A few months ago, my raid group held an offline tournament to get things going again in the tournament scene, and that proved to be a minor success - even for little ol' me. This time, my raid group took a bit of a different turn and held a remote tournament instead. Earlier, in the previous tournament, I noted that it would (could) be a prelude to the next Silph Arena season... but it's been three months since the tournament and nothing has come out in the Arena, which suggests a lot of things - though I'll discuss that separately. Regardless, this tournament, much like the last, is hosted through and made possible by the Silph Arena toolkit, which still affirms its workability, even if things are changing or have changed.
The selected format for this tournament is the Great League, and there are no strings attached to it, so it's just a pure open Great League. The tournament title affirms that even further, stating that the format has no restrictions applied to it, unlike last time as above or concurrently in Factions. The "no restrictions" aspect also applies to the participants of the tournament, who are from different places across my resident country, not just those in my raid group. This includes a handful of high-ranking Trainers - even, those "guests" from the last tournament as above - whose caliber I don't quite match but who are still fun to compete with. And since it's a remote tournament, more of them are able to participate, and they did: the tournament started with 44 Trainers, though 6 had to drop out for different reasons as it progressed, leaving 38 at the end.
Regarding the schedule, this is (was) a typical one-round-one-day tournament; it started out with the first round last Saturday at 9 PM and concluded today with the last round, the sixth round, at the same time. In order to keep order, stricter "no-show" rules were applied: two Trainers in a match who don't show up until the end of a round are randomly drawn for a 2-1 win (though in practice it never did come to this), and if either one shows up just before but the other doesn't, the one who shows up gets a 3-0 win. Non-responsive Trainers were also dropped out, which was the case for 4 of the above, with the remaining being for other reasons. Coordination was up to the Trainers as they were matched in order to avoid either circumstance, or to just follow through if it becomes clearly impossible.
Of course, there are the results to discuss, including for me personally. This tournament wasn't so hot for me, as I lost the first five rounds and only managed to win the last one by totally shutting out the other Trainer. The fifth round in particular featured a really close call that could (and maybe should) have been able to result in a second match win for me. The remaining rounds resulted in two shutouts and one-win rounds each. I ended up the best among those with only one win but sixth from the bottom, discounting those who dropped out with no wins. Everyone who stayed also won at least one match, a good thing indeed.
For those who ended up on top, this tournament may be considered the "warm-up" or the "pretest", as the real action and the real "test" is a one-day tournament that is to take place tomorrow in a very specific place, and is therefore in-person. I'll have more details on this separately, but what's important is that the tournament is a big one. For that, I considered this raid group tournament as a partial determinant of whether I should go, and given the results for me, I ought to not be going - and even as I write this, it would be too late to go anyway. The tournament that is about to take place deserves the best of the best, and I'm not in that condition yet, but maybe and eventually, I will be.
With my participation in this tournament and how the results of that are manifested, a few things can be noted. First, my performance is too up-and-down to follow tournaments consistently, though at least I can always try. Those tournaments, meanwhile, are on the up-and-up, even though some things look a bit down. This one in particular, with some of the national elites, may be considered as the "barometer" for how things turn out in them, and if things are of any indication this time, at least some things may be on track for good results, however one takes them to be "good".
One year ago: Casting Out Porygon
Two years ago: Let's Talk About Finding Our Way
Three years ago: A Day (or Year) with Pikachu
Four years ago: To See and See Not
Five years ago: A Pokémon Twist to My Phone
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