Every now and then, I find local news articles about Pokémon card tournaments for both the video game and TCG, and the excitement they bring to small towns.
It’s just funny to me that after more than a decade of worldwide popularity, all of these articles have to explain the game from scratch again, including what “Pokémon” means and its pronunciation. I also find it funny that you hear many of the same explanations of the game like, “It’s easy to get into, but difficult to master.”
But what I found most striking is how big some of these tournaments get – some of them have 80 players. That’s more than I see at the comic shop King’s Games in Brooklyn. I hope this doesn’t sound like a knock, but maybe in the smaller towns people have less to distract them, so it’s easier to get them dedicated to something like this. But there is a misconception, I think, that all of these articles fail to help clear up: most competitions like this are organized by ordinary people. And that’s what brings me to…
