Odds In Pokemon
By X-Act
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
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!