What do you think about Young TCG players?

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Here's my line up of how I see TCG players by devision:
Juniors: annoying to very nice
Seniors: annoying to nice
Masters: Insanely unbearably annoying to... ok...

Anyone see what I'm saying? Juniors can be annoying, but the masters can be 1000X worse. I'm not giving any full names, but it starts with a g and ends with an ino. :) I've seen masters come in not knowing the rules and having illegal cards. That's not an age based thing. I work with a bunch of juniors. Right now, I'm focussing on getting one into worlds. Otherwise, I'm teaching some kids. I wanna be in Juniors again. That's the best chance anyone will have to get into worlds. They might as well utilize their chance while they still have it. Often, there's a one-year window for juniors to be good and still in juniors.

Overall, Juniors are good. Not bad ;P
 
The problem is that the Juniors have parents who can simply help them get ready to join the league to save problems for other players.

Like my dad did.

Asked if I read the rules many times.
Asked if I had the right amount of cards.
Asked if I was ready or not.

The only problem I had was the illegal cards. My dad simply wasn't lazy and asked if I was actually ready to play, instead of sending me off to play a game against others while not knowing much else than that you battle.

z-man said:
Here's my line up of how I see TCG players by devision:
Juniors: annoying to very nice
Seniors: annoying to nice
Masters: Insanely unbearably annoying to... ok...

Anyone see what I'm saying? Juniors can be annoying, but the masters can be 1000X worse. I'm not giving any full names, but it starts with a g and ends with an ino. :) I've seen masters come in not knowing the rules and having illegal cards. That's not an age based thing. I work with a bunch of juniors. Right now, I'm focussing on getting one into worlds. Otherwise, I'm teaching some kids. I wanna be in Juniors again. That's the best chance anyone will have to get into worlds. They might as well utilize their chance while they still have it. Often, there's a one-year window for juniors to be good and still in juniors.

Overall, Juniors are good. Not bad ;P
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I don't mind juniors, I've helped several to learn the game. What I do not like are the chronic cheaters(that age division has a plague of them) that do it on purpose and then cry and moan when you call them on their cheat.
 
I love kids. And I play just about anyone, newb or vet alike, generally. Except for people who tend to annoy me. There's this one kid at my league that acts like he belongs in a mental institution. Annoys the heck out of me. He's the only one I refuse to play.
 
I hate the cheating too. I should have called this, but I didn't. I was playing one at a BR (didn't have enough Jrs, so they mixed with Srs) and the kid hid his Unown G under the Uxie so when I used Take Out, he lifted up the Uxie to show me the G. That annoyed me. It resulted in a game loss for me.
 
I battled one earlier. He acted so lazily and depressed.

And one that I traded with's friend yelled, "NO DON'T TRADE THAT CARD! IT POWERFUL!!!!!"

It made me angry, but I didn't show it.
The card wasn't truely powerful, as it made you discard many Energy to attack for a somewhat small amount.

I still got the card I wanted.
 
z-man said:
Here's my line up of how I see TCG players by devision:
Juniors: annoying to very nice
Seniors: annoying to nice
Masters: Insanely unbearably annoying to... ok...

Anyone see what I'm saying? Juniors can be annoying, but the masters can be 1000X worse. I'm not giving any full names, but it starts with a g and ends with an ino. :) I've seen masters come in not knowing the rules and having illegal cards. That's not an age based thing. I work with a bunch of juniors. Right now, I'm focussing on getting one into worlds. Otherwise, I'm teaching some kids. I wanna be in Juniors again. That's the best chance anyone will have to get into worlds. They might as well utilize their chance while they still have it. Often, there's a one-year window for juniors to be good and still in juniors.

Overall, Juniors are good. Not bad ;P
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Actually in my area I find that many of the masters are actually the nicest people and that some seniors are a bit too serious and competitive to my liking. Juniors... Well, they'll be juniors, mainly very hyper and not so great at the game, though some will cheat and brag etc. I think that most of the good(and fair) juniors are really just good because they have a parent or some other older person who plays the game well and teaches them though.

I just don't like that in this game many of the really good people are the meaner ones...
 
At my league most of the juniors are very good players and can often compete with the masters. True there are often new junoiors who cant play but our league leaders teach them how to play and help them get legal decks. Some of them even top cut in nats and worlds. They make their own decks and know how to play better than a lot of senors. Its true that sometimes there's...less than plesant players but the same is true of all age groups. There's lots of competion in our local juniors. Maybe this is an anomaly but I cant complain about our local juniors as long as they stay away from the sugar.
 
It's great that younger kids play the game. This gives growth to the trading card game as now, for the next 5 to even 20 years down the road they will still have people willing to buy/trade/compete in the game. If younger kids bother you, in the sense that they wont trade, read the rules, learn to play, etc.. then just sit with the masters and do everything with them.

If any of the younger kids have a common or uncommon that I want, I simply offer them one of my many RH's to pick from. Most of the time I could care less what they pick. It's simple because they love shiny cards.

Also, remember D, the more kids we bring into our small card shop for league, the higher chances we have of Gary giving us a chance to host smaller event tournaments. Then you wont have to worry about age, because people in masters will make the drive.
 
Young players are the future of the game, it's a fact. Pokemon is continuing to grow explosively because it finds new players and keeps its loyal fan base.

I'm a league organize at my venue and as such it's in part my duty to teach young players who are totally new to the game how to play. There are some things that naturally make for a more enjoyable experience for the student learning and for myself attempting to teach said student.

-Previous experience with the Pokemon videogames is a great help. I find that kids who play the videogame have a good idea of structure (you need an Active to start, the six prizes represent the six Pokemon you can use, etc. Also they usually have a better idea about evolution branches so I have very little to teach them about evolving Pokemon).

-YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO READ AND DO BASIC MATH. If you can't do either you are sadly wasting my time and yours.

-BE READY TO LEARN. You're there to learn, I'm there to teach. If you're more interested in talking to your friend, have THAT person teach you how to play. I'll go as slow as you need me to, but if you're not paying attention to me, you're again wasting your time and mine.

- Before they leave, make sure you attempt to sell them a starter deck from your venue (if you're in a retail store) as well as write down the web address for the "Watch the Interactive Demo" for learning how to play.

This is found at: http://www.pokemon.com/us/trading-cards/how-to-play/

Finally, don't forget to learn the person's name, introduce him/her to the League, and make them feel at home. Remember the first day of school? Some kids will feel like that, so make them feel important and make sure they're having fun. When they leave, ask them if they had fun and make sure they know when the next League session takes place. If the kid is smiling or describing the League to Mom or Dad, odds are good they'll be coming back.

Hope this helps!
 
Being a Florida player, and seeing some of the Juniors and Seniors, I'm terrified of some of the younger kids. :D

Seriously though, even the Juniors play like World Champs down here. We don't have nearly as many problems with cheating as I am reading here. I wish I knew why. The game is fantastically fun down here for everyone, and every player is taught early that losing is an inevitability.
 
I think that young TCG players are very good, the more people playing the game the better and the funner it will be, I mean States wouldn't be as fun if there were only like 5 players there each year. So I think that young TCG player are a good thing
 
Well, TBH I'm getting a bit offended by what some people are saying here, and I really don't have much say on the matter, but I must point out a few things:

~Kids are what keep the TCG running for longer, do you really wanna be the last masters ever?
~Not all kids are terrible, Patrick Martinez who's only 9 could most likely top cut in Seniors.
~How did you learn to play? Did you just magicly learn how to play correctly, AND make perfect decks?
~NEVER say compitition in Juniors is stale, come watch the top tables sometime, they just don't have control decks yet.

I'm only 11, and I've been playing the TCG for 5 years already. My bro has been playing for 4 years and he's only 9.
Everyone is new at some point, and some people's brains just can't process the TCG at a competitive level.
 
Raequaza said:
By this, I mean the kids that are about ten or under.



My opinion is that they partially annoy me. Though it is kind of the Parent's fault, by just bringing the kid in without even partially trying to teach them how to play. Whenever a new child comes to the League, I have to sit down and wait for someone that is not an easy defeat to finish up and let me battle them.
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Sorry but that post makes you seem like a bad sport. You know, Do you want the game to continue? If so then why not Spend your time HELPING them, Rather then complaining about them in a pokemon friendly forum! and helping them would obviously show that you do care about the game, and im guessing your leauge leader will commend you on it.

Help the new kids!

Dont hate on em!
 
I wish good players wouldn't be so annoyed by the children and actually help them learn to play.

I can't do that though. I'm afraid of children... and they're even more afraid of the way I look. :D

Vulpix Yolk said:
I think that young TCG players are very good, the more people playing the game the better and the funner it will be, I mean States wouldn't be as fun if there were only like 5 players there each year. So I think that young TCG player are a good thing
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If States had five GOOD players, it would be great.
 
I'd also like to say that some parents are either incredibly busy and don't have time to teach the kids how to play, are not interested enough in what their kids are doing to teach them how to play, or are for one reason or another unabe to understand the rules (such as them not speaking English). Sounds like some of you here have some very attentive parents who will take a lot of their time and get themselves involved in what you are doing.

Not all parents are like that, and not all can be like that. It all comes down to the jobs they have and the style of parenting they have, and how they lived earlier in their lives.

I had a friend in high school, for instance, whose parents can only speak Spanish. (He can speak English fine though.) They are also so busy that he had to take care of school-related matters as his parents were always running around because of their jobs. They care about him deeply, but they know there is only so much they could help him with. He doesn't play the Pokémon TCG, but if he did, he would have had to learn entirely without parental help. (He's smart though, so he likely wouldn't need parental help in the first place.)

Really, a lot of families have both parents working 8 hours per day every day of the week, maybe except Sundays, which they use their reduced hours to relax. This means the kids are left to their own devices most of the time, and in turn, this means the parents need to find something, anything, to occupy the kids. Pokémon League happens to be one of them, and the same goes for Pokémon card tournaments that happen to be in the area.

I like that there are kids at my local Pokémon League, and if one has trouble, I will help them learn to play the game as I enjoy helping people. In addition to there being new blood to keep the game alive, and that they're there to have fun, there is one more beneficial thing to being here: They are here to have fun, and you can be thankful they're not spending their time having fun in more destructive ways. I don't know about other places, but here in Los Angeles, gang culture is strong. At my middle school, most of the kids wanted to join gangs to beat up cops and spray graffiti and all that. That's because these kids never found a hobby or something they truly have fun doing. The kids going to Pokémon League and these tournaments have found an outlet that doesn't inflict harm or is illegal in any way. If you react hostilely to these kids, you may scare them off and send them on a slippery slope. Every kid in your Pokémon League is one fewer kid being taught how to smoke by his older friends. (My father used to run a liquor store, and this was a common problem.)
 
When I first started playing I sucked. My parents just took me to league and I played and had fun even though I lost all the time. Until I came to the beach I sucked, but I never complained or whined about losing. Finally, I have learned to play well and I can make decks without help from other Pokebeachers. I don't think you should blame all the Juniors like me that never complained, bragged, never made their own deck, etc. Just tell them not to brag or whine if they win or lose eventually one or the other will happen.
 
I think Juniors are a good thing as they will become the future Seniors and Masters that keep the leagues going. So what if a handful of them net deck to win a tournament? They all have access to net decking, only some of them choose to use it. I remember when I was a little kid, I mainly cared about how shiny the card was, not how "competitive" it was. Besides, quite a few of the other older people creep me out. XD
 
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