When Pokemon TCG Pocket first announced its new Ranked Mode, I was happy… for other players. Not for me, because I fully admit that I will never be good at the Pokemon TCG due to my refusal to lean into the meta or run a single deck that doesn’t feature at least one Eeveelution. But I knew people were looking forward to it and assumed it’d be a nice feature for them to play and me to ignore. One of the hazards of my job, however, is that I can’t ever really ignore things like this. So, tempted by the list of Ranked Mode rewards for the first season and armed with the knowledge I’d have to do at least one match to earn any of them, I went in.
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After a few attempts at the randomly matched PvP battles in Pokemon TCG Pocket, I’ve mostly stuck to the solo battles. I do actually enjoy playing the condensed TCG card battles in the app, but I prefer to do it against the computer, which (probably) can’t judge me. Pretty quickly after the game came out and the meta settled, my cute Grass-type Leaves of Fate deck fell behind. I lost so many matches that I stopped trying. So, I fully expected to get absolutely obliterated in my first Ranked Match.
Instead, it was easy. Maybe a little too easy? Initially, I figured it was because I’d waited a bit to jump into the Ranked Matches, so I’d need to level up a bit to find players who weren’t brand-new beginners in Pokemon TCG Pocket. But these players were doing things in battle that just made no sense at all. I ran across a few players in a row who were running decks with multiple different energy types, a surefire way to lose in battles with 20 cards and quick gameplay.
I like to play my rotation of Pokemon mobile games while I have my morning coffee, often with a podcast on in the background. I just so happened to be listening to the It’s Super Effective Pokemon news podcast while I played, and the host started talking about bot behavior in Pokemon TCG Pocket’s Ranked mode. How they’d use decks with three different energy types and often have account names like Mike or Bob, simple one-word names.
That’s when I realized. These weren’t human players I was crushing with my cute little Grass deck. They were bots.
Maybe I should’ve realized it on my own, and probably I would have… eventually. Since those first few Mikes and Bobs, I’ve run across several of these likely bot accounts while playing. A quick trip to Reddit and, sure enough, other players are also noticing this robotic behavior in Pokemon TCG Pocket‘s ranked mode.
Given the general issue with bots in the Pokemon community right now, particularly when it comes to snatching up Pokemon TCG cards from online postings, you might think these bots are generated by people trying to game the system. However, there’s actually something less nefarious going on, which you might easily miss if you’re not one to read the fine print.
These bots are, in fact, intentional AI opponents set up by Pokemon TCG Pocket. At the very bottom of the news post introducing Ranked Matches for the A2b season, Pokemon TCG Pocket slipped in the following note: “At certain ranks, players will sometimes be matched with AI opponents.”
Because this falls just above the image of the rank reward emblems and before the bright red “Attention!” many gamers missed this note. As such, the r/PTCGP subreddit is full of players who, like me, didn’t realize what was going on at first with these far-too-easy opponents.
While there are certainly signs you can spot once you know to look for them, Pokemon TCG Pocket doesn’t clearly label the AI opponents. The profile shows up just like any other user, and you can even send thanks or friend request it after the fact. However, they’re never going to thank you back or accept your request. Honestly, Pokemon TCG Pocket could’ve made their bots a bit friendlier, but I guess they don’t want to give away all those shop tickets.
Most likely, these bots are only present in the lower ranks to help beginner players level up. Players who’ve put more time into Ranked Mode than I have confirmed they stopped seeing Bill and Chris as they reached higher ranks. It’s also possible they show up after a crushing defeat to help bolster morale, but of course, Leafeon and I wouldn’t know anything about that.
