Local Pokemon players play for the World Championship

LANSDALE — Ben Sauk, 15, and his 13-year-old brother Geoffrey, spent last weekend a little differently than most of us.

Instead of a jump in the pool or a game of catch in the yard, Ben and Geoffrey spent the weekend testing their wits against the best in the world, at the 2008 Pokemon World Championship.

“The first day we get there, on Friday, there’ll be a ‘Last Chance Qualifier,’ so anybody who didn’t make it in yet can play in the big tournament on Saturday,” said Ben last week, before departing for Orlando for the big competition.

Ben had already earned a spot in the World Championship tournament on Saturday by virtue of his top-16 finish at the National Championship in Columbus, Ohio, in June.

“But every year they’ve had a world championship, we’ve both been in it, starting with the one in Seattle in 2001. We’ve been to Florida, last year was in Hawaii, and two in California, I finished second in the world in one of those,” said Geoffrey.

Both brothers have been playing the Pokemon trading card game for almost a decade, and Geoffrey remembers how his older brother got them both into the game.

“When I was 3½, Ben really liked the TV show, and then he found out about the cards and we started playing ‘Go Fish’ with Pokemon cards just to learn them,” Geoffrey said.

Eventually, the brothers learned the official rules of the card game, played by gamers around the world. Their father Greg helps organize and judge tournaments in this area, mom Renae drives them to and from tourneys, and both brothers have done quite well for themselves.

“We’ve won all sorts of stuff, like packs of cards, bags and deck boxes, card protectors. Sometimes if you do well enough, you get a paid trip, which is pretty nice, and we’ve won a lot of scholarship money too,” said Ben.

Geoffrey says he has the lead in winnings, nearly $13,000 in scholarship money to Ben’s $5,000 or so, but that may partially be a result of the competition they each face.

“They have three age brackets. This year the Masters are for people 15 and over, so born in 1992 or earlier; Seniors are 11 to 14 so 1993 to ‘96, and then Juniors are anybody 10 or under, so born in 1997 or after,” said Ben.

All three age groups compete in separate tournaments at Worlds, but this was Ben’s first time competing as a Master.

“It’s tougher just because there are more people, but it’s more or less a lot of luck, if you have the right card at the right time,” he said.

Each year, four new sets of Pokemon cards are released by Nintendo, the game’s current publisher, so it takes some time and effort to stay on top of the gaming environment every year.

“But sometimes people in Japan get all of the cards really quickly and translate them, and then put the lists online so you know which ones are the good ones already,” said Geoffrey.

And while that knowledge can be helpful, sometimes it just comes down to the luck of the draw, said Ben.

“Last year, the guy I lost to in the Top 16 ended up winning the whole thing, and he had almost the exact same deck as I did,” he said.

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