2008 World Championships (TCG)

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The Pokémon Trading Card Game 2008 World Championships were held at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista hotel in Orlando, Florida from August 15-17, 2008. They were the fifth World Championships event hosted by Pokémon Organized Play. In addition, this year featured the 2008 Video Game Showdown, which would evolve into the annual Video Game World Championships starting in 2009.

The event used the EX Holon Phantoms onwards Modified Format. The second day of the tournament featured seven rounds of Swiss Pairings for all three divisions. The top 32 players in each division were then seeded into single-elimination tournaments on Sunday to determine each division’s World Champion.

Single-Elimination Brackets

Junior Division

Jun Hasebe, of Japan, was the defending Junior Division World Champion. Jun finished in sixth place, losing in the quarterfinals to eventual runner up (and future World Champion) Takuto Itagaki.

Tristan Robinson, of the United States, claimed victory with a 10-2 record, defeating Takuto in the final.

Senior Division

Jeremy Scharff-Kim, of the United States, was the defending Senior Division World Champion, but chose to withdraw from the tournament after completing five rounds.

Dylan Lefavour, of the United States, posted a 9-3 record to win the tournament, along the way defeating 2005 Junior Division champion Curran Hill in the semifinals.

Masters Division

Tom Roos, of Finland, was the defending Masters Division World Champion, and finished 35th in Swiss Rounds.

Jason Klaczynski made history by winning his second World Championship with a record of 10-2. Jason is the only person to have achieved such a feat in the TCG (Ray Rizzo would win three Video Game (Senior/)Masters titles from 2010-2012). His path to victory included the defeats of the top two players from the 2008 U.S. National Championships.

Invitation structure

Previously, there were four guaranteed invites per division in the Last Chance Qualifiers: however, due to unprecedented numbers of players, Pokémon Organized Play announced an additional 47 invites into the World Championships. Similarly, it was announced at the United Kingdom Nationals that fourth place in each division would, in addition to the top three finishing players, receive an invitation to the championships.

There were, in total, 435 invites announced (also known as Travel Awards) for the 2008 World Championships; 145 in each division. Of these, Pokémon Organized Play sponsored and paid for 41 Travel Awards, including the top four finishers in last year's World Championships. After the announcement of various additional invitations, there were at least 485 invitations available for the World Championships.

Event Pokémon

Pokémon Info				Trainer Memo	Battle Moves		Ribbons
LUCARIO	♂	Dex No.	0448	Adamant nature.	Fighting	Force Palm
Lv. 30		Type			Ground	Bone Rush
		Fighting	Steel	Pokémon Event	Fire	Sunny Day
		OT	WORLD08	Apparently had a	Fire	Blaze Kick
		ID No.	08178	fateful encounter at	This Pokémon was available in the United States on August 17, 2008.
Item		Ability		Lv. 30.
Leftovers		Inner Focus
The date this Pokémon was received is determined by the date on the DS when it was obtained from the Poké Mart.
This Pokémon is English in origin.
Can be obtained with: D P Pt HG SS
Obtained from: PBR Ranch Ra SoA GS Distribution

This article is part of Project TCG, a Bulbapedia project that aims to report on every aspect of the Pokémon Trading Card Game.