Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Camel]

I watched The Life of Oharu last night. That was cheery. Might as well have been a musical.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I watched The Life of Oharu last night. That was cheery. Might as well have been a musical.

Have you seen Sansho the Bailiff? Mizoguchi is quite the misery guts.

[Camel]

Not yet but I have it here waiting to be watched. I do like a depressing film, I must admit.

[JLM]

Teesports Tings!

What an excellent tournament that was. Tremendous stuff. Lovely to see 'Choo. I tried to watch your matches where possible but only saw the whole of one set. I still maintain that you outplayed Cheechwizard's Rose but were undone by Yang's combos doing no damage. It was also heartwarming to see so many scenes represented, some complete with their team t-shirts and extremely vocal supporters. Lots of talented players, lots of very nice folks who I hadn't seen for ages and some gents I was meeting for the first time. Nice venue and set up, approachable tournament organisers who managed to not be dicks whilst simultaneously making sure the thing ran like clockwork.

The Will Ho/Metallic Mike money match was a complete beasting from Mike. That was a bit of a sour note as I was there to root for Will, and also because it's not nice to see someone get completely murdered over a long set. He got outplayed, he didn't use/didn't get a chance to use the match-up specific tech he had and you could tell afterwards how mad he was at himself. On the plus side, he's been winning quite a lot of cash playing online poker recently, so losing the money wasn't as big an issue as it could have been.

By contrast, the unsanctioned money match between OverMostHeads and White Daigo was incredible. Ghost set it up and they only chucked in a tenner each, but that money, the pride and the fact that it turned into a bit of a Yorkshire vs Teeside battle added lots of lovely extra hype. ProFluke, HadoShrooms and some other gobby audience members added to the occasion for the most part too. It happened during Marvel Finals and there were more people huddled around the TV watching this match than were sat in the rows and rows of seats in front of the projector. I'd rather not spoil the results or go into specific highlights as Ghost filmed the whole set and I'll hopefully have a link to it soon. Suffice to say it went very long and delivered everything I hoped it would and more. Best set I've seen in person by a huge margin. Choo was one of the folks who ditched Marvel finals to watch it and I don't think it disappointed.

Streetfighter finals were loads of fun, but it was sad to see White Daigo make some uncharacteristic errors and let the pressure get to him a bit at the end. BigFool and Miligano were worthy grand finalists, but it'd have been nice to see Whaigo get the chance to defend his title in grand finals. At one point against Bigfool he did fireball FADC to bait a neutral jump, then walked up and got hit by neutral jump fierce to lose the round. Why/how he didn't EX DP and take the win (when that was surely the point of the fireball/FADC in the first place) is beyond me. He is frighteningly good for his age and experience but for now it's nerves and loss of composure that occasionally hurt him. He'll get better at dealing with that in time though, at which point he will be a threat against anybody. Still, very impressive from the VS Scotland chaps to come down and take the top two spots.

My matches:

JLM (Chun) 2-0 Clangers (T. Hawk)

I was horrified when I got this as my first round draw. I know it's a winning match up for Chun and I have valuable experience against Sith's Hawk, but Clangers is the king of the pop off. If I had lost this set the entire building and most of Middlesbrough would have known about it in seconds. That's without even getting into the trash talk and Facebook mockery I'd have to endure over the months that followed. It's all done in the best possible spirit of course, Clangers is lovely really, but I did not want to give the man any ammunition. I had already earned the nicknames "3rd Place" and "Chun Free" because his team finished ahead of us at Rival scenes, so adding a loss here would have been disastrous.

Thankfully the aforementioned experience against Sith and my knowledge of Clangers' playstyle from playing him and watching him play previously all counted here and I was able to take it with only one round lost. I played patiently in the neutral game as I did against Sith, and then used what I previously knew about Clangers to get out when he knocked me down. The main observation I had about Clangers' game is that he'll only wait and try to bait a reversal once after a knockdown before assuming you've been trained and he can go in again. When he lost at the previous SFO tournament he ate a ridiculous number of wake up cannon spikes from Cammy because he didn't believe Ant would keep doing it.

With this in mind, I decided I'd do EX SBK on wake up until he convinced me to stop. I'd do EX SBK (hit), then on the next knockdown he'd bait it and sweep me. On getting up from the sweep I'd do it again and he'd get hit. I'd rather take the punishes than be caught in the splash mix up blender, so until he proved that he was going to bait my reversal multiple times or punish it harder I decided to keep going to the dumb option. The bigger my life lead got, the more likely EX SBK was to hit as his need to get some damage became more urgent. EX SBK is particularly good against Hawk just for the distance it knocks him away, so every time it hits I'll get some extra damage on top as he tries to get back in.

Despite the scoreline and match up being relatively comfortable though, it was a huge relief to win this and my hands were shaking like mad when it was over.

JLM (Chun, Dudley) 2-1 Shek (Adon)

Shek's Adon is really good. He had an Adon pixel art necklace thing on, so I probably should have guessed. I went with Chun for this because she can compete in the mid range and because I played Imp's Adon in tournament not so long ago. Aside from that I don't have a lot of experience against him because he's oddly absent from most UK tournaments despite being one of the best characters in the game. The Xbox live Adon army doesn't count either, as only a handful of them know how to play him and many still do the random wall dive into throw/uppercut mix up as their main strategy.

Unfortunately for me, Shek plays Adon quite differently from Imp, so what worked at Heggwest did not work at all here. My Chun got soundly thrashed here, so I went to the strategy I promised myself I'd use and headed to character select.

I had been playing Dudley in casuals all day to try and get as warm as possible with him, so thought this might be the time to give him his high stakes tournament debut. The fact that this paid off and I went on to take the next two games was one of the biggest plus points I took from this tournament. Felt so, so good to make this comeback after being dominated in round one, especially as I've put in more training mode and research time with Dudley than any other character. I still ended up dropping some stuff through nerves, particularly in the third game as we were both on edge at that point, but generally I was playing correctly and it felt like Dudley in tournament might just be viable for me. The biggest drop wasn't even a link or combo, I was so flustered that I got a crumple and then did EX uppercut when I wanted raw ultra. That's nothing to do with the character and the same thing would have happened with Chun when I'm that flustered.

My approach to the match was to try and get a read on his standing roundhouse timing and then jump it like a fireball. It's the same thing Gief has to do against Adon and it's just as effective here. I also made sure to walk in and out of jaguar kick range and stick out a standing fierce so that I could at least trade with them. The trade is in Dudley's favour, so it made him think twice about doing it when he'd been throwing them out for free against Chun.

A very pleasing win indeed, which only got sweeter when I was told a couple of hours later that Shek got 3rd place at Teesports last year.

JLM (Dudley) 0-2 Rose player whose name I keep forgetting (Rose)

I made a critical error here. I was feeling too good about my Dudley following the previous set and decided to open with him for this match. This was a stupid thing to do as this is a horror match for Dudders and I should have known that a Rose player in winners' round 3 would be more than solid enough to take it. As well as her excellent pokes, her biggest annoyance is that she can do strings ending in spiral that aren't true block strings but do end in a focus breaking move. Her crouching fierce is excellent against Dudley too, beating his jumping roundhouse much more consistently than a lot of anti-airs because it's fast and can be done late. She is perfectly equipped to beat Dudley.

This guy was really good too, which makes me all the sadder that I cannot remember his name. Incredibly clean play, great spacing, on point with his anti-airs and very effective use of ultra 2. I'd have stood a better chance with Chun though. My problem was that I got frustrated after the first game and hit rematch without thinking, so the second game was a total waste. This was the biggest disappointment of the tournament for me. If I'd have had someone sat next to me to tell me to take a second and consider a counter pick it could have gone very differently.

Losers Bracket

JLM (Chun) 2-1 Kaworu (M. Bison)

Was cool to play Kaworu in tournament again. I used to play him at almost every Manchester ranbat event a few years ago and never even came close to beating him. It was a pleasing measure of how much I've improved that I was able to get the win here. Chun/Bison is a winning match for Chun, but it was one I found horribly difficult until not so long ago. It took a lot of research and practise to overcome it, and it's one where I rely heavily on match up knowledge and theory fighter because I've had to do a lot of research on how and why Chun should win.

There's a certain spacing where if he blocks my standing MP, I can follow up with a sweep and it will beat the LK scissors during its start up. If he headstomps or does devil reverse I can air grab it. I can ultra 1 to punish EX psycho crusher, I can ultra 1 Devil reverse if he runs away with it. Any scissors aside from LK are punishable. Slide is punishable at most ranges. I can't anti-air sweep his neutral jump roundhouse because I'll get stuffed, I need to watch for him losing his charge before throwing a fireball. I can do a meaty jump in with OS roundhouse hazanshu to chase teleports. I have all these little bits of info in mind when I fight him and it makes me feel confident that I can win even against strong players.

All of that said, Kaworu is very good and I wasn't surprised that he took a game. I knew what I'd done wrong, though, so stuck with Chun and was able to close it out.

JLM (Chun) 2-1 vs VS Galva Muirtron (Bison/Makoto)

This match. Fucking hell, this match. "Stressful" doesn't quite cover it. It doesn't get any closer than this, and having some SFO players, some VS Scotland players and Choo watching only added to the occasion. This match is the prime example of why I want SFO players to get better at supporting and coaching each other at tournaments. We traveled out in force for this event, purple t-shirts everywhere, and yet for all but one of my matches I had no coaching. Every MBA, Teeside, VS Scotland and Electronic Dojo player had a coach with them and I think it makes a world of difference. I don't need much either. I don't want someone backseat SF-ing for my whole match, shouting abuse at the other player or even giving me a pep talk between games. Just a few quick notes on my opponent before the match and maybe one or two sentences in between rounds/games if I'm doing something wrong and haven't noticed it.

For this one, Ty from SFO was in my corner and it made a world of difference. Before the set started he simply told me that Muirtron plays an especially lame Bison and that I'd need to match him for dryness. It's such a simple thing, but it immediately means I'm going into the match with the right head on and I know that protecting a life lead and making him do the work should be my main goal. I was nervous in the first game and made some mistakes, and again having Ty there just to calm me down, remind me of what I needed to do and offer a bit of encouragement kept me on track. Second game I remembered the standing strong/sweep the scissor kick thing I mentioned earlier and it seemed to break Muirtron mentally when he got hit with it two or three times in a round.

There was a nice little bit of theory fighter progression in this match too. At the beginning of the set I was sweeping his neutral jumps over fireballs. He then remembered that neutral jump roundhouse beats that, and so started neutral jumping more often in an attempt to bait me. This worked a couple of times and I had to mentally give myself a slap and remember to stop doing it. I kept this filed away, and was able to close out a round by doing a fireball to bait the neutral jump, walking in as if to sweep it and then doing a max range standing MK to anti-air him at the top of his jump instead. It got a "niiiiiiice" from one of the onlookers, which is pretty much the best possible thing you can hear when you're playing in tournament matches with an audience.

A couple of thoroughly enjoyable games aagains this Bison. His methodical and thoughtful approach to the fight meant that I could play at the same pace and it made every hit and correct read all the more satisfying.

Then he switched to Makoto. I had an inkling he might do this as I thought I'd played a Muirtron using Makoto on XBL in the past. Although I'd have infinitely preferred to be playing Dudley here, I still feel like the vs. Makoto match is one of my best in terms of knowledge and experience of what a Mak is likely to do in a given situation. I credit this win largely to Donut, is what I'm saying. My personal highlight of the match was a bit where I did neutral jump roundhouse on his wake up because I know that beats her reversals. He blocked it, then I neutral jumped again to bait his karakusa attempt and then hit him on the way down for the dizzy. Only someone with plenty of Mak experience will be thinking about baiting that Karakusa for two turns in a row, and it's my games against Donut that have taught me to do it. A dizzy with Chun doesn't happen that often, and it generally means that you have made a succession of good reads, so it felt very good.

Round 3 of game 3 is largely a blur, but my main take away is that it went down to no life each, next hit wins. I knocked him down in the corner, then did the df + roundhouse flip kick. Usually a bad option, but my reasoning was that it would cause Ultra/EX Oroshi/EX Karakusa/Fukiage/EX Hayate to whiff, and if he blocked it I could then do jump back roundhouse for either the instant overhead or to air to air his next move. I wouldn't have done the same thing in mid screen, but in the corner I felt like it was the winning play. Although it was a mad scramble at the end, that option genuinely did make the most sense to me and I felt like it was the best thing I could have done. It ended up working. He jumped and went for Mak's mighty jump fierce, but at that sort of point blank situation Chun's jump roundhouse is too fast and too active for almost any button, so it beat it clean. I have never felt quite so relieved after a tournament match, and I ended up ignoring his handshake and going for a back slappy hug instead. Amazing set. Loved it.

JLM (Chun Li, Dudley) 0-2 Shinji (Fucking Fei Bastard Long)

Agh, Shinji. He was leagues ahead of me back at the Manchester ranbats, and when I played him at Rival Scenes in casuals he beat me 20-0 or something similarly ridiculous. I think I conceded this before I sat down to play, which is another tournament weakness I need to work on. I also made the mistake of picking Chun for the first game. There is no point playing Chun in this match. Press a button, eat rekkas, never leave the corner again. It is fucking brutal. Complete whitewash of a first game.

I switched to Dudley and was actually doing much much better, but again I was already, ahem, mentally guardbroken, so was just waiting for a chance to throw it away. What consolidated the mindfuckery was when I did lk duck to close distance in the midscreen and he did tenshin on reaction to grab me out of it. I have never seen that done before or even imagined the possibility of it. Shinji does play Dudley as well though, so I should have expected match up specific tech. Still, when he did that I felt like unplugging the stick immediately. Sadly, in the last round of the set, I was actually winning and playing quite well, only to make an insane HARD READ and throw the whole thing away for no reason. Again, I had accepted defeat before we started playing and never got that out of my head even when the match was looking a lot less bleak with Dudders. Oh well, not long til the Fei rekka nerf, and if I play him again before that I'll stick with Dudley and make a more respectable attempt at it.

4 and 2 is a very respectable showing given the quality of players in attendance.Myself and Benners went further than any of the other Leeds players, and much bigger names than us went out before we did, most notably OverMostHeads.

I'd gone 2 and 2 at my last couple of majors, and at both of those one of the wins was against a weaker player. Every one of my opponents was a good player here, and the two I lost to are both excellent. I'm annoyed that I didn't really play against Shinji and that I handicapped myself against the Rose player, but both were more than capable of beating me at my best, so I'm not beating myself up about it too badly.

Back at Ghost's house on Saturday night (and a fair bit of Saturday morning) we ended up playing Radiant Silvergun, Megaman 10 and then some AE ranked matches. A fine way to spend an evening.

Oh, and Ty from SFO went and bought an XBone, so there will be Killer Instinct at the next SFO. I will pencil some thinkings when I have actioned some playings.

I'm seriously tempted to go to Hypespotting in March now. If I can convince some folks to road trip it to take the edge off the journey time and travel expenses then I'd be well up for it.

[imp]

Sweet mother! Praise the sun!

[imp]

Excellent read, sounds like a goddamn excellent event. It might be a shame about the way you went out Jellum, but that is absolutely a respectable showing, and I am full of vicarious pride.

Cannot wait for that Whaigovermostheadsmoneymatch footage.

[Camel]

*shriek*

Amazing write-up, JLM.

[Nate Dogg III]

Jason

[sith]

Great write-up Jayson!

Loved that you beat Clangers 2-0

When/where is Hypespotting?

[JLM]

Tis in March up in the Scotlands:

http://www.hypespotting.co.uk/?page_id=17

[Camel]

We should do a Scotch Hegg Fest.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Robbie Burns Kick

Heggis

Celtic Throws

[Camel]

Haggpipes

From Long

Know

[joeplus]

Bloch Ness

Glasgo Hibiki

Graberdeen

[Camel]

One Touch KIlt

[joeplus]

Auld Yang Syne. Which they sing at Balrogmanay.

[JLM]

Hibernian Blizzard.

LuckyD, he of the best Dhalsim mix ups in the business, has started a youtube series showcasing some of said trickery. Here is part 1:

I love the meaty drill set up in particular as everyone who has ever fought a decent Dhalsim would expect him to air teleport there. The commentator even calls the teleport and then essentially gets hit by the dive kick himself. So dirty.

[Camel]

Enjoyed that, thanks JLM. I realised recently that you can punish a tatsu with a yoga mummy->Ultra or Super. Or both. Hard to react in time though, so only really useful if the other player is doing silly tatsus from a great distance.

[ah]

*waves*

[Camel]

Needs to be a Dhalsim with reflexes too.

[ah]

I have almost stopped doing silly tatsus, I think, though it still happens occasionally in high-pressure moments, and still happens with other moves. Last night I did a random EX messiah at the end of a round when my opponent was half a screen away and not showing any signs of wanting to press buttons anyway.

I am out for more matches against people, by the way. Would be cool to get a rematch against you if you fancied it, and I was going to challenge Ig to a couple of FT5s (one vs Rufus and one vs whichever character I'm telling myself I want to learn this week), and I still haven't challenged JLM because I was thinking to just invite him round to my house and do it lag-free. And of course I will fight anyone else who fancies it :-)

I got good games against Imp the other morning but have not been available much recently so basically been stuck with random endless battles on the few times I've been online.

[joeplus]

Superb writeup btw JLM! I had a quick half-hour look at the stream archive to see if you happened to pop up. I saw you dash across the screen to elsewhere in that signature purple but that was all.

[Camel]

I'm on now if anyone fancies a few.

[IgTerminals]

I'm on now if anyone fancies a few.

I'll be on about 11:30 - 12ish if you're still around.

Casuals tho cos I haven't played for a few day thanks partly to Real Life and partly to the amazingness that is Two Souls.

[JLM]

My match against Shinji was meant to be on stream but got bumped at the last second. Guess my next tournament goal is to get on stream at a big event.

In other news, Microsoft held a national tournament for Killer Instinct and the winner should be a surprise to no one:

[joeplus]

Just had some nice casuals with Camel - I loved your Honda not not letting me get away with any bullshit*. My flatmate greatly enjoyed that round you won with jump back roundhouse.

Quick question for the thread - what's Bison's best easy punish for a whiffed move? Like if you've blocked a DP and you're charged. I've been using cr.mk or cr.mp into hk Scissors.

*by this I mean bad moves, not super-tricky mixups or anything

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Has jellum posted his teesports roundup yet?

Bisons best punishes are:

Without charge:

Cl.HP, lk, HK. However this has two one frame links, one of which is not plinkable, and nobody ever does it. Instead do

Lk, lk, HK chargeless.

With charge:

Up close use cl.hp x special

Far away cr.MP is your best bet. Cancelling into scissors is probably best since there are set ups off it.

Bison isn't really a damage monster when it comes to punishing.

[joeplus]

Up close it cl hpx special

Thanks though dude! I haven't heard anyone else say Bison's cr.mp is good but I definitely hit Camel with it a few times. lk lk hk sounds like a good addition to the arsenal. I really like playing Bison and he's now definitely my secondary. Sorry Chun.

[JLM]

It's meant to say "up close it's cl. hp xx special".

Close hard punch cancelled into special move. Doesn't work with far standing hard punch as that can't be cancelled.

[joffocakes]

Excellent, excellent write-up Jellum. Was the Rose player Zaus? Who sort of sounds a bit like Allistarrrrr when he talks and also you once thought he genuinely was Allistarrrrrr until you got closer but you'd already made far too much eye contact and had nothing to say?

Zaus was the Rose player who knocked me out of the recent Irn First tournament. I'm dreadful against Rose anyway but I had absolutely no chance against him. I did consciously take one round more slowly, patiently forcing myself not to make clumsy, eager mistakes but even though I fared much better I just couldn't stay in that mindset for long enough. FAAAAATHER!