Jigglypuff, Charmander and Squirtle may sound like a foreign language.
For 10-year-old Colin Blais of Port Coquitlam, they’re his ticket to Nashville.
Colin is going into Grade 5 at Cedar Drive elementary school. But before he gets there in September, he’ll be testing his wits, strategy and knowledge of strange cartoon characters with big saucer eyes and myriad powers at the Pokémon World Championships, which will be held at the Nashville Music City Center from Aug. 24 to 26.
It’s the realization of one of the boy’s life ambitions to battle his deck of Pokémon cards against the 70 or so top players in his age group from around the world. They’ll each have earned their way to the game’s ultimate tournament by earning points at several local and regional competitions that are held almost every weekend.
In the two years Colin has been seriously playing Pokémon, he has competed at tournaments in Vancouver, Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City, Utah and Madison, Wisc. The events can attract hundreds of players, each loaded with decks of the 60 best cards they’ve carefully collected, collated, catalogued and handicapped to give them the edge over their opponents.
That’s what Colin will be doing over the next week, sorting through his collection of roughly 10,000 Pokémon cards to identify the right mix of character, trainer and energy cards, then testing his hunches and strategies against his dad, Michael Blais, and his friends at Treasure Chest Games on Coast Meridian Road, where he has been honing his Pokémon knowledge for two years.
It all started with just a few cards that are based on a Japanese animated TV series and form the basis for a complex game to determine who the best Pokémon “trainer” is. Like most of his fellow kindergarteners at the time, Colin didn’t concern himself with the minutia of booster packs and expansion sets, he just wanted to collect and trade the colourful cards. When they did try to play the game, they just winged it without knowing the rules.
But then his dad challenged Colin: If he wanted to build his collection of cards, he would have to learn how to play the game properly.
Colin headed to Treasure Chest, where he was immersed in Pokémon rules and strategies every Sunday in a local league against other kids and even some adults.
He got better, earning better cards that gave him the ability to improve. He studied the TV series to learn the quirks and intricacies of its dozens of characters. He mined online resources to glean the strategies of other top players around the world.
Colin’s card collection grew, from uncles and acquaintances who passed down their decks from when they were kids, and from expensive purchases of rare, powerful characters that could tip the balance in a close game.
At the bigger tournaments where he might play seven rounds of 50-minute games in a day, Colin’s Pokémon cunning grew exponentially.
“You lose when you make mistakes,” Colin said. “So you know what not to do next time.”
Michael Blais said the experience has been good for his son, developing his math skills as he tries to calculate the odds for success of any one of his cards and increasing his reading comprehension while navigating the complex narratives of skills, powers and vulnerabilities for each character.
“Some of the decisions you have to make, you’re getting into calculating probabilities,” Blais said.
For his part, Colin just wants to have fun.
In Nashville, he’ll get a chance to reconnect with some of the friends he’s made at other tournaments. They might play a few games amongst themselves but mostly they’ll run around.
“I just play and I don’t want to stop,” Colin said.
