How to play Daily Red Pokemon

Each day follows the same shape, and knowing it removes most of the confusion.

A new team unlocks at midnight in your own time zone. The counter in the header shows the exact time remaining. Your team is drawn from a shared pool, so any other player on the same date is looking at the same six Pokemon.

Before you begin you can inspect everything: each member's moves and PP, its held item, its ability and its actual stats at level 100. You set the lead. Nothing is locked in until you press the button to start.

Starting reserves your official attempt for the day. From then on the battle is recorded decision by decision. Leaving does not forfeit it, and neither does closing the browser.

When the battle ends you get a result you can copy. It shows how many of your six survived, or how many of Red's you took down, plus a grid of squares — enough to compare with a friend without telling them what to do.

This is not a team-building game. Every Pokemon arrives with a full moveset, a held item, an ability and a trained stat spread, and none of it can be changed.

That constraint is the puzzle. A weak-looking team usually has one line of play that works, and finding it is the game. When you lose, the useful question is rarely "which Pokemon should I have had" and usually "which lead, or which order of operations, would have held".

You control two things: who leads, and what you do on each turn — attack or switch.

The lead is the largest decision you make all day, because Red always opens with Pikachu.

Any Ground type is immune to Electric moves entirely, which makes Thunderbolt, Thunder and Pikachu's whole plan do nothing to it. If your team contains a Ground type that is not also weak to something Pikachu carries, leading with it usually buys you a free first turn.

The opposite also holds. Leading something that takes heavy Electric damage gives Red tempo immediately, and level 100 Pikachu hits far harder than its small stature suggests.

Speed matters too. If your lead is slower and cannot survive the first hit, you are on the back foot before you have made a decision. When two Pokemon are close in Speed, check the numbers in the team panel rather than guessing.

Change the lead from the team strip on the landing page or from the team board below it. You can change it freely until you start; after that it is locked for that battle.

The screen is laid out like a handheld battle. Red's Pokemon stands in the upper right with its status panel in the upper left. Your Pokemon stands in the lower left with its panel in the lower right.

Each panel shows the name, level, an HP bar and six small pips — one per Pokemon on that side. A lit pip is a healthy Pokemon, an outline is a knocked-out one, and the highlighted one is the active Pokemon.

When it is your turn the message box is replaced by a move menu. The left panel lists your four moves with a coloured dot for each type. Hover or focus a move and the right panel fills in: remaining PP, the move's type, whether it is physical or special, its power, its accuracy, and how effective it is against the Pokemon in front of you.

That effectiveness line is the single most useful piece of information on the screen. It tells you, before you commit, whether a move will be super effective, resisted, or do nothing at all.

A turn resolves both sides' actions. Attacks go in order of priority first — moves like Quick Attack and Mach Punch always go early — and Speed second. When priority and Speed are equal, the order is a coin flip, so never assume you move first.

To attack, choose a move. To change Pokemon, open POKéMON and pick a replacement. Switching uses up your turn: Red still acts, so the Pokemon coming in usually takes a hit.

There is one exception. When your active Pokemon faints you must send out a replacement, and that does not cost a turn. The turn has already ended.

If a move it is resisted or useless, do not spend the turn on it out of habit. A switch or a status move is often the better use of the turn.

Battles run on Generation 3 mechanics, which differ from later games in ways that change how you should play.

Whether a move is physical or special is decided by its type, not by the move. Every Ghost, Poison, Bug, Fighting, Flying, Ground, Rock, Steel and Normal move is physical; everything else is special. So Shadow Ball is a physical attack, and Crunch is special. A Pokemon with high Defense will shrug off a Shadow Ball; a Pokemon with high Special Defense will not.

Matching the attacker's type gives a same-type attack bonus of 50%. Type matchups multiply on top of that, and the multipliers stack: a Rock move against a Fire and Flying Pokemon lands at four times damage, which is why Rock Slide is the fastest way to remove Charizard.

Damage is not fixed. Every hit rolls between about 85% and 100% of its calculated value, and critical hits deal double. A move that "should" knock out can survive on a low roll — plan for the average, not the best case.

Abilities and held items work as they did in 2003. Leftovers restores a sixteenth of your maximum HP at the end of every turn, which quietly wins long games. Intimidate drops the opposing Attack when its holder switches in. Levitate makes its holder immune to Ground moves. Volt Absorb turns Electric attacks into healing.

Every move has limited PP, and a six-on-six battle can run long. Strong moves usually have small PP pools: Fire Blast and Hydro Pump have only five uses each, while the weaker, more accurate versions last far longer.

You can see remaining PP next to each move in the menu, so track it. If your main attacking move runs dry mid-battle you can be left with only ineffective options.

If a Pokemon genuinely runs out of usable moves it will fall back on Struggle, which hurts its own user. Avoid reaching that point by spreading your attacks sensibly early.

You get one official attempt per day. It is the one recorded against your streaks.

Practice runs use a differently ordered team and are unlimited. Nothing about them is saved, and they never affect your record. They are the right place to test a lead you are unsure about.

Because practice draws a separate lineup, it will not show you the order of your official team. If you want to keep the official lineup intact while you experiment, use practice and leave the official attempt untouched.

Your record is kept in this browser only. There is no account and nothing is uploaded, so it does not follow you to another device, another browser or a private window.

Four numbers are tracked: battles played, win rate, current win streak and current day streak. The win streak counts consecutive wins; the day streak counts consecutive dates with a completed battle, win or lose.

Streaks only survive if the last completed day is today or yesterday. Miss a day and both reset to zero — that is the pressure the daily format is built on.

A battle you abandon is marked as void. Void days do not count as a loss and do not break your streak; they simply disappear from the record. Clearing your browser's site data erases everything.

Everything works with a mouse or a touch screen. On the move menu, tapping a move selects it and reveals a confirmation step, so a mis-tap cannot waste a turn. On a computer a single click attacks immediately.

Click or tap the message box while a turn is playing to skip straight to the end of it, which is useful once you have read the text.

The speed toggle next to the screen switches between the normal animation pace and a fast one. It changes presentation only — never the battle itself.

You can leave a battle at any time with the button beside the screen. Leaving the official attempt keeps it open for later.

STAB

Same-type attack bonus. A move that matches its user's type does 50% more damage.

PP

Power Points. How many times a move can be used in one battle.

Priority

Some moves always resolve before normal moves regardless of Speed.

Stat stage

Temporary boosts and drops. Each stage shifts a stat by half its value.

Crit

A critical hit. Doubles damage and ignores stat boosts and drops.

Lead

The Pokemon you send out first. The one roster decision you control.

Void

A day where you started the official battle but never finished it. Ignored by the record.