I did better than I've ever done before at our world finals event this year, taking 5th place in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I also got to test 18 decks of my Yomi card game, and got to lose Guilty Gear to Yossan, the #1 finisher in that tournament.

I won't say much about Guilty Gear other than having to relearn the strange lesson that my Potemkin gets much worse when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents, and yet my Chipp gets much better when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents. I call this the Curse of Chipp.

In ST, I made it to the top 8 without losing a single match. i tried this year to make an effort to "play the opponent" rather than "play the game." In my book, I talk about the player type called Planner. That's how I've always approached things, but the approach has weaknesses.

I've heard Seth off-handedly mention in his match commentary whether certain players "show no respect" for their opponents. He means this in a very particular way. He's not talking about sportsmanship at all, but instead whether a player does things within the game that a really good opponent should be able to counter. Seth isn't even giving an insult by saying this. He's just pointing out when a player is trying to get away with something that he might not try against a player he "respects." To be clear, you *should* do bootleg stuff that's easily counterable *if* you really think the particular opponent you are playing against won't counter it. That is what "playing the opponent" means, rather than "playing the game."

The toughest opponent I beat was Afrolegends. He's a rising star of a player. Determined and in practice. I think it's safe to say that he practiced at least 10 times more than me, if not 100 times. I invested nearly no practice time into ST this year, and instead have focused on designing STHD. Anyway, I didn't rely on practice or on scouting.

Here is what I did. I remember watching the match between Afrolegends's DeeJay and Graham Wolfe's Vega (claw) three weeks ago. I also remember playing the same match against Afrolegends right after that, and losing. Graham got hit by about 90 ducking medium kicks. Three weeks ago I tried very hard to avoid that fate, but still got hit by several. That match is on youtube, but I only watched it maybe 1 or 2 times casually. I'm honestly not trying to be arrogant about this, I'm just trying to point out all the things that I didn't do to prepare hat people probably expect me to do.

I decided to play the same character matchup against Afrolegends this time. I won't be bullied away from Vega just because of a damned ducking medium kick. So instead of trying hard to avoid it, I would just have to try REAL HARD to avoid it. To look into Afrolegend's mind and try to guess when he will do it, so I can slide a bit after. And just as important, try to guess when he will throw his sonic boom thing ("max out") so I know when I can go off the wall. I also factored in that I know he's sitting there waiting for me to go off the wall a lot of the time, so I have to avoid the temptation to do it when he expects me to do it.

I won this match by something like two pixels, so it's not like I dominated at all. It could have gone either way. But my point is that I got more mileage out of focusing on exactly when I think the opponent will do X or Y than I probably would have out of studying match footage or even actual practice. I should also point out that Afrolegends's tons of practice wasn't for nothing. He placed 3rd, which was two places higher than me.

To prove that I'm not just bragging, all this reading the opponent stuff went exactly the other way when I faced Graham Wolfe. After losing a game, I switched to Honda (a crowd pleaser!) and won one round, but in the final round of the match, Graham guessed right something like 4 times in a row. His final move was a ridiculous jumping strong with Balrog (boxer) that clearly proved he knew exactly what I was going to do, and when. Graham soundly beat me in that match, so my hat is off to him. He took 4th place.

My only other loss was to Tokido. I was very sure I would beat him. So sure that I knew overconfidence was probably bad, but I just didn't think he could be Bison (dictator) with Vega (claw). About four years ago, my friend first introduced me to the concept of Meyers-Briggs personality types and after a quick set of questions, he told me I'd be most likely to lose to a player who is capable of executing something in a game that I didn't think was possible or practical, so it wouldn't be in my "systems analysis" of the game. He was exactly describing John Choi's ability to custom-combo my Rose's low strong in SFAlpha 2. And, it turns out, he described Tokido, too.

There's something mysterious about Tokido's ability to go off the wall with Vega. Two different times, I saw his Vega touch the wall, then do the air throw just a bit earlier than I thought was possible. He also sometimes went off the wall then immediately attacked, just a tiny bit earlier than I thought was possible. Maybe more to the point, Bison can beat Vega if he can get close enough to do scissor kicks and stand roundhouses. It didn't really occur to me that Tokido would be able to run away well enough to avoid this for a whole match. I think I was one round away from defeating him, but he came back with his mysteriously good run away and off the wall tactics. He went on to defeat John Choi with similar antics, earning Tokido 1st place. I'm a little salty about it, but oh well.

Before signing off, I'd like to give my awards for strangest counter-character choices in the tournament. DSP was about to face Japanese Dhalsim player KKY. I asked DSP if he was going to win and he said "KKY's Dhalsim cannot beat my Vega." Pretty bold, but amazingly, DSP was right. KKY then switched to Blanka! Unexpected for a Japanese Dhalsim player, but nice move because it's counter-match heavily in Blanka's favor, in my opinion. KKY won game 2, but to DSP's credit, not by much. DSP could now switch to a new character in game 3. Luckily, DSP plays a wide variety of characters who have a big advantage here: Old Sagat, Balrog, and DeeJay for starters. But DSP chose to KEEP Vega, countering himself! I don't get it. It went down to the last hit and as KKY did whiff roll into bite for the final hit, both players physically leaped out of their chairs in excitement.

But this was not as strange as Alex Wolfe's choice. Let me preface this by saying that Alex Wolfe is one of the very best players in the US. He won 1st place at last year's Evo World Finals and just two weeks ago he and his brother Graham got 5th place in Japan. Anyway, his Dhalsim got absolutely destroyed game 1 against someone's Vega. It was really bad, but it happens. then Alex switched to ZANGIEF. Zangief vs Vega is an incredibly hard match and it's pretty damn crazy to intentionally play this match when you're 1 game from losing a tournament match. I guess his idea was that a good Zangief has a big surprise factor (and his Zangief is good), but Vega proved too strong even then.

I hope that gives you a taste of what the Super Turbo tournament was like. It was also a great opportunity for me to get feedback from the Japanese players about STHD...but that's all I'm allowed to say about that.

--Sirlin

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

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

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 SF3:3^rd 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

www.sirlin.net

Playing to Win, the book: www.lulu.com/sirlin

(It’s on Amazon too, but faster shipping and better author agreements on lulu.)

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 exculsively 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.

IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, NOTE THAT THIS IS TOALLY 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, inelegent, 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.  

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 tourament 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

I'm leaving for Las Vegas in two days to go to the Evolution Finals (www.evo2k.com). I already qualified for Guilty Gear XX Slash and for DOA4 (but I don't even play that anymore). I failed to qualify for SF2 AE, so I'll enter the pools like everyone else.

In SF2 AE, I expect to see a lot of CE Bisons. I'll admit that he can sometimes win matches for no good reason. Random crossup psycho crushers can sometimes end up doing 100%, as can a random scissor kick -> dizzy -> dead. There are a few counters to him, so we'll see who tries to take him down with who. CE Guile is also a top character, but it takes a good Guile player to pilot him. HF and CE Ryu are still contenders. The ST cast will still show up, I'm sure, as ST Balrog and ST Dhalsim are still good choices. Too bad ST Vega and HF Blanka have broken, buggy move detection for flash kick moves or I would play both of them.

Guilty Gear is going to be pretty insane against the Japanese players. They're on another level. It still claim that Eddie is top tier because the whole idea of controlling two characters and having a fast, full-screen knock down ("invite hell") is just too good, no matter how much he's been nerfed. Slayer is up there too (which again, no one else believes). I don't really understand ABA, but her crazy damage potential would seem to make her top tier even considering the instant kill risks she takes. Ky is also top tier, and I see why now.

I also disagree with everyone's Chipp rankings. He went from bottom tier to second to last tier, in my opinion, but I have some kind of mental bond with him, so I'll stick with it. I've tried to take up better characters but it never works out, so it'll be Chipp 'til the end this time.

I hope to see you all there. This even should be our best yet.

--Sirlin

The setup phase for Evolution East was tricky, but once the actual event started, it ran smoothly. We had plenty of space and a pretty good turnout of players for most games.

Dead or Alive 4 had 30 players this time (same as Tekken 5!), rather than 9, so there was actually somewhat of a real tournament. I entered, again with zero practice for months. I won some, lost some, and was eventually eliminated. I don't even really remember by who, as I wasn't serious about this tournament (and had already qualified from Evo West anyway).

At the last minute before the Guilty Gear XX Slash team tournament, Tom Cannon, the original founder of shoryuken.com asked if I'd join his team. Tom had never played even one game of the Slash version of GGXX and this was just a "for fun" thing. I rounded up Mopreme, another person who had never played Slash before, and we entered. I didn't really expect to get anywhere and I had already qualified for GGXX at Evolution West anyway. Little did I realize that the Evo East competition in GGXX wasn't anywhere near the level as the Evo West competition (sorry guys, not trying to trash talk, just telling it how it is). I beat entire teams by myself, sometimes losing only 10% life per round. Note that I went back to Chipp for this tournament, who I still claim is not at all good, but the Curse of Chipp dooms me to forever be a little better at playing Chipp than anyone else.

Anyway, we eventually played "team Yaa." Their first player plays Sol, and I'm sorry to say that he is one of the worst Guilty Gear players I've seen play the game, lol. Next they had a Testament player who I beat pretty easily. Finally, they had an Anji player who totally rocked me. He really had amazing mixups and good combos. He didn't even really need tricky mind-games because his mixups were so powerful, that eventually I'd guess wrong and die.

I thought I actually had a shot at beating everyone else there except for the Anji player and Marneto, but Marneto must have scrubbed out and lost, I don't even know to who. My team then somehow had to fight team Yaa, AGAIN. I beat their first two players easily again and was double eliminated by the Anji player. What a terrible way to be kept out of the top 4 teams for Sunday. During the Sunday matches (on stage, everyone watching just one game at a time), team Yaa inflicted the Sol player on the audience again and again. It was very hard to do commentary during this. I wanted to say "uh...so...nothing good is happing at all...not sure why this is a finals match...hmm....," but I mostly said nothing at all during those matches. The Anji player went on to get 2nd overall.

I somehow managed not to qualify in SF2 AE again. It looks like I had the hardest bracket again with Chris Li, NKI, Jeron, Julian, and other known players. While at Evo West, I fought against only Ryu and Dhalsim. At Evo East, I fought against only Champion Bison and ST Chun Li. I was ready to specifically beat Champion Bison, and I was looking forward to showing that "he's not all that."

I faced Jeron's Champion Bison and beat him 2-1, where I used Honda and ST Bison. I then faced him again and lost 2-1 with the same character matchups. If my honda made him block a good jump-in, I could usually ride that to 100% damage because Champion Bison can't get out. But when he knocked me down, he was able to do the broken cross-up psycho crusher on me over and over, and I just couldn't block it. One round, I took 100% damage to repeated psycho crushers that seemed unblockable. My total record against him was 3-3.

My other loss was to NKI, who went on to get 3rd in the overal tournament. NKI's Chun Li is legit and good. I did get a perfect on him with honda and won the first game, but I lost the next, switched to ST bison and lost. Ouch.

Some of the Champion Bison players didn't even know how to get out of another Champion Bison's lockdown. They sadly demonstrated that knowledge of the nuances of the game is not really necessary if you have the unfair psycho crusher and a scissor kick that combos into a dizzy and a redizzy. I'll finally admit that Champion Bison makes the game much worse than it would be without him.

My current opinion is that Champion Bison, CE Guile, and HF Ryu are the best 3 characters in the game.

Next year we'll surely have real Super SF2 Turbo rather than AE, as ST will be part of Capcom Classics Collection 2, produced by me.

--Sirlin

Evolution West was overall a great tournament. We had a huge ballroom that might have made us "the first fighting game tournament ever with too much space." Also, our new format of doing one game at a time worked exactly as planned. If was much easier to get the players in the right place at the right time with this method. Also, it was great that we had so many casual play stations in the same room as the tournament. This allowed players to practice for for their matches ahead of time.

As for my personal performance, I wish I had done better. I got top 8 in DOA4 (qualified), but hardly anyone even entered. I hope about 100 DOA players magically show up at our Las Vegas finals, because the total lack of support from the DOA community we've seen so far means we won't be able to feature the game next year. Too bad, as I think it's a pretty fun game.

In Guilty Gear, my team got 3 place, qualifying for a spot in the final brackets at Las Vegas, but this was mainly due to my teammate Ruin's performance. (XenoTiger also did well). I wanted to play first in our rotation, but Ruin was certain that he should play first, so he did. His plan was to single-handedly beat the entire field, and he practically did. His Eddie ripped through victim after victim, including top players like Ken I (Potemkin), Justus (Zappa), and Deuce (Faust). I played Potemkin and didn't accomplish much, unfortunately, except 28 wins in casual play, lol.

Going into this tournament, I thought Eddie was top tier, despite what everyone else says. I'm more sure than ever now. The ability to lock down an enemy while controlling two characters at once (Edddie) is just too good, even with all the nerfs in GGXX Slash.

Also note that before the tournament I ranked Slayer as top tier. Paul Kugler (slayer) was on the 2nd place team in the official Evolution West tournament and he also *won* the unofficial singles tournament. Slayer just flat-out does too much damage. Aba was my other pick for top tier, and Combofiend's Aba got 2nd in the singles tournament. I know that this isn't enough data to conclude tiers, but my predictions are sure looking good so far.

I said Ky was 2nd tier (despite everyone in the world saying he's top tier) in Slash, and after seeing Heidern's Ky (wow!), I finally get it. I'll finally put Ky in the tier 1 list. Sol still seems tier 2, but Said (aka ID) puts him at the bottom of tier 1. Semantics, really.

SF2 AE was pretty disappointing for me. I'm not happy with getting 9th, as I really wanted at least top 8. I ended up losing to the 2nd and 3rd place finishers: Alex Wolfe and Alex Valle. Even though I planned to play mostly ST Honda and ST Bison, I ended up playing HF Ryu almost the entire tourament as a counter to other people's Ryu's. It worked in the early rounds, and then I faced Alex Wolfe's Dhalsim (the only non-Ryu I'd face all day). I picked HF Ryu and Alex kind of laughed. I started the round with 8(!) consecutive helicopter kicks, demonstrating that the move is too good. I gave Alex Wolfe the opportunity to throw away the game here, but he cleverly did nothing and ducked almost all of them. Anyway, I beat him decisively in the first game. He stuck with Dhalsim and he won game 2. I really should have stuck with Ryu, but I switched to ST Honda and lost. Most of the game, I couldn't get in, and I finally got one ochio throw in the corner (should lead to 100% damage), but I did stand jab too slow as he got up (Dhalsim gets up slightly faster).

Against Valle's ST Ryu, I played HF Ryu and won the first game. He then switched to CE Ryu and won the next two. I think HF Ryu is clearly superior to HF Ryu, but whatever. Valle used Valle skills and won.

Here is what I wanted to say before the tournament about character rankings:

* HF Ryu's helicopter kick is one of the best, if not the best, moves in the game.
* CE Guile might be the best character in the game. WW Guile is almost as good, but he only has one sonic boom speed and can't do reversal attacks.
* HF Zangief is "secretly" good, but nearly no one has the skill to play him. Ironically, Alex Wolfe does, but he plays Dhalsim as his main so no one even realizes the Zangief threat.
* Chamption Bison is the most overrated character in the game. He isn't even as good as ST Bison. CE Bison has faster scissor kick startup and can combo after the scissor kick, leading to a dizzy and redizzy. He also has weird properties on his torpedo that make hit randomly hit as a crossup. But ST Bison has a super (CE has no reversal attacks AT ALL). ST Bison has better crossup attacks that lead to an easy dizzy combo. ST Bison's stand short allows him to tick into throw (usually untechable, too, unless the enemy is an ST character). ST Bison had a high priority jump strong. CE Bison is a one trick pony who can't get out of traps and has no reversal. There's no need for an "I win more" button, when what you really need is a little more defense.

*ST Vega would be good, but his input recognition on the off-the-wall attacks are broken. Same goes for HF Blanka.

*ST Honda is pretty good, but he still can't beat Guile or Ryu, really.

*HF Sagat is pretty good, and straight up better than CE Sagat.

After the tournament, I still believe pretty much all of that except the CE Bison part. Even though CE Bisons lost more than they won at Evo West, I finally saw the power of "scissor kick lands = you die." It is admittedly scary. Also, a perfectly executed CE Bison trap (scissors, low strong, stand forward, repeat) is *very* hard for an enemy bison or dhalsim to get out of. Watson demonstrated this on stage in a tournament match against Dhalsim.

It's interesting that the top 2 finishers in SF2 AE (Graham Wolfe and Alex Wolfe) both played ST characters (ST Balrog and ST Dhalsim).

Anyway, thanks to everyone who came out for the event. I hope to see even more people at Evo East, and I look forward to facing the competition there.

--Sirlin

We're only a few days away from Evolution West (www.evo2k.com). I'll be helping run it and also competing in it. I'll enter SF2 AE, GGXX Slash (team tournament), and DOA4.

This is the first year that any of these 3 games have been featured at Evolution, so it should be interesting to see if the well-known players from previous versions make it to the top or not. It will also be interesting to see if the supposedly overpowered characters from each game actually show up at the top.

I'll withhold my list of top AE characters until after the event, but the list is definitely different than what other players seem to think. In GGXX Slash, from what I can gather the top tier still contains Eddie and Slayer, and now Aba. I think around 0% of players agree with that, but when you really nerf the best character in the game (Eddie), it's entierly possible that he's still top tier, and that's still how it looks to me. It's probably only a matter of time until Eddie is proven again in this version. Slayer lost a few things, but *gained* good things too. He's a beast. I bet a good Aba player could beat anyone in the USA, even with the disadvantage of possibly being instant killed.

Anyway, no one agrees with that GGXX Slahs stuff, but wait a couple years and we'll see. We can save the SF2 AE arguements for after I get back.

Good luck to all and I'll see you there.
--Sirlin

I'm about a month late in reporting this, but better late than never. This year's Evolution tournament was in Las Vegas, and it was great. I entered the Super Turbo Street Fighter 2 tournament and the Guilty Gear XX #Reload tournament (aka ST and ggxx).

I know it's bold to say this, but going in the ST tournament I knew I had an actual shot at winning the whole thing. I have it within me to beat everyone there and I have beaten all the big names before in tournaments, it's just a matter of doing it this time. I finished first in my qualifying pool, and this included a match against the Japanese player Mester. He plays Vega (claw) and finished in top 8 before at Evolution. I told Kuni (my friend, another Japanese player) that I would play Bison against Mester even though I was playing Vega the whole tournament. Kuni said "to counter Mester's Vega?" I said "Well, this is America." Kuni nodded, understanding. (In the US, we often pick counter characters but in Japan players devote themselves to a single character.) Anyway, I completely smoked Mester and beat him 4-0 in rounds. I know that match very well and Mester didn't seem to know it at all.

I watched a very good Balrog (boxer) play another good Balrog and I would play the winner. I whispered to Kuni that I was considering playing Honda for this match. Kuni was surprised, saying "You play Honda?" I nodded. He has been my secret weapon for years. Kuni said "It can work." The better Balrog player won the mirror match, then I stepped up with my Honda. Using some "old man techniques" I won the match. My next opponent was two-time US national champion Jason Cole. I've beat him before, it was just a matter of doing it now. We did double blind select and to Cole's great surprise, I picked Honda. Cole picked his main character, Dhalsim. I beat him the first game and this put him in a very bad position. If he switched to Guile to beat me, I would easily beat his Guile with my Vega (claw) and win the match. Cole considered this for a while, then decided to stick with Dhalsim for game 2. It was a good choice because he barely won it. He also barely won game 3 and the match. Close, but the win went to Cole. He had better knowledge of that match than me, so I have no gripes about the loss. In fact, I learned a few things from it.

As an aside, I'd like to point out that I went to another player for advice before the tournament. I call him "The Ancient One," because he has secret knowledge of the ages about ST that exceeds even my own. (His actual name is James Romedy.) I asked The Ancient One, "If I have to play against a Honda player, who should I pick?" Romedy scoffed, saying that there could be no such player. Only Bob Painter plays honda of any US players there, and no Japanese players at the tournament played Honda. I asked him to answer anyway. He said "Is the theoretical player better or worse than Bob Painter?" I said "Assume worse." He said in that case I should pick Bison. The match is *hugely* in Honda's favor, but I can...rely on a certain tactic to beat any non-expert Honda. I said, "Fine, but what if he's better than Bob?" The Ancient One said "Then you should either play DJ(!?) or possibly tough it out with Vega, just don't get behind in life."

The reason I asked him any of this is that I feared losing to Honda more than almost anything in the entire tournament, including playing people like Cole or Choi or whatever. Romedy made a good point when he said that there could be no such Honda player though. So who was my next opponent? A random Honda player that no one had ever seen. I took the wise advice of The Ancient One and picked Bison and did my stuff. The Honda endured. Hmm....he seemed much better than a random scrubby honda. I could play DJ, but it seemed like too ridiculous a move. At this point, I did the losing move of the match: I hovered my character select box on Ryu but did NOT pick him. Instead, I picked Vega. I figured I could tough it out in that silly match, but Vega cannot come back from being behind. I got behind, I lost. Smoked by a random Honda out of no where. My worst nightmare realized. Why didn't I just pick Ryu to counter? That was a really bad loss. I know everyone talks about "would have, could have, should have," but I really think the tournament results would have been a lot different if I could have just avoided that one player. I'll have to actually be able to beat Honda next year. (That guy made top 8, btw.)

In ggxx, I got a few wins and finishied first in my qualifying pool, but I eventually lost to two solid players. One was Alex from Texas who plays Slayer. He absolutely smoked me at Texas Showdown 5, and he did very well against me this time as well. I missed a guaranteed sweep that would have won me a round, but perhaps the overall match result would have been the same. I picked Potemkin against him in game 1 for the character advantage (Alex is a known Slayer player) but he destroyed me so bad that I ran back to my main character, Chipp.

My other ggxx loss was to ID. He's one of the best ggxx players in the US and he beat me fair and square. I have no gripes, and in fact the very first thought that entered my mind when he beat me was "I really have to never play Chipp again if I actually want to win at this game." I had prepared a little bit with Faust, but I was not confident enough to actually play Faust against ID or Alex. Next time maybe, if anyone ever practices with me.

That's all for now.

--Sirlin

I can't even update my website anymore. Hopefully servercentral.net will straighten this out soon.

I appear in the Fall 2005 issue of Game Developer Magazine's Game Career Guide. I wrote an article on "A Day in the Life of a Game Designer." Check it out, it's dangerously close to the truth.

I'm going to the Evolution Fighting Game Championships tomorrow, both to compete and help run the event. www.evo2k.com. NOTE: I am brining somewhere near 100 copies of my book, Playing to Win, to sell. This is a special print run, individually numbered and signed, with the Evolution logo on the cover. The regular run of the book won't be available for another 60-90 days.

Ok, see you guys later.
--Sirlin

One of my character flaws is my giddy delight when I get to expose retarded ideas. I'm calling you out personally Justin Blanchard, Commissioner of the CPL, for posting this rule:

"In one-versus-one deathmatch competitions, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) expects all players to remain competitive and engaged in combat throughout the entire match. Stalling and/or hiding in an effort to keep your opponent from finding you or to stall game play, is unprofessional and not acceptable during tournament matches.

"This also includes hiding in locations not normally accessible or visible during standard game play (via normal running/jumping). A player using these tactics to prevent an opponent from engaging in battle or hiding in map locations not normally reached or seen during regular game play will be penalized based upon the tournament administrator's discretion.

"If a tournament administrator has reason to believe that any unsportsmanlike tactics are being used, the player will face penalties, which may include forfeiture of the match, expulsion from the tournament and/or suspension from the league."

http://forums.thecpl.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=27;t=000343;p=

I don't even know where to begin. As I wrote in my articles, something must be Discrete, Enforcable, and Warranted for it to be banned. This fails all 3 of those tests. Hiding in corners is a part of the game. Sniping from secret locations is a part of the game. The game does not need vague rules imposed on it, creating many situations where the player can do something the game itself deems legal, but the tournament organziner deems illegal.

Not only is the rule completely impractical, but it flies in the face of Playing to Win at all. Do you think Sun Tzu's Art of War has a section explaining that when you are close to victory, you should expose yourself to possible loss? If you are ahead in points and time is running out, it's only common sense you should do everything possible to avoid the opponent. Yet now, you must "sort of avoid him" because if you "avoid him too much" then you will be banned. The natural forces of the game tell you to do one thing (run and hide) and the Commissoner of the CPL tells you to do another thing (expose yourself to the enemy).

I guess the CPL needs to take a hint from the Evolution Fighting Game Championships (www.evo2k.com) which I help run. We encourage our players to do whatever they need to do to win, short of a few game-ending bugs. Some players attack relentlessly, some players run away relentlessly. It's all part of the tournament experience to face radically different play styles.

A few players wrote me asking for advice on this issue. I guess I'd have to say "play to win anyway and ignore this new rule. If you or anyone else actually gets penalized for it, then the entire tournament becomes invalid, and you should find another tournament." Sorry guys.

--Sirlin

I am back from Evolution 2004. www.evo2k.com. It was huge and awesome and there's so much that went on that I can't begin to convey it all here. Many of the best players in the world were there, competing in 9 different fighting games. I am one of the organizers of the event, and I ran a sizeable portion of the Super Turbo Street Fighter 2 tournament.

Anyway, here's how I did. On Day (qualifying pools day), I did not lose a single ROUND in either game I entered (ST and GGXX). This included a win against two-time US national champion Jason Cole, in 4 straight rounds. (Um...why were he and I in the same qualifying pool? I think we really need to seed by ranking, not just by region next year.) Oh, I played only Vega the whole time in ST. Cole played Chun Li against me first, then switched to Dhalsim. I played only Chipp the whole time in GGXX.

On Day 2, I won some matches in Guilty Gear, but lost (barely) to an Axl player who made top 8. I felt like that was mine to win, but oh well. I later lost to an Eddie player who trains with the great Kensao (Chipp player), which means he had plenty of practice against Chipp. I feel I must be honest here when I say that this Eddie player completely destroyed me. It was not close at all. I finished 17th.

In ST, I had been waiting all year for my rematch with Daigo. After retiring Dhalsim, setting Bison aside and focusing on Vega, I felt I was ready. I have beat both Choi and Valle in tournaments with Vega, so I was mentally prepared to face Daigo. The brackets even worked out right for me, as Daigo was on my path. I faced Alex Valle and the winner would not only qualify for top 8 (day 3) but also play Daigo on stage the next match. I wanted to win that one so bad, but Valle proved too tricky and took the match. In loser's bracket I somehow managed to lose to Jessie Howard (Jessie, you are good, but I'm coming for you next time ;) ). So two Old Ken players knocked me out of the tournament, I finished 9th. In case you think Old Ken counters me, I invite the rest of you to play Old Ken against me in a tournament and see how you do. ;)

My claim to fame was the GGXX #reloaded tournament. I have played #reloaded like 2 times ever (one of those times was when I qualified for Team USA lol). I know the differences Chipp has in #r, but since I did not play #r on purpose (since Evolution's main Guilty Gear tournament was Non-#r this year) people did not expect much of me. I teamed up with Destin and famed Japanese Sol player Miu. We faced "Dream Team USA" of ID, Ruin, and Chaotic Blue. Those are probably the #1, 2, and 3 players in the US. I personally beat ID (top Sol) and Ruin (top Edddie) consecutively, to the amazement of the crowd. Chipp power! My friend Miu was able to clean up Chaotic Blue for me. We took 3rd place.

Oh, and I shouldn't leave out Kuni. He is the Japanese liason, since he speaks very good English. He plays ST Zangief(!) and there is nothing like him in the US anywhere. He wins the unwinnable matches and managed not only to qualify for top 8, but to take 3rd place in ST! He beat down Hondas, Balrogs, Sagats and Dhalsim's like they were nothing...all considred nearly impossible matches. I hung out with Kuni quite a bit, and with the Japanese Guilty Gear players Miu (4th place, Sol) and Kindevu (2nd place, Eddie). They're all very friendly and gave me a glimpse of much higher level play than I had ever seen before in person. I will almost certainly be retiring from Chipp and taking up a new character. For sake of surprise, I'll keep that character secret for now!

--Sirlin