How it works

Picking, not rating

Rating 1,025 Pokémon on a scale is slow and unreliable: the seventh 8/10 you give out means something different from the first. Comparing a handful side by side is a much easier question. You do not have to know how much you like Gengar, only whether you like it more than Arcanine. The engine turns a long series of easy comparisons into an ordered list.

The default is pairs. If you would rather move faster, the batch size can be raised to 4, 8, 12 at a time and you pick any subset of the batch: everything you tap survives, everything you leave is eliminated. A pair is just a batch of two.

Relational elimination

A bracket only guarantees its winner. The runner-up in a knockout tournament is whoever happened to lose to the champion last, which is not the same as the second-best entrant. pokepick avoids this by remembering who eliminated whom. Each knocked-out Pokémon records the exact set of picks that beat it.

When a favourite is crowned, every Pokémon whose eliminators have now all been crowned returns to the running. After #1, that is everyone #1 beat directly; they compete down to a single winner, who becomes #2, and the process repeats. Provided your picks are consistent, every position in the list is correct, not just the top of it.

Rounds

The field is dealt in rounds. Every Pokémon still in the running appears once per round, in a shuffled order, and the picks from each batch advance to the next round. Survivors of one batch never meet again until the round is over, so you always face fresh company. When a round thins the field to a single survivor, that Pokémon is crowned as the next favourite and everything it eliminated is released back into the running for the next slot. A release can leave another lone survivor, in which case it is crowned straight away too: a one-on-one final crowns the winner and makes the loser the sole contender for the following place.

Skip and Undo

Skip is for the batches you cannot call. Picking everyone (or no one) eliminates nobody; the whole batch goes to the back of the queue and you will see them again against different company. Undo steps back one decision at a time, including rescues and pool edits.

Shaping the pool

Edit pool scopes the competition. You can limit the field by generation, by type, or to starters, fully evolved Pokémon, or Legendary and Mythical Pokémon. Filters apply to the running field, never to the favourites you have already found. Excluding a Pokémon also removes it from every knockout record, so anyone it had eliminated on its own comes back into the running.

If a Pokémon you care about was eliminated in a batch you rushed, look it up under “Missing someone?” to see who beat it and pull it back into the running. Preferences are fuzzy, and the list is yours, not the algorithm’s: found favourites can be reordered by hand at any time.

What is included

One entry per National Pokédex number, Bulbasaur (#001) through Pecharunt (#1025), across all nine generations. Regional forms, Mega Evolutions, Gigantamax forms and other alternate forms are not separate entries. Sprites can be shown in their regular or Shiny colouring. Browse the full list on the Pokédex page.

Saving your run

There are no accounts. Your run is saved in your browser as you go, so closing the tab and coming back later picks up exactly where you left off. Clearing site data, or switching to another browser or device, starts fresh. Start over wipes the run and asks for confirmation first.