Pokémon TCG Odds: Opening Hands, Mulligans, and Prized Cards

Welcome to Level 3. At Level 2 you built a deck on purpose and learned to count Knock Outs. Now you put numbers on luck. The Pokémon TCG has plenty of it, but the luck comes from a deck you chose, card by card. That means you can know the odds before the game starts.

Every number in this lesson is worked out from a 60-card deck, an opening hand of 7, and 6 Prize cards, as the official rules set them. You do not need to do the math yourself. You need a feel for the tables.

Will your opening hand have a Basic?

You must have a Basic Pokémon in your opening hand, or you take a mulligan: show your hand, shuffle it back, and draw 7 again. Each time, your opponent may draw an extra card. So the number of Basics in your deck matters.

Two things stand out. Going from 8 Basics to 12 nearly halves your mulligans. And even 16 Basics leaves about one game in ten starting with a mulligan. A mulligan hands your opponent a free card, so a deck with very few Basics pays for it every few games.

Will you see your key card?

Say a card is so important that you want it in your first turn. You see 8 cards by then: 7 in your opening hand plus your first draw.

Even 4 copies show up in the first 8 cards less than half the time. That is why decks run search cards: each Item or Supporter that can fetch your key card is another copy in practice. Four copies of the card plus four cards that search for it gives you far better odds than four copies alone.

Will it be Prized?

Six of your 60 cards go face down as Prize cards before the game starts. Any card can end up there.

A single copy of a card is Prized one game in ten. Two copies are almost never both Prized. That is the case for running at least two of any card your deck cannot win without.

Check your Prizes early

The first time a card lets you search your deck, look through the whole thing and work out which cards are missing. Those are your Prize cards, minus what is in your hand and in play. Knowing that your only copy of a card is Prized changes your plan for the whole game. Many players make this a habit on the first search of every game.

Counting outs

An out is any card that solves your problem right now. Say you need one of 3 cards and your deck has 30 cards left.

• Your next draw: 3 in 30, or 10%.
• A Supporter that draws 6: about 50%.
• With 6 outs in 40 cards and a draw of 6: about 65%.

A quick estimate: multiply your outs by the cards you will see, then divide by the cards in your deck. When the answer is well under 1, your real chance is a little less than that number. When it is near or above 1, your odds are good but never certain.

Using odds without slowing down

You will not run numbers on every turn, and you should not. Use them in three places:

1. Deck building: set your Basic count and your copies of key cards.
2. Your first search: check what is Prized.
3. Big decisions: when a play only works if you draw a certain card, count the outs before you commit.

Over time the tables become instinct, and the instinct makes your hard turns faster.