So there was a lot of controversy over the tournament rules today after it had started. This clearly effected the strategies of several players and started a fire in chat. Here are my thoughts on this:
1. A mistake was made by tournament organizers when rules were not made explicit from the start.
2. There are fifty million pokemon websites - we cannot assume that rules from any of them are expected by anyone.
3. We have a great advantage in being able to form our own community and not be beholden to the rules of some other community. Saying we use rules "That are a max of smogon and VGC" or "Kind of like PO" will only hamstring us.
4. I don't believe every tournament needs similar rules. If someone wants to run one with all legendaries, do it. If someone wants to run a tournament with no clauses DO IT. This just forces more thought before the tournament. Nothing can be unfair if everyone UNDERSTANDS the rules. Then losing is your own fault.
What can we do to remedy these things in the future?
1. A mistake was made by tournament organizers when rules were not made explicit from the start.
2. There are fifty million pokemon websites - we cannot assume that rules from any of them are expected by anyone.
3. We have a great advantage in being able to form our own community and not be beholden to the rules of some other community. Saying we use rules "That are a max of smogon and VGC" or "Kind of like PO" will only hamstring us.
4. I don't believe every tournament needs similar rules. If someone wants to run one with all legendaries, do it. If someone wants to run a tournament with no clauses DO IT. This just forces more thought before the tournament. Nothing can be unfair if everyone UNDERSTANDS the rules. Then losing is your own fault.
What can we do to remedy these things in the future?