Ian Robb, a 16-year-old from Warwick, will be heading to the Pokémon Trading Card Game World Championship this August following a victory at the regional level.

This past May, Robb competed in the Pokémon Masters TCG Tournament in Madison, Wisconsin, and took home the first place title. For his victory in the tournament, which included more than 800 other players, he received a $5,000 academic scholarship and the chance to advance to the competition’s final level. Robb is currently a homeschool student who takes dual enrollment classes at Bristol Community College in Fall River.

With 807 individual Pokémon creatures currently existing in the series roster – and the list only growing – the potential for strategic team-building is intricate enough to build an entire worldwide tournament off of. And build they did. The Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) is the subject of numerous tournaments at local, regional, national, and international levels, where competitors build card decks and compete to earn points that will allow them to advance to the next level of the contest.

Robb will go on to compete in the 2019 Pokémon World Championships, an invite-only tournament held August 16-18 in Washington, D.C. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. He will face off against players from across the world, all of which have qualified for the competition through their exceptional performance in Championship Series tournaments.

After receiving a starter deck of cards from his father about nine years ago, Robb found himself immersed in the series and soon began to pursue competitive play. Now at a point where he has “lost count” of his card collection, Robb has traveled across the U.S. and even to other countries to compete in tournaments. He states he is excited to compete, and devotes hours each week to practicing for competitions with friends.

Outside of competitive Pokémon, Robb spends his time doing volunteer work at the T.F. Green Military Lounge. For his service, he has earned the President’s Volunteer Service Award from Bristol Community College for the second year in a row, which commemorates 400 hours of service in a year. Robb says working at the lounge allows him to show an appreciation for helping the military.

When asked about his future goals, Robb hopes to win the World Championship, and to use his scholarship money to attend university and study law.

For the uninitiated, Pokémon is a Japanese entertainment franchise that began operating in 1995, created by Satoshi Tajiri. Pokémon (meaning “pocket monsters”) are fictional animal-like creatures that humans, known as trainers, seek to capture and train for a variety of purposes. The franchise is the world’s highest-grossing of all time with $90 billion in total revenue, and its card game variant has the distinction of selling over 27.2 billion cards.