Pokemon Go rookie shows off insane luck with rare wild catch

Philip Trahan
pokemon anime shiny gyarados header

Sometimes beginner’s luck can be all too real, as one rookie Pokemon Go trainer demonstrated with an extremely rare wild encounter.

One of the most exciting aspects of Pokemon Go is the rare encounters trainers can find in the wild. Whether they be a Legendary Galarian bird or a sought-after Shiny, finding rare Pokemon is thrilling.

However, lucky encounters are all up to chance at the end of the day, and one Pokemon Go rookie experienced quite a heap of beginner’s luck.

A trainer by the Reddit username ‘NotAWeeb92’ made a post on the Pokemon Go subreddit and asked the community if their latest encounter would be considered lucky.

The rookie included a screenshot of a Shiny Gyarados they encountered in the wild. While a Shiny encounter in and of itself is quite rare, finding a fully evolved Pokemon in the wild is very uncommon — especially a Gyarados.

Fans in the comments assured the trainer that it was indeed a rare encounter.

“Yes. Very lucky. It saved you a lot of candy grind,” said one trainer.

Another said, “Depends, were you at the Lake of Rage,” referencing the guaranteed Shiny Gyarados encounter in Pokemon Gold & Silver.

While trainers don’t have definitive odds or statistics of each encounter, one fan estimated the odds of this particular encounter.

“Gyarados spawn is at least 1/500 minimum (rough number as no one knows), then shiny is another 1/64. So yeah a rough estimate of the best odds would be 1/32,000 Pokémon spawns will be a Shiny Gyarados.”

Many in the comments claimed they’d been playing the mobile game for years and had never seen a wild Gyarados, let alone a Shiny one.

While there have been plenty of examples of beginner’s luck in Pokemon Go, it’s not something trainers should get used to.