{"id":35273,"date":"2012-04-02T14:32:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T12:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=35273"},"modified":"2012-04-02T20:49:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T18:49:42","slug":"joburgs-first-pokemon-championship-is-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/35273-joburgs-first-pokemon-championship-is-a-success","title":{"rendered":"Joburg&#8217;s first Pokemon championship is a success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday, 31 March 2012, Johannesburg held its first ever Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card Game Championships in Sandton. The tournament had players across different age groups battle it out to claim the spot as Johannesburg\u2019s Pok\u00e9mon TCG Champion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAha, this must be another late April\u2019s Fool prank. Surely no South African cares about Pok\u00e9mon anymore!\u201d I hear a lot of readers exclaiming.<\/p>\n<p>Au contraire &#8211; South Africa has seen a lot of growth in Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card Game players thanks to the implementation of the Play! Pok\u00e9mon system through the combined efforts of The Core Group (the local Pok\u00e9mon distributor) and the Pok\u00e9mon Company International. The system provides official support for Pok\u00e9mon leagues, tournaments and other events like the Johannesburg Championships.<\/p>\n<p>The Johannesburg Pok\u00e9mon Championship was structured according to the Swiss pairing format. In this format players are paired against other opponents with a similar win\/loss ratio and no player gets eliminated until the final round of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Players are divided into three age groups (Junior, Senior and Master) and by the end of the 4th Round winners in the Junior and Senior divisions had been calculated:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Junior Division (Ages 10 and under)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1st Place &#8211; Taigue Mitchell<\/li>\n<li>2nd Place &#8211; Sarah Mitchell<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Senior Division (Ages between 11 and 14)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1st Place &#8211; Robert Power<\/li>\n<li>2nd Place &#8211; Keean Mitchell<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Due to the large number of Master players (aged 15 and up) another two rounds took place for the top players in the division. This allowed the top 4 players to be ranked:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Master Division (Aged 15 and up)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1st Place\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jaco van der Walt<\/li>\n<li>2nd Place\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Viktor Radermacher<\/li>\n<li>3rd Place\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Raymond Rattey<\/li>\n<li>4th Place\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Ricky Doria<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_35278\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35278\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35278\" title=\"Pok\u00e9mon tournament in action\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action.jpg 600w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-80x45.jpg 80w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-100x56.jpg 100w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-150x84.jpg 150w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-170x96.jpg 170w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-297x167.jpg 297w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-530x298.jpg 530w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Pok\u00e9mon-tournament-in-action-250x140.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-35278\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pok\u00e9mon tournament in action<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Those with a keen eye will notice that a certain Pok\u00e9-loving MyGaming writer secured the title of Johannesburg\u2019s Pok\u00e9mon Champion in the Master\u2019s Division. Ladies, please calm yourselves and form an orderly queue.<\/p>\n<p>The Johannesburg Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card Game Championships was well organized and very successful. The tournament organizer (and head judge) of the event, Brian Murdoch, was prepared to host 32 players, but was delighted about the final turnout of 20 players.<\/p>\n<p>He had the following to say regarding the event: \u201cEach event has its bumps and I&#8217;m glad that the Pok\u00e9mon community are fun and friendly enough to help out where possible (by moving tables around at the start of the event) and still have a blast!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more information regarding the Johannesburg Pok\u00e9mon Championship or Pok\u00e9mon in general contact Brian Murdoch: fanaticit@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s fledgling official Pokemon league saw its first event in Johannesburg this weekend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":35275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3109,1907,21,777,3108,2052],"class_list":["post-35273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-brian-murdoch","tag-core-group","tag-headline","tag-pokemon","tag-pokemon-league","tag-sa-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35277,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35273\/revisions\/35277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}