How Pokékipe works
The proprietary analytics that sit on top of Smogon's raw data — what each concept means, what signals feed it, and why it matters for your next game.
From raw stats to actionable insight
Smogon publishes one of the richest competitive data sets on the planet: millions of rated battles turned into monthly usage stats. That is the raw material. What Pokékipe adds on top is the analytical layer — the classifications, scores and badges that turn a spreadsheet of percentages into decisions you can actually make at team preview.
This page documents the vocabulary Pokékipe uses across the product. For formal definitions of each term you can always jump to the glossary.
Turning Points
Turning Points — the moments that decided the game
A turning point is the specific turn where a replay's momentum shifts decisively. Surprise KOs, mispredicted switches, hidden item reveals, hazard layers that suddenly put half your team in OHKO range — these are the pivots that determine the outcome, and they are rarely where you think they are while playing live.
Pokékipe detects them by tracking how the Board Advantage curve moves turn after turn and flagging the inflection points. Each turning point is annotated directly on the replay timeline so you can rewatch and study the exact plays that cost you the game — or won it.
Board Advantage
Board Advantage — who is winning, right now
Board Advantage is Pokékipe's signed measure of relative game state at every turn of a replay. Positive means you are ahead, negative means the opponent is, and the absolute value tells you by how much. A curve rising sharply means a swing in your favour; a sudden drop means a turning point just happened.
The metric blends several signals — remaining HP, type matchups, hazard pressure, status conditions, item / Tera availability and switch positioning — into a single readable number. It is not a perfect crystal ball, but over thousands of replays it correlates strongly with wins and losses, which is exactly what you want from a real-time read on the game.
Archetype Detection
Archetype Detection — your team's identity in one label
Every competitive team belongs to a family: Hyper Offense, Bulky Offense, Balance, Semi-Stall or Stall on the pace spectrum, plus strategic variants like Rain, Sun, Sand, Snow, Trick Room, Tailwind, Volt-Turn, Hazard Stack and Perish Song. Knowing your archetype tells you which games you win easily and which you have to grind for.
Pokékipe classifies teams automatically using a multi-signal analysis of item distribution, ability roles, hazard coverage and move patterns. The resulting label drives everything downstream — the Advice Cards you see, the coherence checks that run, the warnings about items that work against your own plan. Every archetype is defined in detail in the glossary.
Team Coherence
Team Coherence — the difference between six strong picks and a team
Coherence is Pokékipe's structural review of the team you just built. The question it answers is not "are these six Pokémon good?" — the answer to that is almost always yes. The question is "do they pull in the same direction?". A Hyper Offense squad with three Leftovers wearers has great individuals but loses to itself; Coherence flags that.
Every coherence issue surfaces as an Advice Card with a concrete fix: swap this item, add this role, remove this redundant pivot. You choose whether to follow the advice — Pokékipe just makes sure you see the problem before you click Save Team.
Counter & Check Scores
Counter & Check Scores — from reliable answer to situational prayer
Pokékipe rates every matchup with a Counter Score distilled from real ladder battles — switch-in frequency, KO patterns, trade ratios. The score feeds three human-readable reliability tiers displayed on every Pokémon page:
- Reliable counter — beats the opponent 1v1 even at full HP, no hazards, no assumptions.
- Solid check — wins if the opponent is weakened, unboosted, or item-locked.
- Situational check — only works with specific setup (hazards up, status applied, item knocked off).
The tier labels matter more than the raw score: "Solid check" tells you exactly how confident to be when you switch in.
Playstyle Detection
Playstyle Detection — know your opponent before Turn 1
Scouting the same player across several replays reveals a style: aggressive openings, Protect-happy grinders, pivot-addicts, match-up fishers. Pokékipe profiles each player based on move usage distribution, switch frequency, Protect rate and win-condition patterns and renders the result as a readable profile you can consult before facing them in a tournament.
The profile is built from public replays only. Nothing private, nothing scraped from Showdown accounts — just the games they have already shared.
Meta Status Badges
Meta Status Badges — spotting the wave before it crashes
Every Pokémon card across Pokékipe carries a Meta Status badge that compresses its current standing into a one-glance verdict:
- Meta staple ⭐ — defining the format right now, high stable usage.
- Popular 🔥 — common enough to face every ladder session.
- Rising 📈 — usage growing sharply, tomorrow's staple.
- Declining 📉 — falling out of favour, often after a counter emerges.
- Niche 🔍 — specialised pick, effective in the right slot.
The badges let you read a page in under a second and know whether a Pokémon deserves a place on your team, a place on your radar, or a place in your nostalgia list.
ELO Tiers
ELO Tiers — whose meta are you actually looking at?
The same format plays very differently at 1200 ELO and at 1700 ELO. Pokékipe lets you choose the ladder skill bracket you want to read: All levels, Good (1500+), Very good (1630+) or Expert (1695+). Higher cutoffs surface a sharper, more optimised meta — which is what you want if you are preparing for a tournament or chasing peak ladder.
Every usage rate, teammate, counter and spread on Pokékipe respects the ELO cutoff you pick. Your view of the game is the view the best players see.
Advice Engine
Advice Engine — the layer that turns data into decisions
Underneath the Advice Cards you see across the product sits the Advice Engine — a library of expert-curated rules that scans your team, your replay, your matchup or your damage calc and surfaces the one-liner that actually matters. "Add a Ghost-resist." "Turn 7 cost you the game — sacrificing Zoroark would have won it." "Switching from Life Orb to Choice Band converts this 2HKO into an OHKO."
The engine is opt-in-friendly: every card is dismissible, nothing is forced on you, and if you enable the metrics toggle you help us tune which advice helps most — anonymously, no identifiers, no personal data.
Want the full taxonomy?
The glossary catalogues every term on this page plus the rest of the 190+ competitive terms Pokékipe uses — Pokémon roles, item categories, ability classes, suspect vocabulary, VGC regulations, tournament formats.