EVs and IVs — Making the Leap from Casual to Competitive and How to Retain a Competitive Mindset

Before going too deep into the substance, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is John Kettler, and I’m a lifelong player, deck builder, and fan of the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I’ve been playing since the game first came out, but I didn’t make my jump into competitive play until about a decade ago at league. Eventually I made the jump, and since then I’ve achieved numerous accomplishments over the years, including top cut finishes at Nationals and Worlds, two U.S. Regionals wins, four State Championship wins, and nine invitations to the World Championship, including this year!

I also know the community. That is, I really know it. I help turn casual players into strong competitors, judge, collect. You get the idea. Very few people have seen the number of perspectives on this game that I have. You can’t help but see trends over time, which is why I’m situated well to discuss players who successfully go from being casual to competitive Pokemon players.

Although this article is targeted at players interested in making that first jump into Play! Pokemon, I’m also just as interested in helping competitive players stay competitive, or even advance their game. Many of the hardest workers I know consistently tell me, “You either go up or down, you never stay level.” That may not be so true for people who don’t participate, but speaking from personal experience, it is certainly true for competitors. I’ve had ups and downs in competitive Pokemon, and would like to help my fellow “old school” players stay in the loop and do well. So let’s talk for a moment, shall we?

The Initial First Step: Deciding to Compete (Effort Value)

The first step to succeeding in the Pokemon TCG is really that simple. Despite low percentages of people advancing to day two in major tournaments, and the only top cut being dedicated to eight people out of tens, hundreds, or even a thousand, once you get in the mindset of wanting to compete, you’ve already won half the battle.

[cardimg name=”Professor Sycamore” set=”XY” no=”122″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

Unfortunately, actually getting to that point mentally is harder than it seems. I’ll explain why, based in large part on how most people get introduced to competitive Pokemon TCG.

You find yourself hooked on an aspect of the franchise. You later learn about a particular convention, league or meetup. You go to the event, and you hear there is something involved with the cards there, so you bring whatever you have laying around and make it your 60 cards. Surprise! It turns out that the Pokemon cards are the biggest part! You then get creamed, and at that point learn there’s a much bigger world out there, full of other competitive players hunting for a win.

That’s essentially what happened with me at my first and only Super Trainer Showdown qualifier. I went to the event as a way to enjoy a mix of the video games and the cards, brought what I considered to be a very good deck (it wasn’t), and found myself knocked out of the tournament after three rounds. I was 11 at the time, so I can cut myself some slack, but this same experience happens to people of all ages all the time with Pokemon. My competitive arc eventually started at around 2003, when I finally had enough of casual-only. I heard about Nintendo handing out invitations to its Worlds tournament, and with that motivation, got excited enough to get on my way to earning an invitation that year.

For me, I needed both internal and external motivation to make the leap: an internal change of heart from casual to competitive, and an external motivation to achieve a goal. I had at least some of that internal motivation for a long time, but finally there felt like something more to be chased than a box of cards, essentially the entire prize structure for the last year of organized play under Wizards of the Coast.
Pokemon as a franchise is designed to be social though, so it’s difficult to balance that with a super-competitive edge. You can become a successful player without losing either aspect of what makes the cards so enjoyable to play.

Common Characteristics of the Newly Successful Player (Individual Value)

Because competition is always an upward or downward trend, people don’t stop too often to see those important first signs of success. And because the prize structure in Pokemon is so inclusive by design, what with rewards for all levels of play and hundreds of invitations to its World Championships, it can often be hard to see if you’ve successfully made the leap you want to make. Even if you have the right attitude, you still need most or all of these attributes!

The Newly Successful Player Understands Key principles of Deck Building and Playing

There’s no way around it: You have to play the game, and you have to have the tools to play it. Because many other authors touch on the finer points of deck construction and strategy, I won’t go into too much detail here, but I will say this much: Whereas identifying the main skills behind actually playing the game (thinking ahead, not making misplays, calculations) is a more straightforward process, I feel like the skills behind deck building are more mystified nowadays. Whereas in years past, players could easily maintain “secret decks” for weeks if not months on end, in the modern era of Pokemon TCG we have an excess of great lists at our fingertips. But someone, somewhere made up the first principles behind a well-built deck, right? And each season, that could be different depending on which important staple cards rotate out.

For a a few months or even a season, you can compensate for a lack of unique deck building talent by copying lists except for a few cards, or by relying on an excellent team (more on that later). However, for a long-lived Pokemon card career, you need to be able to build decks. And doing that ultimately comes down to two things: consistency and versatility. When a player isn’t given a list, the inevitable safest point is to build something that can set up reliably. Additionally, when a list is finalized, but is needing those last few special tweaks to handle a given metagame well enough, a player has to know card interactions well enough to make the right call on those final “floating slots.” Newly successful players who have a breakout season tend to do both of these things with lists, which leads to the rarer situation where deck building talent in Pokemon can overcome any deficiencies that may exist in raw talent.

The Newly Successful Player is Part of a Network

[cardimg name=”Pal Pad” set=”Flashfire” no=”92″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

Most of us don’t grow in playing skill or deck building skill without some help along the way. That help becomes a mutual thing competitive players refer to as a “network,” or a “team.” If you’ve played the video games, you know that some Pokemon are version-exclusive; if you’ve played Pokemon GO recently, then you’d also know that some Pokemon are a lot more likely to be found in particular areas, cities, or regions.

The same concept applies with ideas, and not just about good decks, techs, or play hints. In my time playing, people’s superior shuffling taught me how to shuffle better; people’s choices in game supplies tuned me in to the most efficient way to manage my stuff during a tournament (I used to haul around a suitcase with me to each tournament)! Although it’s been a long time sine I’ve truly been on a “team,” I got better with my friends, not all on my own. In the player growth experience, most good players are getting there at the same time as other people, or getting there due to exposure from a much more experienced player.

Some players might suggest that the interactions for testing will be more shallow than that, but I wouldn’t confuse this with professional networking. Whereas networking means more going to events, meeting people, and merely opening the possibility to a deeper relationship in the future, your network in Pokemon will probably be a lot more intimate. This is why Pokemon is full of teams, groups of people will constantly travel together and test together.

The Newly Successful Player Playtests Proactively

There’s playtesting based off of trends, and then playtesting based off of new ideas. Messing around and tinkering with whatever is big is a huge part of handling the metagame, but I see more newly-successful players cut through the pack much more effectively when they focus on ways to be inspired.

Inspiration during playtesting doesn’t have to be an aesthetically big event. It can just as easily be a large change as it can be a small one. All of those people who ever won National or World Championships with secret decks? That was the result of some seriously big, metagame-exploitative planning. Cutting [card name=”Trainers’ Mail” set=”Roaring Skies” no=”92″ c=”name”][/card] entirely out of Night March / [card name=”Vespiquen” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”10″ c=”name”][/card], what the most recent U.S. National Champion in Masters did, was not nearly as flashy as constructing a secret deck, but it had the same effect.

The Newly Successful Player Maintains Respectably Ambitious Goals

Finally, even after a good first competitive season, the newly successful player doesn’t stop shooting for higher goals. As I said earlier, Pokemon’s reward structure can encourage players to coast throughout a season, a scary prospect for someone who actually wants to earn more accolades, prizes, and wins. Few people in the world have had a perfect season though, in which they’ve won Worlds, Nationals, and possibly another high-tier event all in the same season, so as a point of pride and passion, there’s something more to get. In other words, the newly competitive player is still hungry for the game.

Level Up or Level Down – Staying on the Upward Trend

Having a good initial outing, or jumping into the competitive foray, may be wrought with difficulty in its own right, but in my experience, staying competitive can be even more difficult. I had a chat with a friend of mine a few years ago, a former National Champion, in which he told me, “It’s a lot harder for me to keep playing. I’ve won everything at least once except a League Challenge and a World Championship. I don’t want to go to League Challenges and I run cold at Worlds, so what more is there?” Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t play anymore.

So you’ve made it! You’re a name player, a great player in your own right. How do you keep going up? Although the simple knee-jerk answer most people will give to this question is “win everything, and win more than you did last season,” that’s only the result of leveling up and not sliding back into mediocre performances.

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Avoid Entitlement or a Bad Attitude

I’ve brought this up a couple times already, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to bring up again. Pokemon’s unique reward structure has an immediate impact on the way we all view the game. This is good in many ways, including the way it makes Pokemon a friendlier, more casual game. But it’s also detrimental in other ways, in that you have many more players get angry about not achieving certain goals of theirs, even if they never really had the innate talent, or put in the necessary effort to get to where they want.

Possibly the best time to see this was the spike in the Trading Card Game’s popularity around 2011. More new players were coming into the game than at any other point in years; U.S. Nationals went from an event with just a few hundred people to one with over a thousand in the Masters division alone; and the threshold to earn invites went up. The result was that a whole block of older players began to slide. Up until that year, I actually had a perfect streak of being invited to the World Championships, but that was broken the moment Black and White came out!

Many players quit around this time, not nearly as many who started, but enough to tell me there were several people who were only staying in it for the wrong reasons. A much more consistent version of what I’m talking about is what happens when Juniors age up to Seniors, or Seniors age up to Masters. They think the’ve done everything they want to in the younger division, and so that now, because it’s impossible to win, they want to get out of the game! That couldn’t’ be further from the truth, but someone, be it themselves or their parents, puts the idea into their heads that there’s no longer a reason to play. And as I’ve made clear, without internal and external reasons to play, you’ll get out fast.

However, the idea is to keep going “up,” and not to just avoid dropping out. So instead of reflecting so much on how bad your luck is, or how rough it is to move up in divisions think about the positives. Consider the minute misplays you may have made! Think about the positives of joining a new age group! I have a couple friends in Texas, Max Armitage and Adam Garcia, who both found way more success when they moved up to the Masters Division than they ever did in the Seniors, and that was specifically because they learned to appreciate the positives of not being a Senior, namely, not being constantly metagame’d in a five-person field.

Learn to Relax As Much as You Can

One recurring trend I notice exclusive to competitive Pokemon players, myself included, is the danger in swinging radically one direction or the other. That is, you either become too much of a serious business, uber-competitive type, or you revert to viewing the game casually. It’s perfectly fine to love competition, as well as to have tangible reasons to play, it’s part of my first early point about making the decision to get competitive in the first place. But as with everything else in life, it’s possible to overdo competitiveness.

[cardimg name=”Champions Festival” set=”Black and White Black Star Promos” no=”BW95″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

How vicious can you be to other players? How hard can you be on yourself? From about 2003 up until 2006, I believe that I was excessively vicious and hard on myself for some guy playing Pokemon. I took the game too seriously, to the point where I wound myself up and got frustrated if I got a single loss. It’s a good thing to play hard and work hard, but in endurance events like U.S. nationals or Worlds, which can last the entire day, it never helps to place yourself in mindsets that lead to burnout. This is especially true in Pokemon, where about half of the player between all divisions are young, meaning there’s a higher chance said young players haven’t had a chance to mellow out.
I’m happy to tell our 13-18 year olds, however, that once you learn to relax, you may see even better results than before. You become more physically and mentally capable of handling a long day; you become more confident, and in doing so gain a serious mental edge over anyone who’s flustered and wound-up. My older brother getting into Pokemon was a turning point for me, this guy is about the most relaxed, mellow dude you could ever meet. I was and still am not that way, I’m more intense, but his involvement helped bring me down to Earth. It shouldn’t have been too surprising, then, that after hunting it for years, I finally won a Regional Championship, tons of other tournaments that year, and got a free trip to Hawaii.

But you know what? I still haven’t won a Nationals or a Worlds, so there’s definitely still room for me to improve. There’s room for nearly everyone to improve And on that note, what better way for you to level up than to…

Open Your Mind to the Deeper Levels of Play

Earlier, I stated that it’s more straightforward a process to identify the main skills involved with playing well. However, actually getting good on all of those points is not so simple. As I mentioned in that previous section, there are countless articles which settle on ways to “git gud,” so I won’t overwhelm the article with a rehash of those already great points by other authors. Instead, I’d like to direct you to what I consider to be the best sources of inspiration to up your game.

Articles and Books on Focus

Between my own anecdotal misplays and the less-anecdotal misplays of others, I can say with confidence that biggest mistakes tend to happen thanks to a lapse in focus. I would encourage you to search these out for yourself, but one article I read recently on greatergood.berkeley.edu brought up the rather excellent points meditation, as well as identifying and casting out distracting thoughts when they appear. And they “will” appear, because we are human.

Pokemon tournaments tend to have lots of downtime in between rounds. Use that to your advantage, especially if you just had a real hard-fought match. My focus is far from perfect, but I thank my focus for when it is good as for part of the reason why I’ve had several runs at Nationals and Worlds that were redeemed due to keeping my mind aware of the games I was in. And by comeback, I mean going from 1-2 or 0-2 to winning six games in a row. “That” kind of comeback.

Math

No, really! Players casually throw around “improving at math” as a reason why little kids should play Pokemon. Those players have it backwards. Pokemon’s true math is actually quite complex, so in order to become better at Pokemon, it certainly doesn’t hurt to be clued into math concepts bigger than addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The heart of Pokemon’s most advanced math is in probability and statistics, particularly the odds of drawing into cards, of starting with a Pokemon, of prizing a card, and so on. Even if you don’t calculate the exact probabilities in real-time (most people don’t or won’t ever have to), simply being aware of and exercising your mind in these key mathematical concepts outside of the game should make attempting approximations in real-time a much more fruitful exercise.

Old Formats

Almost like a standardized test, many key concepts get reused over the years, and working with those concepts or at least knowing they have existed will aid to your skill set. There was a long time in the game’s history when [card name=”Double Colorless Energy” set=”Fates Collide” no=”114″ c=”name”][/card] was not legal, so much so that when it was initially rereleased in 2010, there were people who were seeing the card for the first time. Naturally, then, everyone who were familiar with the card instantly knew what its presence did for the Basic Pokemon of that era, and so those Basic Pokemon dominated for well over a year.

We will see this experience rehashed going into this 2016 World Championship tournament in San Francisco. Gaining street cred from veterans like me for knowing a [card name=”Swoop! Teleporter” set=”EX Team Rocket Returns” no=”92″ c=”name”][/card] from a Ninja Boy won’t by itself do anything for your learning process. But if you have played with Swoop! Teleporter for any reason over the past decade, then getting mentally prepared for all the strange Ninja Boy interactions won’t come as much of a shock to you. So for those of you preparing for Worlds, if you have a friend who collects and builds old decks, and have no clue how Ninja Boy will affect Worlds, you might ask that friend to a casual game or two using retro decks that utilize Swoop! Teleporter. You might learn something critical.

How to Make a Comeback: Helping Old Players Get Back Into the Game (Max Effort Value)

This last piece is dedicated to all of you players who used to be competitive but found yourselves slide at some point. Be it failing to keep up with goals, or just some major life hallmark, you’ve become less competitive, care less about cutting-edge deck theory, and even play worse. I know, because quite frankly I’ve been there. In 2011, I missed my first Worlds invite in years, and in 2012, I lost the U.S. National Championship off of a misplay. I then made a pretty respectable comeback, and have since had a pretty good couple of seasons. Hopefully that gets topped off with a Worlds win next month.

This discussion is also for those of you who quit in a past glory era and are grasping where we are at now. With the 20th Anniversary, as well as the release of Pokemon GO, I am not surprised at all to be seeing so many people interested in dusting off their old cards, as well as buying new ones! However, we need to get some things straight for everyone, whether you’ve been absent for a few years or even a decade.

Don’t Compare the New Era Too Much to the Old One

You’ve been out of the game for a long time. But regardless if you’re an old veteran or just someone from the 90s, your first reaction may be to do some research. Okay, fair enough, but then you start seeing all sorts of new cards that look surprisingly familiar!

“What’s this [card name=”N” set=”Fates Collide” no=”105″ c=”name”][/card] card?” you think to yourself. “I bet it makes the game a lot slower!” you might even say out loud. “Or how about this [card name=”Professor Sycamore” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”107″ c=”name”][/card]? Will I deck out after the first turn, like I could in Base Set?!”

[cardimg name=”Professor Sycamore” set=”Phantom Forces” no=”101″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

Not so fast, Vance Veteran! While I certainly don’t blame you for trying to find parallels between old and new times, and I just finished talking about how old formats can educate us, functionally similar cards oftentimes don’t have the exact same roles they used to, even if they have the same word-for-word text. Allow me to go over some of the upcoming 2016-2017 format’s functional reprints of old staples, and explain why they are different.

• [card name=”Professor Sycamore” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”107″ c=”name”][/card] (functional reprint of Professor Oak) – Whereas Professor Oak had a great cast of supporting Trainer cards around it, the draw power in Standard and Expanded has been rather lacking in diversity and strength. About the closest you would get to the experience of the 90s format in the modern era is Expanded, where you have access to an excess of  Item-draw, as well as [card name=”Battle Compressor” set=”Phantom Forces” no=”92″ c=”name”][/card].
• [card name=”N” set=”Fates Collide” no=”105″ c=”name”][/card] (functional reprint of [card name=”Rocket’s Admin.” set=”EX Team Rocket Returns” no=”86″ c=”name”][/card]) – Other than Rocket’s Admin giving you the option to draw up to the number of Prizes you have remaining, these are functionally the same card. Both are also incredible for their respective eras. However, if you played during a Rocket’s Admin format and are just getting back into the game, note that N’s impact is a lot more dramatic. The field is full of incredible Basic attackers, and even several evolutions that don’t require much setup, so it’s much easier and quicker of a process to swing a game into comeback territory.
• [card name=”Escape Rope” set=”Primal Clash” no=”127″ c=”name”][/card] (functional reprint of [card name=”Warp Point” set=”Majestic Dawn” no=”88″ c=”name”][/card]) – Both cards actually have similar roles in each of their respective formats, only Escape Rope is less commonly played than Warp Point was. Several old formats in a row also had reliable ways to fetch Warp Point, whereas for the current format, your most reliable method of finding Escape Rope is [card name=”Skyla” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”148″ c=”name”][/card] and that requires that for a turn you not play Professor Sycamore or N, which can be brutal to your momentum.
• [card name=”Lysandre” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”78″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Pokemon Catcher” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”105″ c=”name”][/card] (functional reprints of Gust of Wind) – Also like Escape Rope, Lysandre replacing Gust of Wind is more of a timing difference, but the predictability in when you will see a Lysandre is also different. Gust of Wind being a 100% guaranteed Item made it the 100% guaranteed play in every format it appeared it, whereas Lysandre is a nearly 100% worse card that makes its appearance two or three times a game max. Pokemon Catcher then, being on a flip, can become a much less predictable card to see in games, both for the mere inclusion of it as well as its status as a tails-fails Item.

I hope that shores up at least a few people’s understanding of how the current game is not your 1990s Pokemon, even if some cards are the same.

Manage Major Life Events Appropriately

School, work, or just plain “life.” Lots of things might have taken you out of the game, but here you are again, wanting to play! However, if you want to stick around for the long haul, think carefully, and plan accordingly.

Although college is the most common point I see for people who quit or just revert to casual status, for me it was law school, as well as the months leading up to it. Pokemon’s rewards and invite structure is a very year-round system, in that those who can both participate and do well will more often than not achieve impressive prizes, oftentimes without even winning a single tournament. Because of that, a new responsibility can make the idea of staying involved in Pokemon tough.

Don’t give up, though. Your responsibility as an adult player juggling the ever-vague “life” alongside dedication to Pokemon TCG as a hobby is doable. Time management lessons are outside the scope of this article, this is a Pokemon site, after all.

Know the mathematical limits for your season vis-a-vis time and weekend availability. If you want to play competitively, but want to make the most of your schedule, remember that the biggest and best prizes only go to those people who earn an obscene amount of Championship Points. This season, a player in the United States or Canada had to earn over 600 just to get an automatic day two invitation with a paid trip! Based on that, I would suggest that you play in as much of what you can for the early season, beginning now (yes, now at League Challenges), up until City Championships. The invite structure for 2016-2017 is not yet announced, but these early tournaments are almost always included in some meaningful way. From how you do in the early tournaments, you can decide if it’s worth it to attend bigger tournaments and go for a day two invite, or just “settle” for earning the points needed for a day one invite, and / or try your luck at the National Championship of your home country. Law school made the very high CP total extremely difficult for me to reach because I was capped in what I could attend, but the day one structure was just what I needed to balance out an interest in playing Worlds and doing that whole lawyer thing on the side.

Second, think carefully about the effects of travel cost on your efforts. If cost isn’t an issue, then great, go have fun and travel the world playing Pokemon! But for most of us, even those of us who pay premium subscriber fees, it is certainly a factor. One thing that’s kept me from wanting to chase a day two invite these past two years was the prohibitive cost of airfare. For the price of two plane tickets, the maximum prize I could see myself getting even by winning “both” regionals was two plane tickets: a ticket to Nationals and a ticket to Worlds. There’s also value in softer prizes like an automatic day two invite, and always value in the intangible of seeing and hanging out with friends, but as a competitive Pokemon player, it’s worth balancing that out to get the most value for your trip. That’s why Nationals and Worlds are such well-attended, enjoyable events.

Revive Your Competitive Spirit As Well As Your Ambition

[cardimg name=”Steven” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”95″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

Coming full circle, we return to another old friend of mine, a former World Champion in the Masters Division. For the many years he played, this guy was very competitive. He traveled all over the country, was very much a name player, and for the time he was involved, loved the game. Then he won Worlds, and within a couple years just decided to drop the game. Granted, he had several real-world responsibilities such as family, but he dropped out of the game nonetheless.

If you just flat-out don’t like the game anymore, or genuinely feel there are better uses for your time, then that is totally A-okay and 100% respectable. But on a point somewhat related to my entitlement discussion earlier, lots of people lose their competitive spirit for the wrong reasons. From 2007 up until 2011, and probably several others all the time without me noticing, there were players in my general class of competitor who had similar experiences to me, in that they saw their results slipping. Many of them dropped off the face of the Pokemon universe, never to be heard from again, because they rationalized the game had gotten too luck-based. But really, that was merely their massive “level down” moment: quitting the moment it got too tough, but not having the self-awareness to realize that. Keep in mind that several of these people had their “If I won Worlds” daydream conversations with me at least one time each. What a sad way to go!

The key to this issue is yet another instance of coming full circle: making the decision to get back into playing competitively. Maybe accept that you weren’t as honest with yourself as you should’ve been, hey, that’s life, and we’re all working towards that goal, right? As cliche as it may sound, an incredible amount of doing well at this inclusive, welcoming game is determination.

Ultimately, you old players should think of yourself in a light similar to what Pokemon GO did for the Pokemon franchise. You may not always have the ups that you’d like, and you might have even faded away for a while, but now you’re more successful than ever! Don’t underestimate what you can do, even with a little bit of adjusting to new times.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading, everyone! It was a pleasure writing to the PokeBeach audience for the first time, and I hope everyone from old to veteran players got a lot out of this discussion. I look forward to sharing more ideas with you all in the near future.

~John

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