Players Cup III Recap

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Intro

The third iteration of Pokémon Players Cup has just concluded, with Jonathan Evans taking it home after an excellent tournament run. This article will recap the teams and players that made it through the respective regional brackets and then address the highlights of the global finals bracket.

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North American Bracket

The American region came out swinging in this edition of Players Cup, sending three of the top 6 players from Players Cup 1 to the main bracket. Veterans Joseph Ugarte, Alec Rubin, and Jonathan Evans are joined by Mike D'Angelo, a New York area local who has been doing well in the Series 8 grassroots scene with his trusty G-Max Coalossal. What stands out about the American teams is that there were two Venusaur that made it through and no Groudon, which made it seem like Torkoal was the new favorite. The "VenuKoal" core even saw use in the middle of a Kyogre team piloted by Jonathan Evans, who's no stranger to dual weather, as he used the Groudon and Kyogre duo to earn his 2nd place at the 2016 World Championships. Alec Rubin made excellent use of the hard Trick Room archetype, which has been fairly absent for the duration of the metagame.

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European Bracket

In case you missed Groudon from the North American bracket, Europe is here to give you not one, not two, but three sun teams! Italian players Francesco Pio Pero and Leonardo Bonanomi seemingly brought the same team, while Rafael Busutil wanted to take it a little slower, swapping out the Incineroar for a dual screens Grimmsnarl. Roberto Portetti also decided to keep up the aggression with his take on the Coalossal archetype, interestingly featuring a Swords Dance Landorus-T, just in case there wasn't enough boosting going on already. Rafael and Francesco are newer to high-level play, but they easily proved they are capable with their solid runs through the European bracket.

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LatAm Bracket

Fan favorite Gabriel Agati is joined by three new competitors in the Latin American bracket. Looking at the teams, it's interesting to see the mix of standard metagame influence, as seen in Orlando Luna's and Gabriel Agati's teams, with more of the aggressive flair that the LatAm region is known for with two Calyrex-S teams from Alberto Daza and Alejandro Diaz. The highlight from this round is definitely the Regigigas + Weezing combination from Alberto, as the duo has largely been missing in action since the dawn of Series 8. Gabriel Agati also made waves with Salamence, a Pokémon that hasn't seen much use since its release.

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Australia/New Zealand Bracket

The Aussies sent four new faces to the main bracket in hopes that one of them can finally break into the top 4, which the previous two cohorts failed to reach. As Australia & New Zealand is a much smaller region, the bracket is only made up of 128 competitors; however, there were still plenty of excellent games played and teams used throughout the qualifier. Christopher Egan's Dracozolt team is easily the highlight of this bracket, notably taking a win over 2017 World Championships finalist Sam Pandelis. Something else of note is that this bracket is completely absent of Groudon and G-Max Coalossal teams, which each saw at least one use in the other brackets. It is extremely interesting to note that these are four very distinct teams, with Daniel Quek's Calyrex-S + Mienshao team running a pinnacle hyper offense core, while Yoav Rueven elected to take it slow with the Lapras + Zacian-C core.

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Global Finals Bracket

The global finals bracket kicked off as expected, with big names such as Jonathan Evans and Gabriel Agati taking round 1 of the winner's bracket. However, not all players had a smooth shot into the later rounds of the tournament, with Joseph "JoeUX9" Ugarte being eliminated at 1-2. Additionally, three out of the four Australian players were knocked out in the first round of the loser's bracket. Impressively, Yoav Rueven won four straight loser's bracket sets, going down to Jonathan Evans in the loser's final. Speaking of, Jonathan lost the winner's final to Leonardo Bonanomi, but he managed to win the grand finals after playing a whopping four best-of-five matches. For their excellent finishes, Jonathan, Leonardo, Yoav, and Alberto were all given travel awards to attend a future International Championship when live events resume!

As for the teams, it's no secret that sun was the key to success in the global finals, as Venusaur, Charizard, and Groudon were extremely popular, and even the sole Torkoal in the tournament was on the winning team. Conversely, Zacian-C, which was heralded as the best restricted Pokémon in the metagame by many, ended up with zero results in the top four. Other niche picks such as Yveltal, Solgaleo, and Calyrex-I also fell flat, as none of them managed to make it past 9th place. Calyrex-S had a fairly decent tournament with fourth-, fifth-, and ninth-place finishes, which is about how most people expected it to finish. Of course, the biggest success story here is Kyogre. Its only use was by Jonathan Evans, meaning it had a 100% win rate in the global finals after lots of players were heavily doubting its power.

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Final Thoughts

As the curtain closes on Players Cup III and the Series 8 metagame, all eyes are now on the Players Cup IV Qualifiers and the return of Series 7 rules in Series 9. It will certainly be interesting to see which new faces continue to appear and take their shot at glory in the next installment of the Players Cup series!

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