This is the first in a series of posts post about my experience playing Pokémon GO over the past week.

Pokéstops per minute

If you're in New York City, two are throughout Central Park (but watch for stampedes) and Times Square.

If you happen to live in Boston, you're very lucky: The highly detailed custom Google Map Gotta Catch 'Em All categorizes ~500 confirmed catches by rarity. As of this writing, it has almost 1M views. Turn on "Lure Stacking Locations" to see the best Pokéstops. Other cities have maps, but they're nowhere near as good or complete.

In Cincinnati, the gold mine is Washington Park in OTR.

So many Pokéstops!

One trip around the park takes 5–10 minutes to hit 14 Pokéstops yielding 42–84 items (63 on average) [1]. You can hit all but the very center stop by walking the sidewalk around the outside. This is useful because you can still make a very effective run even when the park is closed after 11 p.m.

Aren't you glad we have all those churches and historic buildings now?

Since stops respawn after 5 minutes, by the time you finish, you can start again. Repeat for as much time as you have, or until your bag is full.

Tip: Check your bag for free space before you start. Discard some junk (old revives anyone?) if you need to make room for the new items, or just expend Poké Balls catching whatever pops up while you walk. Even if you have no intention of battling, there are other several of other uses for low-level Pokémon (future post).

Primetime

It's possible to get even more though — while I can't find this confirmed anywhere, anecdotally, it seems that stops with a lure attached return a few more items than usual. So when does that happen?

All the lures

Washington Park surges around lunchtime and right after work on weekdays, and for a lot of the afternoon on weekends. Note: If it's raining, the park probably isn't worth your time since most people leave.

Follow on Reddit

There are a couple popular subreddits for the game.

The main is r/PokemonGO with 635k subscribers. There is a lot of gold here with new material popping up daily. The best way to see it at a glance is to sort by top, past 24 hours. Another is r/TheSilphRoad with 64k.

We also have a Cincy-specific subreddit at r/cinci_pokemon_go with 590 subscribers. Two of the best threads so far are:

I hope you found this post helpful. Stay tuned for more in this series soon.

Disclaimer: I'm probably not the first person to think of these ideas: the basics are usually discussed first on Reddit. I've cited specific primary sources where they are available. My goal is to expound upon existing advice with my own experiences.

  1. Here's how I arrived at these numbers. Each Pokéstop yields 3–6 items. So let's just figure the min, max, and average of that range.

    average([3, 4, 5, 6])

    Since the range is symmetric, mean == midrange, so we can simplify the equation.

    ⇒ average([min(range), max(range)])
⇒ average([3, 6])
= 9 / 2
= 4.5 items per stop

    minimum = 14 stops * 3.0 items per stop = 42 items
average = 14       * 4.5                = 63      
maximum = 14       * 6.0                = 84
    ↩︎