Young Edmonton Pokémon TCG player preparing for world championships

A local 12-year-old is heading to San Francisco later this month to compete against the best in the world at the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

Arcanine uses flamethrower and that’s enough damage to take out your Venusaur.

That’s something you might hear said by Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) players like Bennett Hansen.

The 12-year-old Edmontonian is a competitive TCG player who is currently training for the 2026 Pokémon World Championships tournament in San Francisco.

The Pokémon TCG is a strategy card game that launched in Japan 30 years ago before making its way to North America in 1998.

As of the end of March 2026, more than 85 billion Pokémon cards have been printed across the world since the game first released in 1996.

The basic premise of the game is players build a 60-card deck that includes Pokémon, item, support and energy cards, then they battle. The game encourages strategic thinking, math and literacy skills.

Bennett started playing the card game around two years ago after collecting cards as a hobby for a few years before that.

“It was very basic. I started at a little league playing in the city. Then I started getting better and more skilled, and then we went to bigger leagues, and then started going to the biggest local leagues,” Bennett said. “I was still always doing constantly well, so I was trying to get more of a challenge.”

Eventually, that meant travelling to other cities for tournaments. Bennett has competed around the world, including Indianapolis, Las Vegas, London, Sao Paulo and Toronto.

“It was really cool to go and compete with other people that also were very skilled at the game,” he said. “I was also very nervous.”

Tournaments involve best-of-three rounds that slowly whittle the competitors down. In his first major tournament in Vancouver, Bennett believes he was only one win off from making it to the second round.

“There were, I believe, about 2,000 competitors there. Huge convention hall full of people,” said Adele Hansen, Bennett’s mother. “That was completely overwhelming for both him and myself.

“I honestly thought that was going to be one and done going to that tournament, just have that experience and be done. But it lit this fire inside him, and he just found his passion and wanted to do more and more from there.”

The tournament circuit is similar to major sports like the NHL in that you start off a given season with no points and you have to build up your score to be able to compete in big tournaments like Worlds.

It’s not just for fun or bragging rights either. The upcoming Worlds tournament has a combined prize pool worth more than $2 million.

Bennett finished last season placed 17th in North America in the Junior Division with a score of 1,380.

“It was challenging, but not as much as we expected it to be,” Bennett said. “My goal at the start of the season was to make Worlds, and I passed that by a mile. I did very well, a lot better than we were expecting.”

The road to Worlds

To keep his skills with the game in top form, Bennett usually practices around two hours a day, even more if he’s practicing for a tournament.

Part of that practice involves going through his decks, playing matches and going over strategies with a coach.

Yun Shin with HPW Cards has been working with Bennett as his coach since 2024. The store also sponsors Bennett, along with several other Alberta competitors.

“As Bennett grew and became more elite in his division it became a bigger task and a bigger challenge for me as well, to improve him as a player every session,” Shin said.

Bennett has a “natural talent” for the game, but also critical thinking skills, determination and a “willingness to strive for greatness,” Shin added.

“He wants to be the very best, and he tries to be the very best. That’s all you can ask for as a coach.”

Another thing that sets Bennett apart, according to Shin, is his versatility and willingness to try any strategy, from control, to stall, to multi-dimensional.

“He obviously has a deck that he likes more, but in order to be the best, you need to know what other opponents are playing. What kind of strategy do they use? You can’t just get stuck in your ways.”

It’s not just his coach, family and friends who have been helping and supporting Bennett, the local Pokémon community has pitched in as well.

“Even from other shops that we’re not sponsored by, and other players in Alberta and Canada, and throughout the United States, he’s had so many people jump on his team,” Adele said. “It’s a great community to be involved in.”

There will be other Canadian competitors at Worlds in San Francisco, but Bennett says he’s the only Alberta competitor. Only the top 80 Junior Division players in North America got invited to the tournament.

“It is a pretty big deal,” Shin said. “Bennett had a consistent season where he would make Phase Two (of tournaments) quite a lot, and he had a top eight finish in a regional tournament.”

There will be 427 other competitors from around the world, including Japan, Brazil and Europe, in the Junior Division at the tournament.

“It’s cool to see him work through language barriers and understanding barriers at those tables,” Adele said.

“I love the soft skills that he’s developing through all of this as well. Advocating for himself, working with people outside of competition, but then even being able to sit down against those same people and compete at his highest level to try and do his best and still be friends and be a good sport before and after the game.”

A professional card game player

Explaining to friends and family that they travel to far flung places like London for Bennett to play card games has garnered some interesting reactions, according to Adele.

“When you say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going on a weekend trip to Sao Paulo to play Pokémon cards,’ people kind of look at you a little funny,” she added.

Going to tournaments can get expensive, but Bennett has been able to secure travel stipends and awards to be able to help cover costs.

“And of course, mom has gotten into really good travel planning and trying to find the good deals and plan as far out as I can to help make this happen,” Adele said.

“It’s a big commitment for sure for the whole family … (but) when your kid finds something that they love, you want to support it any way you can, and we’re lucky enough we’ve been able to do that for him.”

In most popular competitive card games, there is usually a “meta,” which, in this case, refers to the cards and strategies that are usually recognized to be the most powerful or effective at any given time.

Bennett says that while people can build decks based on the current best meta cards or decks to specifically counter meta decks, that strategy isn’t always the most fun.

“Usually, you pick the one that you have fun with that you can still do good with. That’s usually what I do,” he says.

At the end of the day, Bennett enjoys the game and wants to have fun with it, not just win.

“If I play the deck the best I can and I lose, it’s okay. But I would always like to do well,” he says.

Adele also hoped he’s able to “take the time to enjoy being on that stage” and enjoy his first Worlds with the friends he’s made along his journey.

“It’ll be a memory he’ll hold forever,” she said.

Bennett currently plays in the Junior Division, under 13, at tournaments. Next year, he’ll age into the Senior Division, ages 13 - 16, and, if he keeps up with the game, eventually reach the Masters Division, ages 17 and up.

The 2026 Pokémon World Championships kick off Aug. 28.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson