Russia Joins the Pokémon Championship Series
This season of the Pokémon Championship Series has seen a number of new countries join the battle for the title of World Champion. Today, we learned another country will join the fray: Russia. The Pokémon Trading Card game was only localized earlier this season in Russian so it’s promising to see the country joining in on both the TCG and video game at a competitive level so quickly! One representative from each game will make their way to the World Championships in the Masters division. They will not have a Junior or Senior division representative as only those 18 years of age or older are allowed to enter the events.
There will be 20 Regional Championships held in the following cities on the same weekends as the US Regional Championships:
- Moscow
- Saint Petersburg
- Arkhangelsk
- Voronezh
- Ekaterinburg
- Irkutsk
- Ivanovo
- Kazan
- Krasnodar
- Krasnoyarsk
- Nizhny Novgorod
- Novosibirsk
- Omsk
- Perm
- Petrozavodsk
- Rostov-on-Don
- Samara
- Syktyvkar
- Ufa
- Chelyabinsk
Tournaments will use the Swiss format. The two finalists from each Regional Championship will be invited to play at the Russian National Championships in Moscow on June 27th & 28th, 2015. The winner of the National Championships will receive an invitation to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships in Boston, MA, USA happening from August 21st to 23rd, 2015.
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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Wow. That is great to hear that there is a masters spot for those in Russia now
Not sure how to react with no seniors or juniors though.
It’s absolutely amazing to see the amount of growth the VGC circuit has had internationally this year. Let’s hope it sustains well into the future!
There’s no Kaliningrad, fml…
#TimeForPoland
Last year it was Australia and South Africa joining, and now we get russia. This years worlds will be massive, and full of competition. It will be interesting what they bring to the format
TWENTY REGIONALS
they have like 10 people on their BS doubles ladder though!??!? LOL
can’t wait to see what happens here lol
10 Russians traveling through the country on their quest to be the very best.
bearctics on unicycles hype
So this Nationals will have only 40 players?
Or have I misunderstood it and anyone who didnt place #1 or #2 in those regionals are allowed to play? ._.
So are they just doing TCG, VGC or both?
Too many regionals. So little time to make usage statistics
Not sure It means much, but with 20 regional championships and only 10 “Active Players” on battlespot… I guess it will be interesting…
http://imgur.com/NPkMfPQ
I wish we got 20 regionals ;-;. Doesn’t it kinda seem like overkill to have all those and only 1 person qualify? But at least they did join nonetheless. I’m eager to seeing their statistics.
First of all, thanks to Firestorm for sharing these wonderful news with the community! We here in Russia are very hyped and getting ready for the championships!
Uhm, don’t even try to see where the locations are – Russia too big!
Guh, I guess I couldn’t grasp the quoting features here from the first time. I’ll try to clarify:
My statement about kids was the answer to FloristtheBudew. Then, I replied to Cypress, and then to LasermanZ1.
It would probably be harder to list the countries that aren’t in the Championship Series.
You know what? Screw that. Let’s have Nationals in Russia!
But wait, why stop at that? Let’s have some “Regionals” in Russia. I’m sure it’d please their large amount of players.
But hey, do you think only a few will be enough? I guess they will be pretty overrun. Yeah, let’s just host 20 of them. In Russia. (checking if it’s April Fools’ Day… nope)
Like seriously, why would they spend money on hosting tournaments like that? Just doesn’t make any sense to me at all, if, at the same time, there is no ressources for a good Regionals structure in Europe.
Like it’s cool that Pokemon expands and what not. But does Nintendo or whoever hosts these have money to just throw out of the window like that? I’m not even mad or anything, I am just surprised by where they think they should invest in. Also the fact that there is different companies doing stuff in the different countries makes the whole thing very nontransparent and if TPCI or whoever thinks that they have their steady player base in Europe that will just accept any further steps in term of how and where tournaments are run, I think they are pretty wrong in believing so. But whatever, good luck to everyone participating lol.
(don’t see this as a rant please, I think the whole thing is very amusing, yet disappointing)
If what Glaceon is saying is true, this seems to be related to Nintendo of Russia (similiar in how Nintendo of Australia has/had been taking care of events there), so TPCi wouldn’t have much to do with it.
Also, the way I see it they don’t have a CP circuit (much like Japan/Korea), so other Europeans traveling there wouldn’t really gain anything.
So basically we have a new, isolated zone that will send players from Russia to World’s.
Could be way worse, honestly. If the Regionals/National provided CP to players from other Regions this would be outrageous. But I don’t see any harm in this considering the circumstances.
Yes, I got that. I still think it makes little sense that there is no big plan behind how and where tournaments are organized. If there is a bigger plan, I fail to see it with moves like this.
That’s just absolutely incredible! I’m so glad to see it’s branching out like this.
While I think twenty regionals and a National is overkill for one invite (and only in one division), I’m really glad to see Russia joining the circuit. The size of their country warrants a lot of events, but I just hope that there are enough people to sanction all of them, as Battle Spot doesn’t indicate a lot of interest in VGC. Maybe they’ll surprise us, though. Regardless, I’m glad to have them in the circuit, and I look forward to seeing the circuit expand even further. Russia certainly wasn’t the first country I would have anticipated to be added to the circuit this year, so this really shows how open it can really be and how much it’ll continue to expand.
I’m so happy VGC is growing a lot far and wide and we’re getting bigger and bigger.
I only hope my neighbours in Spain get those back, too. And soon the others and I get regionals and not only Premier Challenges in Portugal!
I think the thing here is that NoR has an isolated plan. Like stated in the article, they recently started localizing the TCG, which I would assume is the main motivation for this circuit. Adding VGC was probably just a side effect of the TCG development in Russia.
I totally share your concerns about the European circuit though, don’t get me wrong. But I think the development in Russia has to be viewed from a different angle.
I was criticizing the fact that there is no big plan that includes all the different companies and countries and you are telling me that NoR has an isolated plan? Yes, that is exactly what I do not like. It doesn’t come down to TPCi but to subcontractors, while, when I talked to Nintendo Germany, they said that they were not allowed to do anything tournament related and hence can not really support the competitive aspect of the game.
If there was one company that handled all business for competitive pokemon, I doubt that Russia would be the place where they would invest ressources first, while there are still big problems in countries that I would rate more important based on player base and business market.
Thanks. I understood what you meant
It makes sense.
This is a great step in getting total global coverage at worlds! But lets hope tpci doesn’t forget about currently participating countries- theres a lot more I’d like to see in the European circuit, particularly more PCs in Italy!
Aren’t there currently economic sanctions by the EU and the US (and possibly the UN) against Russia right now? How will that affect players?
With this growth in the VGC community I’m just waiting for Norway to send people to worlds next year 😉
Ok, just a sec, how does it not affect European players?
Even if those tournaments are on an isolated and different player zone, and the only way for someone playing in the Russian player zone to qualify for Worlds is winning the Russian Nationals, I would like to remember everyone that there is no region lock this season anymore.
This means that anyone can go there (way easier for Europeans, obviously) and boost CP by playing 20~40 men regionals, and maybe even a Nationals.
Am I missing something? ._.
From the information that’s been released now it seems that the Russian events won’t be awarding Championship points since participants won’t need any of it, similar to those in Japan and Korea.