“Craziest” Pokemon Go Shiny haul causes players to doubt legitimacy

Joe Pring
pokemon go shiny galarian meowth

An impressive haul of Shnundos has prompted Pokemon Go players to question the incredibly lucky streak’s legitimacy.

Questioning their good fortune in a Reddit post, the user, who caught six Shinies, all with zero IVs on the same day, said “Why am I getting so many Shinies, is it for an event?”

Barring a lone Shiny Nidoran, all of the catches were regional variants, including Alolan Diglett and Meowth, two Galarian Zigzagoon and Galarian Meowth.

“I caught all of these Pokemon today which I thought is usually supposed to be pretty rare,” the thread’s creator continued, adding “Is there a special event for this happening right now?”

Reacting to the incredibly rare occurrence of capturing so many Shnundos in such a short period, one player did the math. “Not gonna lie, this is one of the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. 1/262k each for the regionals and 1/2 million for the Nidoran, all in one day.”

“That would actually be the rarest string of events in human history,” another exclaimed, requesting that the owner “Check the IVs again” after restarting the game.

The thread’s author did provide screenshots of their ‘mon’s IVs, confirming that each Shnundo did, in fact, have zero IVs across the board, though it did little to disquiet suspicions.

Shiny Zigzagoon from Pokemon Go
Shiny Galarian Zigzagoon was among the haul of Shnundos.

“Each of these encounters is a 1 in 262,000 chance, and the Nidoran is a 1 in 2,000,000 chance. All of it occurring in one day becomes such a statistical improbability that OP is either lying or spoofing/cheating with a scanner,” stated one skeptical reply.

“I’d say it’s a map or scanner. There’s no way this is legit,” another stressed, while others suggested the statistical anomaly was the result of a bug rather than cheating. “In fact, I think that’s the most likely scenario,” one user believed.

To disprove claims of cheating, the collection’s owner stated their intention to post a video for “anyone that still doesn’t believe it”. As of writing, a video hasn’t been posted.

Eager to catch some Shinies of your own? Pokemon Go’s next Community Day, featuring Tynamo, has plenty of bonuses to help you along the way.