Play! Pokémon sanctioned organiser · Run by Professors Lee & Jo · Venues: Dice & A Slice · ACE Comics
Trade → lee@kanto.ukYear one report
We started with one TCG tournament for under-16s and no real idea whether anyone would come. A year later there's a league with seasons, a room that fills up, and a few hundred kids who can play a game they couldn't play before. This is the whole year, numbers and all.
The numbers
25
Play! Pokémon, GO and TCG
23
Open play, labs, celebrations
1,300+
Never sold. Not once.
100+
From never-played to playing
We don't sell promo cards. Ever.
Over the year we've handed out more than 1,300 free packs of Pokémon cards. That includes the Worlds celebration cards and the Pikachu at the museum promos — the same cards you'll find other shops selling.
We give ours to the players. If a kid sits down and plays, they go home with cards. That's been the rule since the first tournament and it isn't changing.
Pokémon Day, and the time we got locked out
Pokémon Day was the day we found the ceiling. We signed up so many players so quickly that Pokémon's own system decided something suspicious was happening and locked our account — they thought we'd been hacked. We hadn't. There were just that many kids in the room.
We handed out 100 promo cards and another 300 play packs on top of what the day came with, because we'd rather run out of table space than send anyone home empty-handed. It remains the best problem we've ever had.
Play Lab Discovery
We taught 70 families to play in a single day and sent 50 lab decks home with them. Not a tournament, not a competition — just parents and kids learning the game at a table with someone patient sitting opposite. Half of our regulars started at something like this.
Pikachu at the museum
The Pikachu at the museum promos are the ones people hunt for, and you'll find them listed for real money elsewhere. We gave ours to the kids who turned up and played — for nothing, like everything else on the prize table. It's the only thing we know how to do with them.
What we put on the prize table
Official Play! Pokémon prize support, promos, sleeves, deck boxes and our own binders. Every event, not just the big ones — and the prize table is photographed because we'd rather show you than tell you.
Every month, not just the good ones
Consistency is the bit that's hard. Anyone can run one big event. Here's the year in order.
Two junior/senior TCG tournaments
Where this started — under-16s only, at Dice & A Slice.
Monthly GO League Challenges
October, November, December. The habit that turned into a league.
Winter Season: three Challenges + a League Cup finale
Plus a Friday night skirmish and our first Play Lab.
Pokémon Day League Celebration
The big one. Full room, and a story we still tell — below.
Spring Season: two Challenges + the Season Finale
Same rhythm, more players, better decks.
Mid-Year Celebration and the Champions youth series
Starter Triangle Cup, then Pokémon Champions for the summer holidays.
Year two
More youth events, more Play Labs, and BinderHQ so kit stops costing silly money. Same rules: taught properly, capped numbers, named tickets, packs given not sold.