Guide To Prediction
By: husk1442
I. Intro
II. Move Sets
III. Timing
IV. Surprise
V. Long Term Thinking
VI. Recording
VII. The Enemy (how to predict)
VIII. Safe Predictions
IX. Conclusion
X. Real World Application
I. Intro
Prediction is the art of knowing what your opponent will do before they do it. This said, it is obvious that with a good team you can win every game if you know exactly what your opponent will do. This is what separates the good from the mediocre.
II. Move Sets
Knowing standard movesets is key to winning. If you know what your opponent has you can switch to the appropriate counter. Having a good move set is part of prediction. If your metagross has HP:grass then you can predict the switch to Swampert and 2hko it. If you don’t have it, you can’t. This does not mean you can’t predict the switch to Swampert. You can still earthquake on the switch but, your prediction is futile, Swampert isn’t being hurt that badly by your efforts. A
III. Timing
Lets say your Zapdos has HP: Ice and its being walled by your opponents Celebi. You probably don’t want to HP: ice the celebi on the switch because your prediction will be futile. Yes, you will do more damage than T-bolt but, you won’t be killing it. In the future when your opponents will probably send out Salamence or Flygon against your Zapdos thinking you have HP:Grass, then you will be able to ohko it. Timing also refers to lets say: when you reveal to your opponent you have a tyranitar and it knows dragon dance. If you reveal it late game when your opponents counters have died, you will probably win the game.
IV. Surprise
If your opponent doesn’t know your set, they can’t predict you. Many good players use unorthodox sets and win easily because no one has any idea what they will do. That’s not to say standard sets don’t have their merits but, everyone gets owned by a Gengar with fire punch every once in a while.
V. Long Term Thinking
Long Term Thinking is knowing what you and your opponent wish to accomplish down the road.
Example:
Team 1 (me): Meta, Pert, Celebi, Starmie
Team 2 (opponent): Zapdos, Milotic, Dugtrio, Snorlax
If my opponent has HP:grass zapdos and I’m holding it off with celebi, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to use celebi to wall his milotic incase of a ch. I also don’t want to switch celebi into zapdos every time because he might swap to dugtrio quickly. The logical thing to do is to every once in a while absorb a t-bolt with pert and then take the HP: grass with meta. That way he won’t swap in dugtrio when I do send out celebi. Now that I have stopped my opponent’s long term goal, what is mine?
Mine would probably be to kill dugtrio and beat his team down with Celebi. Another thing I could do is kill snorlax and sweep his team with starmie. Either way it will require a lot of predicted switches. I don’t want to try and sweep with meta or pert since he has 3 and 2 counters for them respectively. I could sacrifice pert to bring zapdos into K.O. range and start rolling heads with starmie.
After my opponent’s Zapdos is dead, we must think and revise our idea of his strategy. He could just let milotic die and use snorlax+dugtrio to beat my team, which is quite viable. Snorlax curses against starmie and beats on celebi, a predicted dugtrio can take out celebi and metagross. So now the important thing for me to do is to kill his snorlax. So I don’t want meta to die as it is my only sure way of killing lax. Since, I don’t want it to die I’m not going to randomly switch into snorlax with meta. What I might try to do is:
~Use starmie to kill milotic
~Use celebi to seed snorlax and dick around
~Let dugtrio kill celebi
~Send out meta against the HP:bug’ing dugtrio
~Meteor Mash his snorlax and then either explode if not cb or just keep mashing if I am
~Dugtrio comes in on snorlax's death and kills meta
~Use starmie to beat dugtrio
Seeing as how some logic just turned a bad situation into a good one, your opponent could probably use this same technique against you.
VI. Recording
Writing the HP, moves, and pp of your opponents pokemon in a notepad document is extremely useful. That way you know just how long you need to stall to win, or if your DDtar can sweep yet. Writing everything down means you don’t miss a thing and eventually when you get good enough you can estimate their evs based on how fast they are or by how much damage they do.
VII. The Enemy
Standing in your enemies shoes is probably the greatest way to outright know what they will do. Most people don’t realize that their opponents don’t want to do max damage to their team. Opponents (like you) want to do maximum damage to their opposites team at the lowest risk to themselves. Knowing this, you can know what they will do based on what you would do if you were in their situtation.
VIII. Safe Predictions
A safe prediction is a good one.
For example:
Lets say you use a non-cb meteor mash on regice, bringing it into the red zone. Then you want to use eq because it will kill regice and because if your opponent does switch out they won’t be switching to something that will get destroyed by meteor mash. Which probably means something weak to eq if they haven't already sent it out. This will get you a lot of kills.
IX. Conclusion
If you know what, where, and when your opponent will act you win the game. Taking safe predictions is probably the best way to win. Just remember to think about the consequences of your prediction. You obviously don’t want to predict a switch and surf when your opponents DD’ed mence is up against your 55% milotic.
X. Real World Application
http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=2176546
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