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YOUR SPACE: Confessions of a teenage card shark
Some teens flip burgers to earn money for college. Bret Brander is flipping cards.
We’re not talking Texas Hold’em.
Bret, 17, is a Pokémon shark.
Instead of playing with diamonds and spades, his deck has cheeky yellow Pikachu rodents and holographic anime monsters.
His winnings are flippin’ amazing.
How does $7,000 for college tuition sound?
The lanky 6-foot-4 Pokémaster looks like a basketball star. But his game is cartoon cards and he’s World Championship caliber. He has traveled all over the nation to compete — and win.
Pokémon isn’t poker. Imagine bridge played by kids sucking energy drinks.
Players create custom decks of 60 cards of Pokémon characters that each possess unique superpowers. Each character has a strength and a weakness. The goal is to defeat the opponent’s character cards in a back-and-forth play.
Bret shows how it’s done in the “Pokémon Rap” video on the Web at gazette.com/yourspace.
He was 6 when the Japanese cartoon and trading cards instantly turned innocent little kids into raging Pokémon addicts. Some schools banned the cards.
Bret’s two big brothers and the neighborhood kids had Pokémon cards. Bret wanted in on the action.
“My husband and I were initially opposed,” says his mom, Mary, who homeschooled her clan.
While my boys were burning up my money on Pokémon cards to collect and trade, Bret was putting his cards to work at tournaments. He won more cards. And cash for college.
Mary became a proud PokéMom. Ditto for PokéDad Bruce.
“It takes so much attention and concentration,” he says. “I told my kids if they’d taken up medicine instead of Pokémon, they’d be doing surgery by now.”
Bret uses his skilled hands to shuffle cards like a Vegas dealer. Some players go from Pokémon to professional gambling, but Bret says that’s not in the cards for him.
“It’s a lot like chess, strategy-wise,” he says.
“And rock-paper-scissors,” adds brother Ian, 21, who won a few grand for college in his younger Pokémon days, and often lost to Bret.
Poker-faced Bret is a natural, Ian says. “He thinks of every angle out there.”
Bret’s list of titles is growing. He’s now New Mexico’s Pokémon champ. Next week, he’s off to Denver for regionals.
Then maybe to Hawaii to go for the world title.
He doesn’t plan to flip Pokémon cards forever.
“I have to get out there and do something else. Hopefully something productive,” he says.
“This keeps your brain working, but it’s not going to benefit people.”
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