On a sleepy Tuesday night, beneath an arts and crafts store in the heart of Sydney, there are battles raging. Long white tables stretch out under bright lights to the back of the room. Chairs on each side are occupied by hoodies, smart work shirts and pop culture tees as players – mostly men – arch forward in deep focus.

Tonight is a weekly event for trading card games, with two different games to do battle in: a tournament for a fantasy game, known as Flesh and Blood, takes up most of the space. But it’s the other card game I’ve come to watch, Pokémon.

On one side of the table, Chloe Appleby, a 30-year-old museum games curator, shuffles a deck of cards in lilac protector sleeves. I’m her guest for the evening, invited into a world I have often heard about but have little experience of. On the other side her colleague, Dai (who requested only his first name be used), does the same – his cards protected by red sleeves. They both draw a hand of seven and, with a dice roll, Appleby wins the crucial first turn.

What unfolds over the next half hour is an elegant dance, each step dictated by chance and calculated with precise math. A misstep or miscalculation and your opponent will take the upper hand.

It’s well established that Pokémon cards boomed during the pandemic, but they have been big business since their first release in the 1990s. A new wave of fandom and attention, brought about by social media stars brandishing rare finds and an enduring, nostalgic love of Pokémon, has seen their popularity peak once again. In recent months, the demand for new cards has been so high that it’s been difficult to find them at many local game stores and retailers.

“Pokémon is definitely one of our most popular games and it has been even more popular in recent years as we’re seeing an increase in public awareness of the game,” says Dayna Mortimore, marketing manager at Melbourne’s Ozzie Collectables.

Appleby says there has been an insane demand for cards, coupled with the Pokémon Company producing limited stock of new sets. That’s seen cards that usually go for $5 sell for upwards of $20. The real rarities for players top out at more than US$1,500, double their typical prices, while collector cards reach mind-boggling prices, selling for millions of dollars.

But the fervour also appears to have led to an increase in criminal activity targeting games stores. Since September last year, a spate of brazen robberies has rocked Victoria. In early February alone, five stores across Melbourne’s north-west were hit in six days. “It’s kind of like being on a life raft and seeing all the sharks swimming around you,” says Jason Zhe, owner of a store in Melbourne’s north-west that was allegedly burgled.

Game store owners and managers allege there were at least 15 break-ins over the period, with estimates that $500,000 worth of stock had been stolen. But while they say the break-ins left them anxious and fearful, several told Guardian Australia the impact of the alleged thefts go beyond missing stock. They disrupt the spaces the stores provide, particularly for young men, to catch up and hang out with friends.

“Every card shop, if it has somewhere that people go sit down and play games in the store, that’s forming communities,” said Lindsey Heming, owner of The Games Cube in Parramatta, which runs tournaments and provides space for casual players of trading card behemoth Magic: The Gathering.

“It’s like a men’s shed. People catch up, they see their friends, they have a chat. It’s like their mental health weekly get-together.”

As we get into the intricacies of the battle between Appleby and Dai, William Rue, a 22-year-old music teacher from Sydney’s inner west, joins us. Two years ago, a friend suggested he come to a casual trading card evening. He got hooked. “I ended up telling my job that I couldn’t take Tuesday nights anymore, just so I could keep coming,” he says.

Rue wasn’t a huge fan of Pokémon games growing up. He liked them but never got super into them. It’s not necessarily the Pokémon, or the card battles, that keep him coming back. “Honestly, I come more for the community and the friends than actually playing. Like, I kind of suck,” he laughs.

The group expands as Appleby and Dai get deeper in their match. At the head of the table, Shane and Paul post up in the plastic chairs. The pair met at school, some 20 years ago, and became fast friends because of, well, Pokémon cards.

Appleby’s passion started early. She has always had a fascination with Pokémon. Her favourite is Togepi, a bulbous and cuddly cherub, shaped like a star emerging from an egg. Picking up the card game was a natural evolution of that fandom, but the first time she walked into a games store to play, she felt nervous.

The spaces are typically occupied by young men and not always the most welcoming to outsiders. On the night I watch Appleby and Dai battle it out, she’s one of only three women in a room of about 30.

Her first experience eased those nerves – she hit it off with some regulars and she’s been going to Pokémon nights every Tuesday ever since. “I’ve met lifelong friends from Pokémon” she says. “All of these guys were at my wedding.”

But she says a lot of work can be done to make women and marginalised genders feel more welcome. Community groups, such as Girl Power TCG, have appeared in recent years, aiming to make minority genders feel safe and comfortable both in casual settings, like the one we’re in, and at regional and world tournaments.

Those events are a whole other thing, I’m told. Competitive play requires an understanding of the metagame or “meta” – the types of cards and decks that are currently being used by the world’s best players. As the first battle finishes up in defeat for Appleby, we’re in deep discussion about a Pokémon named Budew, a newly added card that has thrown the meta into disarray.

There’s no need to interrogate the finer points of the Budew-driven meltdowns here, dear reader. Much of the terminology is impenetrable. But what the discussions reveal are the importance of community and how it works together. If throwing cards on a table feels like an individual pursuit, this room proves that feeling is wrong. The best players strategise on how to set up a deck and combat shifts in the metagame. That is useful come tournament time – just ask Natalie Millar.

Millar, 24, is a Brisbane-based public servant and Pokémon card guru. At the recent European Championships, she took out the silver medal, going down 2-1 in the final. She started playing when she was 13 years old and the foes she battled back then have become her friends and confidants. Ahead of big tournaments, they get together to practise and revise.

Millar credits her wins to this. “The group I prepare with at the moment is very crucial to any success I’ve had,” she says. “All my recent tournament results are never just mine.”

As Appleby plays her turn during a second battle against Dai, she shows her cards to Rue, Shane and Paul. They confer about optimal strategies and “lines” – which Pokémon to play next, which support cards are going to be useful, the optimal path to a win. Eventually, Appleby claims victory.

If the perception is that local game stores are the haunts of hoodie-wearing punks or shy quote-unquote nerds – OK, yes, there’s definitely some of that in the room where Appleby and Dai battle it out. But those descriptors belie the foundational reality of Australia’s local game stores: These are spaces where people feel safe, where they can indulge in their passion uninhibited.

Victoria police arrested four men in conjunction with the burglaries in mid-February and the case against them is ongoing. Even as the value of Pokémon cards remains high and the spectre of theft lives on, these spaces continue to fill.

“The break-ins have been a unique challenge to our industry and by no means something to take lightly,” Mortimore says. “We’re very lucky, in that none of us have let fear keep us down, and our player [and] local community seem to share that mindset.”