This guide covers the rules around booster packs in Pokémon TCG Pocket, detailing how they’re structured and the probabilities of opening specific cards. We use information from the “Offering Rates” table, accessible from the booster pack tab within the app.
Pack Selection
- When you choose to open a single pack, you’re presented with multiple packs circling around. This is purely an aesthetic interface and has no impact on probabilities.
- Opening a pack backward has no incidence on probabilities.
- If you have enough resources, you can open 10 packs in one go. This also has no effect on the following probabilities.
- Unlike the physical TCG, each version of a booster pack for a set contains different cards from other versions, with the exception of a common pool of some cards, some cards and all cards.
Card Selection
A pack has a 1 in 2,000 chance (0.05%) to be a Rare pack containing only and cards.
The following applies to regular packs with 5 cards:
- A booster pack is broken down in terms of probabilities into the first three cards, the fourth card, and the fifth card. The first three cards in your pack are ALWAYS rares. The higher rarities are distributed among the 4th and 5th slots.
- Please note that the content of a pack can be shuffled: if you open a or even a card in the first position, it means that the fourth or fifth card was shuffled to the first spot.
- You can open duplicates of the same card in a booster pack.
- The language of the cards you open will be the app’s selected language at the time the pack is opened. This language won’t change for obtained cards even if you select another language afterward.
Card Rates in a booster pack by Rarity
- : 3.0
- : 1.5
- : 0.25 (1 in 4 chance)
- : 0.0833 (1 in ~12 chance)
- : 0.1286 (1 in ~7.77 chance)
- : 0.025 (1 in 40 chance)
- : 0.0111 (1 in ~90 chance)
- : 0.002 (1 in 500 chance)
These are the average number of cards of each type per booster pack. By deduction, note that cards (Pokémon ex) are harder to open than full-art cards of regular Pokémon.
How Hard Is It to Get a Specific Card?
More common cards
- Each card has a 2% chance per card slot to be opened in a pack. Since there are three card slots in a pack, the total chance to open a specific card is 6%. For those cards that also have a counterpart in this pack, the chance increases to 7.607%.
- Each card has a 4.285% chance to be opened. When we account for their full-art counterparts, the total chance to open one of these becomes 5.892%.
- Supporter cards are a bit more complex, as they’re the only cards that have a counterpart. In total, you have a 4.562% chance to open a specific trainer card, with just a 0.277% chance to get specifically their full-art versions.
Rarer cards
In Genetic Apex, every Pokémon ex with a print have a rarity print. The legendary birds, Gengar ex, Machamp ex, and Wigglytuff ex also have an extra rainbow-bordered print. The cover Pokémon for Genetic Apex (Charizard ex, Mewtwo ex, and Pikachu ex) have an immersive print as well as a crown rare print. This gives players more opportunities to open one of these, regardless of the rarity.
For specific cards, by adding all the rarities they’re available in, here are the opening chances:
- Pokémon ex with just a ☆☆ counterpart (e.g., Arcanine ex): 1.915%
- Pokémon ex with two ☆☆ counterparts: 2.165%
- Pokémon ex with just gold variants, if you open a pack where it’s not the main character: 1.981%
- Pokémon ex with both gold variants and immersive art, if you open a pack where it’s the main character: 3.091%
By comparison, a card has a total 1.785% chance to be opened (3.392% if it has a counterpart).
This means that, regardless of the rarity, it’s harder to open a specific card with no counterpart (such as Gardevoir) than any Pokémon ex. This is due to the small number of Pokémon ex per pack (5) compared with the rather large pool of 14 cards per pack.
Similarly, there are 8 different cards per booster and only 1 immersive , meaning that the chance to get a specific card is 0.003125 (1 in 320 chance) compared with the immersive at 0.0111 (1 in ~90 chance).
It’s interesting to compare these probabilities to how much a card costs in Pack Points. Moving on, these rates could actually be used as the baseline for the forthcoming trading system of Pokémon TCG Pocket. Do not discard your cards: they might become more precious than your cards.
4 Responses
Great post, very interesting!
Could you add the probabilities that are missing? Related the 1 diamond and 2 diamond pokemon (pack specific cards like ralts and kirlia with no full art, pack specific cards like bulbasaur and golbat with full art, pack specific cards like trainers with 2 star full art, no pack specific cards like petilil, lilligant) and a specific 1 star card.
Thank you!
You’re absolutely right. Although some things need to be precise, you technically have the same chance of opening a shared pool ◊ or ◊◊ card regardless of the booster pack. Are you looking for standardized data that takes into account the addition of each different type of pack? I’ll update the article soon with the data you mentioned.
I know you said sometimes a star or something can be shuffled to the first position. Is there a way to shuffle the cards in a pack manually? Ideally I want to open packs from the back and not have the best cards as the first 2. Thx
None that I know of.