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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58 Responses to Russia Joins the Pokémon Championship Series
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Uhm, thats rly weird, since in the rules it says every Nats/Reg award cp. .__.
Silly tpci. oo
I didn’t even know that Nintendo distributes games to Russia…
You know what is really amazing though, Russia has 20 Regionals and Portugal has 0, cry ;-;
Russia is also 185x bigger.
I don’t think that would be a problem, Chile has more a less the same activity in Battle Spot but i can asure you, there are waaay more players than that.
Well, if there’s no region lock in the CP gained, i wonder why none American has traveled to Latinamerica Regionals, some of them are in the same page as Russian Regionals.
To all people who say things about competition points: we don’t use them, we don’t need them and I think we won’t ever be using them. And yes, as far as I know, TPCi has nothing to do with this, the Regionals and Nationals both are solely NoR CEO’s idea. His name is Yasha Haddaji and he’s really interested in Nintendo’s expansion to the Russian video games market: because of the relatively small community, he often writes community posts to the players by himself; he arranges various events, such as Pokemon tournaments and release day meetups; he appears on the streams and gives interviews sometimes; he is a great man overall and community just loves him. And like was stated above, the main game advertising here is TCG, because of the translation. When we bought cards from the Europe and America, there were something like 20 active players. With the arrival of Russian cards last year, the number of players here skyrocketed to 200s, maybe 300s, maybe even more, because I don’t really know about the situation in regions (Russia is big, let’s not forget about that). But Mr. Haddaji doesn’t forget about video game players and last year he stated he’ll arrange us the spot in the Worlds. Still, because TCG generates more revenue, I think it’s more important for the Nintendo of Russia.
And please stop whining about having no spots in Worlds in your country. Do something about it: try to write to the N, for example. Host your own tournaments, let them know there are players bringing them money. No businessman will turn away from that, I assure you!
Indeed.
Quick geography lesson, thanks to Wikipedia:
Russia: 17,075,400 square kilometers (6,592,800 sq mi) – 1/8 the world’s land mass.
United States: 9,850,000 square kilometers (3,800,000 sq mi) – 57% the size on Russia
European Union: 4,423,147 square kilometres (1,707,787 sq mi) – 25.9% the size of Russia
So you’re mad that TPCi doesn’t handle everything but you’re also mad that Nintendo of Germany can’t handle your country? You can’t have it both ways. You expect a department of six people (only four in 2014) to handle the entire world. So basically, regress to 2011 where we had a few tournaments in the summer in the US and EU. Works great for you and your friends (and me), works terribly for basically every other player in the rest of the world.
Your solution isn’t scalable. There is a reason that companies like Blizzard and Riot are looking at the model that Magic and Pokémon use and recently hired people to start creating and managing this type of program. It’s how you can actually run something like this. It’s hard enough to justify a program that loses money to higher ups.
A circuit in Russia doesn’t hurt Germany. A circuit in Russia doesn’t hurt Spain. A circuit in Russia only helps Russia. It’s money from the Russian distributor (in this case I assume Nintendo of Russia). Nintendo of Russia is not going to give Amigo their resources because they can’t run events in Russia. That’s not how the world works — even if you were right about business market which I don. Otherwise why not ask Amigo to give their money to Spain?
It’s frustrating that Nintendo of Germany cannot help your events (though German events seem to be among the best anyway). However, that would complicate the relationship they have with Amigo. I was also frustrated when Nintendo of Canada wasn’t allowed to help when I got them in touch with my PTO a few years ago.
I’m tired of this same song and dance every time a new region gets official tournaments. I’ve been pretty happy to see the numbers on a lot of Premier Challenges improve steadily over this year. I’ve been really happy to see a lot of players who aren’t able to make it out to Regionals and Nationals play in my local Premier Challenges and get to know them better. Sometimes I think a lot of players on Nugget Bridge forget they’re not the only ones playing the game.
And yet, Portugal alone has more VGC players than them, just check the GL. I think it is ridiculous that Russia gets 20 regionals and there are places where people dont even get 1, like the Iberian Peninsula, and what’s funny about all that is that russian regionals will probably not have more than 30 players lmao :’)
Don’t get mad guys, 20 regs are a lot, sure, but you can’t think about them as true regs. In those countries where tpci has nothing to do, they get bigger circuits because they delegate in another company and that company only has to spend money to organize eevents in that country.
Here in Spain we had 4 regs and 1 nat in 2009, because Nintendo Ibérica hosted them. TPCi just gave them one guaranteed spot for juniors and one for seniors for the french nats. I think what’s happening in Russia is similar to what happenned here. It doesn’t matter how many tournaments they get because it’s their own circuit. What would be really bad is they award cp in every tournament, but as long as they don’t do that, it’s fine. The more tournaments around the world, the best for the community and the game.
Moreover, representatives from some regions are already telling they can’t host the event because of the rules: all the players must be at least 18 years old, and there must be at least 8 people participating. 20 regions is a great number, but it would be great if at least half of them could meet the aforementioned quota.
This whole “why is Russia getting Regionals and Nationals???” thing is ridiculous. This isn’t some democracy where the playerbase and the interest for events in areas subsequently creates such events. It’s entirely based on who arranges it and who can host and whatnot.
Second of all, although Russia’s interest may be lower and not theoretically constitute a need for 20 Regionals, the country is about 2/3 of all of Europe’s land mass; not implying that they deserve more events because MORE LAND, but it’s significantly harder to get to them if there’s a smaller amount. Sure, they might not even reach 8 players at a few of them, but it’s not like their circuit affects the rest of Europe in any way whatsoever, and it only produces one Worlds invite. If you think your traveling is bad, watch some Russian car crash compilations on YouTube or check their land mass and the distance between their cities. You won’t feel so bad about your four hour drives or your two hour flights after a while…
Lastly, two players qualify for Nationals at each Regional, a Nationals in which only the champion qualifies for Worlds. Everyone’s looking way too far into the terminology that’s being used relative to what we experience from each of those events rather than what they describe as a sequence. Russia’s circuit isn’t awarding CP and it’s spitting out a single Worlds qualifier in the end. There’s no reason to get flustered over the terms “Regional” and “National” when their events are barely comparable in retrospect anyways.
There’s no reason to freak out about anything here, no reason to compare at all. Worry about your own situation and be glad Russia has theirs figured out.
The expansion of the game is only a good thing. I’m excited to see what the players from new countries can do. Does it stink that some countries still don’t have Play! or as many opportunities as other countries? Absolutely, but look at where we were at even 12 months ago. We’re getting there.
im not really an expert of russian travel or politics but only because of my familiarity with the Russian-based LoL team Gambit Gaming which had trouble traveling in past seasons due to visa issues with the rest of europe, I would like to bring up the point (maybe incorrectly, not sure) that i dont think other residents of european countries can just walk into regionals or nationals in russia so easily. It seems like it would be a lot of trouble for anyone to attempt to attend one of these regionals without being a resident of russia to begin with, just to add to the apparent zero-cp structure of the NoR circuit they are implementing.
To add something I do know: this is like when people complain about budgets of certain parts of companies not going to helping other parts of the company when you can either spend the money allocated or lose the opportunity to spend the money at all. This isn’t events being taken away from the rest of the world. This is events that only Russia has the opportunity to host, and change nothing for anyone else’s circuits around the world.
Well Played TPCi. Cancelling Indonesia Regional Championship when we are ready with all the preparation, also removing us from the VG Circuit at the end of the season. I am greatly disappointed by this decision that you made.
For those who have missed the news, Indonesia has been disbanded from future official events. Despite having achieved the biggest Premier Challenge in 2014-2015 Season, along with Taiwan with a total of 117 trainers, more than 250 players play the Pokemon VG Competitively. Therefore, it would be basically almost impossible for us to be there in Boston for the Pokemon World Championship.
For our people, with GDP of only around $350 it is difficult to make travel to other countries such as Singapore and Malaysia to join PC or Regional or even Nationals. They are counting and they are blessed with the official events, until it was taken. Short to say, we are greatly disappointed. Reason? No official distributor, but we are not given the chance to have one.
And btw Congratulations to Russia by being able to participate in the Pokemon World Championship this year.
TPCi had no hand in this. This is something from Nintendo or Russia, a completely separate entity. It literally doesn’t affect any else. Please understand.
The only reason why I followed NoR on Twitter was reading about games, so I could improve my vocabulary. I wasn’t expecting to see Russian Circuit’s announcement, lol.
Yeah, Kalningrad would be nice, I’d love to compete in Russian circuit.
Time for Poland? I don’t think so… We have less that 5 TOs (none of them are interested in helping the VG grow, they’re focused on TCG), no PC organizers, our Battle Spot ranking consists of up to 10 people. TCG is doing fine, but won’t grow, unfortunately. When Polish DP and DP2 sets were released, the current format was already BW-on, so it was a major failure. The boosters cost 0.5€ and theme decks were sold for 1.5€ after distributor realized the mistake they’ve done… In our country, there are 5 people willing to learn new things, are willing to travel and improve their VGC gameplay (you, me, Phlosio, Yoship and Tadei). Another issue is like the one in Germany: Nintendo of Poland (or rather Conquest Entertainment, Czech-based distributor) is not allowed to support any Pokemon tournaments. The only real argument is that TPCi blocking the distributor didn’t consider our demographic and the fact we’re in UE doesn’t mean we get paid like the Western countries, so travelling to nationals is much more of a hassle (my trip to Manchester costs me more than half of my monthly salary, same with Milan), even if you pick the cheapest solutions.
That’s why I think slapping a National Tournament in Poland wouldn’t be the best idea. It would wither down like in Spain or France, but actually for good reasons… It’s really hard to cultivate the seed of competitive play in a country that still thinks Fire Red is the best Pokemon game ever and if doesn’t play competitively on Showdown, plays OU (usually refusing to take the step forward and don’t buy games beyond the first in the latest generation).
Quite a ranty post, but I had to make this straight. Overall, I’m very happy for Russia to have thier own circuit and get the chance to participate in Worlds. I don’t agree with allowing only 18+ players to compete, but hey, you have to start somewhere. A circuit like this is a definitely better than none.
I’m fine with Russia been added to the worldwide circuit, I wouldn’t call those 20 Tournaments real Regionals.
Anyway the big issue seems to be, the randomness in our VGC scene. We have local distributors in UK Italy and Germany, we have TCPi responsible for US, we have Nintendo of X for some countries(Russia, Australia, …), while Nintendo of Germany for example is not responsible for German VGC Tournaments at all. I am not complaining about this at all, i just can’t see the “red thread”.
The choice of “Regonals” as the name of the 20 qualifiers was perhaps not the best choice given the apparent confusion the name has created.
Just replace “regional” with “qualifier” and be happy that Russia is getting a circuit that will have no impact on Europe but will send a couple of Russian players to worlds. What is not to like?
Similarly can anyone think of a better name for the European VG “nationals” as they are open events rather than residence locked like their TCG counterparts?
Internationals. Easy.
…In Russia, the ladder climbs you.
I abandon VGC a year ago because I don’t have any motivation due to abscence of any actual tournaments, and now, just as I am about to leave the country for another year, they start holding them here. Perfect >_<
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? ._.
Not sure about the championship points, but in any event you’re missing the fact that whoever tries that will almost surely get their visa application rejected
Played against a Russian in NB Major. She destroyed me in a best of 3. They definitely have potential.
The “Regionals” don’t award CP. The two finalists from each Regional win the opportunity to compete at Nationals, and the winner of Nationals gets an invite to worlds. That’s it.
Hello again, I’m here with the news from the Day 1 of Russian Regionals. We’re planning on writing the huge report once our Nationals will be over (June 27th). So for now, a little bit of info for the curious ones:
We’re allowed to switch teams between the events, so I’m looking forward to Day 2!
May 17th was the Day 1 of Russian Regionals. We had similar tourneys in Moscow (first OU, then VGC ones), but this is the first one with the prize being the trip to the Worlds.
Nintendo of Russia stated the tourney (both VGC and TCG) will be held in 20 cities throughout the country. In fact, we know only of three cities which were able to met the bare minimum of 8 people competing in Masters division: Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, and Krasnodar. Smaller cities like Samara and Krasnoyarsk doesn’t have almost no VGC players, and we have yet to know the conclusion made in other places. We don’t get CP for our events, instead people get points for battling people at this Regionals: 3 points for winning, 1 point for tie (when battlers have no time so start their third game) and no points for losing. I played in Moscow.
Moscow had 16 players, almost all of them played VGC at the tourneys at least once. So, every player must battle five others and get up to 15 points in one day. I gotta tell you, in three aforementioned cities, no one couldn’t reach up to the maximum; every day winner had one loss.
Let’s look at the table: http://challonge.com/6g69mv27There are 10 people out of 16 who were in top cut at any of Russian tourneys at least once. The favorites of our Regionals are Zellel, Kelly Kato and Elveman. But with prize like that, this event is more unnerving than the others, so reality did it’s bit: our wildcard player FireDead made his way to the winners of the day instead of Elveman. We still can’t tell who’ll win at the end, though.
The event itself was great. No cheaters, no misjudging, no swearing at the top of someone’s lungs.
Is there a place where you cover this in Russian? I’d love to follow the news and comments regularily. Я говорю по-русски.
We have https://vk.com/pokecenter.
We now have the results from Day 1 of both TCG and VG events! http://pokemonleague.ru/ResultsPage
Left tables are TCG ones, and the right are VGC ones. So, 5 cities hosted only TCG games, 4 cities hosted only VGC ones, and 6 cities hosted both. That means, five cities couldn’t meet the player quota.