Pokemon TCG League Cup at Games of Concord Turns into a Hot Nightmare

If you are thinking of attending a League Cup at Games of Concord in Concord, California, maybe think twice. Unless you like playing in a room that is a sweltering 90-100 degrees or outside on top of cars during an excessive heat warning.

Pokemon TCG’s popularity is not waning, so it makes sense plenty of strong players would be flocking from surrounding areas to play in the area’s first League Cup of the season in sleepy Concord, CA. While Pokemon’s World Championships for 2023 might not even yet have occurred, hopeful players are already busily attempting to win championship points for next year’s world championships exclusive invite.

In the case of the tournament at Games of Concord, it feels more that the management was looking to capitalize on this hopeful zeal for championship points than to provide a decent playing experience.

An Event that Was Rocky from the Start

Even before getting there things didn’t seem great. There was no way to purchase your spot ahead of time. No decent way to submit deck lists.

Things weren’t off to a good start either when at 3:30pm (the time the tournament was intended to start) a previous tournament was still in full swing, leaving Pokemon players to wait outside in the heat – with an excessive heat warning in place, mind you.

Players milled around waiting, making last minute changes to their decks, and looking for local boba tea shops. When the claustrophobically tight card shop started to open up with the previous tournament ending, players went inside hoping for a break from the heat only to find that it was just as hot if not even hotter inside than out.

Tournament Gets Delayed for Two Hours

Like at tee-time when playing golf, Pokemon Tournaments should start on time, and if you’re late, you get penalized. Which means that if a tournament starts at 3:30, that means you’re literally sitting there getting ready to play at 3:30. However, almost two hours had elapsed before the tournament had begun and players were still uncertain about where they were supposed to be sitting or who they would be playing against.

When round one pairings were posted, I went outside (yes…the shop was so tight and ill prepared for a tournament of any substantial size that the pairings were literally posted outside in the excessive heat warning air) and found that my name had been omitted from the tournament. After I had paid the exorbitant $35 entry fee. After I had sat there for nearly two hours. After I had checked in with staff days early and submitted my deck list ahead of time over email. I wasn’t there.

After telling the staff, they then reported that (after already making everyone wait nearly two hours) round one would have to wait a little longer because there would need to be a re-pairing of players.

Things Aren’t Going Well and I Decide to Drop from the Tournament

The tired, overheated players (some of whom had traveled over 3 hours to get here and would be making the return trip late, late that night) groaned in misery. Not only because the tournament still wouldn’t be starting, but because it was incredibly hard to navigate that minuscule shop with 50+ players trying to get in and out to look at pairings.

It was too much for me. Not only did I not want them having to get re-paired on my account, I could see that this tournament was headed nowhere good. So I told the cashier that I would rather just have a refund at this point because they were way too late and had also not even entered me into the tournament at all after having had 2 hours to do so.

If all this hadn’t been bad enough, Games of Concord could not actually figure out how to refund me. So I told them to give me $35 of Pokemon product and I would leave. Unfortunately, I didn’t get anything remotely valuable in my 7 packs. But I did get something even more valuable than $35 – I got the hell out of Games of Concord.

Players Play on Backs of Cars While Event is Labeled “Health Hazard”

At this point, I have to rely on other sources as to what happened there. But one of my friends who was there left later than I did, and luckily several pro Pokemon TCG players were at the event and Tweeted about it.

It seems that (probably not long after I left), the League Cup was shortened due to the event being labelled a “health hazard”.

What would have been better, however, is if Games of Concord had realized before the event took place that hosting a large tournament in a tiny building with no A/C with a heat warning in effect was probably a bad idea. Maybe then players wouldn’t have wasted countless combined hours traveling to their location to play their favorite card game in a tournament Games of Concord had no business hosting.

Clearly they did not have a venue big enough for the tournament from the start as players were actually playing on the backs of cars in 100 degree heat since there was no room for them inside.

Photo from Princess Mia of players playing Pokemon on the backs of cars at Games of Concord’s hazardous Pokemon tournament.

I suppose some players are so passionate that they will do just about anything to get championship points. While I am clearly not one of them, I do think that card shops like the one in question could do a little better to not exploit this sincere desire to be the very best (like no one ever was) and try to provide decent playing accommodations that don’t create a self professed health hazard in the process.