Hi, I’m Dexter T. and I’m here to tell you about Pokemon Video Game Championships (VGC), aka competitive Pokemon.
First let’s start with some basics: VGC battles are usually double battles. A double battle is a 2v2 battle where you have a team of six, but in VGC you can only take four Pokemon per battle.
Types of Pokemon
There are different types of pokemon (Fire, Water, Grass, etc…). It is CRUCIAL to know type advantages and disadvantages. 
Please look over the type chart before we continue. The 0x on this chart means the attacking type cannot hit the defending type. The 1x means it’s neutral damage. The ½x means the type is weak against it but still does damage. The 2x is super effective and does 1.5x the damage when used. There are also Pokemon with two types so they can double resist a type or be 4x weak to a type.
Status Conditions
Now onto status conditions. The status conditions are burn, freeze, paralysis, poison, bad poison, and sleep. You can only have one of these status conditions at a time. However, a Pokemon may have any number of additional status conditions at a time, which include confusion, infatuation, and curse.
Burn
Let’s start with burn. Once a Pokemon is inflicted with burn they take damage every turn which does 1/16 of their HP. It also halves the damage of all physical moves.
Freeze
Next is freeze. When your Pokemon is frozen, you cannot move. Freeze has no set time limit. Now you have a 20% chance of thawing out each turn but it is possible to be frozen forever.
Paralysis
Next is paralysis, which has a 25% chance to stop you from attacking each turn, and has no set time limit.
Poison and Bad poison
Now we have poison and bad poison. Poison does ⅛ of the Pokemon’s HP per turn. Bad poison does 1/16 of your max HP, but it adds on another 1/16 each turn only taking five turns to knock out your Pokemon.
Sleep
Next we have sleep. The first turn you will sleep no matter what. On the 1st or 4th turn you have a ⅛ chance to wake up on all other turns. After four turns, you wake up.
Confusion, Infatuation, and Curse
Confusion has a 50% chance of making your Pokemon hit themselves. Infatuation has a 50% chance of making the Pokemon not hit the opposing gender. Last but not least, curse. Curse does 25% of your opponents HP per turn. That’s all for now. I will try to make a second article on another date going over a little more complicated things.
