Three boys to represent UK at Pokemon World Champs

Three boys from Suffolk are heading to San Francisco to represent the UK at the Pokemon World Championships.

Oliver, 15, Matthew, 14, and Oakley, nine, have qualified to compete at the event in the US between 28 and 30 August.

They have trained together at Mulligan Game Cafe in Ipswich, with Oliver and Matthew due to compete in the Trading Card Game (TCG) competition and Oakley in the video game event.

The boys are all within the top 16 players in Europe and they said they were excited to be heading across the Atlantic.

It has been 30 years since the Pokemon phenomenon sparked in Japan.

The first video games were released on the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996, with the card game released the same year.

The games, which involve "pocket monsters" battling against each other, are still loved today by millions of people - and have become such a sensation that some schools have had to ban children from bringing cards on to the playground.

The world championship event is invite-only, requiring a year of qualifying events against thousands of players.

Matthew explained that he was introduced to the trading cards in school.

"In primary school in about year two, I saw people trading cards and I got into it," he said.

"Then when people left I didn't stop collecting.

"At some point, people here [at Mulligan Game Cafe] were playing and I wanted to learn."

The teenager said he was excited at being able to explore San Francisco, and encouraged others wanting to get into the game to work hard.

"You just have to play a lot and go to a lot of events... you have to practice a lot," he said.

Pokemon TCG is a two-player game where opponents use 60-card decks to battle the monsters, until one player claims victory.

The video game sees a virtual battle of the Pokemon.

Oakley said his dad introduced him to the video games.

"Eventually he got me the Shining Pearl [game] on the [Nintendo] Switch," he said.

"I played through the whole game and liked it."

He was then taken to a tournament in London where he became hooked.

The US event will be his second time on the world stage, having similarly competed last year where he ended up in the top 16.

Meanwhile, Oliver started playing the cards after he was taught by his stepdad.

"Eventually I started going on YouTube... I learnt the proper decks that everyone is playing," he said.

"I stuck to it for a while, and then I got better and better over time."

This is similarly his second world event, and while he knows there will be all the top competitors there he said he wanted to win.

Baz Cloud is the store manager at Mulligan Game Cafe.

"It's absolutely fantastic, I'm a little bit jealous to be honest," he said of the three boys.

"I've been playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game since the late '90s when it first came out.

"Seeing that there's young people coming in every Wednesday to play, having fun, and engaging with the game systems in different ways, is the reason I took the job in the first place.

"It reminds me to have that passion, still."

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