14 DAY TRIAL // Pokemon fans will be pleased to know that the Pokemon Winter Regional Championships will be taking place over the next three weekends across the US.
The North American championship will be the first time battles in a Pokemon Video Game Championship Series will take place in the Pokemon X or Pokemon Y games.
The events are completely open to the public, and all players have to do in order to participate in the competition is bring their copy of either Pokemon X or Pokemon Y with them, along with their Nintendo 2DS or 3DS handheld console.
The competition will use the swiss tournament system, meaning that after a set number of rounds depending on the total number of contestants, the winners will be the players with the highest aggregate number of points from each round.
In such a system, the one-on-one pairings are automatically generated after each round, and will have players facing opponents of equal skill, depending on points gathered up to that point, in order to create balanced final standings.
The top finishers for both the trading card game and the video game events will receive booster packs, trophies and prizes from a pool of almost $200k / €147k, mostly in travel allowances for the Pokemon US National Championships and invitations to the 2014 Pokemon World Championships taking place this August in Washington DC.
The schedule of the event is as follows:
Doswell, VA - January 11th-12th – (TCG both days, Video Game Jan. 12th only) Long Beach, CA - January 18th-19th – (TCG both days, Video Game Jan. 19th only) Salem, OR - January 18th-19th – (TCG both days, Video Game Jan. 19th only) St. Charles, MO - January 18th-19th – (TCG both days, Video Game Jan. 18th only) Orlando, FL - January 25th-26th – (TCG both days, Video Game Jan. 26th only)
More information can be found on the Pokemon Championship Series website.