"As a > level 20 player, if I was to start the game again this is how I'd play it. (Useful for people looking to catch up or make a second account)."

#PokemonGO: If I was to start Pokemon again today I'd play the game significantly different to how I did during my first play through. This is the "boring" yet effective way of playing through the game, but if you are getting on board the hype late, and you're more of a serious optimization type player here are a few things I'd recommend. Despite everything I'm about to say, ultimately the most fun way of playing pokemon go is socially with friends, so bear that in mind.Ultimately your goal is to get to level 20 as fast as possible. This is for 2 main reasons. 1) Hatched Pokemons' stats stop scaling past player level 20. Many of the more competitively viable pokemon (namely Snorelax, Laprass and in some cases Dratini) are most consistently obtained through hatching. It is also worth noting that hatched Pokemon seem to on average have a better IV distribution than caught Pokemon (I'm not going to explain IVs in the main body of this post, however).2) Once you hit level 20 the experience required to level up your trainer starts to increase massively. At this point it becomes worthwhile to actually spend stardust powering up Pokemon, as you begin to accumulate stardust faster than wild Pokemon will scale with you.There are 2 limited use resources you will obtain via leveling up that I would consider most important, these being Lucky Eggs (Obtained at levels 9, 10, 15 and two at level 20) and Incubators (Obtained at levels 6, 15 and two at 20).As you are leveling up, make sure to hatch all the 2k eggs you find with your infinite incubator and save your limited use ones. DO NOT hatch your 10k eggs before level 20, as from personal experience the pokemon is generation at the time of egg hatch and not at the time of egg collection, and you will kick yourself if you have a 200 cp snorelax which you can never afford to power up.When playing the game, I advise stocking up on as many pokemon with cheap evolutions as possible, including Weedle, Caterpie, Ratatta and Pidgey. There will be some regional variation to this, as you may also have Poliwag or Eevees in abundance also. Catch any other basic pokemon you find, but note that they will most probably become redundant very quickly as you level up and will ultimately end up in the candy machine at some point.AVOID catching second stage pokemon, especially evolutions of the pokemon mentioned above, as each time you unlock a new pokemon in the pokedex you are awarded 500 exp, which IDEALLY you want to receive while using a Lucky Egg (Explained later) and catching them early is futile anyway, as in a few trainer levels the basic pokemon you find will be stronger than the evolution anyway.When you have around 60-70 evolutions worth of candy stocked up (Plus the required pokemon) use a Lucky Egg (which doubles experience gained for 30 minutes) doing this will net you 1k experience per evolution, and 2k experience should you obtain a pokemon you haven't had before (hence not catching them as mentioned above). Doing this with the lucky egg obtained at level 9 should net you another Lucky egg from reaching level 10. This process should be repeated a second time at which point you are probably at level 20. Another useful tactic would be to incubate as many 5k eggs as you can to a point just before they hatch before you use the Lucky Egg. Due to the large diversity of the 5K egg pool you will likely get a new pokemon and be rewarded with a handsome chunk of exp.Once you are level 20, hatch your 10K eggs and head about collecting the pokemon you actually wish to use for the late game gym battling meta. Congratulations you can have fun now.Additional information that may be useful: - If your area has a decent number of Eevee, you may wish to start saving and IV checking all the high end CP Eevee you find. If you find one with very high IVs it's probably worth using your one time vaporeon "rainer" trick on it early, as Eevee candy shouldn't be too hard to come by.-Use incense and lures as you please, incense is best used when moving, but may also be worthwhile if you are camping lure spots. I also advise not using lures on isolated pokestops, as you are better off using them where you can access multiple stops at once, doubling or tripling how many pokemon you catch an hour. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2aen4aW