Pokémon World Championships 2024 Disqualification Completely Changes Tournament Outcome

A shocking story emerged from the Pokémon World Championships 2024 TCG Masters quarterfinals earlier today in Honolulu, Hawaii. Competitor Ian Robb was removed from the tournament following a win in the Top 8 over Fernando Cifuentes, unexpectedly granting the latter a berth into the Top 4 and immediately throwing the semifinals in chaos as Cifuentes represented one of then-undefeated player Jesse Parker's worst matchups.

Things appeared normal as the stream moved away from Robb's on-camera match with Cifuentes and into its secondary Top 8 match — but by the time the semifinals began, it became clear something was wrong, as Parker was seated across Cifuentes instead. Viewers were quick to point out that Robb had made what could be seen as an inappropriate gesture following his victory on camera in the Top 8, as documented by this clip, sourced from the official Pokémon TCG twitch.

The Pokémon World Championships 2024 stage is one of the best ever put together — here's every detail you might've missed on stream.

When asked for comment, The Pokémon Company International provided this statement to:

Ian Robb has been issued a match loss for unsportsmanlike conduct.

There are two major discussions now occurring within the Pokémon TCG community — whether Ian Robb deserved the match loss in the first place, and whether it was implemented correctly. The former discussion is surprisingly nuanced, although Robb's gesture looks quite bad at first glance. In a matchup that was decided by a great deal of dice rolling — the competitive subsitute for coin flip effects on cards — some have suggested Robb was gesturing to the crowd that he'd gotten luckier than his opponent in those spots, which was largely true. In multiple spots, Robb was fortunate his opponent's cards didn't do anything because of a lost dice roll.

Robb has been a fixture of the Pokémon TCG scene in recent years and even has a decades-old World Championship pedigree, having previously finished second at