JWittz
New Member
Hello everybody! My name is Josh Wittenkeller, and by now almost all of you know me by my internet moniker “J-Wittz” from my youtube show “Prof-It!”. I started it in November 2009 with the hope of educating more players about the competitive trading card game, and thanks to the support of this incredible community, have been able to share my videos to thousands of viewers worldwide. I love this game, but even more so love the people that play this game. You’ve all been an amazing part of my life, and this year I’ve been working around a concept in my head that could take this great group of people and really do some good.
Even before Regionals ended, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my plan is for Nationals. Last year I went, was greeted to a wonderful reception by the players, had a solid run up into the top cut, and had an all-around blast. At this point, my show was just 8 months old, and I had a total of around 130,000 total views. To my surprise I found myself quickly swarmed by players, old and young alike. Players were eager to talk to me about the show, offer praise/criticism, ask for autographs, collect one of my promotional cards, get deck advice, and simply play a game of Pokémon with me.
I expected a few excited fans, but the sheer amount of people coming up to me was really overwhelming! I printed around 300 “J-Wittz Cards” for Nationals, and by the middle of Day 2 I had run out of them completely! I had dozens of requests to play matches with players that I wasn’t able to fulfill, and I found that it was pretty hard tending to the many fans while also tending to myself! Nationals in Indy is still by far the best Pokémon event that I’ve ever attended, but it would be an understatement to say that it was hectic!
Come a few months under a year to today, and my show has continued to receive the support of the community. I’ve been blessed by a huge supply of players eager to learn about the competitive game, and my show has expanded over 400,000 views since Nationals. I ran out of my 300 promo cards halfway through the event last time—I can’t imagine how many promo cards I’d have to hand out during the actual event! This also includes countless more requests to help with deckbuilding/play a game that I’d unfortunately have to deny.
This year, I’ve been debating whether or not I want to play at Nationals for a couple of reasons. The first being the possibility of a format that allows for a high potential of uncontrollable first turn wins, due to the combination of an MD-On format with the Black/White rules. While this doesn’t mean that strategy is thrown out of the window, it definitely doesn’t seem like an inviting competitive event that I would be interested in competing in for 9+ rounds.
The second reason goes in line with the first—I’m set on going to Worlds this year! Both due to my own drive to see how I can compete “vs. the best” around the world, and due to my desire to get footage of Worlds for my show, I’ve been working hard to have a successful season and work my rating up. The hard work has paid off, and I am not sitting at a very comfortable 1890—well above the 1850 or so that the usual top 40 cutoffs in North America each year. One loss at Nationals could drop me upwards of 25+ points, and while one loss will likely not drop me out of my secured invite for Worlds, two losses potentially could. In a format that promotes quick losses—it’d be running the potential risk of losing what I’ve worked for all season.
I do recognize the stance that “If you’re good enough to do well at Worlds, there’s no reason to skip Nationals”. However, the format changes my stance on this slightly. I’m all for working hard and playing a competitive intellectual game—it’s the reason I like this game enough to make a show about it in the first place! US Nationals is, after all, the largest tournament ever for the Pokémon TCG, and players that do well at Nationals receive a great deal of respect. But if the format ends up compromising the skill factor, it could be an issue. My fingers are crossed that if nothing changes for Nationals and the tournament is decided by several donks, that a change would be easy to implement for Worlds, an invitation-only event. I haven’t made my mind up completely about what I’m going to do for Nationals, but the possibility of me not playing the full tournament is definitely there, regardless of what happens to the format. Whether or not I play, I’m definitely going. But the question then came—what would I do instead if I don’t play? And that’s where my focus has been recently.
My first thought was this—setting up a “stand” in the free play area where fans could greet me, autograph, play games, etc. during and after the main event each day. This way, instead of juggling the heavy task of playing in Nationals and helping out fans, I could narrow my focus to one of the two. This seemed like a good idea in my mind—it’d help get word about the show around, while also allowing me to give back to the players who watch my show by offering advice. My only fear was that it would still be complete chaos. I can’t lie and say that I don’t appreciate the attention that I get from fans, but even I am kind of worried about catering to a large crowd of people all at once. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you—I really like planning ahead and keeping things orderly. I wanted to find a way to stay open to helping out as many people as I could, while finding a way to keep things orderly.
Then, as the gears continued to turn, another thought—what if I could help people . . . while helping people? This plan, which is the prototype for what I’m currently working on, would be a system that would allow for players to have a loosely timed “session” with me, where we could play a game, I’d offer deck advice afterwards, and we’d part with a handshake and one of my silly promotional cards—all in exchange for a donation to a relevant charity. This, in my opinion, is an idea that really excites me—I get the enjoyment of meeting with players across the Nation, the players get the enjoyment of being able to play me with my newfound free time, I’d be able to prevent any “chaos” with time slots, and we’d all be working together for a much greater cause.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on hammering out many details about how I’d go about doing things, but right now I’m interested in hearing your thoughts as a community and what you think about the idea. I am still in preliminary stages for this whole thing and have a ton of questions. I’m sure many people will be eager to help out, but right now the biggest help anyone can be is to let me know if you think that it’s a good idea, and if you could help me with some of my current questions. Here’s a few I’ve been pondering over so far:
1) Where? Should I set this kind of thing up in the free play/league area? Would it be considered too distracting? Should I ask anyone running the event if it’s okay to hold something like this?
2) How often? This question depends on many things, including if the format is adjusted or not. I’m not 100% sure on how much I want to dedicate to the main event, or if I’m playing at all. However, chances are pretty likely that after 1, possibly 2 losses I’ll be dropping. Beyond that, I’d love to have this thing running throughout the night—I know you crazy Pokémon fans don’t sleep—and the more donations the better!
3) How should I accept donations? I would obviously have the option to donate any amount open to the public attending Nationals, but should I “charge” a donation to sign up for a slot, or just highly encourage it? I want to raise as much money as possible for the cause that I decide, and maybe something like offering raffle tickets/prizes to be included with donations would make a mandatory donation seem much less “strange”.
4) Where should I donate? Right now I have two specific charities in mind—one being to raise funds for Red Cross Relief in Japan, and the other being the Child’s Play charity.
Money raised for Japan would be used to help aid areas most damaged by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Being the home to the very world of Pokémon that we’ve grown to know and love, donating to Japan would be a cause that we as a Pokémon community can get behind. With this option, I’d like to do more research on making sure exactly where the money would go—and determining the optimal way to make a donation.
Money raised for Child’s Play is used to provide toys, games, and videogames for children’s hospitals. Founded by Penny-Arcade, I’m sure many of us gamers are familiar with it. I think that the Child’s Play program is wonderful, and another one that we as players could get behind. I also really like this idea because of it’s circular nature—by playing games, we’d be able to raise money so that those less fortunate could get the same enjoyment from games that we do.
It goes without saying that every cent raised would go to charity. I want to find a way to make it so that there is no doubt in the minds of everyone that the money will be going straight to the charity of choice. What would be a good way of doing this? Keeping an active tally of each donation? Showing everyone the competed check/recipt afterwards?
5) What format? Playing in the current modified tournament means maximum involvement from anyone interested. No additional work for players in building decks. The only problem is that 60 card decks would take up a larger slot of time. Even with 4 nonstop days of playing, I can only get so many games in! Would an alternate 30/40 card format be a better idea because it takes up less time?
Thank you for all of your support! While Prof-It! is an individual project, it can’t exist without the amazing community that the Pokémon Trading Card Game has. As lame as it sounds, I've learned that there is a great deal of enjoyment that has come out of helping players with the game. I love helping players, especially new players, build decks and understand how to play competitively. Being only human, I can’t attend to many of the emails that I get asking for help, and I try to redirect them to the forums and websites here for help. However, with Nationals and a summer break from college, I see a lot of free time to help out, and I’d like to help as much as I can! As things get closer to Nationals I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get this “event” taking shape and form.
Nationals is still a good deal away, but thanks for any help that you guys can provide in pointing me the right direction as soon as possible. In the meantime, good luck at Battle Roads, and I hope you all enjoy the recently released Black and White set as much as I do! With the online game continuing to expand, this game will only get bigger and bigger, and I’m excited to keep it as a part of my life for years to come.
-Josh
Even before Regionals ended, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my plan is for Nationals. Last year I went, was greeted to a wonderful reception by the players, had a solid run up into the top cut, and had an all-around blast. At this point, my show was just 8 months old, and I had a total of around 130,000 total views. To my surprise I found myself quickly swarmed by players, old and young alike. Players were eager to talk to me about the show, offer praise/criticism, ask for autographs, collect one of my promotional cards, get deck advice, and simply play a game of Pokémon with me.
I expected a few excited fans, but the sheer amount of people coming up to me was really overwhelming! I printed around 300 “J-Wittz Cards” for Nationals, and by the middle of Day 2 I had run out of them completely! I had dozens of requests to play matches with players that I wasn’t able to fulfill, and I found that it was pretty hard tending to the many fans while also tending to myself! Nationals in Indy is still by far the best Pokémon event that I’ve ever attended, but it would be an understatement to say that it was hectic!
Come a few months under a year to today, and my show has continued to receive the support of the community. I’ve been blessed by a huge supply of players eager to learn about the competitive game, and my show has expanded over 400,000 views since Nationals. I ran out of my 300 promo cards halfway through the event last time—I can’t imagine how many promo cards I’d have to hand out during the actual event! This also includes countless more requests to help with deckbuilding/play a game that I’d unfortunately have to deny.
This year, I’ve been debating whether or not I want to play at Nationals for a couple of reasons. The first being the possibility of a format that allows for a high potential of uncontrollable first turn wins, due to the combination of an MD-On format with the Black/White rules. While this doesn’t mean that strategy is thrown out of the window, it definitely doesn’t seem like an inviting competitive event that I would be interested in competing in for 9+ rounds.
The second reason goes in line with the first—I’m set on going to Worlds this year! Both due to my own drive to see how I can compete “vs. the best” around the world, and due to my desire to get footage of Worlds for my show, I’ve been working hard to have a successful season and work my rating up. The hard work has paid off, and I am not sitting at a very comfortable 1890—well above the 1850 or so that the usual top 40 cutoffs in North America each year. One loss at Nationals could drop me upwards of 25+ points, and while one loss will likely not drop me out of my secured invite for Worlds, two losses potentially could. In a format that promotes quick losses—it’d be running the potential risk of losing what I’ve worked for all season.
I do recognize the stance that “If you’re good enough to do well at Worlds, there’s no reason to skip Nationals”. However, the format changes my stance on this slightly. I’m all for working hard and playing a competitive intellectual game—it’s the reason I like this game enough to make a show about it in the first place! US Nationals is, after all, the largest tournament ever for the Pokémon TCG, and players that do well at Nationals receive a great deal of respect. But if the format ends up compromising the skill factor, it could be an issue. My fingers are crossed that if nothing changes for Nationals and the tournament is decided by several donks, that a change would be easy to implement for Worlds, an invitation-only event. I haven’t made my mind up completely about what I’m going to do for Nationals, but the possibility of me not playing the full tournament is definitely there, regardless of what happens to the format. Whether or not I play, I’m definitely going. But the question then came—what would I do instead if I don’t play? And that’s where my focus has been recently.
My first thought was this—setting up a “stand” in the free play area where fans could greet me, autograph, play games, etc. during and after the main event each day. This way, instead of juggling the heavy task of playing in Nationals and helping out fans, I could narrow my focus to one of the two. This seemed like a good idea in my mind—it’d help get word about the show around, while also allowing me to give back to the players who watch my show by offering advice. My only fear was that it would still be complete chaos. I can’t lie and say that I don’t appreciate the attention that I get from fans, but even I am kind of worried about catering to a large crowd of people all at once. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you—I really like planning ahead and keeping things orderly. I wanted to find a way to stay open to helping out as many people as I could, while finding a way to keep things orderly.
Then, as the gears continued to turn, another thought—what if I could help people . . . while helping people? This plan, which is the prototype for what I’m currently working on, would be a system that would allow for players to have a loosely timed “session” with me, where we could play a game, I’d offer deck advice afterwards, and we’d part with a handshake and one of my silly promotional cards—all in exchange for a donation to a relevant charity. This, in my opinion, is an idea that really excites me—I get the enjoyment of meeting with players across the Nation, the players get the enjoyment of being able to play me with my newfound free time, I’d be able to prevent any “chaos” with time slots, and we’d all be working together for a much greater cause.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on hammering out many details about how I’d go about doing things, but right now I’m interested in hearing your thoughts as a community and what you think about the idea. I am still in preliminary stages for this whole thing and have a ton of questions. I’m sure many people will be eager to help out, but right now the biggest help anyone can be is to let me know if you think that it’s a good idea, and if you could help me with some of my current questions. Here’s a few I’ve been pondering over so far:
1) Where? Should I set this kind of thing up in the free play/league area? Would it be considered too distracting? Should I ask anyone running the event if it’s okay to hold something like this?
2) How often? This question depends on many things, including if the format is adjusted or not. I’m not 100% sure on how much I want to dedicate to the main event, or if I’m playing at all. However, chances are pretty likely that after 1, possibly 2 losses I’ll be dropping. Beyond that, I’d love to have this thing running throughout the night—I know you crazy Pokémon fans don’t sleep—and the more donations the better!
3) How should I accept donations? I would obviously have the option to donate any amount open to the public attending Nationals, but should I “charge” a donation to sign up for a slot, or just highly encourage it? I want to raise as much money as possible for the cause that I decide, and maybe something like offering raffle tickets/prizes to be included with donations would make a mandatory donation seem much less “strange”.
4) Where should I donate? Right now I have two specific charities in mind—one being to raise funds for Red Cross Relief in Japan, and the other being the Child’s Play charity.
Money raised for Japan would be used to help aid areas most damaged by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Being the home to the very world of Pokémon that we’ve grown to know and love, donating to Japan would be a cause that we as a Pokémon community can get behind. With this option, I’d like to do more research on making sure exactly where the money would go—and determining the optimal way to make a donation.
Money raised for Child’s Play is used to provide toys, games, and videogames for children’s hospitals. Founded by Penny-Arcade, I’m sure many of us gamers are familiar with it. I think that the Child’s Play program is wonderful, and another one that we as players could get behind. I also really like this idea because of it’s circular nature—by playing games, we’d be able to raise money so that those less fortunate could get the same enjoyment from games that we do.
It goes without saying that every cent raised would go to charity. I want to find a way to make it so that there is no doubt in the minds of everyone that the money will be going straight to the charity of choice. What would be a good way of doing this? Keeping an active tally of each donation? Showing everyone the competed check/recipt afterwards?
5) What format? Playing in the current modified tournament means maximum involvement from anyone interested. No additional work for players in building decks. The only problem is that 60 card decks would take up a larger slot of time. Even with 4 nonstop days of playing, I can only get so many games in! Would an alternate 30/40 card format be a better idea because it takes up less time?
Thank you for all of your support! While Prof-It! is an individual project, it can’t exist without the amazing community that the Pokémon Trading Card Game has. As lame as it sounds, I've learned that there is a great deal of enjoyment that has come out of helping players with the game. I love helping players, especially new players, build decks and understand how to play competitively. Being only human, I can’t attend to many of the emails that I get asking for help, and I try to redirect them to the forums and websites here for help. However, with Nationals and a summer break from college, I see a lot of free time to help out, and I’d like to help as much as I can! As things get closer to Nationals I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get this “event” taking shape and form.
Nationals is still a good deal away, but thanks for any help that you guys can provide in pointing me the right direction as soon as possible. In the meantime, good luck at Battle Roads, and I hope you all enjoy the recently released Black and White set as much as I do! With the online game continuing to expand, this game will only get bigger and bigger, and I’m excited to keep it as a part of my life for years to come.
-Josh
If donating towards Japan I'd like to see the money going to Doctors Without Borders or The Red Cross Japan. Anywhere but the Red Cross US due to the things I've heard surrounding how much money they keep to what they use to help amongst other things.