Ah jeez my first steemit post is going to be about Pokemon GO. Hello everyone!

Pokemon Go really doesn't explain much of anything on how the game works. As a result there has been a lot of misinformation. This will be a "serious" guide explaining how best to min-max your time in the game. I might gloss over basic information. Feel free to google for the tons of "guides" already out there. my goal here is to cover the things you will not find in those other guides.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-go is a good place to start for someone completely new.

Experience is King

If you want to be the very best like no one ever was, it's all about raising your character's level.

All the Pokemon you catch have a CP level. I don't actually know what CP stands for. Think of it as combat level. The higher the CP level the more HP your Pokemon has. Your characters level determines how strong the Pokemon you can catch are. At level one you might find pokemon with a CP of 15. By comparison my character's current level is 21. and my highest pokemon is a Snorlax with a CP of 1958.

The majority of the XP you will get comes from catching new Pokemon and evolving. Catching a new Pokemon grants 500XP and evolving (even one you already have) gives you 500 XP as well.

Pokestops
If you are lucky somewhere in your area may have multiple poke stops all near each other. Places like that where you can hit pokestops often are where you want to play most of this game. So you don't keep running out of pokeballs.

Catching Pokemon
I believe there are three things that you can do to increase your odds of catching a pokemon. Ignoring item based stuff like razz berries and different ball types.

throwing when the circle is as small as possible.
throwing a curve ball by spinning your finger.
having your poke ball land in the center of the grey circle. I'm not sure if this one is correct.

Buy Lucky Eggs
If you are going to spend money in the game this is the item you want. They double your XP for 30min. While you could just use lucky eggs whenever you play; what I normally do is wait until I find a Pokemon I don't have. I pop a lucky egg and get an easy 1000XP. I also save all my candy (what you use to evolve and power up Pokemon) until I have used a lucky egg. Every evolution then grants 1000XP as well instead of 500.

Don't buy Incense
Incense, another item you can buy gives you a random Pokemon every 5 minutes. It will almost always be a weedle or some other common Pokemon. Lures are a much better choice. But if you go to the right poke stops in your area you might find other people are placing lures for you to benefit from.

Powering Up
Honestly, I don't think you should bother powering up anything until you are level 18. Maybe that is even too low. As you level up you will get way stronger Pokemon that will be way higher than anything you could of powered up. You shouldn't power up anything until it is fully evolved as well. Your Pokemon's attacks change when you evolve and you could end up with really crummy attacks.

Tracking
When I say tracking I'm referring to finding a Pokemon that shows being near you. They have a number of footprints, the less prints the closer they are. The important thing to know is that when you are walking in the right direction a green line will flash at the bottom right of your screen. Sorry I couldn't find a photo to show what I'm talking about. Maybe I'll upload my own photo of it when I get a chance.

Finding different Pokemon
Certain areas will have different Pokemon that commonly spawn there. I played most the game so far at one specific park and it is always full of Drowsy's. I have evolved like 6 of them. It may be worth it to travel around a bit to catch different Pokemon.

Gyms and cashing out Gym's are why Pokemon CP levels matter. Once you are level 5 you can pick a team and can take gyms or reinforce ones your team already has. Attacking an enemy gym lowers it's level. Once it's down to zero anyone can drop a Pokemon on it. Reinforcing works the same way. You are still attacking the gym, but instead the level of the gym is raised. The Gym's level determines how many Pokemon can be placed there to defend it. Normally you will have to raise the gym's level before you can place your own Pokemon there.

You can cash out once every 20 hours via the shop. It's the green circle at the top right corner. You get 10 coins for every gym you hold with a max of 10 gyms you can hold at once.

Fighting
Right now, you can only fight Pokemon at gyms. Taps do normal attacks, holding down does your special, swipes dodge. To know when to dodge watch for a white flash that will appear around the edges of your screen. Don't gauge when to dodge by the Pokemon's attack animation watch for the white flash! Combat generally has the same pattern of attack attack, dodge. Don't get hit by special attacks.

Pokemon attacks do different amounts of damage and are a specific type. Try to use Pokemon that have attacks your opponent will be weak against. Click here for attack types. The better regular attacks do between 10-15 damage. Something you will also notice is some attacks have shorter animations that let you attack faster. Water gun is a great example. You can attack 3 times between dodging. Although it sometimes doesn't register with how fast this attack is.

The Dark Side of Pokemon Go
Having multiple phones turns you into a Pokemon God. You can go around and catch all the same Pokemon and level all your accounts at the same pace it would take you to level one account. The gyms limit you to one Pokemon per account. Having multiple phones would bypass this completely. You could take a gym and throw on as many Pokemon as phones you have up to 10, the max gym level. I'm not encouraging anyone to really do this, as it is not how the game was intended and really defeats having to get organized with other people of the same team. That said, it's a lot easier to have 10 phones then to get 10 people of the same team to meet up at a gym at the same time. I saw someone doing this, and it really over powered. Nintendo could fix this by allowing people to place multiple Pokemon at a single gym.

I hope you learned something.