Why Online is Better for Competitive Play | Pokemon TCG

Although I’m undoubtedly in the minority for holding this opinion, it seems objectively true that online options for playing one of the world’s favorite trading card games have far outstripped the experience you get from in person play. While there is one major caveat to this rule, without a doubt online play affords a better playing experience. And this is for a number of reasons.

Playing online, the software does everything for you

You don’t realize it when you spend most of your time playing Pokemon online, but a lot of the meticulous routine stuff involved in Pokemon TCG is handled by the software for you. Remembering to put damage counters somewhere – check! Organizing your hand by card type – check!

When you play in real life, there’s a whole added hurdle of things you need to pay attention to on top of the actual game in front of you. You need to deal with dice, remember to do all the mechanics and abilities exactly correctly, and things of that sort.

While this can actually be kind of fun in limited amounts at your local league gathering – the way building a fire the old fashioned way can be fun – it gets really tiresome when you do it a lot. Shuffling over and over again suddenly feels like a chore when your computer can achieve a perfect shuffle instantly.

Let’s dive into the shuffling point a bit more, because it is such a pain it bears it’s own category.

Playing online does your shuffling for you (thank goodness!)

To be fair, shuffling is not much of a burden in casual play. At your local league night, you might do four rounds of Pokemon, which is a very satisfying amount of Pokemon if you think about it. At max, that means you are doing 12 battles. In all likelihood, it’s much less than that. Which means you aren’t actually spending a whole lot of time shuffling.

At a competitive event, however, like the Regional Championships I went to recently in Fresno, you’re just getting started at four rounds. You do as many as nine rounds in a single day at one of these big events! That’s a ton of shuffling. And it’s a very repetitive task.

Another issue with shuffling when it comes to competitive play is the fact that nobody shuffles perfectly. There are probably some professionals who know how to shuffle close to perfectly. But the computer can perfectly randomize your deck every single time.

Another issue is knowing whether or not someone is cheating when they are shuffling. Someone could totally be cheating when they play against me cause I have no idea what to look for. Also, I’m not gonna spend time cutting their deck with more shuffling after all that shuffling. So they could pretty easily cheat. Not saying they would but there’s probably someone out there doing it.

Online, you don’t need to worry if your opponent is shuffling badly or not, because the software takes care of it.

Playing online removes the “Judge” mechanic

Playing in person has for the most part been an enjoyable experience for me since I picked up Pokemon as a hobby. However, one thing I came to realize while playing at Regionals level is that calling the judge on your opponent is as much a mechanic of the game as actually playing the game is. Basically, really competitive players are looking for you to make a mistake so they can jump on it and hopefully get an advantage.

Yeah. A children’s card game is that cut-throat.

I had a judged called on me two times, and both times were for issues that could have easily been resolved between us players. In fact, the judge basically said that and didn’t hand out penalties either time. However, on both ocasions my opponent was losing to me, and eager to get an advantage.

It’s sort of like being able to request a yellow card or red card in soccer. That should be the ref’s job to call that out, not the player’s. In Pokemon, it’s totally the player’s job, making the play actually pretty awkward. How are you supposed to become best buds with the person across from you if you know that at any moment they might try to use the judge mechanic to gain an advantage?

Playing online removes this hassle. While judge calls still happen even at online tournaments, they’re much less common, and usually for actual issues that need to be resolved, not stalling tactics. This is simply because the software is taking care of all the minutia for you, so when you make a mistake, it’s almost never a clerical error, but a strategic one. Which is how the game is meant to be played.

Playing online is way more convenient

Traveling to Pokemon Regionals, Leagues, Cups or Challenges is a very time consuming endeavor, meaning only some of us in reality will be able to do them. Things like adult responsibilities, or insufficient funds or other obligations can quickly derail someone who is crazy about Pokemon from playing in real life.

Playing online, however, is pretty much open to anybody. Not to mention significantly cheaper, now that you can earn what you need to get the cards you need by just playing the game.

I’d much rather log into my computer, fire up my Discord, and play a four round Team Challenge event than travel hours and hours to another city, pay for several nights at a hotel, and then have to play from 8am until night at a major event.

When is playing in person better for Pokemon TCG?

While undoubtedly playing online or using your computer works better for competitive Pokemon play, that doesn’t mean there aren’t advantages to playing in real life. A lot of people tend to think of online play as better for practicing and in person play better for competition, it’s actually sort of the opposite. Playing on your computer or mobile device removes a lot of the hassle that really gets pronounced after hours and hours of play. Meanwhile, playing in person for shorter, less competitive tournaments, is a great way to help you focus in the moment on your game play, and potential short comings.

Playing in real life is better for making friends

This is really mostly true for league play, where you are likely to see people more than once. We know from psychology that in order to become friends with someone you need to see them around 3 times before a friendship can be established. At massive tournaments like Pokemon Regionals, you aren’t likely to interact with somoeone more than once. There’s just too many players for that to happen (unless you go to A LOT of regionals, which some people do).

When it comes to playing at your local league, however, people will come back each week, making it very likely you’ll become Pokemon pals.

Handling the cards can be stress releiving

Playing Pokemon is a lot like pipe smoking. It’s expensive, an easy way to make friends, and a lot of the fun of it is handling things – like your play mat, cards and sleeves. We do a lot of things digitally these days from work to our phones – handling real physical items is rewarding.

That’s true, however, only when it comes to playing casually. When playing competitively, the negative sides of dealing with physical objects – like frequent human error and a general inefficiency – begin to negate the stress relieving benfits of in person play.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you prefer playing online or in person. There are plenty of options for either, and as long as Pokemon stands to make money from their cards, in person events will always be the most prestigious. That doesn’t change the fact that from a competative standpoint, online will always boast the better experience.