Rufus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
badass_tiger) wrote2025-08-25 12:18 pm
badass_tiger) wrote2025-08-25 12:18 pm
Joined a local grassroots on Saturday
My first time! I've been an avid fan of VGC for several year, but I've always just thought of myself as a spectator. Well, last year I went to the Birmingham regional championships, intending to simply watch, but my sister convinced me to join a side event. And it was fantastic. I joined another the next day, then more at EUIC. I was still largely apathetic to Scarlet/Violet but whenever I'm playing face to face against an opponent, it's exhilarating. And so I decided that with the new season, I would give competing a proper go.
Whenever it's been a while, I always forget how much fun it is to compete in person. Playing online on my Switch is definitely fun, all the little creatures dancing around and all that, but playing on Showdown (let's not get into the new regulation and why playing on Showdown is my only option right now ...) kind of isn't, so when the grassroots came up, I kind of just made the snap decision to buy a ticket so I would be forced to go. Only once I had got there and started my first match did I really remember, 'This is the best'.
Well, hopefully I won't forget that now. Here's the team that I went with:
No rental code because there's no point, but here's the PokePaste.
I had the whole week off work so I spent it ... well, sleeping a lot because work took me out but also practicing a little bit since I haven't played any real VGC in so long. I tried out Justin Tang's LAIC team purely because it has Primarina on it and I like Primarina, but the team really impressed me. I shouldn't be surprised because, y'know, Justin Tang is an insanely good player, but still. I couldn't come up with a team idea that I liked better so I decided to replace Kantonian Arcanine with Incineroar (because I like Incineroar) then packed it up for Birmingham.
There are a lot of things that held me back from competing in the past. I don't have much talent for Pokemon in the first place. Like sometimes you just take to something, right, and I took to Pokemon in the sense of really enjoying it, but not in the sense of finding that I was doing better than other people. But even more than that, I hate losing. I'm not a sore loser or anything like that, but the feeling of losing is something I dislike, and that's something I've struggled with for a long time. Not only that, but the fear of losing makes me anxious whenever I play versus games. My heart starts beating in my ears, my hands go cold, so I put it off until I hardly do it at all. I'm equally terrified of choking to the point that it becomes inevitable that I do choke, or so I imagine.
But when I sat down to my first match, and this happens every time I play in face-to-face battles, everything else disappears. I'm focused entirely on the match in front of me. Occasionally, thoughts of 'I think I've got this' or 'That's probably it for me' and the like drift in, but I can easily brush them aside to refocus. And I've started to find that I don't care whether I win or lose. I'm having so much fun that all I care about is being able to play a little more Pokemon.
My first round was against someone with a hard Trick Room+Sun team. I hate Sun, especially with my team, and I was complaining about it to my sister just two days before. Fortunately, this wasn't the Jumpluff variant, which is the worst one. My opponent lead Indeedee in both matches alongside Hatterene in the first match and Gallade in the second one. I identified my wincons and won 2-0 fairly swiftly. We might have been the first ones to finish so I played some TCGP while waiting for the second round.
My second opponent had a rain team and we had a really fun 3 battles that I wasn't sure I would win until the last couple of turns. SOMEHOW my opponent hit FOUR Hurricanes in SNOW and THREE of them CRIT. Happily, none of it mattered, as I was quite definitely winning at that point, but HELLO? My Alolan Ninetales didn't freeze anything ONCE this tournament. Saving it for a more important time, obviously, but ... really just had to laugh at that one.
My third opponent was a guy named Joe who was very friendly and I was very happy to chat with him while we were setting up. He commented that he had never seen me before despite my low Play! Pokemon ID and the fact that I was 2-0. I explained that I hadn't played competitive in a few gens. I didn't mention that I thought I'd got lucky to go 2-0 so far. And Joe utterly steamrolled me. He read every single play I made, it seems like. I couldn't get a foothold against him. I told him that he's clearly the better player and he said, 'We'll see who wins after a hundred games', which was very kind of him.
After that was lunch which I only had half an hour for. I contemplated going to New Street to pray because it was the closest place I could think of , but it was still about 10 minutes away at a run. Would the tournament end before Asr? Well, at the very least, I'll have Zuhr sorted if I pray now. I'm sure I can hold my stomach for a couple of hours, so I dashed off to New Street and back, making it to the venue about 40 seconds before pairings went up.
My fourth round was against an insane sand team with Sandslash. If I didn't make notes I would have no idea what else was on that team because I stared at the Sandslash on their team sheet for a full 45 seconds before I picked my leads. They lead with Tyranitar and Indeedee-male and in this game, Tera-Flying Tyranitar only took 25% from Blizzard, which means it's max HP and SpDef, and yes it was Assault Vest, but hello?? Ninetales has felt so good the whole time I've used it but this is the one game that reminded me that its base SpAtk is just 81. Anyway, I won the round 2-0 but my goodness.
I was quite cheered at this point because I was 3-x and we were playing 5 rounds of Swiss so I was guaranteed to be positive this tournament. The night before, I'd slept quite badly, and had a dream that I went 1-6, so when I was at 2 wins, I was quite relieved, and at 3 wins, I was positively proud of myself.
My fifth round was quite bad for me, honestly I just played badly lol. My Primarina did get crit through Aurora Veil which sealed game 2 for me, my opponent even apologised for it, but hey, that's the game. Side note, my opponent's name was Joey. We have an awful lot of Joes in VGC.
I settled into my seat, packing up my bag as I waited for the wrap-up. There would be a top 8 after the round was over, but I assumed that my most recent loss meant I wouldn't make it. Besides, as I said to my sister, imagine little old me in top 8? Even at a friendly, how jokes would that be? I'm just a nobody who rolled up after a couple of hours on the Showdown ladder. I started planning lunch ... any good ramen places nearby? Oof but that one was 18 quid a bowl. Subway it is, I suppose. The head judge finished tallying the results and stood up to thank everyone for coming and announce who had made top 8. Names I had played against and names I didn't recognise rolled out ... and me.
My face was probably a study in comedy. I sat up straight, eyes wide, mouth tightly shut, head whipping round to stare at the judge. 'Wtf?' I texted to my sister before standing up to take a look at the standings, which are printed on a sheet of paper, with the top 8 players bolded. Everyone was taking a picture to commemorate their final standing, so I did too, even though it wasn't my final standing, because I was in the bloody top bloody 8!
Okay ... well ... that was my name and it didn't look like a mistake. I had made it through on resistance. Now I will explain what resistance is even though it will interrupt the flow of my story because I am fascinated by the concept. Major tournaments no longer use resistance, thank God, as it was a major source of contention, but heartwarming tales have come out of it too. When it comes to the top cut, not only are your results taken into account, but for players on the border of top cut, the win rate of their opponents are calculated. This is based on the theory that if most of your losses are to people with a high winrate, you probably have a higher skill level than someone whose losses were mostly to people with lower winrates. Of course, this is quite frustrating, because if you're on the border, whether or not you make it to top cut is completely out of your control. But this does have the side effect of making players feel quite friendly to their opponents who they lost against, checking up on them and occasionally even helping them, because if your opponents keep winning, you have a higher chance of making it through top cut. I've even heard of a player who was guaranteed top cut forfeiting their last match so that their friends would have a higher resistance. Now we just have an asymmetrical top cut, but that sure is something, isn't it?
Anyway, I handed my Switch over to the head judge for a team check. For the top cut, judges apparently check every team individually to make sure that team sheets are accurate, there are no hacked Pokemon, or anything of the like. I didn't know they did that! How exciting to be teamchecked for the first time! As my team was being checked, I gazed at my team sheet, feeling I should do something about being in top cut. I was just a nobody with, as I said, about 2 hours of practice on Showdown, if that! Yet my team sheet imparted no wisdom.
Trying to be more practical, I reflected instead on my round 3 match against Joseph Russell (not my most recent match with Joey), as that was the one match that I felt I had been positively trounced. Was it possible for me to win against him? The match-up was not horrifyingly bad or anything. He had just read me at every turn. My lesson there was to not stick to basic, level 0 plays any more. As a new player, my tactic is to use these plays on my first round against an opponent, then upgrade as necessary in round two and so on. I'm too new to really make consistent high-level plays, but I would need it against Joe, and anyone at least as good as him.
Still, I was in top 8! I was probably losing my next round, I reflected, but who cares? Top 8! That's miles above what I anticipated!
And it turns out it was a very good thing that I considered the match-up against Joe, because he was my next opponent. He came up to me and said, 'Ready to play again?' 'Let's do it,' I said.
We sat down for a match that felt like it lasted an hour. Level 1 plays, I told myself. I'm not asking for too much. I wrote down in my notebook, 'Make risky plays'. Playing safe against Joe would not and was not getting me anywhere. Based on how he played in our first round, I made some reads, and won game 1. Now I was very happy, even if I lost the remaining set. To borrow Justin Carris' words from his Chasing A Champion video, at that point, I was Chasing the Russell, and a single victory against him felt huge.
He won game 2, but it was very close. I stared at his team sheet. We had both been bringing the same 4 Pokemon. Would he change it up? I crossed one of them off as unusable, but Amoonguss, maybe. He brought Amoonguss and set to putting my Pokemon to sleep. I danced around the mushroom, getting some lucky turn 1 wake ups. Ah, such is the game that we play. The scales felt completely even, up until the penultimate turn. A thought flitted into my head: 'I think I'm winning.' I brush it aside. Close it out, Rufus. When the dust settles, I've won.
I take a breath. 'That was intense,' I remarked. Joe agreed, saying that it was the most intense set he'd had that day. It definitely was that for me. And you can imagine that I was bloody well elated to have won. After my first set with Joe, I had said, 'At least I learned a lot' and I felt that I had properly used those lessons in our repeat match. He was shaking his head, saying that we had brought the same mons as our last set, but I had just played better this time.
When I saw that I was playing against Joe again, I thought about one of Wolfe's explanations about repeat match-ups in his Toronto 2025 video. He said that there's an inherent comeback mechanic in Pokemon when two players play each other more than once, where the advantage is with the player who originally lost. I wanted so much to make use of that mechanic, as he called it. And, well, I think I did!
That was definitely the highlight of my tournament run. Losing very badly to someone in a round then beating them during the next go made me feel like, well, I'm learning! I love learning! This is awesome!
Also, I charged my Switch while waiting for team checks to go through, then took it off for my match against Joe. I ... just assumed I'd lose so I wouldn't need any more battery than that. Back to the charging station I go.
I texted to my sister, 'wtf I won?' As you can see, I was in huge disbelief about everything. The next pairing went up, my opponent sat down in front of me, and when we swap team sheets, I internally groan. Sun. With Jumpluff.
I did my best. The matchup isn't unwinnable. But Amrit, my opponent, knew his team well. In the end, I shook my head and told him that sun is tough for my team and I knew that going in. He said that I had played well, and yeah, I didn't hate how I played.
I packed up my things for real this time, then went to thank the head judge for adjudicating and asked to see the top 4 matchup sheet so I could take a picture. He asked if it was my first time attending a tournament and I told him that I couldn't believe it when he announced I was in top 8. He said something that I had heard a few times that day already: 'You played well.' But this time, it sank in. I guess I did play kinda well. Not at the level of a world champion or anything like that, but I didn't lose every match I played. I won most of them, even. He invited me to the next cup, I said I'd be there, and I skipped out the venue.
Of course, I'd ended the day on a loss, but I didn't feel the sting of defeat. Instead, as I went to get a grilled burger instead of Subway, I was singing the song of victory. Top 4! Above and beyond what I had even hoped!
Earlier this year, Yuki Zaninovich got top 4 at the Atlanta Regional Championship. Yuki is part of Wolfe Glick's friend group and I'm a fan of all of them, checking their names throughout the tournament to see how they're doing and all. When Yuki lost his top 4 match, I was disappointed for him. It was the furthest he had ever gone in a tournament. When I checked his Twitter, his post on the tournament was only positive, his friends were excited for him, but I thought there must be a slight bitterness to it after all, to be so close to winning and not get there.
Maybe it's cynical of me to think that. That's the part of me that hates losing that's talking. But in the burger shop, I thought about Yuki's top 4 finish, and realised that maybe there was no bitterness after all. There certainly wasn't for me.
After my round 5 loss, I was quite satisfied, but I was also a bit disappointed. Not that I'd lost, but because I was out of Pokemon to play. I had been having so much fun. I didn't want to stop now! Going into the top 4 was so fulfilling because I got to play more Pokemon. Whether I win or lose, I don't mind too much. But hey, the more you win, the more Pokemon you get to play. So now I feel like I want to get better at Pokemon so I can always play more Pokemon whenever I go to an event!
And yes, it is quite the confidence boost. Sure it's just a small local grassroots. But I didn't even think I was good enough to go positive! All of the reasons I had held back from competing were fading away. Even the last reason, which I didn't mention earlier, being that playing 8 rounds of Pokemon in a day sounds like it would be exhausting, has been reasoned away. I played 7 rounds that day, which is almost a full day 1, and I didn't feel tired until I was staggering into the train home.
I've mentioned before that when it comes to Pokemon, I feel like I'm living the life I dreamed of as a kid. Pokemon surrounds me and I am doing Pokemon things all the time. But not only that, when I go to these events where people are playing Pokemon, talking Pokemon, thinking Pokemon, I feel like Pokemon is real. And that's the feeling I want to go back to again.
So now I'm going to go figure out my damn sun matchup.
Whenever it's been a while, I always forget how much fun it is to compete in person. Playing online on my Switch is definitely fun, all the little creatures dancing around and all that, but playing on Showdown (let's not get into the new regulation and why playing on Showdown is my only option right now ...) kind of isn't, so when the grassroots came up, I kind of just made the snap decision to buy a ticket so I would be forced to go. Only once I had got there and started my first match did I really remember, 'This is the best'.
Well, hopefully I won't forget that now. Here's the team that I went with:
No rental code because there's no point, but here's the PokePaste.
I had the whole week off work so I spent it ... well, sleeping a lot because work took me out but also practicing a little bit since I haven't played any real VGC in so long. I tried out Justin Tang's LAIC team purely because it has Primarina on it and I like Primarina, but the team really impressed me. I shouldn't be surprised because, y'know, Justin Tang is an insanely good player, but still. I couldn't come up with a team idea that I liked better so I decided to replace Kantonian Arcanine with Incineroar (because I like Incineroar) then packed it up for Birmingham.
There are a lot of things that held me back from competing in the past. I don't have much talent for Pokemon in the first place. Like sometimes you just take to something, right, and I took to Pokemon in the sense of really enjoying it, but not in the sense of finding that I was doing better than other people. But even more than that, I hate losing. I'm not a sore loser or anything like that, but the feeling of losing is something I dislike, and that's something I've struggled with for a long time. Not only that, but the fear of losing makes me anxious whenever I play versus games. My heart starts beating in my ears, my hands go cold, so I put it off until I hardly do it at all. I'm equally terrified of choking to the point that it becomes inevitable that I do choke, or so I imagine.
But when I sat down to my first match, and this happens every time I play in face-to-face battles, everything else disappears. I'm focused entirely on the match in front of me. Occasionally, thoughts of 'I think I've got this' or 'That's probably it for me' and the like drift in, but I can easily brush them aside to refocus. And I've started to find that I don't care whether I win or lose. I'm having so much fun that all I care about is being able to play a little more Pokemon.
My first round was against someone with a hard Trick Room+Sun team. I hate Sun, especially with my team, and I was complaining about it to my sister just two days before. Fortunately, this wasn't the Jumpluff variant, which is the worst one. My opponent lead Indeedee in both matches alongside Hatterene in the first match and Gallade in the second one. I identified my wincons and won 2-0 fairly swiftly. We might have been the first ones to finish so I played some TCGP while waiting for the second round.
My second opponent had a rain team and we had a really fun 3 battles that I wasn't sure I would win until the last couple of turns. SOMEHOW my opponent hit FOUR Hurricanes in SNOW and THREE of them CRIT. Happily, none of it mattered, as I was quite definitely winning at that point, but HELLO? My Alolan Ninetales didn't freeze anything ONCE this tournament. Saving it for a more important time, obviously, but ... really just had to laugh at that one.
My third opponent was a guy named Joe who was very friendly and I was very happy to chat with him while we were setting up. He commented that he had never seen me before despite my low Play! Pokemon ID and the fact that I was 2-0. I explained that I hadn't played competitive in a few gens. I didn't mention that I thought I'd got lucky to go 2-0 so far. And Joe utterly steamrolled me. He read every single play I made, it seems like. I couldn't get a foothold against him. I told him that he's clearly the better player and he said, 'We'll see who wins after a hundred games', which was very kind of him.
After that was lunch which I only had half an hour for. I contemplated going to New Street to pray because it was the closest place I could think of , but it was still about 10 minutes away at a run. Would the tournament end before Asr? Well, at the very least, I'll have Zuhr sorted if I pray now. I'm sure I can hold my stomach for a couple of hours, so I dashed off to New Street and back, making it to the venue about 40 seconds before pairings went up.
My fourth round was against an insane sand team with Sandslash. If I didn't make notes I would have no idea what else was on that team because I stared at the Sandslash on their team sheet for a full 45 seconds before I picked my leads. They lead with Tyranitar and Indeedee-male and in this game, Tera-Flying Tyranitar only took 25% from Blizzard, which means it's max HP and SpDef, and yes it was Assault Vest, but hello?? Ninetales has felt so good the whole time I've used it but this is the one game that reminded me that its base SpAtk is just 81. Anyway, I won the round 2-0 but my goodness.
I was quite cheered at this point because I was 3-x and we were playing 5 rounds of Swiss so I was guaranteed to be positive this tournament. The night before, I'd slept quite badly, and had a dream that I went 1-6, so when I was at 2 wins, I was quite relieved, and at 3 wins, I was positively proud of myself.
My fifth round was quite bad for me, honestly I just played badly lol. My Primarina did get crit through Aurora Veil which sealed game 2 for me, my opponent even apologised for it, but hey, that's the game. Side note, my opponent's name was Joey. We have an awful lot of Joes in VGC.
I settled into my seat, packing up my bag as I waited for the wrap-up. There would be a top 8 after the round was over, but I assumed that my most recent loss meant I wouldn't make it. Besides, as I said to my sister, imagine little old me in top 8? Even at a friendly, how jokes would that be? I'm just a nobody who rolled up after a couple of hours on the Showdown ladder. I started planning lunch ... any good ramen places nearby? Oof but that one was 18 quid a bowl. Subway it is, I suppose. The head judge finished tallying the results and stood up to thank everyone for coming and announce who had made top 8. Names I had played against and names I didn't recognise rolled out ... and me.
My face was probably a study in comedy. I sat up straight, eyes wide, mouth tightly shut, head whipping round to stare at the judge. 'Wtf?' I texted to my sister before standing up to take a look at the standings, which are printed on a sheet of paper, with the top 8 players bolded. Everyone was taking a picture to commemorate their final standing, so I did too, even though it wasn't my final standing, because I was in the bloody top bloody 8!
Okay ... well ... that was my name and it didn't look like a mistake. I had made it through on resistance. Now I will explain what resistance is even though it will interrupt the flow of my story because I am fascinated by the concept. Major tournaments no longer use resistance, thank God, as it was a major source of contention, but heartwarming tales have come out of it too. When it comes to the top cut, not only are your results taken into account, but for players on the border of top cut, the win rate of their opponents are calculated. This is based on the theory that if most of your losses are to people with a high winrate, you probably have a higher skill level than someone whose losses were mostly to people with lower winrates. Of course, this is quite frustrating, because if you're on the border, whether or not you make it to top cut is completely out of your control. But this does have the side effect of making players feel quite friendly to their opponents who they lost against, checking up on them and occasionally even helping them, because if your opponents keep winning, you have a higher chance of making it through top cut. I've even heard of a player who was guaranteed top cut forfeiting their last match so that their friends would have a higher resistance. Now we just have an asymmetrical top cut, but that sure is something, isn't it?
Anyway, I handed my Switch over to the head judge for a team check. For the top cut, judges apparently check every team individually to make sure that team sheets are accurate, there are no hacked Pokemon, or anything of the like. I didn't know they did that! How exciting to be teamchecked for the first time! As my team was being checked, I gazed at my team sheet, feeling I should do something about being in top cut. I was just a nobody with, as I said, about 2 hours of practice on Showdown, if that! Yet my team sheet imparted no wisdom.
Trying to be more practical, I reflected instead on my round 3 match against Joseph Russell (not my most recent match with Joey), as that was the one match that I felt I had been positively trounced. Was it possible for me to win against him? The match-up was not horrifyingly bad or anything. He had just read me at every turn. My lesson there was to not stick to basic, level 0 plays any more. As a new player, my tactic is to use these plays on my first round against an opponent, then upgrade as necessary in round two and so on. I'm too new to really make consistent high-level plays, but I would need it against Joe, and anyone at least as good as him.
Still, I was in top 8! I was probably losing my next round, I reflected, but who cares? Top 8! That's miles above what I anticipated!
And it turns out it was a very good thing that I considered the match-up against Joe, because he was my next opponent. He came up to me and said, 'Ready to play again?' 'Let's do it,' I said.
We sat down for a match that felt like it lasted an hour. Level 1 plays, I told myself. I'm not asking for too much. I wrote down in my notebook, 'Make risky plays'. Playing safe against Joe would not and was not getting me anywhere. Based on how he played in our first round, I made some reads, and won game 1. Now I was very happy, even if I lost the remaining set. To borrow Justin Carris' words from his Chasing A Champion video, at that point, I was Chasing the Russell, and a single victory against him felt huge.
He won game 2, but it was very close. I stared at his team sheet. We had both been bringing the same 4 Pokemon. Would he change it up? I crossed one of them off as unusable, but Amoonguss, maybe. He brought Amoonguss and set to putting my Pokemon to sleep. I danced around the mushroom, getting some lucky turn 1 wake ups. Ah, such is the game that we play. The scales felt completely even, up until the penultimate turn. A thought flitted into my head: 'I think I'm winning.' I brush it aside. Close it out, Rufus. When the dust settles, I've won.
I take a breath. 'That was intense,' I remarked. Joe agreed, saying that it was the most intense set he'd had that day. It definitely was that for me. And you can imagine that I was bloody well elated to have won. After my first set with Joe, I had said, 'At least I learned a lot' and I felt that I had properly used those lessons in our repeat match. He was shaking his head, saying that we had brought the same mons as our last set, but I had just played better this time.
When I saw that I was playing against Joe again, I thought about one of Wolfe's explanations about repeat match-ups in his Toronto 2025 video. He said that there's an inherent comeback mechanic in Pokemon when two players play each other more than once, where the advantage is with the player who originally lost. I wanted so much to make use of that mechanic, as he called it. And, well, I think I did!
That was definitely the highlight of my tournament run. Losing very badly to someone in a round then beating them during the next go made me feel like, well, I'm learning! I love learning! This is awesome!
Also, I charged my Switch while waiting for team checks to go through, then took it off for my match against Joe. I ... just assumed I'd lose so I wouldn't need any more battery than that. Back to the charging station I go.
I texted to my sister, 'wtf I won?' As you can see, I was in huge disbelief about everything. The next pairing went up, my opponent sat down in front of me, and when we swap team sheets, I internally groan. Sun. With Jumpluff.
I did my best. The matchup isn't unwinnable. But Amrit, my opponent, knew his team well. In the end, I shook my head and told him that sun is tough for my team and I knew that going in. He said that I had played well, and yeah, I didn't hate how I played.
I packed up my things for real this time, then went to thank the head judge for adjudicating and asked to see the top 4 matchup sheet so I could take a picture. He asked if it was my first time attending a tournament and I told him that I couldn't believe it when he announced I was in top 8. He said something that I had heard a few times that day already: 'You played well.' But this time, it sank in. I guess I did play kinda well. Not at the level of a world champion or anything like that, but I didn't lose every match I played. I won most of them, even. He invited me to the next cup, I said I'd be there, and I skipped out the venue.
Of course, I'd ended the day on a loss, but I didn't feel the sting of defeat. Instead, as I went to get a grilled burger instead of Subway, I was singing the song of victory. Top 4! Above and beyond what I had even hoped!
Earlier this year, Yuki Zaninovich got top 4 at the Atlanta Regional Championship. Yuki is part of Wolfe Glick's friend group and I'm a fan of all of them, checking their names throughout the tournament to see how they're doing and all. When Yuki lost his top 4 match, I was disappointed for him. It was the furthest he had ever gone in a tournament. When I checked his Twitter, his post on the tournament was only positive, his friends were excited for him, but I thought there must be a slight bitterness to it after all, to be so close to winning and not get there.
Maybe it's cynical of me to think that. That's the part of me that hates losing that's talking. But in the burger shop, I thought about Yuki's top 4 finish, and realised that maybe there was no bitterness after all. There certainly wasn't for me.
After my round 5 loss, I was quite satisfied, but I was also a bit disappointed. Not that I'd lost, but because I was out of Pokemon to play. I had been having so much fun. I didn't want to stop now! Going into the top 4 was so fulfilling because I got to play more Pokemon. Whether I win or lose, I don't mind too much. But hey, the more you win, the more Pokemon you get to play. So now I feel like I want to get better at Pokemon so I can always play more Pokemon whenever I go to an event!
And yes, it is quite the confidence boost. Sure it's just a small local grassroots. But I didn't even think I was good enough to go positive! All of the reasons I had held back from competing were fading away. Even the last reason, which I didn't mention earlier, being that playing 8 rounds of Pokemon in a day sounds like it would be exhausting, has been reasoned away. I played 7 rounds that day, which is almost a full day 1, and I didn't feel tired until I was staggering into the train home.
I've mentioned before that when it comes to Pokemon, I feel like I'm living the life I dreamed of as a kid. Pokemon surrounds me and I am doing Pokemon things all the time. But not only that, when I go to these events where people are playing Pokemon, talking Pokemon, thinking Pokemon, I feel like Pokemon is real. And that's the feeling I want to go back to again.
So now I'm going to go figure out my damn sun matchup.