Evolution of a Pokemon player

Last night at one of the local Pokemon clubs my son frequents I heard one of his friends complaining that the Pokemon card game is mostly won with money–all you have to do is spend a lot of money for the right cards. He has my sympathies. As recently as a year ago–perhaps only six months ago–I thought the same. But now I found I no longer agreed with him, and found it ironic that he would say that. He was the one who seemed to have no lack of money to buy the cards he wanted for his decks, and yet I’ve yet to see him build a deck that is a serious threat to anyone he plays with.

But I had to think some more about my own transition from believing like him to my current belief that, while money still helps, it is far from the deciding factor. I have to conclude that claiming it’s all about who can spend the most is an unsophisticated position, largely based on frustration over repeatedly losing and not being able to explain why. On the surface money seems an obvious answer. But it’s not necessarily the right answer.

Pokemon, I’ve discovered over the past year, is a game that requires strategic thinking and the ability to piece together complex strategies from seemingly obscure pieces. There are a lot of different cards with different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. The best players recognize opportunities presented  by certain cards in combination with other cards and fit them together into a coherent path to victory.

Nothing brings this home like playing in tournament against a variety of players. There are a variety of ways to win at Pokemon. The main and most obvious is to knock out your opponent’s pokemon in order to take prize cards. The player who takes all six of his/her prize cards first wins. But that’s not the only way to win. You can also win by running your opponent out of cards or by leaving him without a pokemon in play at the beginning of his turn.

In the last tournament I played in I saw all three ways to win, and decks designed to specifically bring about one or more of those contingencies. And there are numerous ways to achieve each objective. I’ve seen decks that win by knock-outs by ensuring the player gets his most powerful and tough pokemon set up and ready before their opponent can counter them. And I’ve seen decks that tie up the opponent so that he is unable to get set up at all while the player knocks out his opponent slowly. And I’ve seen both those kinds of decks backfire by running their players out of cards too quickly.

Which brings me to the next point. The best of decks still won’t win if the player is unable to play it well. Understanding of your deck and what it requires is essential. But even that is not enough. Every game is different, and most every opponent is different. The ability of the player to foresee and react to variations and difficulties can make a huge difference. Pokemon, for all its image as a “kids’ game” is a lot more like chess than many people realize. The best players are careful, methodical players, thinking on several levels at once, while balancing the random elements of the game to play the odds in their favor. You could take one of the best players, have us trade decks, and unless I gave him a terrible deck, he would probably still beat me the majority of the time.

So back to my son’s friend’s complaints. As I see it, here are the key elements in successful Pokemon play:

• Strategy formulation (Conceiving a coherent plan to achieve victory through one of the main means)
• Card knowledge (Awareness of what cards are available and what they can do)
• Deck building (Collecting and balancing a legal, 60-card deck to facilitate that strategy)
• Strategy execution (Understanding the necessary steps to initiate a strategy within a game)
• Opponent analysis (Using all legal in-game means to determine your opponent’s deck and strategy, and identify threats to your own)
• Deck management (Awareness of and optimizing the flow of cards during the game to ensure the needed cards at the needed times)
• Tactical play (Analyzing the immediate game situation and making the best immediate moves to advance your strategy)
• Improvisation (Knowing when to go off strategy to capitalize on unexpected opportunities)
• Continual improvement (Optimizing your strategy and deck, refining them as needed, and even knowing when to toss your idea and try something new)

As I see it, money is only a factor in one element. The more I get involved in Pokemon the less I see that as a insurmountable factor. For example, right now there is one particular card that has been changing gameplay. As a result this card has become obscenely (for Pokemon) expensive and hard to obtain. It has taken a few months, but I’m beginning to notice a counter-revolution of sorts. Lately I’ve begun to see new deck ideas that don’t rely on that card, and in fact often use inexpensive cards that have been overlooked for several sets. It’s the Dr. Malcolm “Nature finds a way” phenomenon.

That’s not to say Pokemon doesn’t cost money. It does. But the smart players know how to get the most for their investment, and it’s not always pursuing the hottest new cards. A player could conceivably spend $1000 to buy all the best cards and still get their butt kicked on a regular basis. I won’t deny money is a factor, but it’s not the most important one by a long shot.

Which brings me to another doting parent moment: Most all of this I have learned from my son, though much of it probably isn’t even something he could consciously explain. He’s the one with the instinctive mind for this. What brought me from siding with his friend to my current evaluation is the result of my finally allowing him to teach me how to really play. It’s been an interesting trip.