{"id":903684,"date":"2026-09-24T11:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T11:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903684\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T11:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T11:56:12","slug":"meet-the-real-life-pokemon-professors-the-unsung-heroes-of-competitive-monster-battling-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903684\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the real-life Pok\u00e9mon professors, the unsung heroes of competitive monster-battling | Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/a> (apart from perhaps the Gym Leaders). In Pok\u00e9mon Red and Blue, Professor Oak greets the player in a pixelated lab coat, and later provides trainers with their first battle partner; since then, each successive generation of games has introduced another professor to aid and guide trainers through their journeys. If you\u2019ve ever played a Pok\u00e9mon game, they are often the first people that you meet, apart from your in-game mom.<\/p>\n

But you may not know that there are also real-world Pok\u00e9mon professors \u2013 volunteers who help organise the game\u2019s competitive communities around the world. Instead of lab coats, they can be seen at events wearing red Pikachu-mascot shirts labelled \u201cstaff\u201d, paired with black trousers and shoes.<\/p>\n

I spoke with several of these profs at the 2026 Pok\u00e9mon world championships in San Francisco, California. Not only do they happily distribute their knowledge about Pok\u00e9mon, but they also serve as vital staff at the tournament, working as referees and teachers, as well as event managers.<\/p>\n

The official Pok\u00e9mon website<\/a> describes the Pok\u00e9mon Professor Program as a \u201cglobal network of passionate and knowledgable fans\u201d who volunteer their time to help run official Pok\u00e9mon events. There were roughly 300 Pok\u00e9mon professors present at the 2026 Pok\u00e9mon world championships, according to a representative of the Pok\u00e9mon Company International. A professor\u2019s responsibilities depend on the game they work with and their assigned role at the event. A Pok\u00e9mon professor officiating a game such as Pok\u00e9mon Unite might be hyper-focused on wrangling players and providing technical support, whereas a judge for a trading card game tournament might provide competitors with hands-on guidance as they navigate their first live competitive event.<\/p>\n

The OG Pok\u00e9mon prof \u2026 Professor Oak in Pok\u00e9mon: Let\u2019s Go, Pikachu! Photograph: The Pok\u00e9mon Company\/Nintendo<\/p>\n

Gemma Byard, a head judge in charge of making the final call on any decisions or questions that arise, became a Pok\u00e9mon professor after her son started competing in the trading card game. She says that she and the other professors help ensure the integrity of the tournament, describing what goes into the day-to-day work at worlds \u2013 such as ensuring that event officials record the results of competitions correctly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to make sure that all of the match slips have the correct results on them and are signed by the players to ensure, you know, that we get the right results,\u201d Byard said. \u201cWe have to make sure that the venue is safe for everybody that\u2019s around. We\u2019re constantly looking out for anything that may be unsafe, or anybody that shouldn\u2019t be in the venue. There\u2019s a lot to think about on top of the rulings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professors often juggle multiple responsibilities on the competition floor and will travel across the world to staff an event such as the world championships. When asked about how the Pok\u00e9mon Company International compensates its professors, however, most people I spoke to declined to disclose details. One Pok\u00e9mon professor said that the European professors are compensated with goodies, such as a special staff kit with merchandise, whereas the professors at regional tournaments in the US are paid wages; the same professor said that the Pok\u00e9mon Company International helped with travel, room and board for the event. (When asked for an official statement explaining how Pok\u00e9mon professors are paid, a representative from the Pok\u00e9mon Company International declined to comment.)<\/p>\n

Evelyne de Groot travelled from the Netherlands to staff this year\u2019s championships. Like the other Pok\u00e9mon professors I spoke to, de Groot worked her way up to staffing worlds after organising local competitions in her home region. Before we spoke, she was helping usher players out of the Moscone Center after the main convention hall closed for the evening. This year, she worked at a trading card game side event called Pok\u00e9mon Sisterhood League, dedicated to giving women and non-binary people a chance to compete and connect.<\/p>\n

Passionate and knowledgeable \u2026about 300 professors were working at this year\u2019s Pok\u00e9mon world championships in San Francisco. Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle\/Hearst Newspapers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

For her, a good Pok\u00e9mon professor must balance enforcing the rules with giving competitors the tools they need to enjoy the game itself. She compared the position to working in \u201ccustomer service\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Players] make friendships. You see them smile. You see them have a good time, but you\u2019re part of that,\u201d de Groot said. \u201cIf you\u2019re not organising it properly, if you don\u2019t give them clear instructions, then you see some failure [\u2026] You will sometimes get questions. You need to make sure you\u2019re knowledgable regarding that. If you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing, if you don\u2019t know how the card game works, then you can\u2019t help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Groot\u2019s experience as a professor has been relatively relaxed. However, some professors must serve as referees and make contentious calls throughout the competition. For Byard, that means she sometimes needs to deal with upset players. At one point during the tournament, she had to manage a player who was upset with a ruling that didn\u2019t go his way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got called over to the table, and I said to him: \u2018Look, I need you just to keep your voice down and be respectful, and we\u2019ll talk through what\u2019s happened.\u2019 And he was like: \u2018I don\u2019t need to talk to you. I need to talk to the head judge,\u2019\u201d Byard said, chuckling. \u201cWell, buddy, you are talking to the head judge. That\u2019s the kind of sass that we deal with a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tough calls \u2026 a judge surveys the scene at a previous Pok\u00e9mon event. Photograph: Pok\u00e9mon<\/p>\n

A difficult call can lead to controversy. Earlier this year, a ruling from a different judge at another tournament made headlines when a competitive Pok\u00e9mon Go player who goes by the name Firestar73 was disqualified after winning the final at the Pok\u00e9mon Orlando regional championships<\/a>. Many, including the competitor himself in a statement<\/a>, conceded that the decision was a \u201cgood-faith mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n

I asked Byard about what it\u2019s like to make tough calls at the tournament. She said that the professors are often seen as \u201cthe bad guys\u201d. What does she wish competitors and viewers understood about the role?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they don\u2019t understand is that they\u2019re seeing a picture, but we\u2019re getting the entire story, and we\u2019re making the decisions based upon that story,\u201d she said. \u201cThat can make a real difference. And we\u2019re the ones putting ourselves out there to right a situation that\u2019s been broken by players. We haven\u2019t caused any distress. We\u2019re there just to try and put it back together again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pok\u00e9mon (apart from perhaps the Gym…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-903684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}