Hisham El-Far

Where on the site will the vault stock be listed? Just trying hard not to miss my chance 👀 😇

Amazed they learned from last year and managed an almost impressive working Mesh WiFi network in the main event hall.

Shame they moved all of the On-Demand Side Event registrations online - It was so much simpler and quicker to turn up and pay at the desk last year.

Spent far too much money at the Pokemon Center, traded in a stack of older cards gathering dust in my trade binder for cash though so evens out a little 😂.

Loved the Official Pin Trading set up. A little sad they didn’t host a League Cup/Challenge on the Saturday and/or Sunday like previous years.

That’s a wrap on the 2026 Pokemon European International Championship in London.

A terrible performance by me in the tournament only salving my wounds with the funny observation that i scored “a Mew” by going 1-5-1 (win-loss-tie).

I guess Birmingham was as good as it gets 😂

… my best ever run in a Major level Pokemon TCG event - with a deck meta i hadn’t touched in more than SIX months!!!! 😱👀🥳

I am so Psyched now for the next one in London next month for EUIC (the Eurpoean Championship)

🥳😎

Just finished up my Tournament run at the Birmingham, UK Pokemon TCG Regional event…

5-3-0 (Win-Loss-Tie) getting 15 match points (just 1 short of the minimum requirement for Day 2 of the competition) and putting me in 504th place overall out of nearly 2900 players 🥳

Hands up if you hate the new Liquid Glass “improvements” to the iOS phone experience.

*raises 3x hands in the air like he just don’t care*

Just to reemphasise- this is an EARLY ACCESS for attendees only.

Can’t wait to see the PR storm when general access opens up for non-attendees.

Of course it only works 1 out of 4 times (having to start from scratch with a fresh form each time)

Anyway. All time slots for the day i needed are all gone by this point. So i have had to settle for the Sat and now bizarrely have to hope i don’t do well enough to make day 2 of the competition.

A cropped picture of a web page with a stylistic image of a giant tick in a circle and the text “You have a booking at Pokemon Center London EUIC 2026!”

How? Why?

Who knows.

The workaround?

Enter your phone number, complete the entire form. Get the error message saying you can’t book.
Return to the phone number and BACKSPACE IT to a blank box. (Importantly, deleting it doesn’t let this work) - then just hit enter repeatedly until:

The reason? The form doesn’t like phone numbers. The problem- the form REQUIRES a phone number.

You see the issue here?

That’s right. The form is absolutely borked and unusable!!!!

Several hours later and news spreads that there is a reason why - and a bizarre work around. A hack if you will. 🙄

A cropped picture of a web page form highlighting the text “Oops! Looks like you can’t schedule a booking at this location.”

Once you got in, you fill in your form and …

It took a few hours but eventually someone figured out how to get to the booking page by editing the link provided to get in.

But that my friends is only the BEGINNING of this saga!

Pokemon Intl surely must have sent out a correction at some point right?

Nope.

Absolute radio silence.

A picture of a web page displaying 404 in giant digits and the caltion below “Something is missing. Page not found. Verify the URL and try again.”

Oh! That’s actually good! What went wrong Hisham? 👀

Brace yourselves - the link sent out does not work!

That’s right. 404 page not found baby!!!

Hisham, you ask - surely EVERYONE hammered the booking site immediately? Did they DDOS themselves?

No.

In a somewhat sensible move, they only opened up the booking site with early access to Staff/Judges/Competitors/Supporters attending the event via an email link to pre-registered attendees.

… February sees the massive European International Championship tournament come to London. With it, a Pokemon Center Pop-Up store for the event.

To shop at the Pop-Up you need to book a limited availability time slot!

How in the year 2026 can a massive company worth billions (yes, I’m talking about YOU Pokemon Trading Card Game Intl) have such a terrible website user experience?

If you’re curious and have no idea what i’m alluding to settle in…

Hello social media butterfly’s, what’s going on?

I will not be taking any questions or comments on this matter going forward. I bid you all good day, i said GOOD DAY! 😭😂

Me: *picks up iphone before sitting down to avoid accidentally sitting on and breaking said phone - puts phone in pocket*

(10 minutes later)

Also me: *has spent 9 minutes fruitlessly searching for his phone - because it was just THERE a moment ago!*

👀🙄😭

… and yes, i have already put that Mega Lucario up on ebay 👀😂🤞

Pictured is the deck i put together from my pre-release kit. A 2-2-1 Alakazam line. 2-2 Grunpig line. 2x Xerneas. 1-1 Mega Lucario Ex line. A bunch of random trainer cards and 11 basic Psychic Energy and 3 basic Fighting Energy cards - for a total 40 card deck. The Mega Lucario Ex is currently a £300+ card so played with the proxy pictured!

Pictured is the Special Illustration Rare Mega Lucario Ex 179/132 worth £300+ at time of posting and the proxy used to play it.

Hello BlueSky. Been a while.

Just got home from the latest Pokemon TCG pre-release for Mega Evolutions at my local TCG place 😎

Came 4th out of 26 with probably the best card pull of the night too 🥳🥰😎

😱 Why are all these cool books, movies and games being announced for 2026 - that’s like, 5ish years away surely? 👀

testing

No kings in this country!

...except a few of the nice people we found walking along the Venice Beach Boardwalk 👑

Who's your favorite sexy Dropout car wash team?
❤️ 'Like' if Team 1 is your favorite
💬 'Comment' if Team 2 is your favorite!

Honestly I lost it when “Mark” was introduced 😂. Mission accomplished Katie. Mission Accomplished 😂

Also an amazing way to get everyone to know that Gamechanger & Dimension 20 are on Bluesky! 😎

Now all they need to do to stop me saying it twenty times a day is “Make Sanctuary Moon Too!!!!” 🫠