Tom Dolezal
New Member
For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Tom Dolezal. I don’t actually play the Pokémon tcg a lot; I don’t own any cards and I only play in one tournament a year (nationals), possibly two if I make it to worlds. This is mostly because I’m a graduate student, and that takes up a lot of my time, so I don’t really have a chance to play the game during the school year. This year, I was lucky enough to qualify for worlds through a T8 at nationals. This wasn’t really a rare occurrence though, as I’ve finished with two T32s, one T16, two T8s, 4th, and 2nd in the 7 years that I attended nationals.
I had played typhlosion/reshiram for nationals. Because the deck fit my play style well and was a solid deck overall, I decided to use it for worlds. Just prior to worlds, there had been a long discussion about running it without ninetails, and just using extra draw supporters instead. I felt that this left the deck too vulnerable to a mid-game judge and opted to run the ninetails version. Seeing as how 8/10 decks that I played against were some kind of yanmega/magnezone/kingdra variant (all of which ran judge to my knowledge), I feel that this was the correct play. I won’t post my decklist here, but it was just a very basic, highly consistent list without any tech cards. I had worked a lot with Drew Holton and Andrew Mondak to perfect the Typhlosion/reshiram list, and I ended up running the same list as Mondak did at Worlds. I’ll also extend a huge thank you to Chris Silver, who let me borrow the cards to make the deck, and an unknown junior player from the playtesting area, who gave me a fire energy.
Prior to the actual tournament, I just hung out with my friends and played a few testing games, most of which were the mirror. I had actually managed to get enough sleep this year, so I was well rested for round one:
Round 1 vs. Jackson Iler with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I had a pretty sick feeling in my stomach as I looked at my opening hand, which consisted of unplayable junk. I went first, drew my card, and passed. I was a little relieved when my opponent did the same. I drew passed again, and he evolved into yanmega, matched my hand size, and knocked out my cyndaquil. I think I topdecked a collector or something and slowly got setup as he took a couple easy prizes with yanmega against my weak basics. He eventually got a collector and got setup as well. Side note: I had played this matchup many times with Drew Holton, and if both decks got setup, I almost always won. He had the prize lead, but based on the matchup, I was able to get back to 1-1 prizes despite going 0/3 on reversal. I junked for a pluspower and juniper/roasted for 10 cards to get another plus power (3 plus/junks left in a 16 card deck, so a 96.43% chance I get one) for the win. 1-0
Round 2 vs. Con Le with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
Con was the 2010 national champion, so I knew I was up against a good player. I was almost certain that I had lost when I drew a hand that was similar to my hand in the first game. I drew passed… but so did he! I think he judged me T2 into a god hand of ninetails and juniper, so I setup off of that while he still drew dead off of his judge. This wasn’t really a game and he scooped when I was up 4-0. I feel bad winning like that, but that’s how luck dependent this format is. 2-0
Round 3 vs. Alessandro Cremascoli with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
My opening hand consisted of 2 candies, typhlosion, and ninetails with a reshiram start. This could either go really bad or really good if I were to draw a collector with my first card. I go first and draw… the collector! I proceed to get out ninetails and 2 typhlosions on turn two, with a blue-flaring reshiram. He gets an okay setup, but there’s really nothing that he can do against my god start, as I proceed to hit reversals (and he misses his reversals/jirachi flips) to beat him in a pretty unfair game luck wise. 3-0
Round 4 vs. Tobias Thesing with yanmega/kingdra
Without the magnezone, I can’t really lose to this deck unless I get a really ****** setup, as it can’t deal with my reshirams. As it turns out, I get a god start again with T2 blue flare, and he really doesn’t have a chance as I proceed to one shot each of his Pokémon. 4-0
Round 5 vs. Ricardo Garcia with Typhlosion/reshiram/no ninetails
I think that his deck actually has the advantage in the mirror since he runs 4 reshiram as opposed to my 3, and since I don’t run judge, the no-ninetails isn’t too much of an issue. We both get fairly average setups, and I think I take the first prize on a cleffa. We proceed to trade reshirams, since that’s basically how the mirror goes, but since he had burned a lot of junk arms to setup (at one point he discarded 2 junk arms to junk arm), he eventually ran out of reshirams/revive/junks. At this point, he was unable to return the ko and resorted to wall-stalling with Typhlosions to deck me. I wouldn’t have decked, as I could have commicationed a couple times to extend my deck, but I just hit a reversal for his smeargle to win. 5-0
At this point I’m relieved, since an expected 8.6 5-2’s (out of 20) will make top cut, and since I started 5-0, my resistance would be pretty high. If you’re interested in how to calculate this, it’s just Pascal’s triangle. With paper and pencil, you can just add the records from the previous round and divide by 2. For example, if there were 30 2-0’s and 60 1-1’s after round 2, there will be (30+60)/2=45 2-1’s after round 3. With this, you can easily figure out the expected number of players that will have a certain record to make the cut. I also made an Excel program that does it automatically, so if you’re interested, just PM me and I’ll email that to you.
Round 6 vs. Josh Wittenkeller (J-Wittz) with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I got a pretty ****** setup with he got an average one. I had a turn two ninetails using roast every turn, but I couldn’t draw into a collector/cyndaquil to save my life. I eventually had to communication to get a cyndaquil on turn 4ish, and I eventually got a collector on turn 5ish, at which point I basically had a god hand. Of course I proceed to get judged which slows my setup even further. He is pretty far ahead, and I think he went 3 for 4 or 4 for 5 on reversals, while I went 1 for 4, to kill my cyndaquils/typhlosions. I eventually get to the point where all of my typhlosions are dead due to magnezone one-shotting them or linear attack/devolve with jirachi, but I’m still in the game and it’s tied 2/2. Time is called and he reversals up my energyless reshiram (active one would have killed his active magnezone next turn) and proceeds to spray splash my cleffa (which I had to use when I got judged into an unplayable hand) a couple times to win on time. I would have won in an untimed game, as he was about to deck out and was out of resources to kill anything else on my field, but it didn’t really matter, as I was pretty sure I was in the cut anyways. 5-1
Round 7 vs. Jay Hornung with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
He played the version that used pachirisu and more lightning energy instead of the jirachi version. I believe that this more lightning-intensive approach is more consistent and better than the jirachi approach, which often got slow setups whenever I played/played against it in testing. For the actual game, we both got fairly average setups, having to use cleffa. The game was fairly standard, with him reversaling my quilava/typhlosion and judging me, which I drew fairly well off of (though I only need a fire energy once ninetails is up, so the vast majority of the time I should draw well off of judges). I got slightly above average luck, going first and going 2/4 on reversals, while Jay only went 2/5 on reversals. The game was pretty close, and had a few more reversal flips gone his way, he might have won, but I think I won 6/4 on prizes in the end. Jay ended up making the cut, so I was happy that I didn’t grinch him out of the cut. 6-1
I was pretty happy to have made $1,000+, but I was hoping to go further than just making the cut. I had made a T32, 2 T16’s, and a T8 in previous world championships, but I wanted to go further this year. I was so nervous/excited that night that I couldn’t sleep; I only got about 3 hours of sleep to go along with 4+ hours of staring at the ceiling. I felt fairly alert on Sunday, but I was worried that my lack of sleep would affect my play. I proceeded to get to the lobby about an hour early, and waited to play my T16 match against a familiar opponent:
T16 vs. Jay Hornung with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
Both of these games went pretty much exactly the same as my round 7 game vs. Jay. He got about 30-40% reversal heads for the match and I drew fairly well off of most of his judges and got fairly average reversal flips. We both got pretty average setups both games as well. I think I reversal killed his horsea/kingdra both games and made sure that I kept my reshirams at 2 damage so that he would have to discard 3 energy to kill them. Doing this makes it so that he doesn’t have enough energy to kill all of my big attackers, and I eventually won, both games having been fairly close (I think he took 4 prizes each game). Jay played really well in all of our games, but the matchup and luck favored me. 2-0 win
T8 vs. J-Wittz with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I’m actually pretty embarrassed about my play in this round, as I made more misplays (at least 2 major ones) than I had the entire tournament, during which I played pretty well, making one, maybe two minor misplays. I don’t think he played the best either though, making a couple errors; we were both pretty nervous at this point, as there is over a $5000+ difference between T8 and 3rd, not to mention the worlds 2012 invite. Naturally this game was recorded; I believe that thetopcut.net has a video of it. Anyways, game one I won pretty quickly, as I had a good hand, he had a not-so-good hand, and I was blue flaring him before he could really get setup.
Game 2 was the opposite, with him getting a really good hand and me getting a really poor hand. I’m not really sure how I was still in the game, but after a few turns of drawing dead, I managed to kill something with manual attachments to reshiram. I drew a collector off of my prizes, which I would ideally use to get a cleffa, retreat, and eeeeeek, but because I was flustered at having drawn poorly with him having a perfect setup already, I misplayed and sent up reshiram after he killed my active reshiram. This would have been the correct play if I didn’t draw the collector from my prizes, but I did, and had to waste 2 turns and energies to retreat and eeeeeek (since I continued to draw dead). This set me back a turn, and turned a hard-to-win game into a nearly impossible game to win. I played it out, since I was still confident that I could win if I got setup, and I almost made a comeback and might have won if I didn’t miss every reversal flip, but he ended up winning game 2. I also angle-shot him this game, as he announced linear attack, and a second later re-announced sonic boom instead. He wanted me to let him take him back, and normally I would, but since it’s worlds and there’s so much on the line, I couldn’t do that. For the same reason, I didn’t ask to take back my dumb promotion of the reshiram, as there shouldn’t be take-backs when playing for this much.
Game 3 I had a really good setup, but I made the mistake of not leaving a fire energy in the discard pile. Note that this wouldn’t have mattered at all if he doesn’t hit heads on reversal and judge me into an energyless hand (as I have a ninetails up), but he does, and I’m stuck with an active typhlosion draw/passing for 4 straight turns. This allows him to get setup (he had a ****** hand) and reversal (he’s 3/3 now for the game) kill my 2nd typhlosion with magnezone. I finally topdeck an energy and roast to get going again. Around this time, time is called, and he has the prize lead. I double pluspower blue flare his magnezone, and kill his cleffa on my time turn 2. He can’t return ko something, and judges me. I roast off the judge, attach an energy, and double junk arm for 2 plus powers to kill his magnezone for the game. 2-1 win.
At this point I’m pretty happy, as I’ve made a decent amount of money and have a trip/invite to Hawaii next year. I find out that I’m going to be playing Ross Cawthon in top 4; his deck decimates typhlosion/reshiram, and my only hope of winning is to hope he gets a bad start or prizes his entei/suicune legend. Needless to say, I’m not too confident heading into the match:
Top 4 vs. Ross Cawthon with vileplume/reuniclus/donphan/zekrom/entei-suicune legend/pichu/blissey
Needless to say, Ross plays a lot of different Pokémon in his deck, which makes is pretty slow. As such, my only chance of winning is to get a few typhlosions out and either go through his field quickly or discard all of the energies off of his legend when he does get it up. Unfortunately, I don’t play a rare candy in either game, as he gets a turn 2 vileplume in game 1, and I just don’t see one at all game 2. This limits me to one typhlosion each game, as I discarded a quilava with a juniper in game 1, and I had quilava as one of my last 2 prizes in game 2. For the actual games, Ross just let me kill a few things, then started twinsing every turn, set up entei/suicune legend with about 5 energy on it, and proceeded to one shot my whole field while my damage was capped at 120. With blissey, he can take 6 prizes before I do enough damage to kill his legend, so I really can’t win the match without getting really lucky. Ross gets a worse setup in game 2, but he still gets up the legend with a ton of energies on it when I’ve only taken 4 prizes, and proceeds to go through my whole field. I give props to Ross for making an original deck and doing well with it. Also, this game is on thetopcut.net as well. 0-2 loss
I’m pretty happy with my finish overall. I obviously got very lucky and played well enough to get into T4, outside of my idiotic mistakes in T8. But, in a field with so many skilled competitors, and especially in this format, luck (whether it be matchups, drawing, or coin flipping) is the most important aspect to a player winning.
I manage to finish in 3rd, just based on the fact that I had a higher swiss record than the other T4 player. I don’t agree with this practice, as there is a considerable prize difference between 3rd and 4th: the trophy card that sells for a couple thousand dollars. Ideally, the players should play-off for 3rd/4th place. This could be done at the same time as the finals, as it was a few years ago. Logistically though, it makes sense to not have them play off, as it distracts the spectators from the finals match, and only has an impact on 2 people. Fortunately, I won my last swiss game and got the better end of the deal, but I imagine that the 4th place person would be fairly angry.
In total, I got around $8k+ worth of prizes, most of which are up on eBay right now. The money is really nice, but the more important thing is the enjoyment of hanging out with everyone in the Pokémon community. I wouldn’t still be playing this game if everyone wasn’t so great. Whether it be playtesting, lending me cards, talking about strategy, hanging out, or just having people that I don’t know walk up and congratulate me, all of you are great and will keep the game alive for many years to come.
I had played typhlosion/reshiram for nationals. Because the deck fit my play style well and was a solid deck overall, I decided to use it for worlds. Just prior to worlds, there had been a long discussion about running it without ninetails, and just using extra draw supporters instead. I felt that this left the deck too vulnerable to a mid-game judge and opted to run the ninetails version. Seeing as how 8/10 decks that I played against were some kind of yanmega/magnezone/kingdra variant (all of which ran judge to my knowledge), I feel that this was the correct play. I won’t post my decklist here, but it was just a very basic, highly consistent list without any tech cards. I had worked a lot with Drew Holton and Andrew Mondak to perfect the Typhlosion/reshiram list, and I ended up running the same list as Mondak did at Worlds. I’ll also extend a huge thank you to Chris Silver, who let me borrow the cards to make the deck, and an unknown junior player from the playtesting area, who gave me a fire energy.
Prior to the actual tournament, I just hung out with my friends and played a few testing games, most of which were the mirror. I had actually managed to get enough sleep this year, so I was well rested for round one:
Round 1 vs. Jackson Iler with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I had a pretty sick feeling in my stomach as I looked at my opening hand, which consisted of unplayable junk. I went first, drew my card, and passed. I was a little relieved when my opponent did the same. I drew passed again, and he evolved into yanmega, matched my hand size, and knocked out my cyndaquil. I think I topdecked a collector or something and slowly got setup as he took a couple easy prizes with yanmega against my weak basics. He eventually got a collector and got setup as well. Side note: I had played this matchup many times with Drew Holton, and if both decks got setup, I almost always won. He had the prize lead, but based on the matchup, I was able to get back to 1-1 prizes despite going 0/3 on reversal. I junked for a pluspower and juniper/roasted for 10 cards to get another plus power (3 plus/junks left in a 16 card deck, so a 96.43% chance I get one) for the win. 1-0
Round 2 vs. Con Le with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
Con was the 2010 national champion, so I knew I was up against a good player. I was almost certain that I had lost when I drew a hand that was similar to my hand in the first game. I drew passed… but so did he! I think he judged me T2 into a god hand of ninetails and juniper, so I setup off of that while he still drew dead off of his judge. This wasn’t really a game and he scooped when I was up 4-0. I feel bad winning like that, but that’s how luck dependent this format is. 2-0
Round 3 vs. Alessandro Cremascoli with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
My opening hand consisted of 2 candies, typhlosion, and ninetails with a reshiram start. This could either go really bad or really good if I were to draw a collector with my first card. I go first and draw… the collector! I proceed to get out ninetails and 2 typhlosions on turn two, with a blue-flaring reshiram. He gets an okay setup, but there’s really nothing that he can do against my god start, as I proceed to hit reversals (and he misses his reversals/jirachi flips) to beat him in a pretty unfair game luck wise. 3-0
Round 4 vs. Tobias Thesing with yanmega/kingdra
Without the magnezone, I can’t really lose to this deck unless I get a really ****** setup, as it can’t deal with my reshirams. As it turns out, I get a god start again with T2 blue flare, and he really doesn’t have a chance as I proceed to one shot each of his Pokémon. 4-0
Round 5 vs. Ricardo Garcia with Typhlosion/reshiram/no ninetails
I think that his deck actually has the advantage in the mirror since he runs 4 reshiram as opposed to my 3, and since I don’t run judge, the no-ninetails isn’t too much of an issue. We both get fairly average setups, and I think I take the first prize on a cleffa. We proceed to trade reshirams, since that’s basically how the mirror goes, but since he had burned a lot of junk arms to setup (at one point he discarded 2 junk arms to junk arm), he eventually ran out of reshirams/revive/junks. At this point, he was unable to return the ko and resorted to wall-stalling with Typhlosions to deck me. I wouldn’t have decked, as I could have commicationed a couple times to extend my deck, but I just hit a reversal for his smeargle to win. 5-0
At this point I’m relieved, since an expected 8.6 5-2’s (out of 20) will make top cut, and since I started 5-0, my resistance would be pretty high. If you’re interested in how to calculate this, it’s just Pascal’s triangle. With paper and pencil, you can just add the records from the previous round and divide by 2. For example, if there were 30 2-0’s and 60 1-1’s after round 2, there will be (30+60)/2=45 2-1’s after round 3. With this, you can easily figure out the expected number of players that will have a certain record to make the cut. I also made an Excel program that does it automatically, so if you’re interested, just PM me and I’ll email that to you.
Round 6 vs. Josh Wittenkeller (J-Wittz) with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I got a pretty ****** setup with he got an average one. I had a turn two ninetails using roast every turn, but I couldn’t draw into a collector/cyndaquil to save my life. I eventually had to communication to get a cyndaquil on turn 4ish, and I eventually got a collector on turn 5ish, at which point I basically had a god hand. Of course I proceed to get judged which slows my setup even further. He is pretty far ahead, and I think he went 3 for 4 or 4 for 5 on reversals, while I went 1 for 4, to kill my cyndaquils/typhlosions. I eventually get to the point where all of my typhlosions are dead due to magnezone one-shotting them or linear attack/devolve with jirachi, but I’m still in the game and it’s tied 2/2. Time is called and he reversals up my energyless reshiram (active one would have killed his active magnezone next turn) and proceeds to spray splash my cleffa (which I had to use when I got judged into an unplayable hand) a couple times to win on time. I would have won in an untimed game, as he was about to deck out and was out of resources to kill anything else on my field, but it didn’t really matter, as I was pretty sure I was in the cut anyways. 5-1
Round 7 vs. Jay Hornung with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
He played the version that used pachirisu and more lightning energy instead of the jirachi version. I believe that this more lightning-intensive approach is more consistent and better than the jirachi approach, which often got slow setups whenever I played/played against it in testing. For the actual game, we both got fairly average setups, having to use cleffa. The game was fairly standard, with him reversaling my quilava/typhlosion and judging me, which I drew fairly well off of (though I only need a fire energy once ninetails is up, so the vast majority of the time I should draw well off of judges). I got slightly above average luck, going first and going 2/4 on reversals, while Jay only went 2/5 on reversals. The game was pretty close, and had a few more reversal flips gone his way, he might have won, but I think I won 6/4 on prizes in the end. Jay ended up making the cut, so I was happy that I didn’t grinch him out of the cut. 6-1
I was pretty happy to have made $1,000+, but I was hoping to go further than just making the cut. I had made a T32, 2 T16’s, and a T8 in previous world championships, but I wanted to go further this year. I was so nervous/excited that night that I couldn’t sleep; I only got about 3 hours of sleep to go along with 4+ hours of staring at the ceiling. I felt fairly alert on Sunday, but I was worried that my lack of sleep would affect my play. I proceeded to get to the lobby about an hour early, and waited to play my T16 match against a familiar opponent:
T16 vs. Jay Hornung with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
Both of these games went pretty much exactly the same as my round 7 game vs. Jay. He got about 30-40% reversal heads for the match and I drew fairly well off of most of his judges and got fairly average reversal flips. We both got pretty average setups both games as well. I think I reversal killed his horsea/kingdra both games and made sure that I kept my reshirams at 2 damage so that he would have to discard 3 energy to kill them. Doing this makes it so that he doesn’t have enough energy to kill all of my big attackers, and I eventually won, both games having been fairly close (I think he took 4 prizes each game). Jay played really well in all of our games, but the matchup and luck favored me. 2-0 win
T8 vs. J-Wittz with yanmega/magnezone/kingdra
I’m actually pretty embarrassed about my play in this round, as I made more misplays (at least 2 major ones) than I had the entire tournament, during which I played pretty well, making one, maybe two minor misplays. I don’t think he played the best either though, making a couple errors; we were both pretty nervous at this point, as there is over a $5000+ difference between T8 and 3rd, not to mention the worlds 2012 invite. Naturally this game was recorded; I believe that thetopcut.net has a video of it. Anyways, game one I won pretty quickly, as I had a good hand, he had a not-so-good hand, and I was blue flaring him before he could really get setup.
Game 2 was the opposite, with him getting a really good hand and me getting a really poor hand. I’m not really sure how I was still in the game, but after a few turns of drawing dead, I managed to kill something with manual attachments to reshiram. I drew a collector off of my prizes, which I would ideally use to get a cleffa, retreat, and eeeeeek, but because I was flustered at having drawn poorly with him having a perfect setup already, I misplayed and sent up reshiram after he killed my active reshiram. This would have been the correct play if I didn’t draw the collector from my prizes, but I did, and had to waste 2 turns and energies to retreat and eeeeeek (since I continued to draw dead). This set me back a turn, and turned a hard-to-win game into a nearly impossible game to win. I played it out, since I was still confident that I could win if I got setup, and I almost made a comeback and might have won if I didn’t miss every reversal flip, but he ended up winning game 2. I also angle-shot him this game, as he announced linear attack, and a second later re-announced sonic boom instead. He wanted me to let him take him back, and normally I would, but since it’s worlds and there’s so much on the line, I couldn’t do that. For the same reason, I didn’t ask to take back my dumb promotion of the reshiram, as there shouldn’t be take-backs when playing for this much.
Game 3 I had a really good setup, but I made the mistake of not leaving a fire energy in the discard pile. Note that this wouldn’t have mattered at all if he doesn’t hit heads on reversal and judge me into an energyless hand (as I have a ninetails up), but he does, and I’m stuck with an active typhlosion draw/passing for 4 straight turns. This allows him to get setup (he had a ****** hand) and reversal (he’s 3/3 now for the game) kill my 2nd typhlosion with magnezone. I finally topdeck an energy and roast to get going again. Around this time, time is called, and he has the prize lead. I double pluspower blue flare his magnezone, and kill his cleffa on my time turn 2. He can’t return ko something, and judges me. I roast off the judge, attach an energy, and double junk arm for 2 plus powers to kill his magnezone for the game. 2-1 win.
At this point I’m pretty happy, as I’ve made a decent amount of money and have a trip/invite to Hawaii next year. I find out that I’m going to be playing Ross Cawthon in top 4; his deck decimates typhlosion/reshiram, and my only hope of winning is to hope he gets a bad start or prizes his entei/suicune legend. Needless to say, I’m not too confident heading into the match:
Top 4 vs. Ross Cawthon with vileplume/reuniclus/donphan/zekrom/entei-suicune legend/pichu/blissey
Needless to say, Ross plays a lot of different Pokémon in his deck, which makes is pretty slow. As such, my only chance of winning is to get a few typhlosions out and either go through his field quickly or discard all of the energies off of his legend when he does get it up. Unfortunately, I don’t play a rare candy in either game, as he gets a turn 2 vileplume in game 1, and I just don’t see one at all game 2. This limits me to one typhlosion each game, as I discarded a quilava with a juniper in game 1, and I had quilava as one of my last 2 prizes in game 2. For the actual games, Ross just let me kill a few things, then started twinsing every turn, set up entei/suicune legend with about 5 energy on it, and proceeded to one shot my whole field while my damage was capped at 120. With blissey, he can take 6 prizes before I do enough damage to kill his legend, so I really can’t win the match without getting really lucky. Ross gets a worse setup in game 2, but he still gets up the legend with a ton of energies on it when I’ve only taken 4 prizes, and proceeds to go through my whole field. I give props to Ross for making an original deck and doing well with it. Also, this game is on thetopcut.net as well. 0-2 loss
I’m pretty happy with my finish overall. I obviously got very lucky and played well enough to get into T4, outside of my idiotic mistakes in T8. But, in a field with so many skilled competitors, and especially in this format, luck (whether it be matchups, drawing, or coin flipping) is the most important aspect to a player winning.
I manage to finish in 3rd, just based on the fact that I had a higher swiss record than the other T4 player. I don’t agree with this practice, as there is a considerable prize difference between 3rd and 4th: the trophy card that sells for a couple thousand dollars. Ideally, the players should play-off for 3rd/4th place. This could be done at the same time as the finals, as it was a few years ago. Logistically though, it makes sense to not have them play off, as it distracts the spectators from the finals match, and only has an impact on 2 people. Fortunately, I won my last swiss game and got the better end of the deal, but I imagine that the 4th place person would be fairly angry.
In total, I got around $8k+ worth of prizes, most of which are up on eBay right now. The money is really nice, but the more important thing is the enjoyment of hanging out with everyone in the Pokémon community. I wouldn’t still be playing this game if everyone wasn’t so great. Whether it be playtesting, lending me cards, talking about strategy, hanging out, or just having people that I don’t know walk up and congratulate me, all of you are great and will keep the game alive for many years to come.
