Charles Randall Larenas-Leach

Last year, I created maps showing the attendance for each Tier Two event held during the year. This year I did it again, but we can compare the maps from year to year. I have some thoughts to add in addition to the images, so I made a blog post about each one. Latin America: A Reflection Attendance and Day Two in Oceania and APAC Why the Dubai SPE is bad for Europe

Attendance When I look at these maps comparing attendance in Europe from this year to last year, my first impression is not to note how attendance has gone up. My first impression isn’t to say that no SPE in the region had over 100 Masters, and that the smallest Regionals had over 200 Masters. These are all true, but my first impression is to say that many tournaments are gone. Not including Russia, which was a special case, I count eight SPEs in Europe last season. In contrast, there were four this season. In my opinion, this is fine and it is a step forward. Here is why:  1) SPEs are worth more Last year, there were 8 SPEs. The winners of each tournament received 145 points. This year, there were four SPES, and the winners of each tournament received 200 points. This means that there was a 50 percent drop in number of tournaments, but only a 31 percent reduction in points given to the winners of those four tournaments compared to the points given to the eight previou...

APAC attendance Overall, attendance is up in the APAC region. The same number of tournaments were run, with the addition of one Special Event. This means that it’s especially easy to compare attendance from last year to this year. Let’s start in Australia and New Zealand. Last year, the region had the International Championships and two Regionals in Australia, and a third Regionals in New Zealand. This year, New Zealand exchanged its Regionals for a Special Event, and Australia received a third Regionals. This change means that Australia is still the only country in the entire rating zone with more than one Tier Two event. However, once we see how the Day Two race is going, we will see that it isn’t a huge advantage. It’s always disappointing when events are taken away or when someone loses something. The only loser in the region is New Zealand, who lost the cash from their event. However, their attendance dropped from 49 to 36, which means that cutting $4250 in cash prizing o...

Since all the major tournaments in the Latin American region have concluded, I want to write something regarding the attendance differences from year-to-year in addition to a commentary on the function of the SPEs in the region. Clearly, there were a lot more tournaments in LATAM this year. TPCi cut one Regionals but almost tripled the number of Special Events. This increase in Special Events didn't necessarily create more opportunities to play for people who previously already had tournaments, but brought Tier Two events to new areas. Chile Chile saw incredible growth, and it’s worth pointing out here an interesting pattern in terms of allocation of events. Last year, it looked like TPCi was trying to spread out SPEs in terms of location (Mexico City and Queretaro in Mexico, Olivos and Buenos Aires in Argentina, Santiago and Serena in Chile) whereas this year they seemed to double down on locations with good attendance. For example, Mexico City got two SPEs this year...

Things in Ecuador have blown up. Somehow I managed to get myself involved and I have a very bad taste in my mouth. This all started when I reached out to Andrés Lerqué mid-2016. He lives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and he plays Pokemon. He won the Ecuadorian National Championships in 2006 and ten years later he was picking up the game again. I was very curious about the state of Pokemon in Ecuador because my dad was born there and in general I like the idea of traveling to foreign places to play Pokemon. Andrés and I quickly became friends, trading stories and experiences about the Pokemon trading card game in our respective countries. Andrés traveled to Florida Regionals in 2016, and although I was not able to attend, some of my closest friends from Champaign went and Andrés ended up splitting a hotel with one of my locals. In the 2017-2018 season, the circuit started getting better in Ecuador. Andrés attended a League Cup in Autumn and sent me round by round updates during the tour...