Interview with Zebraiken

Well, I'm twenty years old, and I live in probably one of the most boring places on earth: a small town in Nebraska. Since there's virtually nothing to do here, I end up burning all of my time playing Pokémon and Smash Bros. I'm not currently in classes, but I'd like to someday become a game designer because I love talking about that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, I lead a super boring life and I'd really like to move out of Nebraska some time in the near future and live somewhere with less corn and cows. :(

Ya :D I'd like to go to Europe someday and maybe meet my smogfriends, too!

To be completely honest, I was sort of dreading hosting SPL after I was approached about it and agreed to do it a few months earlier. I initially accepted because I felt like I could do a good job with the role and because I love tournaments as a whole, but hosting SPL naturally comes with some, uh... drawbacks. People are very, very passionate about a huge team tournament like SPL, and that means that any and all controversial decisions you make as a host get met with hostility from somewhere. So when we started up in late December and managers were picked, I was feeling a little bit of regret about making the choice to host, but stuck it through past the auction.

Looking back over it now, it honestly wasn't bad at all! That's mostly thanks to previous hosts who put rules in place to cover some future problems (namely Oglemi and Aldaron) and the fact that everyone this season did a pretty phenomenal job of sticking to the rules and making a good effort to get all of their games done.

Uhhh, hmm. Luckily, there were only a handful of truly controversial decisions, but the one that probably sticks out to me most was Tiba vs Bedschibaer. On top of coming into the situation late, I'm really unfamiliar with GSC myself, so I had to figure out what on earth the scenario looked like for both players to get a good feel for what was going on. It ended up being a very long back and forth discussion about the 1024 PO turn limit that would have ended the game in a draw, the fact that both players had offered to make the game a draw at a couple of points during the game (both of 'em declined the offer at the time), and what the "optimal plays" really were for each player. It was just a very draining amount of time to spend mulling over a difficult decision, and the majority of the TDs were unavailable to help at the time too. The initial call of a tie that I made so that they didn't have to play to the 1024 turn limit was discussed and overruled the next day. I do feel pretty confident that the final call was the right one, though. 8)

Thanks! :D

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, at first. I hadn't ever managed a team before or knew exactly what I needed to accomplish, so dice (Princess Bri) and a couple of others helped me build up a really impressive-looking roster for my first season as US Central captain. For various reasons sparked by the re-establishment of team Asia, that roster fell apart a couple of days before the team submissions were due, so I ended up having to build a completely new team within 3-4 days and only keeping one player and my co-captain from the initial starting roster.

Despite that, though, I was pretty impressed with the performance of my team last year and I feel like I'm lucky to have gotten a couple of gems in guys like Cased, Finchinator, and even cute lil e7e. I think we have a great opportunity to get to playoffs this year for the first time since the earliest WCoPs and that's really exciting to me :D

Thanks ya :>

SPL sort of speaks for itself as far as a "memorable experience" goes, I think, but I'd like to say that the live Tours have probably been the most fun I've had in regards to hosting. It's pretty challenging for the first couple of rounds, but it's also immensely gratifying when you do a good job and push through the tour super quickly. It's an experience I'm glad I jumped on to try a couple of seasons ago.

Also worth noting, though small, I love the concept of the Reverse Tour, but that was also probably one of my least favorite tournaments I've hosted because of the team submission & trading aspect. It's something that I don't think crosses into people's minds much, but that required me to be on and actively trading those much more frequently than I anticipated and was a big issue because I kept accidentally giving people the wrong teams. xD But even then, it was still a fun experience and I'm really glad I picked up hosting tours.

Well, I'm still not quite sure how I won No Johns XY. I'm not too accomplished as a tournament player myself, so pulling out a victory in a standard tournament like that really boiled down to getting lucky with some team matchups and just not being a john, I think.

With the other nonstandard tournaments, I'd say that the biggest reason I had success in them was thanks to my excellent friends FLCL and Raseri, who both helped me test and prepare for them. In the weird tournaments with twists in their rulesets, you really, really, really have to be creative with your teambuilding. Like, you have to think as far outside of the box as you possibly can, and you can't be closed-minded to other options, so having friends to test with and play around with your options helps more than you'd think.

Passive Aggressive in particular was huge in regards to that because we ended up playing the finals three times over, so every time we'd face each other, we'd have to restructure teams to account for threats the other people in the finals thought of and brought previously.

Hm. I like all of the official tournaments for various reasons, but I definitely would have to say that the team tournaments are my favorite to participate in because they foster a lot of new friendships (especially for SPL, where it's less franchise-esque than WCoP) and encourage you to step up your game and fight for your friends. I also really like all of the wacky unofficial tournaments, mostly because I like being creative and coming up with zany stuff just to see if it works and because I like seeing my opponents doing the same. :D

Also, +1 for all double elimination tournaments; Pokémon needs that extra layer of security for when you get lucked. I'd maybe like to think about an official Smogon tournament that's double elimination someday in the future.

Hmm. Just to remember that we all play Pokémon because we have fun doing it, and that you're naturally bound to get unlucky (and conversely, lucky) sometimes, so don't let it be a stick in your butt and understand that, and we'll all be happier people for it :D