My Street Fighter Match Videos from Evolution West 2007

I talked here about the strategy behind my matches at Evolution West 2007. Now you can see those matches for yourself and get a sense of the crowd excitement.

First up, it's me versus Viscant. I'm purple Bison (the dictator) versus his Vega (claw). I mostly flopped around, loosey goosey because I was pretty sure that would be enough to win. Bison has natural advantages in this match and Vega must know exactly what he's doing to win.

Next is me versus the evil Darkside Phill (DSP). DSP won the mindgame of our initial double-blind character selection by choosing Blanka versus my Vega (claw). Watch this whole match carefully because it's definitely the best of the three in this post. You can stop watching at around 4:50 into the vid when the match ends; I'm not sure why the rest wasn't edited out.

Finally, check out me vs. Afrolegends. I start with Vega (claw) versus his DeeJay. In case you get confused about the technicalities of the match, Afrolegends accidentally paused the game at one point, which is a foul that caused him to lose the round and consequently, the game (but not the whole match). Afrolegends played excellently during this match and all his other matches. He's a rising star.

Thanks to James Chen for recording all this and to Seth Killian for the announcing during the event. Seth, you did a great job, but please, please learn the difference between a "round," a "game" (2 out of 3 rounds), and a "match," (2 out of 3 games). It's actually a bit hard to follow what the score is during these videos because Seth uses these terms incorrectly throughout. But let's not be too hard on him because he did an A job overall. I especially liked when he joked about me being one of the developers of the game (referring to my role on Capcom Classics Collection 2, the version we were using in this tournament) and his jab about how I died to one of the most worthless supers in the game during my match against DSP's Blanka. What can I say, it's true!

Hope you enjoy!

--Sirlin

My Evolution West 2007 Performance

Evolution West was at Comicon this year. I'll talk mostly about the Super Turbo tournament because it was a great tournament. Here's the results:

1) John Choi (Ryu, Old Sagat)
2) Afrolegends (Dee Jay, Balrog)
3) Jason Cole (Dhalsim)
4) David Sirlin (Vega, Honda, Bison)
5) Alex Wolfe (Dhalsim)
5) DSP (Dee Jay, Blanka, Vega, Balrog)
7) Antonio Diaz (Blanka)
7) Viscant (Vega)

My very first match of the tournament was against Jason Cole, two-time Evolution World Champion in Super Turbo. But more to the point, Cole and I were the #1 and #2 finishers at Evolution North, so it was weird to fight him straight off the bat, but we didn't complain, it's all good. Cole would definitely play Dhalsim, and I decided to pick Vega. I think I've played Vega vs. Dhalsim against Cole about 20 games or so over the last couple years. During the "normal fighting" part of the match, I have the advantage (I think). But eventually during each game, there is a part called "Dhalsim does noogie over and over and I die." This is especially hard for Vega to get out of. Counterthrowing is, for some reason, very hard for Vega in this situation. Jumping out is literally not possible if Dhalsim does a correct sequence. Vega can flip kick out (charge db, f+kick) but this is a tough thing to do. First, you only get one shot per loop because it's a charge move and worse, if you are charging you aren't shaking out of the noogie. This means a) you take full damage from the noogie and b) you telegraph that you are going to try to reversal flip kick out.

After losing game 1, I said out loud "fuck this match" and switched to Bison. Cole is too damn good at noogie trap on Vega. Bison in theory is just as screwed, but in practice he can reversal throw out more easily for some strange reason. Anyway, Cole beat me.

I went on to beat everyone else I faced that Saturday, including James Chen who I reminded the
hard way that you can't jump out of Honda's Ochio throw. I advanced to top 8. Meanwhile, Afrolegends ran the gauntlet facing Graham Wolfe, Buktooth, Valle, Choi, Graham again, and Watson. He had to beat all of them (except Choi) to advance to top 8. That's quite a string of top players, and that was just to get to the top 8.

The top 8 finals took place the next day on stage in a boxing ring in Capcom's booth at Comicon. There were hundreds of excited fans equipped with noise-makers and everything. It was a really great atmosphere to compete in. Looking back, I guess that could make someone nervous but I didn't even think to be nervous. I love being on stage.

My first match was against Viscant, a Vega player. I asked Choi if I should play Honda or something. He asked how the match goes and I said whoever gets ahead can mostly sit there or run away and it's hard for either character to make a comeback. He said it's too risky to play a match like that on purpose, so don't pick Honda. I asked about Vega and he said yeah, I have good experience with Vega so I should be ok. I sat down to play and the Ghost of Super Turbo told me to play Bison. Bison has like three ways to beat Vega pretty bad unless the Vega knows exactly what to do. I figured I'd be able to get away with at least one or two of those and it mostly worked. I won.

I then fought DSP (who had just lost to Choi, even though he beat both Valle and Watson earlier in the tournament). Given which characters DSP plays, I figured I'd be best off with Vega overall. DSP had a different way of thinking about his character selection though. I think he started by considering who *I* would think is my best chance overall given his characters and he also figured Vega would be my best bet overall. So he started with Blanka specifically to counter my Vega. Remember, these character picks are double blind, so he had to guess all that. I think he was one yomi layer above me there, and he got to play game 1 with a counter match in his favor. (Note to self: learn how to play Vega vs. Blanka.) Anyway, he won game 1.

I had a tough choice now. Vega was not working, so I needed someone else. I could play Bison, but Bison's scissor kicks don't quite work right against Blanka because of Blanka's hitbox while ducking. Also, Bison can't do anything once Blanka starts crossing him up with jump short. The match is probably in Bison's favor (I think), but there are a lot of ways to lose. I had a bad feeling about it (even though I won this exact same match (Bison vs. Blanka) against DSP in a previous tournament years ago.) I could be a little crazy and try Blanka vs. Blanka, but there's too many things I don't know about the match and I figured I should at least play someone I know what I'm doing with when hundreds of people are watching. Honda could work, though. Honda is good against Blanka but not so good against "excellent Blanka" who knows every detail of the match. I could probably pull it off though. But then I might be faced with Honda vs. Dee Jay in game 3, a very bad match for me. By this time I had to make a decision, so I decided to suck it up and win it with Honda.

DSP completely destroyed me first round. I think this confirmed everyone's fears that I had no idea what I was doing and that Honda was a terrible choice. Furthermore, I got hit by whiffed roll into bite and hop into bite. I think this must have looked like I was too old and had too bad of reaction time to stop it. Actually, this is not at all true. I knew he would jab roll into bite. I knew he would hop into bite. I can prove I knew because if you pause the game, then quit out to the main menu (of Capcom Classics Collection 2) then go to Street Fighter tips, you'll see these exact two maneuvers listed there, and I wrote it and took screenshots. Maybe DSP looked it up there! Ha. Anyway, I'm sitting there waiting for it, see it coming, and I have stored Ochio throw ready, and I mash on punches. And somehow, he got all the bites anyway. Ochio throw beats almost anything in the game, but Blanak's bite is so damn good that it actually beat the Ochio throw.

After the first round, I thought to myself "Hey, WAKE UP! You are one round away from being eliminated in a match you have every right to win! Don't just play mindlessly on instinct, THINK about it. Counter jump ins with jab headbutt. Jump or flying butt into Ochio, then mixup!" So I did. I turned off auto-pilot and did all those things and won. As expected, DSP then switched to Dee Jay and used the first round to demonstrate exactly what you do to practically perfect Honda. Ouch. I knew I had to break out of this pattern of being trapped at full screen by his projectiles, I did my best to get those next rounds off to a different start. That match is hard enough that I think I'll keep to myself what few tips I know about winning it.

I then faced Afrolegends, a man forged in fire. Now, I saw Afrolegends beat Graham Wolfe's Vega the day before. Afrolegends had magic powers with Dee Jay's low forward kick and probably did 50% of his damage against Graham with that move alone. Graham kept doing Vega's low strong, perhaps not believing that it could *really* lose to that stupid low forward kick, but it kept losing again and again. Armed with this knowledge, I was extremely careful to not get hit by it, and I did once right at the start of round 1! Then, ready for it, I tried to slide against it and I think I got hit by it anyway. I then even more carefully slid and actually hit him and carefully low stronged and actually hit him. But somewhere, things went really wrong and I lost big time. I turned to Choi, gesturing that I didn't know who to pick. Choi said "No more Vega," after seeing how soundly I was beaten. I agreed and switched to Bison (Even I'm not crazy enough to try Honda versus Dee Jay two times in a row). Game 2 was 1 round to 1 round and during the 3rd round, Afrolegends accidentally paused the game just as he was starting a crossup attempt. This foul means I win the round, and thus the game. Ouch. Afrolegends stuck with Dee Jay and showed superior knowledge of the match, and he won, eliminating me.

My two losses were to afrolegends (the #2 finisher) and Jason Cole (#3 finisher). Choi was #1.

Other highlights of the top 8. TWO people played Blanka (normally would be 0). TWO people played Dee Jay (normally would be 0). Someone played Honda. There were 3 double KOs, 2 in one game! This is more double KOs than I've seen in the last 5 years or so in ST. The two in one game was Jason Cole (Dhalsim) vs. Alex Wolfe (Dhalsim). First round, double KO. Second round, Cole won. Third round, double KO. In this situation (final round), the game automatically gives each player one round win total, meaning Alex Wolfe got a win marker even though he hadn't won a round yet! This was crazy stuff.

The tournament was topped off nicely with Choi pulling of several miracles versus Afrolegends, then Choi transforming into some kind of Korean Inferno against Jason Cole. By the end, Cole was completely thrown off his game and Choi dominated in a scary way. Later, Cole said to me "I can't believe he uppercuts at such risky times! Doesn't he know how risky it is! And he always hits. He's the luckiest mother fucker around, haha." Then Cole theorized that Choi actually conditions his opponents to act a certain way, then does his "risky" stuff only when he gets to a high pressure situation when the opponent is likely to play on instinct rather than thought. Later, James Chen theorized that Choi can "smell fear like a dog." Actually those were my words but Chen's idea. Anyway, he meant that if you make a mistake against Choi, Choi then puts pressure on you and tries to pressure you into making more mistakes. Maybe both theories are right. I had an alternate theory that if we could look into his mind, we'd see a rainbow, a floating panda and a Hello Kitty.

One last note about Guilty Gear: I hate team tournaments a lot and hope we're done with them.

--Sirlin

My Performance at Evolution North 2007

The short version

• I got 2nd in the Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament (part of Midwest Championships, not Evolution), somehow losing to Justin Wong
• I go 2nd in ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo), losing twice to Jason Cole.
• I did not qualify in Guilty Gear, though I did beat entire teams with just my Chipp.

Street Fighter Alpha 2
Even though I haven't played this game in many years, it was still my tournament to win. I know more about the game than anyone else there, have more experience in it than anyone there, and I was pretty solidly one of the 3 best US players back in the day. Both Jeron and Flash G are solid though, somehow knowing how to play A2 (though I wonder how they know, ha). Each of them remind me about a concept I don't really have a name for--maybe "tournament intensity." They are both serious competitors who make good decisions during tournament play. Even when they are out of their element in a game I know they don't know 100%, they still make good decisions and eke out every advantage they can.

Justin Wong has that same tournament intensity, and he's even more intense. I saw Justin play Ken, Rose, and some 3rd character (I think) during the tournament. He seemed to know just enough to get by. I figured he would play Rose against me and he did (maybe he even picked first, I forget). I picked Zangief to counter. Maybe it was my years of zero practice, or maybe it was Justin's "tournament intensity," but he destroyed me in that match. He demonstrated that he knew to counter jump-ins, which is really the main problem for Rose in that match. It was absolutely a testament to "time does not equal skill." Justin has probably played Alpha 2 about 1% as much as me, considering I played it for at least 3 years about every other day and he played it, well, almost never. And yet armed with only meager knowledge about a few important counters, he kept his head about him, turned up his tournament intensity, and was able to beat me.

Oh yeah, after game 1, I abandoned Zangief and went for Rose vs. Rose. I demonstrated that my secret low strong tactics can usually hit other people's low strongs. Rose vs. Rose is a game of doing only a few moves most of the time, with a couple random occasional things thrown in. I had the lead in games, but Justin was able to come back, mostly because he knew a little better when to do nothing and when to do the occasional strange thing.

Incidentally, my other loss in A2 was to NKI. He knows almost nothing about A2 either, but he fakes it very well. He played Rolento using A3 tactics (or CvS2?) in order to fake general proficiency. That's cute and all, but not nearly enough to win. He won by dancing around long enough to land Rolento's deadly custom-combo. Every time he activated it, he hit me with it. I think he learned this from A-Groove in CvS2, but he certainly didn't learn it by playing A2. Again, time spent playing A2 is most definitely not the major factor in whether a player can win.

If anyone is curious, I hardly played Rose at all during this tournament. I played Ryu almost the whole way through.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

There were a number of good players at the event, including Jessie Howard, Wes Truelson(sp?), NKI, Jason Cole, Flash G, Jeron, and Darkside Phil (DSP) to name a few. Again, Flash G and Jeron showed their "tournament intensity" and gave me hard matches. They are able to "keep their heads about them" under pressure, but I was able to beat them, possibly more through super knowledge of ST nuances, though maybe I do have some impromptu ability of my own, shrug.

Facing NKI was a somewhat daunting because he beat me at Evolution two years ago (maybe I lost to him last year too, I don't know). I remember when NKI didn't know the first thing about ST and I could beat him without even trying. He devoted himself to the game, lived in Japan for a while, practicing often, and finally came of age when he beat me in a tournament two years ago. You can't really think about stuff like when you step up to play, and I managed not to. I used Vega (claw) to beat his Chun Li. His Chun Li is very solid, but cheapy wall-dive proved superior that day.

I lost only to Jason Cole and then again to Cole in the grand finals. I got noogied about 100 times by his Dhalsim. The finals score was 2-3 in his favor, so it was close, but his noogies proved greater than my wall-dives. Incidentally, Cole--who used to have quite a temper--has a different type of tournament demeanor altogether compared to Justin Wong and his crew. Cole doesn't seem that intense. Maybe "relaxed" is the better word. He seems to just let the right choice flow through him. Usually patient, and aggressive when he has to be. Cole likes to talk a lot about 'clutch' (the ability to really seal the deal under the final moment under the highest pressure) and he certainly has it in spades.

Guilty Gear Slash

I got jerked around by a few possible teams I could join, then decided to ahead with my original plan of playing alone. That means I'd have to beat 3 people in a row without losing one game to advance each time. Literally 10 seconds before my first match, RashReflection asked if he could join my team, and I said ok. I was--well--the main force on the team though. I defeated a couple teams all by myself. Against one team, I beat their first two members myself, then faced a potemkin player as the third (I was Chipp! Ouch!). After grinding this guy down with like 100 hits, I got him down to 2 pixels, and got hit by a low counter-hit low fierce. GG, Chipp dies. I was a pixels away from eliminating that entire team with Chipp...and they went on to get 3rd I think. Ugh, ugh.

Yeah, I hate the Curse of Chipp. I practiced Potemkin and Faust against random people ahead of time, and realized how many holes I have with them compared to Chipp. My practice matches with Chipp were like 10% me losing in one hit and 90% me completely owning, so I decided to go with him for the tournament after all. Maybe I should learn Millia in GG Accent Core. She always seemed like a non-sucky Chipp to me, but I could never get the hang of her at all. Anyway, I did not qualify in GGXX. Hopefully I'll have a real team for Evo West.

--Sirlin

Evolution 2006 Program Guide

Here is the stirring text I wrote for the Evolution 2006 tournament program guide:

“Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games.”

—Sirlin

These are the words I chose to start my very first article about “Playing to Win” over six years ago, and I’m sticking to my story. Since then, my articles have been passed around the internet and back, and are still linked to in gaming forums for lots of games I’ve never even heard of.

Here at the finals of Evolution 2006, I hope you will see first hand what I’ve been talking about all these years. The players who have reached this level of skill have long left behind the mental handicaps that hold other players back. You won’t find any complaining about throws being cheap, or characters being cheap, or doing one move over and over being cheap, or exploiting bugs being cheap. At this level of play, the word “cheap” even becomes a compliment.

Isn’t it bad to exploit bugs, though? The answer is a resounding “no.” The Evolution tournament does have hard rules that players must abide by such as no kicking each other in the shins, no pausing during a match, and no picking Akuma in SF2 Aniversary Edition. But beyond that, players cannot be expected to intuit the will of the game designer about what was or wasn’t intended, and the tournament organizers have no interest in stifling the players, either. Everything goes and every good competitor will use anything to his advantage. If competitive gamers don’t push the envelope of what the game allows, then they have abandoned one of the primary virtues of humanity itself: the quest to always improve one’s self. If that made you laugh, then I invite you to watch the tournament through the lens of continuous self-improvement and see that these players’ burning desire to improve is no joke.

You will see Sentinel’s unblockable in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. You will see Chun Li’s “stored” super in Street Fighter 2: Anniversary Edition. You will see long-distance “kara throws” in SF3:3rd strike. You will see invulnerable “roll canceling” in Capcom vs. SNK 2. You will even see “snaking” in Mario Kart. The game designers probably did not intend any of these things, but this is not their day. This day is for the players to demonstrate how far along the path the excellence they have traveled and tournament victories are how they measure this progress.

While you watch these competitors, remember that they are now facing their biggest tests. All the preparation they’ve had, all the practice, and all their cheap tricks may still not be enough given the incredible competition they face from all over the world. You might even catch a glimpse of a rising star who evolves his play to the next level right in front of your eyes. After all, this trial-by-fire is how players reach that next level.

If you’re interested in reading more about the mechanics and psychology of competitive play—which is applicable to nearly any game—I will humbly recommend my book, Playing to Win. After all the response from my articles over the years, I compiled, polished, and greatly expanded the material into book form. It contains many topics I’ve never written about before such as the concept of critical moments in a match, how to “see the moments” that go by in a flash, which qualities and personality types the top players tend to have, and what duty the best players do or do not have when it comes to teaching others.

If it makes you feel any better, my main motivation for writing the book wasn’t to make a buck (there are better ways to do that!). Instead, it was partly because too many people wildly misunderstand what competitive gaming is really all about, and mostly because I’m tired of saying this so many damn times, that I decided to write it all down.

On that note, enjoy the event!

—David Sirlin

Card Games and Evolution 2006

Years later, Capcom would deny me the use of the Street Fighter license for this game.

Evolution 2006 went even smoother than any of our past tournaments. There were of course lots of great matches, which maybe I'll get to talking about in a later post.  

For me, though, the highlight was finally playtesting in public the Street Fighter card game I've worked on for months. You can see from the pic that it was popular, and people even played money matches in it.  

The game uses a modified poker deck (so you can play poker with the same cards, too). Each deck represents one character, and there is no deckbuilding or card trading. This is a stand-alone card game not a tcg. It's not a tcg. It's not a tcg. That gets lost on a few people so I figure it's best to say it three times. The game is designed to test exactly two skills: 1) yomi (the ability to read the opponent's mind) and 2) appraisal/valuation (the ability to judge the relative value of pieces in the game). I figured nothing else was important so I threw out everything else to keep it simple.  

Oh and by the way, the game is based on paper, rock, scissors. After years of looking at how paper, rock, scissors worked and didn't work in various games (and writing articles about it...), this is me trying to demonstrate how to do it right. My tagline is "it's the best game of paper, rock, scissors that nature will allow."  

Now, what's very unfortunate is that there are already two other Street Fighter card games out there. One is by Score and distributed by exclusively by Blockbuster, and--surprise--it doesn't sell well (isn't Blockbuster obsolete by now?). The other SF card game is published by Sabertooth games as part of the Universal Fighting System. You can play Soul Calibur 3 cards, Street Fighter cards, and Penny Arcade cards together. That one manages to sell well, which is quite a hindrance to me. Check out this bad card from this bad game.

This card damages the Street Fighter brand.

IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, NOTE THAT THIS IS TOTALLY NOT MY CARD GAME, thanks.  

What really gets me is that Sabertooth has created a terrible, terrible game. It's clunky, bad at capturing the license, inelegant, and has lots of terrible art. I don't even know where to start with this "Yoga Short Kick" card. To be fair, it also has some great art by Udon, but much of it is copy and pasted from their comics. Anyway, this game is offensive to me as a game designer and Street Fighter player. It's kind of a toss up between the Sabertooth game and SF Hyper Fighting on 360 when it comes to what is damaging the Street Fighter brand name most these days. sigh.  

I will most likely move forward with a my own characters in an online version of my card game, and have the Street Fighter (and Virtua Fighter!) characters ready once (if) I can make the business deals with Capcom and Sega.

This is the greatest card ever (not) created.In other card game news, details of the World of Warcraft TCG are out. I've followed them closely and I can't even tell you how impressed I am. I tried for literally *years* to make a card game as complex as Magic: The Gathering, yet better and different (my SF card game is not part of that; it's way simpler). Anyway, what I did come up with on that front looks disturbingly similar to what the WoW TCG is...except they did it better than me. They were a little more clever here and there and really made it come together. Simple and good resource system, good combat system, and good hero system. I will say that this game is so far the ONLY trading card game that has the potential to be better than Magic: The Gathering, in my opinion. Note that I'm not even talking about the Warcraft license, just the game mechanics themselves. Oh, and it also happens to have great art and great card layout.  

I'm not surprised to find out that Brian Kibler is one of the leads on the project. I read his articles and tournament reports for years. Brian, I still remember when you beat Jon Finkel at Pro Tour 2000 with an Armadillo Cloaked Rith for the win. They called you "the dragonmaster" back then. My hat is off to you guys at Upper Deck right now, more than to any other game developer out there. Coming up with a trading card game on par with MTG is about the tallest order you could have, and I think you guys did it.

I wonder if I could release a card game through Upper Deck with similar rules but with a different license. Hmm...  

--Sirlin