Pokemon GO day set in downtown Edmond

EDMOND — The Edmond Gaming Group will be hosting its monthly Community Day from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday in the Citizens Bank of Edmond’s Lobby with food, refreshments, more than $200 worth of raffle ticket prizes and three hours of increased frequency for game players to catch August’s featured Pokemon “Eevee.”

Once players are at the event, they can check in through The Silph Road and receive a raffle ticket for entry into the prize drawings. Food and refreshments will be provided by Old School Bagel Cafe and McAlister’s. Edmond Gaming Group Badges, which are membership cards that have special discounts and deals from participating businesses, also will be for sale during the event.

The monthly gatherings were started by the game’s founding company, Niantic, and are held in hundreds of cities all over the country. The Edmond Pokemon GO community group was started a little over a year ago by Lucas Officer, a Registered Pokemon Professor. Players also can connect on the Discord server, EdmondGo, which is a messaging app that links the entire Pokemon GO community.

“People use the Discord server daily to coordinate meet ups for raids around town. I would say we see anywhere from 100 to 400 messages a day in the chat,” Officer said. ”We are up to over 900 members right now, and we have seen over 200 people in attendance at our Community Days.”

Officer has been involved in Pokemon since its beginnings in the 1990s and has organized all of the additional public celebrations of the event in the Edmond community. Officer also runs and judges the local card game tournaments at Al's Sports Cards.

Sponsors of the event include Citizens Bank of Edmond, Al’s Sports Cards and Gaming, and Storm Brew Games.