La Pequeña Victoria: a club for Pokémon fans in Rincón de la Victoria

Leisure

Computer scientist Hugo Miguel Bertrán Zayas has opened a shop where people can trade and play games cards in the eastern Costa del Sol town

José Rodríguez Cámara

Rincón de la Victoria

La Pequeña Victoria, a local shop where collectors of game cards like Pokemon can get together to trade cards founded by IT specialist Hugo ... Miguel Bertrán Zayas, in Rincón de la Victoria on the eastern Costa del Sol has just opened for business.

Bertran Zayas is hoping to attract the local TCG (Trading Card Game) community, a term coined by Richard Channing Garfield, an American mathematician and game designer. Channing Garfield is the creator of Magic: The Gathering, which is considered the first game of its kind and dates back to 1993. Three years later, came what is perhaps the most famous TCG of all: Pokémon.

“I moved to Rincón de la Victoria two years ago and realised there were no places to play Pokémon. So I said to myself, ‘If nobody’s going to set one up, I’ll do it myself’ and that’s exactly what I did,” explains the owner of the shop at 72 Avenida del Mediterráneo.

Loyal

“This type of shop survives when it has a loyal community that is interested in buying sealed products and, above all, in organising tournaments,” Bertrán Zayas explains. He has already built up a regular customer base and every Friday there are competitions for fans of Pikachu, Charizard or Gengar. Furthermore, as he explains, there are other titles which, in his words, "are proving hugely popular", such as One Piece.

These are usually one-on-one matches and tournaments are held using the Swiss system, that is, in a TCG tournament format where all participants play a fixed number of matches and are paired with opponents who have a similar win-loss record to their own, without being eliminated after a defeat. In other words “It’s a hobby for all ages that involves a lot of strategy; what’s more, if anyone wants to learn, we’ll teach them here,” Betrán Zayas says.

One of the key factors is ensuring that everyone who visits the shop receives a reward, which helps build customer loyalty; there are also phone cases, mouse mats and, of course, games available for customers.

While the IIT specialist is still waiting to break even, he is proud of his shop which is one of the few of its kind in Andalucía;. The founder of La Pequeña Victoria admits that, as well as a commercial spirit, there is a significant element of "passion" involved.

TCG is in his blood. “I started playing cards 30 years ago. My brother gave me an imported pack and I used to spend every Saturday playing. I gave it up for a while and got back into it about a year and a half or two years ago,” recalls Hugo. Driven by this passion for collectable cards, his aim is, as he puts it, “for anyone who comes in to have a good time – this isn’t your run-of-the-mill shop”.

As for the name, it plays on the idea that some victories are small but are still victories, and on the name of the town, as he explains. “I like the fact that the name has a local feel to it, like the name of a pub; what I want is for people to connect with it and see it as something of their own,” he says.

For the time being, until business picks up, the shop’s usual opening hours are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 5.30pm to 9.30pm. The shop promotes itself by saying, "We’re passionate about card games, afternoons spent with friends and the community that forms around a table. La Pequeña Victoria was created to be just that: a welcoming space you’ll always want to come back to.”