Serebii, you do realize back in GSC days, people who battled in the real tournies probably HAVE sharked up rare candies and the likes for their pokemon, right? The only difference between online battling and IRL battling is how much time you waste catching the right mon with the right DVs, and personally, if games are almost completely up to the luck of the draw and wasting time, I'd just ditch the game for something better.
And mistake it not, Online battlers strategize better than IRL ppl. I would refer you to the German pokemon tourney which 2 Online Netbattlers sweeped (got pictures too, Vineon's site and the official site too), but you prolly would just dismiss the opponents as uber using newbies.
Anyways, signups will start this week, I'll post the threads in teh forums later when I finish defragging this POS computer (lagging like a biotch)