In Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii, the Pokemon World Championship has been held this August and the Langreano Adrian Isidoro has gone there. The first Asturian representation (among 900 competitors from all over the planet) that comes to this video game event that can only be accessed by invitation and that revolves around the various games of the deepest series of the Japanese creatures that they have in Pikachuto its best-known specimen.
Isidoro studied Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnic School of Gijón, in Vieques, although he currently works on developing business management software. A job that he has put on hold for a few days to devote himself to something that, apparently, he is very good at. And that is despite the fact that, just after the championship – an event that awards up to 2 million dollars in prize money (50,000 dollars for the winner) – the feelings that remain with the Asturian after his first world championship have not been entirely positive, since he was left out of the competition in the first rounds.
Ambience in one of the activity areas associated with the Pokémon championship. / Pokémon
“I didn’t have many expectations for the championship because I wasn’t very well prepared. It was two months after the last tournament I was in during the regular season until the championship came around, and since I didn’t have the pressure of the event being so close, I started to put it off. So I wasn’t expecting much more since it was my first World Championship and I wasn’t well prepared,” she says frankly.
That said, no one can take away from him the experience of having come to measure himself against the world’s top experts in video games that have been among the most followed for several decades. Isidoro says, in fact, that Pokemon has always been present in his life: “I have been playing all my life, since I was six years old, when the Pokemon Yellow game came out, and competing in tournaments since 2016.” He played his first tournament when he was studying at university and since then he has not stopped: “At university I found out that there were competitions and the first one I went to was the Cometcon in Oviedo, which was held at the Palacio de Congresos. Then I have been measuring myself on the national scene, especially in the north, Valladolid, Bilbao and Gijón. And a year ago I decided that I wanted to qualify for the world championship and I had to start playing tournaments outside of Spain.”
Tournament atmosphere. / Pokemon
Although he has not yet won a European championship, this Asturian Pokemon lover has won national competitions and has achieved some good results in Europe, which has allowed him to qualify for the World Championship: “Local tournaments, those played in Spain, are divided into two categories, the challengers and the midseasons. I have won two Challengers in Gijón, although I have not entered many. And of the midseasons, which are the highest level, I have won four. Outside of Spain I have competed in Liverpool, London and Bologna. In Liverpool I was one victory away from making it to day two. The London tournament was international and I finished 44th out of more than 1,000 players, it is the highest level European tournament. In Bologna I got my best result, I managed to get into the top 10 out of 900 players.”
The Asturian hopes to continue growing in the competitive arena and be able to compete against the best in Europe, in order to qualify for the World Championship again: “The goal for this year is to once again reach the World Championship, which will be held in Los Angeles. Another objective that I would really like to achieve would be to win a regional championship, which are tournaments played at a European level. I would love to be the champion of Spain, but any country would be fine for me. The regulations that they are going to apply are more favourable to me than those of the World Championship due to my style of play, so it is a good time to try to get a good result.”
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