Pooka
Master Trainer
Hey everyone, this is Pooka from The Top Cut with an announcement for a big tournament we're holding at Worlds. After the World Championship award ceremony concludes, we will be holding the first ever Top Cut Invitational: Tournament of Champions. For this tournament, we have invited 8 of the game's best National and World Champions to compete in one tournament to see who will come out on top. Have you ever wanted to watch players like Jason "Ness" Klaczynski face off against Chris Fulop to see who would win? Well, this is your opportunity!
Of course, this tournament will be unique in that it is designed to be a spectator event; we want to showcase the best players in the game to show what the Pokemon TCG is all about. Every round there will be a featured match that will be recorded with commentary. In addition, there will be another camera roaming around to capture the event to give you the feeling you're there watching it live. After the tournament is done, we will post the videos online so everyone can watch later. We are working very hard to have the video and audio quality as high as possible in order to have the event run smoothly and look great. So far we have gotten an audio expert to help us with the sound, and we are working with a professional filmmaker to get the video done correctly.
If the Internet connection is strong enough from the venue, we will attempt to stream the event live online. At this point, we are still figuring out whether or not this will be possible, but we hope it will be. Overall, having a live stream would make the event much more exciting.
Why are we holding this event? We want to clarify that this isn't a scheme to make money or anything like that; our goal is to make Pokemon bigger and better for everyone. In the end, we feel like a tournament like this can open up a lot of doors for the game as a whole. Any sort of video coverage will go a long way in expanding the Pokemon TCG because it makes everything more accessible to the public. If this goes well, we plan on holding more tournaments in the future and making the game much more spectator friendly.
So, to summarize the event, here are the details.
Date and Time
The tournament will take place on Sunday, August 14th at approximately 6 PM PST (depending on when Worlds finishes).
Format
Our initial idea is to split the players into two groups of 4, then have the top two players from each group advance to the single elimination best 2/3 rounds. Given our time constraints for the tournament, we feel like this may be the best way to do the tournament in a timely fashion while still allowing enough games for each player to showcase his skills. We will be using the current HS-On Modified format.
Admission
Only the players who are invited can play in this tournament. In the future, we hope to hold open events, but this one is invitation only. Here are the players!
Justin Sanchez (2011 US National Champion)
Jason "Ness" Klaczynski (2006 & 2008 World Champion, Pokemon TCG legend)
Chris Fulop (2007 US National Champion & 2004 World Championship Runner-Up)
Sami Sekkoum (Multiple-time UK National Champion & 2009 World Championship Runner-Up)
Con Le (2010 US National Champion, Top 16 Worlds 2010)
Tsuguyoshi Yamato (2004 World Champion, Top 8 Worlds 2005 & Worlds 2007)
Yuta Komatsuda (2010 World Champion, Top 4 Worlds 2006)
2011 World Champion*
*In the event that the 2011 World Champion does not participate, an alternate player will be filling in.
Prizes
The winner will receive a trophy among other things. Right now we don't have a set prize pool, but we will have prizes for everyone involved (packs, deck boxes, etc.). We're also accepting donations to improve the prize pool.
Tournament Rules
We will use the standard P!P tournament rules, meaning 30 minutes + 3 turns for the group stages and 60 minutes + 3 turns for the finals.
We're hoping to make this a big event, and we want to do this every year if possible. Unfortunately, our budget right now is extremely small, but we are doing our best to make the tournament look and sound nice with what we have. If you like what we're doing and would like to donate to improve the production quality or prize pool, we are looking for donations of any kind to help run this tournament. Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like to help out. If you have any suggestions, please post here or e-mail us. Thank you!
-Pooka and The Top Cut Staff
Of course, this tournament will be unique in that it is designed to be a spectator event; we want to showcase the best players in the game to show what the Pokemon TCG is all about. Every round there will be a featured match that will be recorded with commentary. In addition, there will be another camera roaming around to capture the event to give you the feeling you're there watching it live. After the tournament is done, we will post the videos online so everyone can watch later. We are working very hard to have the video and audio quality as high as possible in order to have the event run smoothly and look great. So far we have gotten an audio expert to help us with the sound, and we are working with a professional filmmaker to get the video done correctly.
If the Internet connection is strong enough from the venue, we will attempt to stream the event live online. At this point, we are still figuring out whether or not this will be possible, but we hope it will be. Overall, having a live stream would make the event much more exciting.
Why are we holding this event? We want to clarify that this isn't a scheme to make money or anything like that; our goal is to make Pokemon bigger and better for everyone. In the end, we feel like a tournament like this can open up a lot of doors for the game as a whole. Any sort of video coverage will go a long way in expanding the Pokemon TCG because it makes everything more accessible to the public. If this goes well, we plan on holding more tournaments in the future and making the game much more spectator friendly.
So, to summarize the event, here are the details.
Date and Time
The tournament will take place on Sunday, August 14th at approximately 6 PM PST (depending on when Worlds finishes).
Format
Our initial idea is to split the players into two groups of 4, then have the top two players from each group advance to the single elimination best 2/3 rounds. Given our time constraints for the tournament, we feel like this may be the best way to do the tournament in a timely fashion while still allowing enough games for each player to showcase his skills. We will be using the current HS-On Modified format.
Admission
Only the players who are invited can play in this tournament. In the future, we hope to hold open events, but this one is invitation only. Here are the players!
Justin Sanchez (2011 US National Champion)
Jason "Ness" Klaczynski (2006 & 2008 World Champion, Pokemon TCG legend)
Chris Fulop (2007 US National Champion & 2004 World Championship Runner-Up)
Sami Sekkoum (Multiple-time UK National Champion & 2009 World Championship Runner-Up)
Con Le (2010 US National Champion, Top 16 Worlds 2010)
Tsuguyoshi Yamato (2004 World Champion, Top 8 Worlds 2005 & Worlds 2007)
Yuta Komatsuda (2010 World Champion, Top 4 Worlds 2006)
2011 World Champion*
*In the event that the 2011 World Champion does not participate, an alternate player will be filling in.
Prizes
The winner will receive a trophy among other things. Right now we don't have a set prize pool, but we will have prizes for everyone involved (packs, deck boxes, etc.). We're also accepting donations to improve the prize pool.
Tournament Rules
We will use the standard P!P tournament rules, meaning 30 minutes + 3 turns for the group stages and 60 minutes + 3 turns for the finals.
We're hoping to make this a big event, and we want to do this every year if possible. Unfortunately, our budget right now is extremely small, but we are doing our best to make the tournament look and sound nice with what we have. If you like what we're doing and would like to donate to improve the production quality or prize pool, we are looking for donations of any kind to help run this tournament. Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like to help out. If you have any suggestions, please post here or e-mail us. Thank you!
-Pooka and The Top Cut Staff
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