Brent Halliburton
Author Archive
Not Just A Horror Film (A Deep Dive into Pidgeotto Control for UPR–CEC/Standard) “Now I will laboriously walk through our cards and their counts—much of this will touch on matchups, but in the big scheme of things every matchup is the same, so discussing matchups is boring—at some point you will have 1 to 4 Prizes left and you will play (worst-case scenario) Reset Stamp, Lt. Surge’s Strategy, Jessie & James, Jessie & James to reduce your opponent’s hand to 0 cards, Chip-Chip Ice Axe to control their top-deck, and then Cold Crush-GX to strip the Active attacker of Energy. Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, your…
Attendance at Tournaments, Commentating (Drama in Storytelling), the Grind, Marketing, and a Funny Story “There was some chatter on Facebook about how attendance was down at tournaments, possibly due to the Expanded format or rising prices. I wondered if there was a way to get a little bit of science applied to the problem. I asked Christopher Schemanske if he had a data set I could use for a quick linear regression and of course he did. So here is what I did: I looked at every Regional in the last three years and scored it on several attributes… Format Year Quarter (to attempt to control for “people stop playing at a certain point”)…
The Halliburton Report from Worlds, incl. Top 4 Worlds Juniors Report “Right after my last article, we headed to Toronto. For two years, I have offered my eldest son a choice of birthday presents or a father/son regionals trip. Both years he has opted for the trip so this year we crossed the border and headed to Toronto. He had his first poutine, so I already knew the trip was a wild success. Unfortunately, we decided to play BuzzRoc because we could not find a deck that consistently beat it. We felt like this was a bit of a trap because historically, when we just lemmingly follow the herd and play…
Using Science to Answer Pokémon Metagame Questions “Looking at a large sample of games played by archetype can inform what deck is the BDIF. Further, can we determine: did decks that had good results over-perform because they played against favorable pairings relative to the meta or are they, in fact, simply well-positioned against the meta? SixPrizes’ own Christopher Schemanske and the RK9 team went through and categorized every deck played at the Portland Regional Championship tournament by archetype. Then, I was provided with the win/loss data for every matchup for Day One of the tournament in the form (Round X – Archetype One v Archetype Two -…
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Brent on Parenting a Junior + a Senior, The State of the Circuit, and a Midpoint Reflection on the Season “Pokemon tournaments have never been bigger! For that matter, this is a very reasonable year to go get your invite. I have always said “mo’ is betta'” for Juniors going to the World Championship and the stars certainly seem appropriately aligned to get plenty of Juniors out there. I feel like Pokemon is reading what I am writing, because they lowered the kickers to 48 kids, essentially giving out Top 16 points at most Regionals, which is good given the “box-out” that I wrote so much about last year. Having said that, it is worth taking a moment to mention…
It shows no mercy to any who desecrate fields and mountains. It will fly around on its icy wings, causing a blizzard to chase offenders away. (Frosmoth)
A Poképarent’s Guide to Getting Started in Competitive Pokémon + 2× NAIC Top 8 Juniors Report “Because I am a dad of Pokemon people, people ask me how to get their kids into competitive Pokemon all the time. I have seen lots of opinions on this, mine is “win or go home.” And here is what I mean: Winning is a three step process in Pokemon. Equipment. Have the right cards. Pokemon prints lots of bad cards and a few good cards. If you don’t have the good cards, you simply lose. Jason Klaszynski, playing a theme deck, loses basically every game he plays against someone with a top tier deck. If you don’t have the…
Standard v. Expanded, Juniors Recaps of Salt Lake City & Roanoke, Points, and the Box-Out! “Let me start with some thoughts on the Standard format compared to Expanded. When you look at our results, it is clear that we do much better in Expanded than we do in Standard so there is clearly bias. Regardless, my argument in favor of Expanded is this: First, the variety of cards allow for more deck consistency and this should theoretically decrease variance. Cards like Colress, Computer Search, and Jirachi-EX make decks more consistent, preventing dead-draw failures. I am an advocate of ban lists as the meta evolves, but bigger card sets create more creativity as long as we…
Thoughts on Parenting Juniors and A Gauntlet of Tournaments “Carlos Pero has been advocating a new model of top cut where there are no bubbles. I am 110% on that train, even though it is too late for my oldest son. In his final year in Juniors, we have attended seven large events, which is an extraordinary amount for us. He has made top cut at four of them. But consider this: he has only lost one round, at most, of Swiss in every tournament he has attended. A single loss in every tournament, cutting at approximately half. I am sure many Masters would agree, but it seems that…
Economics of Blogging, Standard Stuff, Juniors in Fort Wayne + London, and Bigger Thoughts “This topic is actually aligned with my professional interests, so I have some strong feelings about this. First, let me say that advertising will generally not work. The audiences that you need to have a viable advertising-based business are so large that it is a generally inappropriate model for niche blogs. If one were to advertise, you would want to have a very focused sales outreach because the rate relative to the audience size would need to be so discrepant with common advertising rates that the media buyer would need to feel like your content is a home run. I…
Juniors Orlando & Philadelphia Regionals 2016 Tournament Reports “Masters get cash. Juniors do not. Getting an Amex corporate travel thing is meh. Amex charges a ton for you to use them. Essentially, Amex skims 10%+ right off the top as their fees. Scholarships are pretty meh too. My understanding is they don’t pay interest, so you can get a scholarship for 10 years in the future that just rots while someone else is making money on your money. I assume Pokemon did not realize that their awards for Juniors work out badly for all the PokeParents. I haven’t met someone who has liked winning yet. Finally, I ended…
It’s highly skilled at tap-dancing. It waves its cane of ice in time with its graceful movements. (Mr. Rime)
Top 64 Juniors Worlds 2016 Tournament Report “I think I have talked enough about how, when it comes to choosing decks, we like to choose the most toxic deck in the format. That means I spent a lot of time fooling around with Vespiquen/Vileplume after it was released, but we never got to the point where we felt comfortable with it. As I have always said, another criteria we have for decks is that we try to choose a deck where we can minimize the likelihood that the deck craps out on us and maximize the likelihood where we will have the chance to use skilled play…
1st Place Juniors US Nationals 2016 Tournament Report “So, I didn’t write a trip report about Massachusetts Regionals and I want to start this off by talking about why. I have a new job and it is super high travel. More accurately, it is based in New York and I live in DC. Plus in the first two months I spent a week in Orlando, a week in Atlanta, and a week in Barcelona. This travel has really impacted my Poke-thinking and my family’s Poke-testing. Plus, my job is just intense. This felt like an opportunity I needed to take even though the travel was a bear because…
The Top 16 Grind, Junior Meta Updates, Modern Deck Design, and Maryland + Virginia States Reports “That’s enough talk about parenting! Let’s talk about Pokemon — specifically, what is going on in the Junior meta. The Junior meta feels more different from the Masters meta than ever before. Whereas Masters are circling around Battle Compressor decks obsessively, I think your average Junior still seeks decks where there is an element of attaching and attacking. Most Juniors are put off by the complexity and non-linearity of decks such as Vespiquen/Vileplume. Similarly, the chunk of Juniors not put off by the complexity are put off for a different reason, but to articulate that, I need to tell a…
Top 4 Juniors Florida Regionals Report with Sableye/Garbodor “This list has a lot to talk about. First, let me say that I realized something about myself in this process. As a Pokedad, I am a somewhat conservative deck builder: I don’t want my kid to say, “Oh, I lost because of bleh, that sucked,” where bleh could have been avoided by not trying to be too skinny in draw or overly techie. For example, while people had success at VA Regionals running a single Garbodor, we decided on two because if you need it, you need it. While my prior Sableye list had millions of 2-ofs, there were…
Virginia Regionals Junior Top 8 Report and Cities Recap “My last article was the “pre-Cities” article about team dynamics, yet we still weren’t invited to join any teams. :-P Since that time, Cities has happened and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about that for just a few minutes. Cities for Juniors is a different thing than for Masters but there are similarities. For Masters, it is the easiest way to get an invite. For Juniors, it is also the easiest way to get an invite. There are frequently very few Juniors at a tournament, but they are still fairly competitive tournaments with astronomical variance. We attended…
This Pokémon was born from sweet-smelling particles in the air. Its body is made of cream. (Milcery)
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