Meet Max. The Rock Hill, SC, kid who may be the best junior Pokemon player in the world
One of the most consistent winners in a city known for it, Max Lentz hadn’t thought much about a world title. Then he got a message.
Dad Ian Lentz scanned. A July 4 beach trip paused. Organizers wanted to fly 10-year-old Max halfway around the world to face top Pokemon players from across the globe.
The organizers would pay his entry.
The Rock Hill family thought of a dream deferred, finally realized.
It was London calling.
“Max is going to go to the first day of school and then get on a plane that afternoon,” said mom Lacy Daniel. “This was sort of a no-brainer. He needs to go.”
Rock Hill Pokemon champ
Pick a Friday night, and it’s likely Max sits at a back table at Grand Slam Cards crushing kids and adults alike with Pokemon cards.
The Rock Hill card shop hosts weekly tournaments. There are league events, and pre-release tournaments the nearly half dozen times each year Pokemon puts out new cards. Pokemon tournament site shops like Grand Slam get to hold events with new cards before they go on sale to the public, hence the pre-release name.
Not long after he started school, Max began bringing home Pokemon cards. He’d trade with buddies.
Ian decided to learn the game alongside Max. Ian found local games at Grand Slam. The family hosted players for dinner and deck-building Tuesdays to help Max improve. Ian took Max to his first League Cup event in Columbia.
Max won that tournament. He was 6.
“He was just barely learning to read and do math,” Ian said.
The game clicked almost instantly.
“I was trading cards at my school,” Max said. “So we came to a pre-release (tournament at Grand Slam). I liked it, so we started playing.”
Max has been to eight League Cup and three regional events, even with in-person play only just returning after two years off for COVID-19. He’s been to Statesville, Mooresville and Daytona. He’s played in Virginia and Tennessee.
Max is up to No. 15 in the U.S. and Canada in his age group, good for a paid invite and travel to London for the world championships Aug. 18-21. He even gets a bye through the first day.
Players need 350 qualification points to play in London. Max has 633. He doesn’t yet know how many players to expect.
“It just depends who shows up,” Max said. “Who has the points to be able to show up.”
What is a Pokemon tournament?
Pokemon, the Japanese animated creatures seen everywhere from bookbags and bed sheets to the box office, come in several competitive formats. A wildly popular one worldwide is the card game. Players compete at tables across from one another, or online.
Each player uses a 60-card deck. Those cards include Pokemon characters, energy to power their attacks and a wide range of trainer cards that affect how the game unfolds. If a player’s Pokemon attacks for more hit points than the opposing Pokemon has, the opponent is knocked out.
A player wins by knocking out enough opponent Pokemon to claim six prize cards, knocking out all opponent Pokemon in play, or when the opponent runs out of cards to draw.
Card game tournaments run from friendly and informal local events to League Cup, regional and even world championships. Pokemon lists more than 5,000 players in its current rankings across junior, senior and master age levels. The online game ranks more than 228,000 players.
‘Uncanny ability’
If someone only knows one Pokemon character, it’s probably Pikachu. Small but always moving, cuddly, smiling. Full of lightning energy and able to hold his own in battle.
Max is the human version of Pikachu.
On a Friday night Max is likely to play two hands at once, offering strategic tips to his opponent. He anticipates cards still buried in an opponent’s deck and, often, has a plan already in place for them.
“Max has an uncanny ability to plan ahead,” Ian said. “He sees the game unfold two or three turns ahead.”
Alex Raymond started playing almost a decade ago. He started playing Max at shop and home games four years ago. Wife Abby Raymond joined the games. Both, along with Aaron Elmore, organize and officiate games at Grand Slam on Friday nights.
“He was beating me for a very long time,” Abby said of Max.
Only in the past six months have her games with Max become a coin flip. While many players use the same deck for months or more, Max cycles through new ones constantly. Because, Abby said, he can.
“He just has a great instinct for the game,” Abby said. “He understands a lot of what the cards do in a way that even some of the adult players don’t get. He picks it up very fast.”
Max plays with an encyclopedic memory of card attacks, weakness, special abilities and rules. Something that will help should he play, for the first time at worlds, against opponents with cards written in different languages.
“That’s going to be a new challenge for him, for sure,” Ian said.
On Friday night, a lack of younger players puts Max up against adults in each round. No one blinks.
“He plays just as good as any of the adults here who play top tier,” Elmore said. “He’s very competitive.”
Alex probably has as many games against Max as anyone not related to him.
“Not a lot of people think about anything past what’s like immediately in front of them,” Alex said. “Max, he’s always been really good about looking at the consequences of what happens.”
It’s how he acts on those potential consequences that sets Max apart.
“It is a card game so there’s still some randomness, but he still seems to come out ahead more often than not,” Alex said.
So much that one adult in particular throws in the towel.
“I can’t play against him,” Ian said. “I had to go find other people for him to play against because I wasn’t helping him. He doesn’t mind telling people that.”
Still, dad has a role on the London trip as more than just chaperone.
“I’m the player,” Max said. “He’s the builder.”
Pokemon deck testing
Once Max starts playing in London, he’s locked into that deck for the rest of the tournament.
Which one he chooses can be critical. Certain Pokemon are weak to others. A bad deck matchup can end a game quickly.
“I’m pretty sure we know,” Max said. “We’re going to keep testing.”
Much like the travel sport scene for Rock Hill kids like Max, Pokemon can get pricey as it gets more competitive. The best cards aren’t cheap. Pokemon rotates cards out of play each year, and introduces new ones.
Ian and Max will make proxy cards to test before they buy what they need. They keep up with the most popular and successful decks at major tournaments. Max will probably take a few decks to London before settling on one.
“We have like 10 decks at the house,” Max said. “We battle with them and whichever one wins against the most of them, is the one we’re going to take.”
Helping create decks keeps Ian involved. It gives him a way to bond with Max. Not unlike parenting, it’s about finding the right cards to play and making sure they fit together.
“It doesn’t have to be the most expensive card,” Ian said.
COVID, championships and a kidney
Before COVID hit, Max went to local and regional tournaments gobbling up players points in hopes of qualifying for his first world championship appearance. The 2020 tournament in London would be the first world event outside North America. Ian envisioned a family trip.
Max teetered close to the free trip qualification cutoff when the pandemic shut down in-person play across the world. Pokemon hasn’t hosted a world championship since. Ian had hoped to take the trip, unsure how much longer he’d be able to travel.
“We figured he would have had to go on dialysis,” said Lacy.
Ian had kidney problems for nine years. He knew he needed a transplant. He went on the transplant list in February 2020. The expected wait was seven years. He spent less than three weeks on the list.
“With COVID, I got bumped up on the transplant list,” Ian said.
Travel for transplants stopped. Transplants for the elderly stopped. Those pandemic changes shot Ian up to an April 2020 surgery.
“That’s where COVID kind of was a blessing for us,” Lacy said.
Among myriad life changes, the transplant means Ian is and should remain able to travel to watch Max play Pokemon.
“I’m doing well with it,” Ian said. “I’ll be on medication the rest of my life so I have to keep up with that. But that’s not too much of a bother.”
Rock Hill Pokemon community
On a good Friday, it’s not uncommon to find dozens of players seated across from each other at Grand Slam. Sometimes play even spills from card tables onto glass countertops covering sports and game cards for sale. Kids barely able to calculate damage from their attacks play. Parents who bring their kids with them, play. Shop staff and regulars routinely help new players understand how the game, and tournaments, work.
The return of sanctioned events means more players the past month or so, sometimes even than there were before the COVID pause.
“It’s been fantastic to have even more new players,” Abby said. “It’s been fantastic to see even more of the old players come back.”
Because of his age, Max often matches up against a new player. One who typically gets a master class in Pokemon play along with a loss for that round.
“It makes me think,” Max said, of why he enjoys Pokemon. “It makes me do the math and read and do the strategy.”
In side games or some tournament rounds, Max meets his match.
“I think it’s the collective hive that they use here at Grand Slam, where they can sit and kind of discuss the meta of the decks and how they might work,” Lacy said.
The game isn’t just a matchup of cards. It’s also a matchup of how people play them. Other experienced and high level players at Grand Slam, typically older ones, help Max when they bring a variety of decks and strategies.
“He can do all that analysis in his head and play them out,” Lacy said. “And I think that’s the part that he and Ian really get from coming in here, what to go back and research.”
Tough competition at home helps at big competitions. Max knows what to do with a good or bad matchup, because he’s seen both.
“You change how your deck plays,” he said.
Ian said at big tournaments, it’s clear Max isn’t new to the challenge.
“He doesn’t get stressed with the game,” Ian said. “He’ll go up against somebody who’s good, who’s ranked high or who’s won some tournaments. He just plays.”
Friday nights at Grand Slam, though, aren’t just about the competition.
“We’ve got a great group of people right here in Rock Hill,” Ian said. “It’s a great community here. That’s what I probably like about Pokemon more than anything. I’ve made some great friends.”
Max knows the London event will be unlike any he’s played. Yet he’ll take with him the same approach forged on so many Friday nights in Rock Hill, for nearly half his life now.
“I’m happy to be there,” Max said, “and I want to win.”
Want to play?
Grand Slam Cards at 952 Mt. Gallant Road in Rock Hill hosts Pokemon tournaments most Friday nights at 7 p.m. Most tournaments cost $7 to play and include a pack of cards. Players bring their own decks, but the store has cards and decks for sale. The store also has pre-release tournaments where all players purchase a similar new set to play. Newcomers are welcome at either event. For more information, visit Grand Slam Cards or Grand Slam Pokemon League on Facebook, or visit grandslamrockhill.com.
This story was originally published August 9, 2022 at 6:10 AM with the headline "Meet Max. The Rock Hill, SC, kid who may be the best junior Pokemon player in the world."
