Odds In Pokemon
By X-Act
January 04, 2005

 

Part 1 – 0, 1, 2, 3… Pokemon!

 

Hello, and welcome to my first article on Pokemon odds. As you all know, Pokemon has an element of luck in it. In these articles, I shall consider the odds required to get cards in your starting hand, to get cards in your prizes, the amount of turns required to get a particular card if you haven’t already drawn it, etc. I won’t delve into the odds of coin flips; these odds are usually very easy to calculate, so I’ll leave them up to you to figure out. I am sure that these articles will help my readers become better Pokemon players, and that’s the reason why I’m sharing this knowledge with all of you.

 

Actually, most of the things I will discuss in these articles will apply for most of the other TCGs as well. However, I shall concentrate on the Pokemon TCG, since it is the game I am familiar with the most.

 

First of all, I will start with some credentials, where I basically give you reasons to believe in what you’re going to read afterwards. Feel free to skip this section if you already believe in me. ;)

 

Credentials – Who is X-Act?

 

I am X-Act (real name Alexander Farrugia), and I am a 25 year old man from Qormi, Malta. Malta is a tiny island in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. I have a Master of Science (MSc) in Mathematics, specialising in Spectral Graph Theory. Graph Theory is the study of ‘networks’ and is probably the most applicable mathematics topic nowadays, especially in computer science, computer engineering and even chemistry (treating molecules as networks). For those of you who don’t know, the ‘grade’ of Master of Science is exactly that one before a PhD. I have plans to pursue a PhD course in the future, but I haven’t started it as yet. I teach Mathematics to students aged between 16 and 19 (sometimes more) in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST). I am also a Pokemon player, and used to write in the Card of the Day section for Pojo about 2 years ago. However, my strongest point is, of course, mathematics.

 

No need for more mumbling from me… let’s start with the article proper!

 

Number of Basic Pokemon in your opening hand

 

This article will concentrate on the odds of getting 0, 1, 2, 3 and more Basic Pokemon in your starting hand, depending, of course, on the number of Basic Pokemon you have in your 60-card deck. Let me first present you the following table… I will explain it afterwards:

 

Number of Basic Pokemon in Deck

Getting 0 Basic Pokemon

Getting 1 Basic Pokemon

Getting 2 Basic Pokemon

Getting 3 Basic Pokemon

Getting 4 or more Basic Pokemon

1

8 in 9 Games (88.33%)

1 in 9 Games (11.67%)

Never (0.00%)

Never (0.00%)

Never (0.00%)

2

7 in 9 Games (77.85%)

1 in 5 Games (20.96%)

1 in 84 Games (1.19%)

Never (0.00%)

Never (0.00%)

3

2 in 3 Games (68.46%)

2 in 7 Games (28.19%)

1 in 30 Games (3.25%)

1 in 978 Games (0.10%)

Never (0.00%)

4

3 in 5 Games (60.05%)

1 in 3 Games (33.63%)

1 in 17 Games (5.93%)

1 in 263 Games (0.38%)

1 in 13932 Games (0.01%)

5

1 in 2 Games (52.54%)

3 in 8 Games (37.53%)

1 in 11 Games (9.01%)

1 in 113 Games (0.88%)

1 in 2911 Games (0.03%)

6

4 in 9 Games (45.86%)

2 in 5 Games (40.12%)

1 in 8 Games (12.28%)

1 in 61 Games (1.64%)

1 in 1014 Games (0.10%)

7

2 in 5 Games (39.91%)

5 in 12 Games (41.61%)

2 in 13 Games (15.60%)

2 in 75 Games (2.65%)

1 in 455 Games (0.22%)

8

1 in 3 Games (34.64%)

3 in 7 Games (42.17%)

3 in 16 Games (18.84%)

1 in 25 Games (3.93%)

1 in 238 Games (0.42%)

9

3 in 10 Games (29.98%)

5 in 12 Games (41.97%)

2 in 9 Games (21.90%)

3 in 55 Games (5.44%)

1 in 138 Games (0.72%)

10

1 in 4 Games (25.86%)

5 in 12 Games (41.15%)

1 in 4 Games (24.69%)

1 in 14 Games (7.16%)

1 in 87 Games (1.15%)

11

2 in 9 Games (22.24%)

2 in 5 Games (39.83%)

3 in 11 Games (27.16%)

1 in 11 Games (9.05%)

1 in 58 Games (1.72%)

12

3 in 16 Games (19.06%)

5 in 13 Games (38.13%)

3 in 10 Games (29.26%)

1 in 9 Games (11.08%)

3 in 122 Games (2.46%)

13

1 in 6 Games (16.28%)

4 in 11 Games (36.14%)

4 in 13 Games (30.98%)

2 in 15 Games (13.21%)

2 in 59 Games (3.38%)

14

1 in 7 Games (13.86%)

1 in 3 Games (33.95%)

8 in 25 Games (32.30%)

2 in 13 Games (15.38%)

1 in 22 Games (4.51%)

15

2 in 17 Games (11.75%)

4 in 13 Games (31.63%)

1 in 3 Games (33.21%)

3 in 17 Games (17.55%)

1 in 17 Games (5.85%)

16

1 in 10 Games (9.92%)

3 in 10 Games (29.24%)

1 in 3 Games (33.74%)

1 in 5 Games (19.68%)

2 in 27 Games (7.41%)

17

1 in 12 Games (8.34%)

3 in 11 Games (26.84%)

1 in 3 Games (33.90%)

2 in 9 Games (21.73%)

1 in 11 Games (9.19%)

18

2 in 29 Games (6.98%)

1 in 4 Games (24.45%)

1 in 3 Games (33.70%)

3 in 13 Games (23.65%)

1 in 9 Games (11.22%)

19

1 in 17 Games (5.82%)

2 in 9 Games (22.12%)

1 in 3 Games (33.18%)

1 in 4 Games (25.41%)

2 in 15 Games (13.47%)

20

1 in 21 Games (4.83%)

1 in 5 Games (19.88%)

8 in 25 Games (32.37%)

3 in 11 Games (26.98%)

2 in 13 Games (15.95%)

 

Let me give you an example to show you how to use this table. Suppose you have a deck containing 12 Basic Pokemon, and you wish to know the odds of getting exactly two Basic Pokemon in your starting hand. From the table, go in the first column where the number ‘12’ is displayed, then move to the right to the column entitled ‘Getting 2 Basic Pokemon’, and you have the odds: 3 in 10 games, or 29.26% of games.

 

Note that the percentages are correct to two decimal places, but are otherwise accurate. The ‘3 in 10 games’ is a rough estimate of the percentage in brackets in real-life speech, so to speak. Email me (address is at the end of the article) if you want to know how I generated these numbers.

 

Let’s give another example. Suppose you need to know the probability of getting a mulligan (a hand containing no Basic Pokemon) when playing with a deck containing 14 Basic Pokemon. You go to the number ‘14’ in the first column, then read the box alongside it: ‘1 in 7 games (13.86%)’. That means you should mulligan roughly once every seven games (actually less than that) if you have a deck containing 14 Basic Pokemon. (Remember that the percentage in brackets is the real probability – the “m in n Games” part is just an estimate of the percentage.)

 

Comments on the table above

 

One could, of course, use the above table just for checking out odds for his or her deck. However, we could also analyse the table and conclude certain things about the information given in the table to aid us in deck construction.

 

Usually, you will only want one or two Basic Pokemon in your starting hand of 7 cards. You don’t want too many Basic Pokemon in your opening hand because you need Trainer cards in your opening hand too, and if you get, say, 3 Basic Pokemon in your starting hand, there would only be room for 4 other cards in your opening hand. You want as many options as possible in your opening hand to get a winning start, especially if you’re starting first (remember that you can’t draw a card in your opening turn now too), so you need to maximise on the number of Trainer cards possible in your opening hand. This can be done if you get only 1 or 2 Basic Pokemon in your beginning hand. In Modified, for example, you can even get away with getting only one Pokemon in your starting hand, if that Pokemon happens to be a Dunsparce from Sandstorm (or some other similar card that gets you other Pokemon). However, playing less Basic Pokemon in your deck just because you play 4 Dunsparce is not a good strategy, since you’ll have a greater chance of starting with one Pokemon, but that Pokemon could very well not be Dunsparce, giving you a bad start.

 

Looking at the table above, you will realise that, if you have between 14 and 20 Basic Pokemon in your deck, your odds of starting with exactly two Basic Pokemon is practically the same: about 33%. That means that playing more than 14 Basic Pokemon in your deck will NOT increase your chances of starting with two Basic Pokemon! It will actually increase your chances of starting with more than 2 Basic Pokemon, which, as we argued above, is usually a bad thing. So, in general, playing more than 14 Basic Pokemon in your deck is useless, and you’re wasting space for better cards in your deck.

 

Another thing concerns the old FTKO (First Turn Knock Out) decks. In the past, Pokemon such as Erika’s Jigglypuff were used to win immediately in your first turn, without the opponent doing anything to even try to defend him or herself. This was such a cheap way to win that I found it almost unfair. Looking at the table, you’ll see why FTKO decks were effective: even if the opponent plays 14 Basic Pokemon, he or she still has a 1 in 3 chance of starting with a lone Basic Pokemon! That means that in a tournament having (say) 6 games, that player will expect to start with 1 Basic Pokemon twice, which could have meant 2 FTKO losses!

 

Conclusion

 

I hope you have found this article useful. In the next article, I will tackle prize cards. What are the odds of getting that TecH card in your prizes? What are the odds of getting one or more of your 4 Rare Candies as one of your prizes? Such questions, and more, will hopefully be answered in the next article.

 

Please note that creating tables such as the one in this article takes a bit of effort (although that’s why I use the computer to calculate things for me), so please realise that my articles will take their time to write.

 

In the meantime, if you have any questions (like from where I got those values, etc.), or you want to know the odds of anything in particular, feel free to email me at xactcreations@yahoo.com. You can also AIM me (my nickname is xactxx).

 

I could start my section soon, answering your ‘odds’ questions, so start emailing me!

 

Thanks for reading, and have a fabulous 2005 year!

 

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