So I lost the Ryu mirror once again in tournament. I think the last time I beat another Ryu was Nick back in BAM 2010. Ever since then, I’ve been on a losing streak against every Ryu I’ve played against. I think the most recent one was Syntax. Now I’ve also lost to Antman (Anthony).
At the time, I smiled, shook his hand and walked off. I didn’t feel that salty at the time, which Sol has told me probably means something is wrong with me. But now after the fact, I feel pretty disappointed. Primarily because Antman doesn’t really play SF4, and his main game is Marvel. But credit to Anthony, he played well and kept doing the things that I wasn’t punishing him for. (Jab Jab jump over and cross up Mk, or doing unsafe sweeps.) GGs man.
Maybe it’s the stream curse. So far, I’ve lost every single game I’ve played on stream.
But I’m really, really sick of losing the Ryu mirror. In arcades, online and in tournament.
The one good thing about losing on stream is that I can watch the match afterwards and review things.
Match starts at 47:30 (Double click to view)
In the first game I think I did pretty well. I pushed him back with my walking and anti-aired him more consistently.
The second game I either lost my concentration or stepped it down a gear, but he became the aggressor. The next two games I lost was because of a combination of basic mistakes I kept making.
1- I kept getting hit by EX fireballs, which hurts because I would walk forward and exchange block damage, focus grey life in order to push him back/close distance, and then get hit by a EX fireball which would reset all that momentum and positioning I’ve worked so hard for.
2- I never punished his sweeps. This seems to be a real big weakness of mine and one that I was personally kicking myself during the match. I think I was dividing my attention too much. Whereas I was being more predictable, Anthony had shown a propensity to do unexpected things such as random Tatsus, jump ins, sweeps and EX fireballs, and I was more concerned about blocking all the things he was doing then specifically trying to punish sweep. But I should have been doing it.
3- He was doing a lot of basic clp clp blockstrings followed by crossup mk. All those things are autocorrect dp-able or I can do jump back fierce- anything is better than blocking it and eating more mixup. Maybe blocking it once or twice is okay but not over and over.
4- I should have mixed up my blockstrings/tech throws. I kept walking forward and getting hit by him mashing crouch jab. I should have noticed that “Marvel habit” and just done a tight tick throw instead of walk forward delayed counterhits/throws. I’m pretty sure tight or immediate tick throws would’ve worked as jabs do not tech anything. Urgh.
5- I should have baited his uppercut more. He had shown that he would uppercut in a lot of situations and I could have gotten big damage off those. And I think I did not uppercut enough myself and gave him too much respect.
A lot of simple basic errors that I kept making allowed Anthony to come back and beat me. Again while I’m disappointed in myself, it was good being able to watch myself making those mistakes.
Also, I noticed myself making more execution errors as the game went on and maybe as I lost my composure. In the earlier rounds I was hitting my stuff, and hitting even the difficult or high level stuff I was going for. In the last game not only did I miss a very crucial cmp chp tatsu combo that I should hit in my sleep…I also got a super instead of a DP which basically blew all my meter and almost any chance of me coming back.
Things didn’t go much better for me after that- I lost to Ali and went 0-2 again.
Ali really has my number these days. I think the Akuma matchup is really one I need to work on as well. I feel so afraid of his sweep I’m scared to play footsies. Then I throw fireballs a lot which I find to be not very good against Akuma’s red fireballs and EX dive kicks. I have no choice but to try to block his vortex because of all his un-dpable dive kicks and whiff palm land behind shenanigans whereas he can just DP my crossups or teleport away. So I’m not sure what I should be doing in that match.
Somehow I did better in Marvel. I lost 26 straight games to Gab in casuals and my first match was against him on stream. Joy!
Fuck Wesker.
I was able to use some of my new tech that I’ve been working on, but overall I got bodied by the same shit. Wolverine and Wesker.
I also played Fish on the stream and everyone was going crazy during my match. Yelling a lot, chanting “muttonfiend”…I found it all extremely distracting and just wished everyone would shut the hell up!
I also found it weird that people were getting so hype when I was clearly playing so bad. Maybe it’s the underdog factor? I don’t know.
Anyway I played like shit and hit two lucky bionic arms and killed Fish the second game, even managing to fimble the OTG grapple after the first one which would’ve made the dramatic last Bionic Arm completely unnecessary. And everybody went nuts. Again I don’t understand it. It was just two scrubby bionic arms. AND I lost the next game and the set.
Oh well. At least I had some kind of fun.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I actually really enjoy Shadowfox and Anthony’s Marvel commentary. Good natured humour and hype. Good shit.
This is my second time at Shadowloo Night Live, and I have to say I’ve been enjoying the new location. Brunswick is more central and it’s only a twenty, twenty five minute tram or train ride from the city. Which is pretty good for me.
Quite importantly, it’s right next to the train/tram station. For people like me who don’t drive and often lug setups to events, that is quite a good thing!
Everyone seemed to have fun, and having a fortnightly stream will also be really good for the Melbourne scene. I like the fact that the event is in a actual suburb and we can go out for drinks and food and have a good time instead of being stuck with Encore pizza at CCH and Domino’s/Subway at Deakin all the time!
So good shit to the Shadowloo guys for finding this venue, and Bugs for lugging his stream setup there. You guys rock.
Being a Scrub 
The thing that I noticed was you kept letting him out of the corner. Three(?) times you got him in the corner, and I think in order 1) you let him jump out (although I think that one wasn’t too bad), 2) you did a cross up and 3) you did that walk up mp uppercut. Half the point of the Valle style you seem to be trying to play (and that I try to play in many matchups) is to put people in the corner, and if you can’t keep them there, which generally requires calming down and playing a bit more patient once you get to that situation, I feel you’re not reaping the full benefits of the risks one takes when constantly walking forward.
Obviously the anti-air stuff and the sweep punish stuff and the getting frustrated stuff is important too, but that stood out to me.
Also, Ali comes in halfway through and complains about how you were anti-airing with cr.mp, you were doing that because it can beat the crossups he was doing before that right? Because I think that would have been a good answer actually, trying to auto-correct dp when someone blockstrings into a crossup (unless it’s going to lead to FADC Ultra) could easily divide your already divided attention more than it’s worth. (Assuming you find it easier to cr.mp than auto-correct dp, which I would assume is the case.)
Aand this has now gone on too long.
True, I was too eager to land damage when I should focus more on trapping him in the corner when the whole point of playing that way was to get him to the corner. No patience.
We already talked about this yesterday, but that specific one Ali was talking about was a fimbled SRK, and in the situation you’re talking about, chp does better than cmp as a anti-crossup normal.
Actually, thinking about it some more, it’s that you’re trying to land big damage AND you’re trying to be safe. Trying to cr.hp on reaction would be good, but so would just doing an early mp/lp dp into Ultra because he’s done the same thing three times in a row, and you haven’t punished him yet is also a good options, trying to get the big damage and be safe at the same time if you’ve already missed it several times is probably asking too much of your execution.