When I started Pokemon: Many moons ago, when I was a wee lad (around 5 or 6) the family was preparing to do Ye Olde Christmas shopping. My mom, not trying in anyway to surprise me, made it blatantly obvious that she was going to get me a Game Boy Color for Christmas. She called me into her room and asked me what I'd prefer to get for it: The Wild Thornberrys or Pokemon Silver. I wasn't a fan of the Thornberry cartoon much, so I asked for Silver. Christmas came around, I got my GBC and Pokemon Silver, and I've never been the same.
How I found Smogon: After a few years, I sort of lost my love of Pokemon. The show became more annoying than exciting (although that may just be my growing up) and I stopped playing after my GBC and Silver were stolen from my burning house. I had completely forgotten about Pokemon until I went to a friend's birthday party/sleepover. We kicked off the party with Pokemon Colosseum match using the GBA games. I didn't have a GBA, so my friends lent me a GBA and Fire Red. I thought the feature was fairly nifty and tried my best, but since I had only played up to Gen II at the time I lost. They gave me a copy of Ruby and the GBA and I played them, only to discover that I absolutely hated the game. No day/night? No 2 regions to explore? Growing up on G/S/C deeply twisted my view of what I thought all Pokemon games should be. I found myself in love with Colosseum, though, and I wanted to play more, except with more victories, of course. A few years later I met another friend around the time D/P came out and he told me about this 'foreign concept' known as Effort Values and the Serebii site. I browsed Serebii and of course they were extensively covering D/P, anticipating its American release. I found out that it was going to have Day/Night, tons of different features and Wi-Fi, and my love of Pokemon was rekindled. Slowly I delved into the 'Dark Arts' of Pokemon, looking up IVs/EVs/Natures. I became enthralled with all these (more or less) hidden features that had been included in the game and started making use of them. In a D/P rematch with the two friends I had played Colosseum with years before, my Pokemon were substantially more powerful, but I still lost. I learned it wasn't enough to just train Effort Values and use the right Natures. I needed to make a team with perfect synergy if I ever wanted to win. The friend who introduced me to EVs/IVs/Natures told me about Smogon and I perused it, downloading Shoddy Battle, formulating a decent enough team and winning a few battles. Using Shoddy Battle, I realized that there were thousands of other people who knew about EVs and IVs and I would have to try even harder. I played around with my team, won more battles, but never bothered to sign up to the site that had changed my view of Pokemon so much! I read about Battling 101 and, since I always do best with formal training, decided to sign up...today.
Why I am staying: Aside from my desire to win, it's nice to actually see people better than me. Victory isn't as important to me as learning is. I'm sort of in limbo between competitive and non competitive Pokemon. I'm the best of all of my friends who don't know about the deeper mechanics of Pokemon, but definitely on the lower end of the competitive scale with you guys who have been doing this for years. Beating my weaker opponents gets old quickly, and I want to learn more about Pokemon to have a chance at defeating the better ones. Even if I don't win all the time (which I won't, of course), the knowledge I gain here will hopefully be useful.