predict for anyone because the task is absolutely insane, but these are the guys I think have the best chance on the surface. Jeudy and Arbin are sort of interesting cases to me because they are the two finalists of APEX. I don’t think that making it to the finals of that tournament was particularly easier than doing so in a Regional. If they’d had their big day on a different week they’d have been at higher brackets here and they wouldn’t seem like such long shots.

Ben and Simon are both on this list more for what they showed last year than what they showed this year. Ben was one of the top players in the country last year, did well at Nationals and Worlds, and then completely vanished this season. He’s clearly capable of being elite — it’s just a matter of whether or not he worked to get back there. Simon is a little different in that he hasn’t seemed to be able to put the past behind him after his 14th (note: not actually 13th) place finish last year, missing the top 12 bar for invitations to Worlds after a weak run at Nationals and a series of Wi-Fi tournament disqualifications. He’s certainly a strong enough player to go deep in Nationals and he’s actually done it before in 2011, he just needs to put the past behind him and play in the present the way he’s capable of playing.

Another person with some demons of past years to stave off is Harrison Saylor. Two years in a row he has lost a round before he made it to Worlds, both of which were top 8 finishes. A third top 8 finish would again leave him out of the running, but there was almost no one better than him at Nationals over both of the last two years, so it’s hard not to hope this tournament stops denying this guy. Definitely one of the most deserving players in North America who have never had a Worlds invite.

Gerry is the last and maybe the most interesting case. I don’t know how seriously he’s going to take the tournament if he’s still going at all, since I see he’s gotten back to spending his days writing about Magic, but his knowledge of general game theory is so far beyond most Pokémon players that it is embarrassing to me as someone who spends a lot of time trying to get the community to play this game better. Chatting with him at Madison Regionals was definitely an enlightening experience for me and I think if any newcomer was going to learn the game quickly enough to blow up in a tournament like this one, Gerry would be the guy.

Get Out There And Do It!

I hope you all enjoyed me running down the way I expect things to go a little bit, but really, I think this is the most difficult National tournament to predict there’s ever been. I don’t think a lot of players or playstyles have really established themselves as a step above in XY yet, and because of that it’s very likely that a few players will have practiced or theorized their brains out and will totally shock everyone by coming out of nowhere to dominate the tournament. That’s what’s going to make this exciting — this is a year where I think by this time next week, we’ll all be scrambling to figure out what happened and to catch up to the players who made it to the end.

If you feel like you’re a long shot or you’re a little flustered I didn’t mention you (or I expressed skepticism if I did mention you), use it as motivation to go out there and prove you can get it done. In 2013, two players who needed to finish in at least the top 4 to make Worlds pulled it off. It can be done, and odds are if you know you need that finish and you want it badly enough to be able to get it, you’ve worked enough at this point that you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. This is the best tournament format we could have hoped for. If you deserve to make it to Worlds, this tournament will let you do it.


About the Author

started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!



14 Responses to 2014 United States Pokémon National Championships Preview

  1. Tief says:

    Are there even games that do Swiss that don’t factor in Opponent Win % for tiebreakers??
     
    Nice write up! Wish I could’ve made the trip to Indy, but couldn’t get off work :(

  2. CodeCass says:

    As someone who won’t be able to attend this year, I really appreciate this article! Really interesting to learn and get a feel for the format of these big tournaments!

  3. Hibiki says:

    I believe in Simon and Soulsur.

  4. Organometallica says:

    Does anyone have an idea of why they chose to start on a Friday? As a working schmuck, I can’t get the time off for tomorrow. I would have loved to go through Swiss, but I wouldn’t be able to get out until Saturday. 🙁

  5. Cybertron says:

    Does anyone have an idea of why they chose to start on a Friday? As a working schmuck, I can’t get the time off for tomorrow. I would have loved to go through Swiss, but I wouldn’t be able to get out until Saturday. :(

    It’s the only way the schedule would allow for it with the new format. 

  6. Bopper says:

    Well thank you Scott for giving me something to read on the plane ride to Indy. Great article, really looking forward to this year as this is going to be the toughest nationals we’ve had so far due to this gruesome format. It’s going to be a good one, see you all there!

  7. Scott says:

    I imagine mostly they do it on this weekend to begin with because they expect people will get the 4th off, but they can’t really fit everything in at this point without the extra day.

  8. pball0010 says:

    <sarcasm>Man, I win three premier challenges and I don’t get mentioned? What’s a guy gotta do to get some respect around here???</sarcasm>

    On a serious note, good article–as always. Here’s to not choking at a big tournament this time around to prove myself

  9. Osirus says:

    Great article Scott, I always enjoy reading these preview posts and appreciate the massive effort you put into them!!
     
    Wishing everyone attending all the best and all that jazz, hope you all have a great time! I’m really looking forward to the stream over the weekend and hope to see a few of you showcased. Its weird, for the first time I am actually getting hyped up for a Pokémon event nearly as much as I do for other actual big sporting events can’t wait to see how things unfold with the CP rankings and who ends up with their invite!

  10. glooba says:

    Is this for masters only? PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS FOR MASTERS! (Besides Sunday)

  11. SoulSurvivor says:

    Is this for masters only? PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS FOR MASTERS! (Besides Sunday)

    Yes masters only. Angel attempted to waste some of his time on this External

  12. shinryu says:

    Meh 1-4th, ez peazy.

    …yeah I brought my bad TCG deck in case, though I also spent a bit of time making teams for the side events. Just in case.

  13. I was thinking this before I got to the part about Ashton, but now I definitely want him to take nats

  14. projectmars says:

    Good Luck to everyone participating!

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