Premier League Spotlight: PSPL

By p2. Art by Bummer.
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PSPL

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Premier League Coverage! Premier Leagues have long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon and its many forums, ranging across different tiers and even into Other Metagames. For the final Premier League of this year, we will be covering the Pokémon Showdown Premier League, which brought together many rooms on PS! in order to compete against each other. The first half of the tournament was a three-week-long round robin stage, where groups of four teams would all play each other and the top two from each group would move onto the elimination stage. PSPL also offered prizes for the winning team, those being a custom avatar whitelisted for the players or temporary "top room" status, which put the PS! room at the top of the list alongside the other official chat rooms such as Lobby, Tournaments, and Help.

The format of the tournament was eight player slots featuring all ORAS tiers from Ubers to NU as well as two out of LC, PU, and Random Battles as chosen by the playing teams. Voiced and above users for PS! rooms could play for them in PSPL, with two non-auth users allowed to play for a specific team. The teams with the highest records would then move onto team single elimination rounds until there's one team left.

Qualifying Stages

The qualifying stages of PSPL were three weeks long and let rooms in groups of four all play each other in order to determine who would go through to the top 16 elimination stage.

The winners of each group that went through to the top 16 elimination stage were:

Top 16

The matchups for the Top 16 were:

Obviously, the competition was getting tougher for all teams along with the additional pressure of getting knocked out of the tournament coming into play too. Some teams pulled off impressive wins over their opponents, such as Little Cup, which won 7-1; UU, which won 7-0 (with a dead game); and Français, Ubers, and Doubles, which all won 6-2, while the rest of the winning teams (Competitive Tutoring, Italiano, and PU) narrowly clutched it with 5-3 wins.

At this point there was no clear sign of who the eventual winners would be, but Competitive Tutoring pulled off a win against one of the strongest teams in the tournament, showing that they were a capable team; other standout teams were Français, Italiano, Ubers, and Doubles, which all had very solid lineups and players.

Quarterfinals

Competition was getting tighter as the tournament progressed, and it was down to the top 8. In the UU vs Doubles series, qsns quickly picked up a win in PU to put Doubles in the lead, which UU quickly pulled back from with FLCL winning in NU, tying their series at 1-1. Pearl won in UU for the UU room, putting them back in the lead, along with Killintime winning and bringing the series to 3-1. Leru and BLOOD TOTEM won in Ubers and OU, respectively, evening the series once again. Kamikaze won in DOU, putting the overall series at 4-3, after which it came down to the last game, being LC, whether Doubles had to play a tiebreaker or not. King UU pulled off the win against talkingtree, clutching the tiebreaker instead of a loss for the team.

As for the Little Cup vs Italiano series: both teams traded wins, with Confide and MONNA LUSA winning for their respective rooms early on. Heysup won and put Little Cup in the lead, and Italiano gained the lead back with v0lca winning against Rumor in Doubles and duck winning against Vileman in random battles after. smilzo picked up a win for Italiano too, putting them at a strong 4-2 lead. Gigo won against ZoroarkForever, winning the series for the Italiano room.

Similarly to the above series, Français and Competitive Tutoring traded wins with Gastrik and Teddeh winning in Ubers and PU, respectively. Again, both rooms traded wins again when Eniigma won in LC and Holiano won in RU. p2 put CT in the lead with a win in OU. Vinc2612 won against DaAwesomeDude1 in Doubles, bringing the series to 3-3, with two games left. Kreme brought the series to 4-3 for CT, and Peli won shortly after, winning CT the round.

PU picked up a solid lead against the Ubers room with cityfolk, RawMelon, and TTFTW all winning, netting a strong 3-0 lead. Ubers managed to pull the series back with Aberforth and Lord Outrage winning, followed by wins from Pohjis and Level 56 as well, narrowly taking the lead back at 4-3. absdaddy played after ShuckleDeath was subbed out for trash, nabbing the win for Ubers and bringing them to the semifinals.

Doubles vs UnderUsed tiebreaker

UnderUsed

Doubles

Since UU and Doubles tied, they had to go to a tiebreaker in order to determine which team would go through to semifinals along with Italiano, Competitive Tutoring, and Ubers. For obvious reasons, the team managers chose their respective tiers for the tiebreaker, with OU being the mandatory tier. All games were quickly played and Doubles won 2-1, although RNG wasn't very kind to FLCL, where an unfortunate High Jump Kick miss swayed the game way out of his favor. Regardless, the tiebreaker games were intense and extremely close.

Semifinals

Doubles got off to a solid lead, with Leru and qsns both winning to put Doubles up 2-0. Tricking won against BLOOD TOTEM followed by talkingtree winning against smilzo, and then -Lone winning against Audiosurfer, bringing the series to 3-2. Nido-Rus then won against Alexander., and it was looking bleak for Italiano until v0lca and MONNA LUSA both pulled off solid wins against kamikaze and Colbrushie, respectively, managing to tie the series and make Doubles play in another tiebreaker.

Aberforth and Arifeen agreed to play before the semifinals were even posted, as they both knew they would facing each other, and Arifeen picked up an early win for Competitive Tutoring; however, the next games were unfortunate for Competitive Tutoring, as an untimely Mach Punch critical hit cost the NU game for Peli and a Thunder miss cost p2 the OU game. DaAwesomeDude1 and Eniigma pulled off wins and put Competitive Tutoring in the lead again. Pohjis tied the series with a win against Starmei, but Kreme and Teddeh both won, Kreme even with an unconventional stall team featuring Mega Houndoom; regardless, Competitive Tutoring were in the finals of PSPL!

Doubles vs Italiano tiebreaker

Doubles

Italiano

Tricking played Leru shortly after the tiebreaker was announced and managed to win the first OU game of the series, giving Italiano an early advantage. qsns later played vakatalesau and won, thus making the second OU game of the tiebreaker be decisive. In the end, BLOOD TOTEM defeated -Lone, allowing Doubles to advance to the finals and face Competitive Tutoring. One important lesson we all learned from the last OU game is that no matter what you run, Clefable will always find a way to win the match.

Finals

The much anticipated finals of PSPL were finally here! Both teams had strong lineups, and everybody knew that this was going to be a very close series. talkingtree and Leru both picked up wins, although the RNG wasn't the kindest to Competitive Tutoring. Peli won in NU, and then Memoric won in DOU, bringing the series to 3-1. Royalty and Teddeh brought Competitive Tutoring back into the race, winning both of their games and tying the series. BLOOD TOTEM won in OU with a bunch of crucial full paralyses, which prevented p2 from being able to win, as his Slowbro couldn't gain enough boosts to handle Clefable, after which Colbur Berry would have given him a chance against BLOOD TOTEM's Weavile. Arifeen was the last to play, and he once again evened the series, bringing it to a tiebreaker.

Doubles vs Competitive Tutoring tiebreaker

Doubles

Competitive Tutoring

After a very close finals series, the tournament went to the final tiebreaker to decide the winners of PSPL. The tiers chosen were PU by Competitive Tutoring and LC by Doubles. The Doubles managers chose LC because talkingtree had a great run so far in the tournament playing LC. Teddeh was a no-brainer to place in PU, as he played very consistently through the whole tournament and almost went undefeated, with only an unfortunate loss in the group stages. Hairy Toenail was chosen for LC and was offered a chance to redeem himself after an unfortunate run of 0-4. As expected, Teddeh managed to win in a game where qsns's Raichu refused to hit Focus Blast, while Hairy Toenail brought home the title.

Conclusion

Overall, this PSPL was a very intense one, with strong competition between all teams; as always, tournaments do have occasional upsets, but that's just how the game is. Regardless, it was great to see older and newer players playing, and hopefully the next PSPL will be even better!

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