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How Singles Players Can Adapt to VGC with PokeaimMD.
Dig into the mind of one of Pokémon's most legendary players after his Milwaukee VGC 2025 Regionals Run!
False Swipe
May 22, 2025
In partnership with
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Joey Pokeaim, a good friend of False Swipe Gaming after his excellent performance in the Milawukee 2025 VGC Regional!
For those who are not in the know, PokeaimMD is one of the most distinguished Smogon Singles players of all time, and is a beloved content creator on Youtube where he posts a battle video every day. At the 2025 Milawaukee VGC regionals, Pokeaim broke into the doubles scene with his meteoric rise to the 6th place of the event. This was his first official Pokemon event in 8 years. Making the transition from singles to doubles is no joke, and very few players have found success in both metagames. Joey’s run is truly the stuff of legend!
In this abridged version of the interview, we synthetized the key points we learned from our conversation with him, in order to help singles players make the jump into the world of Pokémon VGC and find as much success as Pokeaim has found.
If you want to listen to the full interview, the audio is available at the top.
We started off with a brief discussion on singles players competing and performing well in VGC and the opinions on both sides of the community about participating at VGC events. Historically there has been a clear separation and sometimes animosity between both communities. Pokeaim gave us this gem right off the bat while discussing how he and other top singles players have performed!
‘‘I mean, that's a great way to put it, bro.
I mean, nobody who's good at the game complains
about the other side of the game, I would say.’’
Joey’s team! Credit: Victoryroad.pro
We then asked Joey about his insights on team building and how it differs from the singles format to VGC. Pokeaim gave us the following pointers:
-1) Leads are very important in VGC. A team can work in theory but you must really practice how to lead against different matchups. Gaining the advantage of the get go is crucial in VGC
-2) Teams must work in configurations of 4 Pokémon that can cohesively be side by side. If your 6 Pokémon have many different 4 Pokémon configurations for VGC it works really well as it compliments the leading aspect of VGC.
-3) Mistakes get punished harder in VGC because of 2 Pokémon attacking at the same time. It is more unforgiving than singles in that aspect because you can not really rely on a Supreme Overlord sweep with Kingambit as a win button. In VGC the team needs to have different modes that compliment each other and work together to survive.
-4) Game 1’s are all about modes, and Game 2’s and 3’s are all about adjustments based on the information presented in game 1. If a matchup is not working you can switch it up.
FSG then asked Pokeaim what the main differences between VGC and singles are.
Pokeaim highlighted how Team Building is a big difference, but there are also a lot of similarities, especially with the training regime he had for Milawaukee Regionals. Joey told us all about how he trained on the Bo3 ladder on showdown in order to get comfortable in leading against certain matchups and also had his very own test group to further experiment in certain matchups.
‘‘Like, practicing versus specific teams. Kinda similar in singles, right? If teams are being used, you wanna be good into those, but more so in VGC’’
We then discussed how laddering often feels like there are many teams that feel too similar, but then innovations like Leech Seed Calyrex Shadow Rider happen and win regionals.
‘‘He said I'm winning the regional he went to and he did win, but he also showed off Leach Seed Protect Leftovers, Calyrex Shadow Rider.’’
Pokeaim then showed us how important it is to have a good group of friends who you can test with, and how clutch it was to have them supporting him live at the event as well. Even going as far as mentioning how his group of friends told him pairings were up while he was eating, greeting people, or in the bathroom!
We then asked an important question, How does a Smogon player go about learning VGC?
‘‘The first thing you do is you take a bunch of teams and you just throw darts at a board and ladder and figure out what you like. This was my advice for this, it’s the advice that Wolfe Glick gave me. Justin and Hopeless, who was Nicholas, who also won a regional as well.
All those people that run regionals obviously know Wolfie as well, you know, Justin.
The advice was take as many teams as you have, play on the ladder, figure out what Pokemon you like. I took every single team from bottom of the ladder, top of the ladder, didn't matter, and I was not doing the greatest, but I was figuring out what mons I like. Ho-oh is one of those Pokemon.’’
Our conversation then had a tangent were we discussed about laddering Best of 1 against Best of 3 and Joey told us he would keep running into teams that had Giratina Origin for example that don’t really appear in the Bo3 ladder. He then gave us this reflection and incredible insight!
‘‘But then recently Giratina top cut in the tournament. , I think one thing is, that's where my singles comes to mind. How can a Pokemon, let's take Ho-oh, that walls all the specific mons running around Koraidon,Calyrex, Zamacenta, Chien Pao et cetera, , be bad.?’
As a final question we asked Pokeaim about his specific run at Milwaukee Regionals with his team and what his hardest matchup was for Milwaukee regionals
‘‘The hardest matchup for me would've been Luca Paz’s matchup with the Ursaluna, Lunala, Incineroar specifically, it's because of Incin on it. The team that won, actually they had the same Pokemon, , Luca’s had a Whimsicott versus the Grimmsnarl.’’
Andrew Ding and Luca Paz’s teams
Joey then gave us an incredibly in depth explanation on how the matchup worked. We compiled the following highlights of his dissertation!
-That team was actually his first loss at the tournament
-Ursaluna is incredibly broken, it should be a restricted Pokémon
-Incineroar’s Intimidate made it so Ursaluna and Lunala were extremely resilient and forced a lot of 50/50’s. It felt like Joey had to rely on 50/50s like Wild Charging with Iron Hands into the Ursaluna predicting a tera ghost AND also winning a speed tie, to win.
To end the interview, Pokeaim assured us that he will compete again and how nice meeting people was!
‘‘Like I, to this day, I still don't feel like I lost because I met so many cool people. Dude, when I lost on stage, when I walked off, the people were clapping. They held their hands out. They were like fist bumping me and everything. I was like, wow, I did not lose. First off, I didn't expect to do that well. But I was having a good time.’’
We thank Pokeaim for accepting the interview and all of the incredible knowledge he provided, and hope that our readers enjoy the start of our FSG Newsletter Interview Series!
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