*Note: We’re labeling Liverpool under VGC 2018 as the Championship Points earned from this tournament will go towards the 2018 season.

It’s weird to think about, but we’ve already had our first 2018 regional before the 2017 World Championships. Congratulations to Thomas Plater who is your Liverpool regional champion, and is now more than two thirds of the way to his worlds invite.

Liverpool was a tournament that just kind of…happened. No major coverage or even a stream came from the event, which was odd, but considering the timing it’s not surprising. Most of Europe’s biggest names made it to the event. Interestingly, usual favorites like Markus Stadter and Alex Gomez weren’t present in the Top Cut.

To be honest, there’s not a whole lot to say about Liverpool, but unfortunately this event did generate a controversy that caused a rather large uproar on Twitter. But before we get to all of that, let’s take a look at the results.

Results & Teams (Top 8)

1. Thomas Plater

2. Jamie Dixon

3. Arash Ommati

4. Daniel Oztekin

5. Simone Perilli

6. Alessio Yuri Boschetto

7. Rafa Montes

8. Nico Davide Cognetta

Do the Top 8 teams reflect a potential Worlds Top Cut?

Possibly, but I don’t expect the number of familiar/standard compositions that made it into Liverpool’s Top 8 to dominate Anaheim’s.

I expected going into this tournament that a lot of European top players would not try too hard to team build for this tournament, as all of that creativity should be going towards a potential Worlds team. As a result, we have goodstuffs, two FAKEPG teams and a couple of familiar Tapu Lele teams. Without much of a reason for Europe’s Worlds competitors to team build for Liverpool, standard was likely the best call.

The only real interesting team here is probably Daniel Oztekin’s Torkoal/Lilligant team. Despite the team being from another player who Oztekin credited on his Twitter, the team had quite a few interesting tricks. Speed Swap Pheromosa, a Shell Smashing Torkoal and Oranguru as the team’s Trick Room setter to name a few. I don’t expect Sun to be an archetype that’s been forgotten come Worlds, and this team shows how crazy a Sun team can be.

Consistent teams are always solid choices for a tournament, but due to the nature of the Worlds metagame, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more interesting stuff in Anaheim’s Top Cut.

Trouble in Top 4

Ruling controversies are never fun to talk about, but there was a rather large one that came out of Liverpool. 2013 World Champion Arash Ommati was playing his Top 4 set against Jamie Dixon. Ommati had already won game one and looked to have already secured game two. The game came down to Ommati’s Whimsicott Encore-stalling Dixon’s Porygon2, at which point Ommati suggested to Dixon that he should forfeit in order to save time and DS charge.

According to Ommati, Dixon agreed to forfeit, but a judge, overhearing Arash basically saying to his opponent “you should forfeit” decided to give Ommati a game loss for a violation of the rules. This distraction, Ommati claims, caused Ommati to misclick and essentially give the game to his opponent. Since game two had concluded before the ruling was decided, the judge ended up applying the game loss to game three instead, essentially giving the set to Dixon.

My thoughts

For those unfamiliar, the official Play! Pokemon rules specifically outlaw the manipulation of a match through “intimidation or distraction.” Basically, it is unsportsmanlike to ask your opponent to scoop the game to you.

To be fair, in this situation, Ommati was not intimidating or distracting his opponent, and it’s unlikely that there was any malicious intent behind Ommati’s suggestion. Although, asking your opponent to forfeit shouldn’t be allowed in any circumstance, especially considering this was a regional semifinal and Dixon should be allowed to play the game out if he wants. Also, it turns out that due to the mechanic of Encore ending if a move runs out of PP, Ommati was not 100% guaranteed the win, but the game was still heavily in his favor.

As for the ruling, I don’t 100% agree with this one. The game loss should have been applied to game two since the details seem to indicate that’s when this whole situation occurred. Though, if this happened in-between games, then it would make sense for the loss to be applied to game three. Then there’s the whole issue of Ommati’s claim that the judge distracting him caused him to lose game two, which doesn’t seem very fair to him as a player.

This situation as a whole could’ve been handled a lot better, but the bottom line is that asking your opponent to scoop the game regardless of the circumstances is never a good idea. Also, a player in this situation such as Dixon had a valid win condition and should be allowed to play for it.

Final thoughts

If it wasn’t already clear, Liverpool is quite a mixed bag for me. For one, the whole ruling controversy was a mess and I’m tired of seeing people argue back and forth about issues like this. Also, I don’t really agree with having 2018 tournaments BEFORE WORLDS. This tournament would’ve been fine if it had happened in September or later, but to have it in the time where most players are preparing for the season’s biggest tournament just seems distracting.

There is something positive that I would like to mention however. Matteo Dorrell, a European VGC commentator who’s well known in the community, posted a short statement before the event about why Liverpool was not going to be streamed. He claims that there was a miscommunication that unfortunately made the stream not possible. At the end of his post, he mentioned that he is optimistic about future streaming of European events and will prioritize his role as a streamer and caster.

Glad to see some good news come out of this event. Now with our first major 2018 event out of the way (still feels weird to write that) let’s again turn our attention towards the World Championships that are now just under three weeks away.

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on Twitter @aricbartleti

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Pokemon Sprite Images from Pokémon Sun and Moon

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