Singapore Pro Circuit - How does it work and history of it

There are many different ways for us to play Pokemon TCG, competitively or casually. Be it the weekly League games at your local shops, League Challenges, League Cups, Special Events, Regionals or the biggest one of them all, World's Championship. But what if I were to tell you that there might be a different way to play the game, in the form of a pro-circuit. Players battling it out to score points in a certain period of a season to see who was the best in that time frame. It's an idea that Project EXT in Singapore has used to introduce the Singapore Pro Circuit with it's weekly circuit leagues, all of which leading up to an Invitational Event for some big prizes.

Singapore Pokemon Pro-Circuit Event is ran by a collective of Trading Card Game Shops around Singapore to promote Pokemon TCG by providing a daily testing ground for the Singapore Pokemon TCG Community. Players get to have Pro-Circuit Points whenever they participates in the Pro-Circuit Events. A Seasonal Invitational with attractive prizes will be held the end of each quarter where the Top 32 Players with highest Pro-Circuit Points of that season will be able to enter for free, to commemorate the changing of the Pokemon TCG meta-game and to usher the new Pokemon Booster Set release.

It started out as an in house monthly tournament which would morph into an in-house league with an invitational even at the end of each season (with a duration of 3 months). The first time a league system was introduced was back in January 2018 with Project EXT doing it by themselves every weekend.

The first Invitational information

The idea was the brainchild of Project EXT and it's founders. We asked Louis Ow what inspired him and his crew to push for the pro-circuit and his goals from having the circuit.

"Back in 2017, when we were trying to grow the community, we realised that there were not many competitive events around. Only playtesting etc but that was not enough to up the players game in the long term. Hence we started our first iteration of the circuit in 2018, and started with a bang. After two successful seasons, we started to approach others to see if we can grow the community even bigger.

Right now we are happy that most of the events are able to fire off and more Singaporean players get to hone their craft, and are now get better results on the regional/international scale. As we move forward, more emphasis will be made on growing the Singapore National brand, we will also start to sponsor players moving forward. More details will be announced after the current worlds in August."


As more players joined in, the circuit grew bigger. The third invitational would go from having 16 players to 32 players, even though the winner's prize dropped from $500 to $400. It wasn't just the group of players growing as in August, EXT announced that it's in house circuit would expand into a Singapore Pro Circuit with the likes of Metagame and Brick's Play host games for the circuit to give players more chance to score points but more importantly to give players the chance to play against more players, some of which may not frequent EXT all that much but now had the chance to partake in the circuit too.

The very first Invitational event, also the first event at EXT's new location in Tai Seng

As of now, the circuit has grown to the point where there are games every day of the week with newer shops hosting some of the games. But it's not just limited to Standard format as there are two Expanded format games for those wanting to get try something different or for older players to bring out decks of past glory again. Starting this season there is also a PTCGO format hosted at EXT, with prizes being packs for the game itself.

With every opportunity for players to take some time off their days and join a circuit day, what did EXT co-founder Thomas Xu think of the effects of the pro-circuit from the store side of things?

"We saw a steady increase in new players as they had more confidence in pro circuit shops because they will find players that play Pokemon on circuit days, and as they play more and more circuit games, they tend to travel to other pro circuit shops together with their new friends which in a way gave pro circuit shops confidence in running the event regularly as they see steady crowd every week. From the circuit we would gradually see 15 to 30 new players who join the events every few season."

How it does work?

3 rounds of swiss, 50 minutes, best of 3 per round. Number of players tend to depend on the shops, with EXT and Sanctuary Gaming the most popular of the shops according to recent and past attendances.

Everyone gets 1 cp for joining (2cp for Expanded games). For each swiss round win, you would earn that amount of cp (3cp for 3 wins, 2cp for 2 wins, 1 cp for a win and nothing with 0 wins). An additional 1cp is awarded to the top 4 at the end of 3 rounds but this bonus is only activated if there are 8 players registered.

Since the Autumn season, there is now an incentive for players to finish in the top 8 or top 16 in the final standings. 1st to 8th place will go into the invitational event with 2 byes while 9th to 16th gets one bye. Need a bigger incentive, how about a cash prize of $800 going to the winner in the next invitational (Spring), which is doubled from the last two invitational winners. A top 4 finish nets you at least $100, while the rest of the top 8 finishes would get 10 packs each. Everyone who took part in the invitational will at the very least get a playmat with their either the Top 32, Top 18, Top 8 or Grand Champion on it.


Past Results

Spring Season Top 16 Invitational 2018 - June 8th 2018 - BKT to FLI

1. Alex Yeo (13th Seed) - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar
2. Titally Tan (8th Seed) - Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX
3. Bobby Soo (16th Seed) - Lapras-GX/Volcanion Prism
4. Kashvinder Singh (7th Seed) - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar
5. Klive Aw (14th Seed) - Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX
6. Syafiq Affandi (Replacement) - Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX
7. Rauf Fazil (4th Seed) - Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX
8. Mason Lim (15th Seed) - Greninja BREAK

Summer Season Top 16 Invitational - November 24th 2018 - SUM to LOT

1. Klive Aw (4th Seed) - Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
2. Gerald Ong (Replacement) - Zoroark-GX/Glaceon-GX
3. Eujun Gan (9th Seed) - Buzzwole-GX/Lycanroc-GX
4. Lyn Fara (13th Seed) - Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
5. Keith Ting (16th Seed) - Buzzwole-GX/Lycanroc-GX
6. Bertrand Yan (10th Seed) - Buzzwole-GX/Lycanroc-GX
7. Kashvinder Singh (1st Seed) - Passimian/Tapu Koko
8. Tan Jun Hao (6th Seed) - Zoroark-GX/Control

Autumn Season Top 32 Invitational - December 22nd 2018 - SUM to LOT

1. Rauf Fazil (4th Seed) - Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX
2. Anselm Sim (14th Seed) - Buzzwole-GX/Lycanroc-GX
3. Tan Jun Hao (6th Seed) - Gardevoir-GX/Alolan Ninetales-GX
4. Kashvinder Singh (3rd Seed) - Zoroark-GX/Decidueye-GX/Alolan Ninetales-GX
5. Rizduan Sukarno (11th Seed) - Shiny Lugia/Malamar
6. Aidyl Adha (2nd Seed) - Rayquaza-GX/Naganadel
7. Eugene Chua (Replacement) - Tapu Koko/Seviper
8. Walter Ho (17th Seed) - Zoroark-GX/Gardevoir-GX

Winter Season Top 32 Invitational - April 6th 2019 - SUM to TEU

1. Bertrand Yan (16th Seed) - Zapdos/Jirachi/Lycanroc-GX
2. Eugene Chua (12th Seed) - Zapdos/Jirachi/Buzzwole
3. Joey Ho (Replacement) - Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX/Buzzwole-GX
4. Rauf Fazil (4th Seed) - Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX
5. Christopher Lim (19th Seed) - Alolan Exeggutor
6. Alphonse Teh (8th Seed) - Zapdos/Jirachi/Jolteon-GX
7. Aidyl Adha (7th Seed) - Zapdos/Jirachi/Lycanroc-GX
8. Kashvinder Singh (1st Seed) - Charizard/Jirachi

A couple of interesting stats you might notice. The finals in all 4 invitational so far have featured a different player, no-one has made a repeat appearance, with Rauf coming the closest to doing that last time out. Also, for the Summer and Autumn editions, even though they were in the same format, none of the decks from the Summer top 8 made it to top 8 in the Autum season, showing how diverse the meta was in the last format.

With the introduction of the 2-bye incentive, have players with that advantage make full use of it? From the last two events, they have indeed with 5 players making top cut in both Autumn and Winter seasons. So it is a nice advantage but there is still the chance of missing out if you don't win your first match in Round 3. 

As for some fun stats, the 4th seed going into the invitational has always had a top 8 finish (aka a top cut appearance with the new structure since Autumn). So no pressure to Luke going into the Spring 19 invitational. The other "lucky number" is 16, with 3 top 8 finishes, the most of the "entrants" not numbered 4. A replacement player has also always had a top 8 finish so even though you may not have qualified for the invitational, if you're one of the lucky guys to fill in for someone else, you might still end up doing well. 

With all that in mind, it seems like a great addition to have the pro-circuit but what about from the players's point of view, specifially one of Singapore's best players and Autumn season grand champion Rauf Fazil.

"I guess before the pro circuit started, there were players who would only play at a certain card shops and not meet more players, old or new. With this, players would be encouraged to play pro circuit tourneys at other shops and meet new players, make new friend and sharing ideas. Naturally it helps all players improve by playing with more players outside their own circle.

While playing a fun deck is fun and all, eventually they meet and play against a competitive player which may inspire them to make the transition into competitive playing or just have more creative (and stronger) deck ideas for casual playing.

It has helped me meet more players like casuals which I think would be impossible without the pro circuit initiative. It widens my eyes and thinking that its not just the meta decks that may be the winning deck, and also I get to see more archetypes which I never knew existed and either borrowed the idea or test my deck against it in case I meet a similar one in the future. Personally as a normal player, it's more fun nowadays playing with more players"

Scenes from the latest Invitational event

On a personal note, I can also say the pro-circuit games have helped me become a better player even though I still consider myself a casual player. The more games I would play, I would start to notice things I may have done wrongly and try to learn from it. I would try to go to as many as 3 pro-circut games per week all in the effort to better myself as a player. And it is a great help to have what I would consider the top tier players like Rauf, Klive, Nicholas and Anselm to name a few, join in on the weekly games. Their presence alone made me want to play better and if not for their guidance and advice after our games, pointing out what I may have done wrong or what I could do to improve myself or techs I may want to consider for decks, I would not have had my top 8 finishes in each of the 4 invitational events so far.

I hope this will help to inspire more places around the world to build up their Pokemon TCG community and help each other get stronger playing the game we love in a new way with perhaps the idea of their own pro-circuit. It's been interesting to follow how the first four seasons has developed in our side of the causeway and I personally have seen many new guys joining us in weekly games, some of whom will take part in their first Invitational event next month. I'd like to think that the one Project EXT developed for Singaporean players will be of some ways to help players improve their game but also to make new friends and perhaps learn from the more experienced players. The more players are having games with one another, the better it is and hopefully that will help to bring in more players and also for the stores, of which may see a rise in players if a successful and enticing system was in place for them. I can say it's helped our players too.