Weston Pokémon trainer’s biggest match yet

If you want to be the very best, like no one ever was, then you’ll probably have to go through Weston fifth grader Vincenzo DiCosola.

Vincenzo, 10, is heading to San Francisco from Aug. 28-30 for the Pokémon World Championships, which will pit him against 349 other Junior Division players ages 6 to 12 in the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

With world-famous characters like Pikachu and Charizard, Pokémon is a 30-year-old multimedia franchise set in a world where humans live alongside an ever-growing ecosystem of creatures with myriad abilities that people train to engage in friendly competitions. It spans video games, anime, the trading card game and more.

With just 350 slots available for players, the qualification process requires top scores at several regional and international tournaments. Vincenzo placed well at competitions in London, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida. While this is the first time Vincenzo is participating in the World Championships, there’s no nerves.

“I’m not that nervous,” he said. “This is my first one and it’s going to be fun.”

Vincenzo picked up the trading card game about two and a half years ago when he started visiting the collectibles store Endangered Hobbies at the Natick Mall. From there, he started his card collection and took off running.

With a wildly popular video game series and a long-running anime series, Pokémon is the world’s highest-grossing media franchise, but for Vincenzo, it was the trading card game and all of its strategic elements that drew him in. He said his favorite Pokémon are Gholdengo and Duraludon, a golden bipedal creature and steel dragon, respectively.

“I always liked collecting the cards and you learn more stuff,” Vincenzo said. “In the video game, you just tap a bunch of things, but this game, you have the strategy, math, reading; it helped me with that.”

Since he began the hobby, he’s amassed a collection of more than 5,000 Pokémon cards, storing them in binders and large boxes. As his collection has grown, his strategy to get cards has also changed. Rather than purchasing a booster pack and leaving it up to chance, he now seeks out individual cards that he needs and purchases them separately.

With Endangered Hobbies now closed, Vincenzo said he gets his cards at Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, where he noted there is a vibrant Pokémon trading card community.

In his two years of playing, Vincenzo has traveled around the U.S. and Europe for tournaments, connecting him with the community. He said he plays in local tournaments each weekend and attends a New England regional event each month, along with any national and international competitions he enters, admitting that “I play a lot of tournaments.”

At these events, Vincenzo said he’s formed many great friendships and it’s an opportunity to test out new deck combinations and strategies.

“I met a bunch of new friends from all around the U.S.,” Vincenzo said. “It’s fun to play, to get new cards, to test out the sets.”

His mom, Alexi DiCosola, is impressed with the deep strategic knowledge he’s cultivated through playing the game, as Vincenzo must know many of the other decks played by opponents, so he can act accordingly.

“It just blows my mind … [the competitors are like] little sponges,” DiCosola said. “He has to know how the decks all interact and play against each other, so I’ve always been a proud mom.”

As he prepares for the World Championships, Vincenzo is building his deck, which he said is based on an aggressive playstyle focused on making multiple attacks per turn. To prepare his decks, he said he visits the competition’s website to study what other players are doing and, often when they’re on the flight back from a tournament, he’ll watch the adult division’s matches on the streaming platform Twitch to see how they are playing.

While the strategy, dedication and critical-thinking aspects of the trading card game impress DiCosola, the sheer endurance required to get through tournament weekend is what surprises her most.

Tournaments often kick off at 9 a.m. and typically wrap up around 7:30 p.m. each day, with up to eight rounds of matches being played. Each match is a best-of-three series with a 50-minute overall timer.

“The focus that it takes to do that,” she said. “He’s really passionate about it and so dedicated, and [has] a really great attention span for the game because I think that’s half the battle, is sticking with it for that long day.”

While the travel can be hectic, DiCosola said the hobby has brought so much to the family – she will play with Vincenzo to let him practice and his dad has taken up the game, even participating in regional tournaments himself.

“It’s added so much to his life, our life,” DiCosola said. “It’s really been enriching for the whole family.”