Soccer connects people on a global scale, but when you play FIFA, it’s easy to only use your favorite teams. As a Mexican from Chicago, my allegiances lie with Liga MX and MLS, respectively, with some UK Premier League thrown in. Lately, though, I’ve found myself largely playing with obscure teams, and it’s made my …

Pokémon’s new competitive rule-set goes live in January 2018, meaning that players everywhere are devising strategies based on the new monsters and movesets available in Ultra Sun and Moon. Let’s talk about some of the biggest additions that will have a major impact on the way competitors approach tournaments.

This past weekend, Runefest 2017 hosted the finals of a RuneScape tournament with a whopping $20,000 cash prize for the winner, plus an additional $10,000 to be donated to a charity of the player’s choice. Five days later, and after accusations of cheating and foul play, the winner still hasn’t been determined.

Super Smash Brothers: Melee pro Adam “Armada” Lindgren has stepped down from his position as a panelist for the game’s rules committee to open it up for more female representation. The committee, spearheaded by the community platform Melee It On Me, aims to standardize all Melee tournament guidelines.

Last July, esports organization ESL lifted the lifetime ban on tournament participation from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players who had been caught cheating or participating in match-fixing schemes. The new sanctions now call for a two-year ban on cheaters and a five-year ban on match fixers, with the potential…

As soon as Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite comes out on September 19, every copy of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will evaporate into a fine mist, never to be played again—OK, not really, but you’d never know it from the approach taken by players’ farewells to the game.

Are you are a woman who wants to compete in a fighting game event, but you don’t know where to start? Maybe you’re worried you don’t know enough or aren’t good enough. (Probably not true.) Or maybe you just want to know what these events are like ahead of time. Which ones should you try first? What should you bring?…

Five prominent Super Smash Brothers: Melee tournament organizers and players have formed a competition committee and released a recommended ruleset for tournament play, including a lengthy section imposing a “tentative ban” on the use of non-Gamecube controllers. The ruleset writers explained that the 16-year-old…

Some of the world’s best Smash Bros. players say they are owed thousands of dollars for their performances in a tournament called BEAST 7 held in Sweden last February.

Last weekend, the weak inherited the Pokémon world for an official online tournament. Much like last month’s Tiny Tournament, players could only use a subset of the game’s hundreds of options. The Weakness Cup’s restriction, as its name implies, only allowed players to use Pokémon with five or more weaknesses to the…

Last weekend’s North American International Championships had two big surprises: not only did Australians sweep the tournament, a Snorlax dodged more than half a dozen chances to be paralyzed or flinched. And, in classic Snorlax fashion, it won a tournament by eating.

Last week, a local Street Fighter V event in Ontario, Canada saw 15-year-old “Toffee” take a major step in her competitive career as she sailed past a handful of her fellow competitors en route to tournament gold. Her celebration, a pop-off that was more elation than disrespect, has spread across the fighting game…

Arms has been a surprise hit on the Switch, but the competitive-minded players who have latched onto it are having difficulty establishing a standard format for high-level Arms matches.

The Pokémon Company offered players a chance to mix things up last weekend with an online competition where only shrimp-sized monsters could strut their stuff.

When it comes to competitive Pokémon, many players have good luck charms. A lot of the time, that means tournament tables are crowded with plushies. But for Ashton Cox, as he won the first Latin American International Championship last weekend, it was a pineapple.

Last weekend’s big Pokémon tournament in Australia saw many famous players, including two world champions, duking it out for the top title. Zoe Lou, a player with no previous major finishes, stunned and thrilled the community by rising above competition. In doing so, she has become the first woman to win an…

Teabagging is a relatively new phenomenon in the fighting game community, but recently it has caused a stir among Killer Instinct competitors following a temporary tournament ban on the taunt.

Although Super Smash Bros Melee closed out this weekend’s Genesis 4 with a bang, a cloud of controversy hangs over the tournament due to rule complications during the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U finals. The competitors most affected are looking for answers and, perhaps most surprisingly, compensation for the match…

Talonflame, a fire/flying Pokémon, took over the competitive scene after it was added to the monster compendium with Pokémon X & Y. For the last three years, wise competitive players made sure to prepare for Talonflame’s appearance on the enemy team. Everything changed after the release of Sun and Moon.