Announcing the Reddit PTCGO Open Tournament

[RedditPokemonLeague]

About
Our aim is to create the first MAJOR online Pokemon TCG tournament to date. We represent the main Pokemon TCG Online group on Reddit (reddit.com/r/PTCGO.) Our group currently has around 700 subscribers.

Premise
The idea behind our tournament is to create a quarterly tournament to attract the best Pokemon TCG Online players, and offer one of the largest prize pools. The tournament is free to enter and supported entirely by the community and sponsors.

Format

Three tournaments:
- Beginner: In this tournament you may only create your deck with cards found in the 3 Trainer Challenge decks and Power Relay deck. (Free cards only)
- Intermediate: In this tournament you are free to use any cards (including cards not in current rotation) except EXs and Ace Spec trainers.
- Professional: Your deck may contain any cards allowed in the current Modified Format

Each tournament will feature a single-elimination bracket, semifinals are Best of 3, finals are Best of 5.
Prize Pool
We currently have established a prize pool of 65 booster packs as of this post, which will be split among the 3 tournaments. We feel this alone is a fairly significant amount, but expect the prize pool to increase dramatically as the wider community becomes aware of the tournament.

Prize distribution will be announced later, but likely to be booster packs for 1st - 4th place

Casters / Announcers
Although Pokemon TCG Online does not offer a spectator mode, we would like to get as many players as possible to capture video of their matches. (Instructions and free streaming/screen capture software will be provided.) This will also help us confirm winners in case of dispute. We plan to stream as many tournament matches as possible on twitch.tv/RedditPokemonTCG in 720p+ quality. However, there will be many matches and this will require multiple casters to cover all the matches.

We are looking for knowledgable, charismatic casters who love Pokemon TCG and would like to help cast the tournament. This is a great opportunity to promote yourself as a caster and you will have ample opportunity to plug your own Youtube channel or stream.

If you would like to be a caster, please email redditpokemontcg@gmail.com, preferably including an example of previous casting or gameplay commentary.

Sponsors

Please email redditpokemontcg@gmail.com to discuss sponsorship options/offers.

We are looking for sponsors to contribute booster packs, code cards, or paypal toward the prize pool, which will attract more players and a larger audience. This will allow us to run a successful tournament with great prizes, while keeping entry free.
If you have an online store or Youtube channel, sponsorship can get you some cheap advertising in the form of shoutouts at the start of our broadcasted matches (ie. "This match brought to you by XXXXXXX"), commercials at the beginning or end of matches, and stream overlays featuring your information for the entire duration of matches. This is a great way to reach a very targeted audience of hundreds or possibly thousands of viewers. However, we currently have no idea how popular this tournament will be, so we can't promise how many people will see your ad.


How You Can Help
- DONATE: Any booster packs, code cards, paypal, artwork, or anything else you feel would help. Please email redditpokemontcg@gmail.com
- SHARE: If you have a Youtube channel, stream, or website, please post to let other players know about this tournament. The more people, the better.
- SIGN UP: This will only work if enough people take part!
- POKEMON PROFESSORS & PROS: We need people with specialized knowledge to help fine-tune the rules (ie. Point out any cards so glitched that they should be banned from the tournament.)

HOW TO ENTER:

Visit www.reddit.com/r/ptcgo/comments/1es9k9/announcing_the_reddit_ptcgo_open_tournament/ and fill out the signup form provided.

Signing up for Reddit and subscribing to /r/PTCGO is highly recommended. It's fast, easy, and free. All future announcements and updates will be posted on reddit.com/r/PTCGO.

SIGNUPS CLOSE JUNE 22, 2013
TOURNAMENT TENTATIVELY SCHEDULED JUNE 29/30, 2013, TIME TBA
(Official announcement once number of players and prize pool has been established.)

DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS AN INDEPENDANT TOURNAMENT NOT AFFILIATED OR ENDORSED BY THE POKEMON COMPANY / NINTENDO. WE ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE PLAY! POKEMON PROGRAM IN ANY WAY.
By participating in the tournament you confirm you are at least 13 years of age or have your parent's permission. The tournament is free and has no entry fee. Voluntary donations toward the prize pool are encouraged but not necessary, and are made at your own risk.

As far as we are aware, holding this tournament does not violate any of Pokemon.com's Terms of Use. People have run smaller independant tournaments without issue and we do not expect to encounter any difficulties, however if The Pokemon Company / Nintendo contact us we will have to discontinue the tournament.

Contact info:
redditpokemontcg@gmail.com
Reddit.com/r/ptcgo (Message the mods)
twitch.tv/RedditPokemonTCG

 

[ven?]

Intermediate: In this tournament you are free to use any cards (including cards not in current rotation) except EXs and Ace Spec trainers.

there was a deck which 2 years ago made pokemon rotate to hgss a month before regular rotation to make things fair at worlds, that deck is sableye, because you have not allowed EXs to be played, sableye wins by auto default in the intermediate catagory.

- POKEMON PROFESSORS & PROS: We need people with specialized knowledge to help fine-tune the rules (ie. Point out any cards so glitched that they should be banned from the tournament.)

If you have a question ask us, we might probably know, everyone who is active on serebii in the tcg forums are quite knowledgeable in the trading card game (I was asked the other day why I don't be a judge myself, and I was like dun wana), I even think our moderator is a judge, idk I probably just made that up.

Uh, add EXS, seriously, just add them, it's not like EXS are hacked in unlimited they really aren't, they're more like lazy giants then actually useful (unlimited decks just trounce us, better T/S/S that's for sure).

 

[Tayseanpwns]

Exs are available in the Professional version of the tournament.

 

[ven?]

Still 1 card wins an entire division if you don't add EXs, it's not so much of the fact that they're EXs, its more of the the fact of what it can stand up against HP wise, sableye SF allows you to go first regardless of coin flip, that being said, they're a re very successful runs of the list that work to auto win turn 1 in which they go first regardless, EXs are the only thing with large enough HP, (3 180HP out min to last 1 turn, if you don't have 3 180 HP EXs out minimum you lose turn 1).

 

[Tayseanpwns]

I do not know much about the card game because I am just getting back into it but, maybe you should consult the Reddit team that is in charge of the tournament. There might be a way to ban certain cards.

 

[ven?]

I am, they're just not responding. This reminds me of the poke cube thing, they get so up into themselves because they came up with a medoicre idea nobody else wanted to do, because they think they know what they're doing (even though they don't actually play the game and keep up to date with things so if they we're to hold an event everything "would not" be fair). No these kinds of people don't care about my game, and to me it's like they're pissing on it, so if I seem offensive towards them, well now you know why I'm such a dick to them.

So in short, before you think about holding some international tournament, why don't you guys do it for you're 700 so called fans and read up on the game as of current, see why I'm saying what I'm saying instead of disrespecting those 700 fans holding a tournament and pissing alot of them off. Japan has even agreed that as of october 2013, everything released from pokemon will be released worldwide, video games, cards, show, etc, making it that much easier to get anyone educated with the game or even pokemon itself (as on that month pokemon will not reside with japan and will be for the first time an international market).