---
type: analysis
title: "Pokémon TCG — Entity Normalization and Ghost-Team Resolution"
description: "Evidence-bound analysis of disappearing Kaggle team identities, leaderboard matching, deck-footprint tracing and the residual anomaly that must not be silently merged."
tags: [pokemon-tcg, entity-resolution, normalization, kaggle, etl, sampling, provenance, uncertainty]
timestamp: "2026-08-15T17:37:00-03:00"
---

# Pokémon TCG — Entity Normalization and Ghost-Team Resolution

## Status and provenance

`docs/normalization_heuristics.md` entered the project in commit `eb83bef` on
2026-08-13. It is an analytical blueprint supported by Antigravity brain
scratch probes, not a production normalizer or a completed database migration.
The current project source tree has no canonical `rl/` or `scripts/` module that
implements this L1/L2 resolver. The analysis therefore belongs in the
provenance and ETL layer, while original team strings and replay rows remain
untouched.

This page records both the reported result and a methodological discrepancy
between the prose document and the saved scratch implementation. That
discrepancy is itself part of the research history.

## The apparent disappearance problem

The replay corpus contains teams with substantial historical volume that stop
appearing before the competition merge boundary. A naïve interpretation is
mass banning, deletion or platform failure. The working hypothesis is more
specific: a strict limit of two active submissions per `TeamId` causes older
submissions to leave Elo matchmaking after team mergers, while the people and
strategies continue under a new team identity.

The historical rows therefore behave like “ghost” subgraphs: they are no
longer sampled in new episodes, but their old matches remain valid observations
of the earlier platform state. A disappearance is not permission to delete or
overwrite a historical identity.

## Hierarchical resolution model

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    G[Historical high-volume identity] --> L1[L1: leaderboard and member matching]
    L1 -->|match| M[Candidate current team identity]
    L1 -->|no match| L2[L2: temporal deck-footprint tracing]
    L2 -->|candidate heir| C[Probabilistic continuity candidate]
    L2 -->|no candidate| R[Residual anomaly]
    M --> H[Preserve original row and record mapping]
    C --> H
    R --> U[Unresolved, not merged]
```

### L1: external topology conservation

The source report crosses high-volume identities that stopped before the merge
deadline against a current leaderboard. It checks both:

- member usernames in `TeamMemberUserNames`, split into individual accounts;
- `TeamName`, for cases where an internal replay name differs from the public
  team label.

The report states that 142 of 144 high-volume ghosts had a direct leaderboard
correspondence. Those figures are source-reported results from the August 13
analysis; they were not recomputed during this documentation pass and should
not be promoted to an immutable identity fact.

### L2: temporal deck footprint

For identities without an L1 collision, the document proposes matching a
stable 60-card deck signature across a short `EpisodeId` distance. A matching
deck near the disappearance boundary is continuity evidence, not proof that
two team records are the same legal entity.

The source report states that one additional ghost was resolved by this route.
The residual example is `Dieter`, reported with 1,068 matches and a last
episode of `88337213`, without a leaderboard collision or lateral deck-footprint
match. It remains an unresolved anomaly in the report.

## Methodological discrepancy in the artifacts

The saved brain script
`~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/brain/<session-id>/scratch/hierarchical_unifier.py`
does not exactly implement the prose document:

| Aspect | Documentation prose | Saved scratch probe |
|---|---|---|
| L1 matching | username/team-name collision against the leaderboard | lowercased member/team set plus substring matching |
| L2 identity | exact 60-card deck signature within `< 2,000` episodes | same `primary_deck` ID in a `+60,000` episode window |
| Baseline deck | not stated in the prose rule | primary deck `1` is excluded from the L2 trace and treated as noise/anomaly |
| Output | one additional resolved ghost and a residual Dieter case | prints counts and candidates; no persisted mapping table |

The second brain probe, `timeline_chain_v2.py`, also uses a `+60,000`
episode window and excludes primary deck `1`. This means the two distances
must not be collapsed into one “implemented heuristic”. The narrow `<2,000`
claim is a design statement; the wider `+60,000` probe is an exploratory
method. A future ETL pass must choose and validate a distance with explicit
precision/recall evidence.

## Safe normalization record

Until a resolver is validated, a candidate mapping should retain at least:

```text
original_team_name
historical_team_id
original_episode_range
candidate_current_team_id
candidate_current_team_name
matching_rule        # L1 username, L1 team name, L2 deck footprint, or none
episode_distance
deck_fingerprint
confidence
unresolved_alternatives
source_snapshot
```

The canonical row remains attached to its original temporal identity. A
candidate heir is an additional relation or analysis record, not an in-place
rewrite. This preserves the distinction between a team merger, a submission
slot cutoff, a true extinction, a rename and an unobserved competitor.

## Relation to sampling, ETL and ratings

The analysis changes how coverage and Elo should be read:

- visible daily teams are a sample of the official population, not the full
  leaderboard;
- a missing later episode may indicate matchmaking deactivation rather than
  player disappearance;
- name normalization can reduce false “death” counts but cannot repair missing
  graph edges or archive-window bias;
- rating aggregates should carry source, archive day and identity-resolution
  provenance;
- no future-derived Elo, tournament result or synthetic deck should be written
  into an observed replay row.

These constraints connect the normalization work to
[[pokemon_tcg_sampling_timezone_identity]], [[pokemon_tcg_data_oracle_etl]] and
[[pokemon_tcg_schema_evolution]].

## Evidence boundary

What is established by the artifacts:

- the project documented a two-layer resolution hypothesis;
- Antigravity scratch probes exist for leaderboard matching, temporal tracing
  and orphan profiling;
- the report records 144 high-volume ghosts, 142 L1 matches, one L2 candidate
  and a residual Dieter anomaly;
- the live project does not contain a production resolver module or a persisted
  mapping table.

What remains unresolved:

- whether every L1 match is a true team continuation;
- which episode-distance threshold is defensible;
- whether the current leaderboard snapshot is complete for the historical
  window;
- whether the residual identity was banned, abandoned or simply unobserved;
- how these mappings should enter the target relational schema without
  collapsing original evidence.

## Source anchors

- `docs/normalization_heuristics.md`, introduced at `eb83bef`.
- Antigravity probes `hierarchical_unifier.py`, `timeline_chain_v2.py`,
  `orphan_profiler.py` and `pure_dna_map.py` in the recorded main brain.
- `data/kaggle_leaderboard.csv`, leaderboard snapshot used by the probes.
- [[pokemon_tcg_aug14_data_etl_database_audit]], current read-only integrity
  boundary.

## Cross-references

- [[pokemon_tcg_sampling_timezone_identity]] — coverage and archive inference.
- [[pokemon_tcg_data_oracle_etl]] — zero-trust ETL and source fields.
- [[pokemon_tcg_sqlite_schema_current]] — current team, agent and match tables.
- [[pokemon_tcg_schema_evolution]] — target identity and provenance relations.
- [[pokemon_tcg_cross_harness_provenance]] — brain and transcript ledger.
- [[pokemon_tcg_repository_timeline]] — introduction of the analysis in Git.