Recently in Tournaments 3

Welcome, everyone, to the third installment of Recently in Tournaments. Without wasting our precious time, let's move on to the real stuff.

Smogon Grand Slam 3

The Smogon Grand Slam is a one-of-a-kind tournament where players compete in six separate opens to earn points. Each open hosts a different tier, namely Ubers, UU, RU, NU, LC and Doubles. With the introduction of Doubles to the tournament, some changes were made to the ruleset. The players can only play 5 out of the 6 opens. The eight combatants that earn the most points advance to the final bracket, where they compete in best of fives until one player remains to claim the prestigious cyan trophy . You can keep track of the top eight by visiting this spreadsheet.

All the opens are still going on, and the participants are still trying as hard as they can for the top 8 spots. You can keep track of the happenings of the different opens through their forum threads, which can all be found here.

World Cup of Pokémon 9

VS.

The World Cup of Pokémon, one of Smogon's two official team tournaments, is one of the most prestigious events in online Pokémon. Sixteen regions from all over the world compete in the first round, where the top eight teams are decided. After being placed in a bracket, the remaining eight teams go head to head until one comes out on top. The winning team, starters and substitutes alike, are awarded the iconic dark blue trophy .

Last year US East showed a dominating performance, beating Asia in the finals 5-2. Considered the heavy favorites this year, East made nothing but improvements to their winning roster, adding Sinclair, PDC, and aim, all considered excellent players in XY OU. Showing no signs of slipping up, East finished group stages as the number one seed with an impressive 18-6 record. Three games behind East with a solid 15-9, we found US West, who improved last year's roster by adding reyscarface, Dice, Ben Gay, fingerscrossed and Valentine. At 14-10 we had three capable teams, namely US Metro, Germany, and Spain. The remaining three teams, Brazil, Asia, and Canada, all managed to get by groups with 13-11 records.

After seeding was determined, these eight teams were placed in the Quarterfinal bracket. East, as expected, was the team with the most impressive performance, beating out Canada 6-2. The other Quarterfinal victors, West, Brazil, and Spain, were victorious over Asia, Metro, and Germany respectively, with 5-3 records. In the next round, East crushed their Semifinal opponents, Spain, 7-1 and started to prepare for the finals. In a back and forth series, Brazil was able pull off the upset, eliminating the second seed, US West, 5-3.

Hill lost, BlueStar won the second, Destiny Device won another, Dekzeh lost, HANTSUKI won, Kratos won, Malfoy lost, Sogeking won the last.

You can see the replays of the games here and see the results by visiting this spreadsheet.

Smogon Frontier 8

The new season of Smogon Frontier is underway. This time there have been some changes to the format, in order to make it a little tougher for the challengers to conquer the frontier, as well as removing the problems of brain fatigue. From now on, there are going to be brains for the XY OU tier, as well as, BW2 OU, DPP OU and ADV OU. Also, there will be 16 brains, of which, the challengers will have to beat 15. For more information, check out the official thread here. You can check out the current standings here. As of now, user Bluwing came closest to winning it with 10 wins, but he was defeated by Palace Maven Ojama, Arcade Star Dice, and Factory Foreman crashinboombang, ending his run. Sand Castle and Dekzeh got 9 wins, followed by Ojama with 8 wins before getting disqualified.

Smogon Tour 18

The new season of Smogon Tour is starting on September 5th. It is a live tournament, where people have to battle continuously until they come out on top. Players are given points on the basis of their performance. 3 tours are held each week for a period of 9 weeks, after which the 16 players with most points qualify for the playoffs and get a chance to earn this trophy . For more information, check out the Smogon Tour website and the official announcement thread.

Official Ladder Tournament

If you are a ladder player trying to get into the tournaments scene, this is what you are looking for. To improve the quality of ladder and encouraging the well known tournament players to play on the ladder, the TD team decided to implement an Official Ladder Tournament. For more information, check out the official introduction thread.

Other Tournaments

Doubles Summer Seasonals

The Doubles Summer Seasonal recently came to a conclusion, with Lohgock winning it all. Finally, Lohgock, Laurel and Haruno managed to reach the top 4. Lohgock beat Laurel 2-0. You can see the replays here and here. In the other semifinal match, Haruno defeated Finally 2-1. Haruno won game 1, defeating Finally's rain team. Finally made a comeback in game 2. In the 3rd game, Finally could not cope with Haruno's Belly Drum Azumarill, which along with Transform Mew and Rage Powder Amoonguss, put huge pressure on Finally's team. You can watch the replays here, here, and here. In the game 1 of finals, Haruno's rain team was unable to break through Lohgock's Escavalier. In the second game, Haruno was put at early disadvantage by Lohgock's Weakness Policy Tyranitar, which resulted in Haruno's Mega Kangaskhan and Kyurem-B getting substantially weakened and Haruno could not recover from this. Thus, Lohgock won the finals. You can watch the replays here and here.

GSCielebi tournament

This tournament is a standard GSC OU tournament with a little twist: Celebi is allowed to be used in it. The fianls were to be contested between Isa, e7e, and Conflict. Funnily though, each of them won a match each, with Isa beating conflict, Conflict beating e7e and e7e in return beating Isa. In the 2nd round of finals, e7e managed to beat both Isa and Conflict to become the champion.

The Quite Literally Perfect BW UU tournament

This tournament was a standard BW UU tournament, but with Abomasnow, Snover, Chandelure, and Victini banned. Whitequeen, Nas, and calloflochie were in finals. Nas, also known as RT and considered to be one of the best BW UU players, defeated both of his opponents to clinch the win.

Along with these, Fuk Fairies Tournament is in finals to be contested between Level 56 and Lily. The Bracket tournament is also in its final stage. FLCL and Typhlito are going to contest for the title. The Sunset Colloseum tournament, which is based on the sunset colloseum—a game mode in Pokémon Battle Revolution is also in finals—is to be fought between TGMD and complete legitimacy. Apart from these, valmanway is hosting the ORAS celebration tour. Only those Pokémon, who were found in the Original Hoeen game trio- Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald are allowed to be used, but the mechanics are XY. So, if you loved those games and are waiting for the remakes, sign up for this tournament. Until next time, happy battling.