What's it like to enter a Pokemon Go International Tournament?

• Trainer Huskyyyx competed in the EUIC PVP match
• His 6 Pokemon were Shadow Gligar, Whiscash, Skarmory, Charjabug, Bastidon and Serperior
• He has tips on bettering your PVP skills

The Pokemon Europe International Championships took place at the Excel Centre in London last week. The event brought together a bunch of different international communities with tons of different tournaments going on!

This is the second International Championship event of the 2024 Championship season, the first one being in Latin America, which has a few different competitions to compete in. There are the Pokemon Video Game Championships, Pokemon UNITE players competing, trading card competitions, and, of course, PvP battles in Pokemon Go. We spoke to one of the entrants in the Pokemon European International Competition while at the show

Along with these competitions, there's plenty to see, including a Pokemon Center, lots of photo opportunities, crafting areas and more. It’s a pretty fun event even if you aren’t a fan of the competition itself, and a great way to meet people who share your hobby. I got the chance to talk to Huskyyyx from the Pokemon Go Harlow area, who ventured into London to take part in the Pokemon Go competition.

As someone who doesn’t do a ton of PVP in Pokemon Go, I would have a lot of trouble in this sort of competition. Huskyyyx (real name Lewis Chalk) got to the Legends rank before applying to be a part of the competition. Those who make it in get a special playmat along with other exclusive goodies, and also get a chance at winning a trophy and being featured on the livestream!

What sort of preparation did you have to do before entering into the tournament?

The main preparation I had to do was team building as this is a massive part of the tournament itself, I had to build a team of 6 that I felt comfortable using and I felt I could do well with.

This process consisted of a lot of watching back previous recent tournaments to determine what the majority of players were using and doing some practice battles with friends to work on my team and see what fit together and what didn’t.

When it comes to the battles themselves, each player has six Pokemon that they can choose from, creating a team of three right before the battle starts and after looking at their opponent’s options. This requires a degree of tactical thinking that doesn't exist in most casual PVP matches as they have to guess at what they might pick and what would be best against it.

What were the six Pokemon you chose, and why?

My 6 Pokemon were: Shadow Gligar, Whiscash, Skarmory, Charjabug, Bastidon and Serperior.
I picked Bastidon and Serperior as my off-meta picks because I felt like they dealt with a lot of the common meta picks, the previous tournaments were dominated by flying types and water types so I knew these Pokemon would perform well for me as well as being Pokemon I have a large amount of practise with. To round off my team I went for some more safe picks which you do typically see a lot at tournaments, these are tried and tested Pokemon and they’re meta for a reason! I believed I needed these safe picks to help support my more risky picks.

What is your strategy going into a big PVP tournament?

This was my first PVP tournament and it was the biggest of all time, so entering I tried to limit my expectations and focused mainly on having fun and improving, of course, every player is entering to win but I tried to be reasonable with my expectations.

The format for the Play Pokémon tournaments is 'Show 6 Pick 3' so you bring a team of six Pokemon and you pick three of them for your battle vs your opponent so my main strategy each game was reading the opponent's team and picking the three pokemon I believed would be best matched vs the other team. This is one of the main parts of the battle: Picking the right Pokemon.

What was the most intense moment of battling?

The most intense moment for me was my last win where me and my opponent were both down to our last Pokémon - with very low health on both - and we were racing for the KO and I luckily won on 1HP just before they reached their move, an excellent game that came down to the wire!

What is your biggest tip for those who want to compete in PVP battles in Pokemon Go?

As cliche as it is, it’s practice, PVP takes a lot to master and there are many things to learn, my tip to beginners would be to build a team and learn the fundamentals, type match-ups, what moves commonly used Pokémon have, what the move counts are, there are many useful resources out there that help with these things and even watching videos of people playing.

When it comes to entering a PVP Competition, you’ll have to spend a lot of time practising and ensuring your Pokemon have the right movesets! Often, there are specific exclusive moves released with Pokemon around different events in the game and players can use items in-game to change the moves out of their Pokemon. There is a large meta-game when it comes to Pokemon Go, which also includes things like the Pokemon’s level, IVs, type and moveset, which all play a key role in PVP matches.