Two of the top players at the Pokémon World Championships, which have drawn almost 1,700 competitors to San Francisco.
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The world’s best Pokémon players fight for championship in San Francisco (photo gallery)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

The hunt is on for the best Pokémon player.

And for good or bad, Pokémon Go — the red hot augmented reality mobile game that debuted in June — is conspicuously absent at the 2016 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco. The Pokémon Company, which holds the event every year to celebrate the Pokémon trading card, 3DS, and Wii U games, made it clear that the event was not open to the general public, and no Pokémon Go activities were associated with the tournament. Clearly, though, the craze for all things Pokémon, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, is bigger in 2016.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.