Pokemon Go players stun community with shiny catch sprees that defy the odds

Lucas Simons
Shiny Charizard, Gyarados and Porygon Z

A Pokemon Go player surprised the community by showing something almost impossible to accomplish: catching three shiny Pokemon in less than 10 minutes. Other Pokemon Go players quickly responded in awe to this feat.

Shiny Pokemon are a rare find in every Pokemon game, and in Pokemon Go, they are one of the targets of many Pokemon collectors. The odds of encountering one out of a Community Day or Spotlight Hour are scarce. But imagine finding not two, but three in a row.

The apparition rate of a Shiny Pokemon outside an Event Day, is around 1 in 512 (0.2%). During a Spotlight Hour, the odds increase to 1 in 128 (0.8%). So, what are the odds of encountering three in a row in a normal day? Harder than winning the lottery, according to some statistics.

Pokemon Go players managed to catch many shiny Pokemon in a row

Reddit user ‘Independent_Earth873’ surprised the rest of the Pokemon Go community with this prowess by publishing his catch log in a post. According to it, he managed to catch three shiny Pokemon in less than 10 minutes.

Speculation about the odds of catching three shiny Pokemon in that short amount of time sparked immediately. Some users declared that “the chances are near 1 in 16 million,” which would be a percentage of 0.0000000625%.

So, even with the odds against him, Independent_Earth873 was able to get a shiny Tirtouga, a shiny Lopunny, and a shiny Patrat. Even then, one of the users was more shocked to see how he managed to catch a Feebas, one of the rarest Pokemon in Pokemon Go.

A few hours later, another Reddit user named KyleV4 also shared a lucky shiny streak with the community. This time, he was able to catch four shiny Pokemon in 22 minutes.

If the first shiny Pokemon catch spree was impressive, this one was incredible, as he managed to catch four fossil Pokemon in a row: a shiny Omanyte, a shiny Archen, a shiny Cranidos, and a shiny Shieldon.

We cannot even calculate the chances of that happening, but to our understanding, both of these feats are even harder to accomplish than winning some lotteries. As one of the users suggested: “Go buy a lotto ticket.”

If this was a game error or mere luck, we might never know. But we will keep you informed if the odds of shiny Pokemon appearing are suddenly changing.

If you are confident on accomplishing a similar feat, you can check the current Spotlight Hour schedule for Pokemon Go, or learn about all Team Rocket Grunts and their Lineups, as they can have shiny Pokemon too.