In short, it used an "integral system" invisible to participants, who could only see rankings, to intelligently match opponents.
It was the familiar "ELO system," with the biggest difference being that the Pokémon World Championship's Battle Commission neither manipulated win rates nor sent bots to throw matches against you.
Moreover, Pokémon Battles tested only the strength of Trainers and their Pokémon. It was extremely straightforward.
Players with high win rates and high hidden ratings could be matched against higher-ranked opponents and gain points faster.
As long as you had the strength, nothing would limit how quickly you could climb.
Otherwise, given how often Ash battled under Goh's influence, he might not even have played enough matches or earned enough points by the end of the season to challenge the bottom-ranked member of the Masters Eight in a placement battle.
However, the prerequisite for activating this matchmaking system was having a sufficiently high win rate and hidden rating.
Su Hao, Diancie, and the rest of the team had no desire to grind points like prisoners, forcing their way from over 250,000th place to the top eight. It was far too exhausting, and battling Trainers weaker than them offered almost no benefit.
Fortunately, the "Conference" they had their sights set on could perfectly solve that problem.
This was not the kind of Conference where one collected Gym Badges from various regions before participating. It was a Conference held by the Pokémon Battle Commission, where one could battle high-ranking Trainers regardless of rank or hidden rating.
It was like the Conference where Ash battled Korrina's Mega Lucario with Dragonite in the Kalos region.
At present, there was only one Conference that was both nearby in time and location and currently being prepared.
The Pokémon World Championship Anistar Conference in Anistar City, Kalos region.