Holesome: What was the key to your success this year?
Yekai0904: The Asia Pacific League
Straight from the mouth of the APC Season 1 Champion (We heard he’s also won some other World Championship since).
Equal Opportunity
Since the start of the Pokemon GO Championship Series, PVP enthusiasts worldwide have have shifted their focus of play to the Championship Circuit. Entering Regional events and holding online practice tournaments, the Show 6 Pick 3 Great League format is thriving and continues to grow.
The Asian scene however, while still a part of the Championship Series, has not been given the same opportunities as the rest of the world. With their tournaments being organised by a different body, players from the APAC region get just a single opportunity to engage in official tournaments outside of the World Championships. Despite this, Asian players have managed to dominate Worlds for the past 3 years with the aforementioned trainer Yekai0904 winning the entire thing last month.
The lack of places for Asian players to express their skills thus bred the idea of the Asia Pacific Championships.
The Asia Pacific Championships were created after the 2023 World Championships in Yokohama in an attempt to provide a competitive format for players of the APAC region that could also help them practice for the Play! Pokemon circuit.
The Format
Coming into our third season now, we have managed to foster a community among the APAC players and had hundreds of unique trainers take part in our tournaments! Let’s take a look at how it works.
The APC is currently split into 4 regions – Japan, Indonesia, Oceania and APAC. Players compete in their respective regions throughout the season in a round robin format. The top 20 players of a region contest against each other in the higher tier Division 1 while the rest of the players are pooled into Division 2. Division 1 players aim to perform well enough during the season to be invited to the end of season Champions Tournament, consisting of the top performing players from all 4 regions. Meanwhile, players from Division 2 aspire to achieve promotion into Division 1 for the following season.
The tournament is carried out in a standard show 6 pick 3 format with players being allowed to change their teams every 2 rounds. This allows flexibility and meta adaptation throughout the season while also emphasising team building in the same way the Play! Pokemon circuit would. The nature of the format used in APC makes for a very competitive environment in all divisions while also rewarding the players who show consistency.
Get Involved!
In our first season of operation, we had top Asian players such as NavaEmpire00, Tetsuo106 and the World Champion himself Yekai0904 qualify and take part in the Champions Tournament. Outside of the World Championships and the singular qualifier events in the year, this really is the best place to witness the talent from the APAC region first hand!
Sign-ups for Season 3 are currently open until Sunday with the season starting on Monday. If you are a player from the APAC region and would like to get involved, you can join the Discord server and follow the instructions to get registered.
Those who are not from the APAC region are also welcome to join the server and spectate. In addition to following the league tables, we will also be publishing usage and the teams of some of our top players giving trainers a rare glimpse of the environment on the Asian circuit!
