Over the weekend I participated in my very first event with the Silph League.
My last Pokémon Go post was telling you a bit about the Tempest Cup.
So this month the permitted types are Electric, Ice, Flying and Ground. The max CP allowed is 1500, or Great League level. You pick a team of six Pokémon to fit the requirements and you go for it!
On March 17th I drove to Chino Hills, California to the local bowling alley for the Tempest Cup. Around 50 people came from all over to participate. I saw people of all ages and walks of life showing up to battle.
This tournament was Swiss-style. Instead of how you may have seen it done in the anime where you would see eliminations happen, basically everyone went through several rounds of best of three matches. So everyone got to play several rounds with different people that the Silph site would put you up against.
It was really cool to see how the website actually worked when a live tournament was in progress. They had an overhead projection of the action and you could also follow with your phone. The site would pair you with another trainer, you would meet them at a table and battle a best of three round with them. The victor would then be recorded on the site, by the trainers notifying the site via phone of who won.
When all the results are in the site kicks it into the next round and so on. I noticed with each round my standing was dropping until I was matched with other trainers that more or less at the same level as myself. I won one round out of the total six that were played.
I'm not sure if every participating city will have fancy lanyards and custom-designed name tags (very cool by the way), but at this place everyone that showed up to battle got to take one home in the color of their team. In my case, yellow for Instinct.
In all, about 50 trainers showed up to take this home.
But only one person walked away with this trophy after a final battle between the two at the very top of the tournament. The final battle itself was pretty fun. The two trainers squared off in front of the whole crowd with their phones being cast up on the big screen so that everyone could actually watch the battle happen. I really enjoyed that, as it really seems to make this into a sort of spectator sport. There were cheers and screams as the battle played out, and a big congratulatory cheer at the very end. :-)
Now onto why I placed so horribly.
My game play style and technique seems to be fine after seeing how 50 or so others played. Some people played with double fingertaps like I do, but most others just like rapid pounding with a single finger. I heard some towards the end complaining of fatigue stemming from rapid pounding. lol
I think it came down to having a shitty Pokémon team for this event. Not shitty in a general sense but shitty for this particular event.
This is what I started with a week before the event.
But then I changed the lineup just before the event to this:
I did find a rather useful site called PVPOKE.com that allows me to simulate battles and look at matchups, stats and other data for helping to select a team. But, I found this site too late in the process and had to go with this last change.
So today I sat here and went though all of my Pokémon with this site and I have a new potential lineup, but I need to do some training to get them ready for the next event day.
This is where I leave you today, because tomorrow brings a new post about this continuing journey for the Tempest Cup where I will go in-depth with what movesets I have going on with my new team and what I am doing to bulk them up for the next tournament!
LOL
Will "AshedKashum" improve his standing in the Pokémon GO Silph League??? Follow me and find out!
@SaintChristopher