Wondering if anyone who reads this forum also plays Pokemon seriously. By "seriously", I mean if you can understand posts like this one: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65953
I play(ed) the game largely blind - I went in after having done a bunch of reading, but didn't have a teacher. The game has myriad variations with several hundred Pokemon right now. Not all are viable, but even for those who are you still have to choose the movesets you want to use, the EVs you want to give them and how to mold six Pokemon into a coherent team. It's such that you can read a lot but still can't master the game - all your opponents have different teams, you have different teams as well and there are simply too many variations. There're still a lot of things I don't understand; it's such that the last time I made it quite high up the ladder was because I had a bunch of random Pokemon that just happened to work quite well together.
Overall the game's quite ... distracting ... since it's simple enough that you can do put together your next team (one step at a time anyway) while away from the computer. It's also the reason why I have the (ed) there - I might quit the game because I've found I spend so much time preparing and reading and stuff until I can barely think of anything else
![sad :(](/forums/images/smilies/sad.gif)
I don't expect there to be many serious Pokemon gamers around, but then it is largely a mathematical game (with some psychological elements). It's also free - at least the server I play on is - so maybe some people might be interested.