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Inside the Pokemon World Championships, where masters are born
The Pokemon World Championships left some fans disappointed after being closed to the public. USA TODAY Sports

Inside the Pokemon World Championships, where masters are born

Everyone knows how the song starts: "I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was." Well, this past weekend, we found out, at least for the year, who is the very best when it comes to Pokemon.

The Pokemon World Championships were hosted in San Francisco this year, and champions were crowned in three different categories, though the event was not without controversy.

It's More Than A Game

It may be surprising to learn that for a large group of people, Pokemon isn't just a video game. Like League of Legends, Call of Duty and Counter-Strike, there is a substantial population of Pokemon fans who play the games competitively at a very high level. Whereas most players simply proceed through the games catching, raising and battling Pokemon until they become the in-game champions, at the highest levels of competitive Pokemon play, it's not uncommon for players to spend months training Pokemon, breeding them so they're as strong as possible, and studying strategy, planning for whatever may happen.

Usually, Pokemon battles at the highest level of play boil down to a kind of rock-paper-scissors match, with players taking advantage of (and succumbing to) unfavorable strategic situations to gain the upper hand quickly. It's a highly nuanced game, one that develops and deepens over time like many other competitive games.

Unlike its fellow games in the eSports scene, however, Pokemon has been around since 1996.

The Pokemon World Championships have been held on an annual basis since 2002 (with a brief one-year hiatus back in 2003) and were originally created by Wizards of the Coast as the world's premier Pokemon Trading Card Game tournament, where elite players from around the world were invited to compete for the top prize. Since that time, the event has been taken over by Nintendo and has now become the de facto event not just for players of the trading card game, but also of the video games themselves. This year, they even added a new category for the Pokemon fighting game, Pokken Tournament, that came out this spring.

This year, the tournament crowned three champions in each discipline, broken down by three age groups. In the trading card game championship, the Junior division, for players born in 2004 or later, was won by Shunto Sadahiro of Japan. The Senior division, for players born between 2000 and 2003, was won by Denmark's Jesper Eriksen, and the Masters division, for players born in 1999 or earlier, was won by Japan's Shintaro Ito, marking his first World Championship win.

The Pokemon Video Game division this year featured players battling it out in the newest Pokemon games: Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. The video game championships were swept by the United States, with Cory Conner winning the Junior division, Carson Confer winning the Senior division and Wolfe Glick taking the Masters division.

The inaugural Pokken World Champions were Masami Sato in the Masters division and Josh Simmonite in the Senior division.

Controversy

This year, however, a shadow loomed over the World Championships. It's not just the competitive players that love the event. For many, the championship is a chance to share in their love of the games with others, a kind of convention for Pokemon fans. However, this year, less than a month before the actual event, and after many fans had made travel plans, the Pokemon Co. announced that the event would be closed to the general public, that only invited players and their families could attend. No refunds were offered, and no real explanation was offered either, other than a general message citing "limited venue capacity and overwhelming demand."

It's possible that this was a safety precaution, given the fact that just last year a potential gun plot on the event was foiled, but that did little to soothe the feelings of frustrated gamers who not only would not be able to go to one of their favorite events, but also may have wasted money on plane tickets and accommodations.

Fans no doubt hope that next year the event is once again open to the public, especially given the looming release of Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon, the newest main-line games in the series, as well as the growing popularity of Pokemon GO.

With Pokemon as popular as it has ever been since its late-'90s heyday, the Pokemon Co. needs to remember that at the heart of the games is a sense of community, of making new friends and making connections. Closing these events off stifles that sense of community and is counter to the reason so many of us love the games in the first place.

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