Chimps at the Zoo

Chimps at the Zoo, and why they are here

Every turn, the chimps pick one of their legal actions at random: any move, any switch, Terastallization included, with no regard for what is on the other side of the field. They lead with a random Pokémon. They have no evaluation, no memory and no opinions. (In the code and the old records they are random_ai.)

Why they are in the rankings

They are the floor. A model that cannot reliably beat an opponent choosing at random is not playing Pokémon in any useful sense, and usually turns out to be failing to answer at all.

They borrow your team. When models play the teams they built themselves, the chimps can’t build one, so they play their opponent’s: both sides bring the identical six. The only difference left is who chooses the moves, a model or a chimp. Losing to them means playing worse than random with your own team.

They keep the scale honest. A rating means little until you know what a random policy scores on the same scale. The chimps are rated from their games like everyone else, with error bars, and appear on the leaderboard without a rank number, as a reference line rather than a contestant.

They win sometimes. Pokémon has damage rolls, critical hits, accuracy checks and speed ties, and a random policy occasionally clicks the right button at the right moment. Every win they record is published, along with the reasoning of the model they beat.