If you want to be the very best like no one ever was, you might consider taking a shower and thoroughly washing with soap every once in a while. A pro player in the competitive Pokémon gaming scene has accused some of his peers of failing to adhere to this basic life skill. He even claims to have thrown up at a recent match as a result.
The 2027 Baltimore Pokémon Regional Championships were held earlier this month, with players competing across the video game and trading card versions of Pokémon as the competitive circuit gets going again after the 2026 World Championships in August. But there was something rotten in the Baltimore Convention Center that weekend, according to pro player Donghun Youm: the other people he was battling against.
“Please take care of your personal hygiene,” he posted on X on September 27. “I’ve had an incident [at] Baltimore regionals where I had to throw up due to a nearby player’s stench. My friends and I couldn’t focus that round due to how putrid the smell was and we even told a judge due to it. Like c’mon man….”
😭😭😭 bro what??? I smelt some bad stenches during tournament matches but too throw up is insane, what smell does that too a person 🤣🤣 https://t.co/EEYNMvAN1X — Punk (@PunkDaGod) September 28, 2026
The post quickly went viral, as allegations about stinky gamers are often wont to do, both because of existing stereotypes and also the fact that encounters with people who aren’t practicing proper hygiene are often a struggle in gamer-centric third places.
“This goes for all TCGs,” one person wrote in response. “I have never understood what is so hard about a 5-min shower and 15 seconds to apply deodorant…” Another joked, “My man was fighting two battles at once.” Someone else claimed they were being completely serious when they wrote, “I had a Redbull like round 3 of flame flame and i got gassy and was just farting the last 3 rounds. idk if that fucked with anyone’s games.”
Many esports and TCG pros understandably balk at their scenes having reputations for being stinky, but it’s also an issue that keeps coming up. Smash Bros. players have been put on blast. A Yu-Gi-Oh tournament was put on hold because the players smelled so bad. An anime voice actor begged fans to bathe before coming to her concert.
Donghun Youm ended up finishing 60th at Baltimore Regionals with a record of 9-4. “Not my best performance but considering I locked the team [at] 4 am the night before I think I did pretty alright,” he wrote at the time. Maybe next time he’ll consider packing a gas mask in order to crack the top 10.
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Source: Kotaku