Premier Cup first came to Ultra in Season 3, and, unlike its condensed and simple Master League counterpart, this one is much more diverse.

 

 

The starter Pokémon have higher prominence here than in any other GBL format, with three of them—Venusaur, Charizard, and Swampert—close to the top three most used Pokémon. They form an important rock-paper-scissors loop that revolves around the diagram. Swampert, however, faces strong competition for its role from three other Water Pokémon: bulky Lapras, Dragon Breathing Gyarados, and fellow starter Empoleon.

 

 

Among them spins a diverse and colorful meta of dragons, fairies, ghosts, fighters, pretend fighters, bugs, and electrics. Some of them form their own prominent loops, like the Ghost-Fighting-Normal/Dark loop of Gengar, Machamp, Snorlax/Alolan-Muk. Some of them are hard to categorize into consistent match-ups, such as the wildcard Gallade, or the Dark/Normal-type Obstagoon with its Fighting characteristics.

 

 

In the diagram, solid lines represent wins across all even shield scenarios, regardless of baiting on either side. Dotted lines indicate favorable match-ups, but ones with some inconsistency. For example, if Dragonite goes straight Dragon Claw against Swampert, say to break down Swampert's shields, Swampert wins when neither player shields so long as it has Sludge Wave. Empoleon generally beats Lapras, but Lapras can tie in no shields by going double Skull Bash. On the other hand, both Pokémon reliably beat Togekiss.

 

A solid line with a slight caveat is the one from Venusaur to the Waters. It does beat all four in all even-shield scenarios, however Lapras that carry the slightly less common Ice Beam manage to win the no shields scenario against Venusaur. The Dark/Normal to Gengar arrow holds against all Gengar movesets except Focus Blast, where Gengar can win no shields against Snorlax (but not Muk).

 

 

Arrows that pass through another Pokémon indicate each Pokémon beats everything further down the line. For example, Venusaur beats Togekiss, and Charizard beats Venusaur and Togekiss. Lapras beats Togekiss, and Empoleon beats Lapras (mostly) and Togekiss.