The fourth iteration of the most prestigious online Pokémon Video Game Championship tournament is set to wrap up over the weekend, giving the remaining players across the world a shot at the $45,000 prize pool and the right to claim the title of champion.
The tournament began with open qualifiers in April, slowly whittling down the competition across North America, Europe, Latin America and Oceania, until only four players from each region remain. Those 16 trainers will now face off to determine who made the best calls, both for the meta game and during battle.
The Format for Player’s Cup IV Global Finals
While the players have technically already played out the Global Finals starting July 17th, the games and results will only be streamed from July 30 to Aug 1. Every day, the matches will begin at 2 p.m. ET.
All 16 players will be seeded into a double elimination bracket and play through it until an eventual champion is crowned. In these competitions, players are required to submit a team list of six Pokémon before the event begins. During every game within a best of three match, players will have to choose four of their six Pokémon to battle against the opponent in the classic doubles format. At all points of the competition, all players will have access to their opponent’s team sheet, which includes information on move sets, held items and abilities. For additional information, these are the official Pokémon VGC rules.
The VGC format for the Player’s cup IV Global Finals will be Series 9. This means restricted legendary Pokémon are not allowed, making the format an effective reversion to Series 7, which was used during the Pokémon Players Cup II. Dynamax Pokémon are also allowed in this Format.
Along the three days of the Player’s Cup IV Global Finals, events will also be held for Pokkén and the Pokémon Trading Card Game, hosted on the Pokémon TCG Twitch channel and the Pokken Twitch channel respectively.
