This is it! The World Championships! All of the competitions during the entire year are boiling down to these few couple of days as the competitors focus their efforts to try and win a world championship in their division. The TCG and VGC had two days of competition. The VGC used Swiss rounds, very similar to St. Louis, and from there determined the top cut of 4. Those four got to play the semi and final matches for the world championships. Each player got to at least play five matches(each with best two out of three battles), so no one went home disappointed they got out in the first round.
The top four finalists were:
1.Kazuyuki Tsuji (JP) 5-0
2.Steven Wasserloos (US) 4-1
3.Tasuku Mano (JP) 4-1
4.Grace Beck (US) 4-1
Kazuyuki Tsuji from Japan played Grace Beck from the US in the first semi final match. Daniel Levinson was recording them, and the entire set went to three matches, the max. Unfortunately, the semi finals between Steven Waserloos and Tasuku Mano were not recorded. Watch the first semi final matches for yourself below:
As you can see from the video, Grace Beck lost to Tsuji in a couple of weird battles (a lot of luck abounded on one side, including letting the computer choose moves for you), but in the end Tsuji reigned supreme. And from what you can't see with the other semi finals, Tasuko Mano beat Steven Waserloos. The World Championship finals were Tsuji and Mano, battling it out. The below videos (credit goes to seadraDS, a Japanese pokemon player on YouTube) are the three games for the finals. Here they are:
Quite a bunch of epic matches. Probably the most shocking part of the whole thing was when the Shedinja got a critical hit against the Toxicroak with Shadow Sneak and KOed it. The entire place went nuts when that happened. Nevertheless, Kazuyuki Tsuji was the victor and the world champion for the 2009 Pokemon Video Game Championships! The crowd clapped for about a minute or two once he had achieved victory. Probably shortly after that people started to think about copying his team.
Well, once the competition had ended, the competitors went back to their rooms or hung out with friends that they knew. The head management for GameFreak, the company who makes the Pokemon games, were around during the weekend for autographs and pictures. Junichi Masuda, Takeshi Kawachimaru, and Tsunekaz Ishihara were there for autographs. A sample picture of some of the autographs is below:
All in all, it was a great weekend for pokemon, and left many people anxiously awaiting for next year. With the legendary addition for next year(here is a link to it on our forums: WCS 2010 ubers?), most people will just have to sit tight and wait until the Japanese tournaments start in the Fall of 2009. Here's to next year!