The Pokemon Travelogue: Honolulu

At the beginning of this quixotic odyssey, I wrote:

We didn’t quite reach that bar, with Tommy finishing #18 and Nate finishing just outside of the money at #28…but we did have the unexpected surprise of Tommy winning the Dortmund regional and collecting the prize money that goes with such an accomplishment…so we were indeed Hawaii bound.

This, then, is the 12th and final installment of a planned 8 issue write up of our experience on the Pokemon pro-am circuit. For the Johnnies Come Lately, you can catch up on the whole thing here.

And for those of you anticipating a Pokemon Travelogue shaped hole in your lives, don’t worry - I have something new planned, but you’ll have to wait to find out the details.

Introduction to an ostensibly first tier city

Many rejoiced when the Pokemon company announced Honolulu as the 2024 host site; I was not among them. In part, yes, because it is reallllly far away from the Netherlands and would thus commandeer our family holiday. And in part because -

And in part because we spent 6 years living in Mauritius and are thus ruined for tropical holidays for the rest of our lives as a result of paying local rates to access world-renowned 5 star resorts. Was there an actual discussion in our family of whether we should skip the world championships and just use the prize money to go back to Mauritius? There was. But despite my lack of desire to go to Hawaii, I felt like it was important to recognize that the kids had set a goal a year ago and had worked really hard to^[1] achieve it, so to Hawaii we were headed.

For the least possible amount of time we could manage.

The tournament started on Friday. We arrived Thursday morning. You may be thinking, “12 hours of jet lag? I bet your kids were messed up.” But we played a clever trick: there is no way to fly directly to Honolulu from Amsterdam, so we flew to Seattle and stopped there for 5 days where we got over the majority of the jet lag, explored the city, saw friends, and ate to excess. Then the non-competitors in our family stayed behind in the Pacific Northwest while the 3 of us proceeded on to Honolulu.

About Honolulu, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, its reputation for natural beauty is well deserved. We didn’t even make it to the good beaches, but Waikiki Beach was wonderful and brought out a core part of Nate’s identity as an island child. On the other hand, navigating Honolulu feels a lot like navigating the Vegas strip in the sense that the way to get from one place to another is never a straight line but always multiple detours past places whose sole purpose and intent is to separate you from your money. This is not my favorite thing.

The resort vibe suited the event though. As much as its a fierce competition, it’s also a friendly gathering of a niche community, and situating it in a beach resort played up that latter aspect. The Pokemon Company dialed up the fun factor for this World Championship, and Honolulu was great for that.

How we’re rolling

There’s nothing particularly interesting to say about flying from Amsterdam to Seattle and then from Seattle to Honolulu, so I’m going to use this section for a digression on the economics of Pokemon because it doesn’t really fit anywhere else, but I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about it.

So here’s a fun question: without googling, what’s the annual revenue of the Pokemon Company (TPCi)? I have asked literally dozens of people this question over the past 6 months since learning the answer myself, and no one has come even close to the right number. So go ahead, adjust your original estimate up a little bit. Want to know the actual number?

It’s here.

So TPCi has a delicate balance that it has to strike between commerce & fun…but it also has a pretty long leash to work with. It got to that massive number in part because of children who are buying all of its merch and watching its shows, but the real secret to its success is the creation of lifelong fans who will continue to buy merch and allow it to diversify its entertainment offerings over time. IMO, TPCi has done pretty well at building & maintaining a brand based on fun and is walking this fine line pretty successfully - there are sooooo many ways they could be generating more short term revenue^[2], but they’ve chosen to play the long game of building lifelong dedicated fans. Pokemon tournaments are an excellent example of that, because they are undoubtedly a loss leader for the company…but one that cements lifelong fan identity and creates something aspirational for a lot of their market.

And can we talk about the swag bag? It’s a well known fact among the competitor community that the World Championship competitor swag backpack and its content can pay for almost your entire trip if you resell it on the secondary market, and even the vendors at the event itself where the supply was at its greatest were offering almost $1000 on the spot. We met a collector at dinner on Friday note, and he exhorted the kids that no matter what they do, they absolutely must not open the pack of promo cards that came with the swag bag, because the unopened cards will be worth thousands of dollars if they just hang on to them for a few years.

The world of Pokemon never ceases to blow my mind.

Where we’re eating

Honolulu was an absolute haven for gluten free kids; in Europe, I usually have to scout out where there’s a decent gluten free menu. In Hawaii, every restaurant had abundant gluten free options - in large part because there are so many rice-based dishes.

The only downside, of course, is that everything is insanely expensive. But, whatever, we’re at the World Championships - we could afford to live it up a little…

We had our fair share of seafood, grilled meat, and shave ice. We didn’t even try to seek out gluten free pizza, like we normally do, because our other options were so abundant.

What we’re playing

Deciding what to play for this tournament was a particular challenge, not just because of the level of play. For the first time in at least 5 years^[3], there was a whole new set of cards that became legal to play for the first time at the World Championships. The effect of that is a major shakeup in the metagame and a whole lot of unpredictability as far as what everyone will be playing. Usually, the metagame is pretty stable and there’s a decent sense of the strongest decks as well as the counters to them. This time, we had a lot more unknowns.

At our first world championship, there was almost no prep. Even though we were clear that this time we were playing for fun and to celebrate a great season, we were also competitive. As their coach says, we’re playing to have fun, but it can be a lot more fun when you’re winning.

And, yes, of course my kids have a coach…and actually he’s really great. In addition to the intense online sessions testing out different decks to make an informed decision, they also joined a tournament warmup session with him the day before the tournament started, and I was really impressed with the emphasis that he places on the mental game of how to warm up, how to stay present, how to deal with mistakes, and how to set big goals while breaking them up into smaller & more attainable steps.

After a great deal of deliberation, testing, and playing countless online tournaments, both kids settled on their decks. Thomas chose the Raging Bolt/Ogerpon deck - and felt very satisfied when we showed up to the tournament to learn that the other 2 kids in our squad had chosen the same deck. It’s very on brand for them: it’s a deck that is built for consistency so long as the player can work through all of the ins & outs of how to play it every turn.

Nate took a little bit of a zag and went with the Regidrago deck^[4], which is indeed capable of some big hits but actually plays more for using the Dragapult’s Phantom Dive attack to hit both the main attacker and the bench.

Both of them were playing firmly on meta, though. It would turn out - unsurprisingly - that they were playing 2 of the most popular decks in format, one of which would actually win the World Championship in one of the age divisions^[5].

How we did

Alas, while the Regidrago deck did win the Senior division championship, it was not Junior division competitor Nathaniel Trudeau who piloted it to victory. Nate had a respectable showing for someone who still has 3 years left to compete as a Junior, but ultimately ended up with 2 wins and 4 losses, failing to advance to day 2.

A quick note on the format of the tournament: unlike all of the previous events, this was a 2 day event of 10 swiss rounds followed by a single elimination top 8. To advance to the second day, competitors needed to secure 18 points in the first 8 rounds, meaning either 6 wins or 5 wins & 3 draws.

Tommy had a better showing, starting the day off with a round 1 bye and automatic victory as a result of their high placement during the regular season. They won their first actual match to go up to 2-0. 4 more victories and day 2 would be assured, but they stumbled in round 3 and dropped the match, won in round 4, and then lost again in round 5 - putting their back up against the wall. Anything but a win from that point forward, and the dream was over.

And then their round 6 just dragged on and on and on. I kept looking over and seeing judges clustered around their table. Long rounds aren’t uncommon at worlds; because it’s a field of competitors who speak so many different languages, judge calls often need to be translated into 2 different languages. The stakes are high, too, so even the youngest competitors can be very particular about the rules - which is totally fair. This is the World Championships after all; there are no newbies. Still…it was going really long, but Tommy seemed very composed, as did their competitor. Both of them came into the match with the same record, so they both needed the win…and slowly, it became clear that they were going to tie. In some situations, when both competitors need a win they make an agreement in advance that one will concede to the other rather than let it go to a tie^[6], but that’s always difficult to do across a language barrier…so in this case, no such agreement was in place. While the competitor might have recognized that he had no path to victory and conceded, that didn’t happen. The final result was a tie. It was heartbreaking, and Tommy ended the tournament with 3 wins, 2 losses, and 1 tie.

There was plenty of disappointment to go around. The other 2 kids in our squad also failed to advance to day 2. Tord Reklev, perhaps the greatest Pokemon player of all time whose status would be secure if he just finally won a world championship, did not even advance to the Masters top 8. There was a big controversy about one of the Masters players getting an automatic loss in the quarterfinal^[7]. Despite rumors that next year’s World Championship would be in Paris, when the announcement came out it was actually Anaheim. Blargh, blargh, quadruple blargh.

But it wasn’t all disappointment. Our good friend Levon advanced all the way to the top 8 and seemed to surprise even himself with his incredible performance. The kids played a bunch of side events and earned a bunch of additional merch. On the morning of day 2, rather than go to the convention center we went to the beach and swam with sea turtles. Not all was wrong in the world.

Back at the convention center, Nate found Levon and they sat down across the table from each other to play even more Pokemon, and I remembered something from our first World Championship: when they interviewed the young man who had just won the Junior division, they asked him what he was going to do now that the tournament was over and he responded without missing a beat that he wanted to find his friends and play more Pokemon. At the time, I was totally baffled by that instinct^[8].

But as I watched the two kids smiling, laughing, and playing…well, I think I get it.