Played in the evo qualifier tournament today. Josh’s Blanka won (the guy I posted vids of earlier). I had the unfortunate draw of playing Dagger_G’s Seth and the best Sagat in Hawaii so yeah, couldn’t do shit. I guess I’ll post the vids when they come out but I’m not even gonna watch them lol.
I’m trying out a new strat for Seth. I just sit back and absorb booms for ultra for half the round. Then when I have enough, I’ll try to catch a lucky headbutt dizzy and ultra. By the second round, I should have the super bar filled so I try to catch another lucky dizzy and super. I’ve won a couple of matches doing that. I think it mostly just surprised them because they expect you to come at them right away. But I’ve also messed up this strat a few times because I was eating their booms after absorbing one. You just have to be really careful not to take too much damage while building up your ultra. If you play this way, I think it ups the probability of winning. It forces them to play a more offensive game which they might not be used to. You don’t have to be super careful when they get their ultra because, if you’re playing right, once you hit them, the match should be over. So look for headbutting their arms when they’re doing their j.HP or catch them off of a wall dive. So far, this strategy seems to work better than anything I’ve been doing before.
These vids were in the vid thread in the general sf4 forum, but they should be in here too
Poongko (ryu) vs Itabashi Zangief (zangief)
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Itabashi Zangief vs Pei Hoon (Saggot)
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It’s been a long time since I’ve done video commentary, but it’s also been a long time since I saw vids of a really good Gief player doing something interesting enough that I wanted to commentate on it. Recently Itabashi Zangief, probably still the best Gief player in the world, went to a tournament in Singapore where he played against some good players. Dude above me posted part of it, but he also played Laugh @Ryu (who got 5th at Cal Regionals here in SoCal back in January) and Pei Hoon @Sagat. I’ll start on these v. Poongko vids, fast forwarding to the third set where both players have felt the other out a bit already.
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0:10: So this match starts up real fast. Itabashi does this focus through the fireball thing. What hewants to happen is for his focus attack to go through the fireball and hit Ryu, and that can work, but it doesn’t here because Poongko is just a bit too far away. For this to work Itabashi has to let go of the focus button (so that the actual hitting part comes out) and then if he hits Poongko, either dash toward if it crumples or dash back to safety if it doesn’t. The downside of having to let go is that if the focus doesn’t hit Ryu at all, Itabashi is just sorta walking through the air waiting to get hit (since once you’ve let go of the focus, you can only dash back/toward if it touches the opponent). Obviously here Itabashi whiffs it and Poongko punishes him.
0:13: But not with a very smart punish. This hurricane kick leaves him right next to Itabashi, and while this suplex here isn’t that safe, Itabashi correctly predicts that Poongko won’t jump back or have a meaty out and gets his throw.
0:51: Alright, so here’s that focus through the fireball thing when it works. As you can see, Itabashi started a little closer to Poongko than he did at 0:09.
0:53: I don’t know why Poongko does a dragon punch right after this, but my guess is that he expected Itabashi to dash toward after the focus, which totally would have worked because Gief has only 15 frames of hitstun on his focus to cover his huge 26 frame forward dash (in other words, Poongko would have had 11 frames to do whatever he wanted if Itabashi had dashed in). Anyway, Itabashi dashed back and punishes the dp with spd for the win.
1:14: The start to this round is more of the footsie battle that I think this matchup is mostly about, but I just wanted to highlight this particular thing for a sec because you can see something really important in it. Itabashi whiffs a short and then immediately after does ex green hand. Why? He’s buffering his far standing short into ex hand, which means that every time he does a standing short (or any short or jab) he’s also doing an ex hand motion immediately after it. This way, if the short hits it immediately cancels into ex hand for a knock down combo and if the short doesn’t hit, nothing happens. This obviously makes Zangief’s footsie game much more dangerous than if he was just doing standing shorts. The problem is that sometimes you can mess up the timing and get a full ex hand after instead of just the buffer, which is what happens here. At least, I think this is what’s happening (because it also happens to me). What could also be happening is Itabashi saw Poongko whiff Ryu’s sweep, which takes half a day to recover and is free ex hand bait. Either way, good things to know.
1:21: So here’s something about footsies that some people might not know. After Itabashi jumps here, he holds back while standing, not while crouching. The reason is that when you crouch, your character’s hitbox also gets a little wider by the floor than when you stand. If Itabashi had crouch blocked here, Poongko’s low forward would have touched him and Poongko might have buffered into fireball. Itabashi is 100% sure that he’s outside of Ryu’s crouching medium kick range, so he just holds back because he knows he can’t be touched this way. Itabashi doesn’t really capitalize, but if he’d stuck out standing/crouching short buffered into ex hand after Poongko’s low forward here, he would have caught Ryu’s foot and taken off almost 20% of Ryu’s life with a knockdown ex hand combo. Knowing exact ranges of moves and being able to stand without worry when you know you’re at a safe range is really important in footsies, because it gives you more opportunities to punish out-of-range whiffed moves than if you crouch blocked and let some moves touch you that would have otherwise whiffed.
1:29: This whiffed focus was Itabashi betting on Poongko doing a fireball. Not that great a bet imo.
1:35: Watch Itabashi walk up while spazzing crouch here. Why does he do that? He’s buffering in the ex hand motion, and I guarantee he’s got his hands hanging over the pp buttons just in case he sees Poongko throw a fireball. Reacting to fireballs with instant ex hand is pretty important in footsies against Ryu.
1:49: Once you back Ryu up to something like half a screen from the corner, heads up, because he’s gonna start thinking about doing jump toward instant hurricane kick to fly way over and behind you, which gets him out of the corner, sets up nice spacing for him, and is usually safe unless predicted. Well, Itabashi predicts it here. Once you hit someone with this neutral jump up+fierce headbutt, it usually only takes one more combo to stun them, which results in mind games you can really use to your advantage.
1:53: This jump back was a messed up walk-up spd, I guarantee it. Poongko had just whiffed a crouching forward and had a split second of vulnerability, although I’m not sure this spd would have worked anyway since it kind of looks like maybe Poongko was dashing back by the time Itabashi starts jumping. But in any case, walking up after a whiffed normal and doing standing spd is a great option in footsies.
1:56: More focus-through fishing, although wisely this time he holds the button to verify whether a fireball is coming, sees that none is, and cancels the focus with a backdash instead of letting go.
2:01: Hate that stupid jump hurricane kick, it’s so good. Look at how well it resets the situation.
2:50: Crouching short buffered into ex hand works here, sick. By the way I really wish Itabashi would quit jumping so much.
2:52: So here’s a nice little tip. Post crossup, Itabashi does crouching shorts instead of crouching jabs, for a couple reasons. The first is that people often try to jump away from Gief’s up-close pressure when they predict he’s going for a command grab. What happens when an opponent presses up on the stick while in Gief’s crouching short pressure? He stands up, and once he’s standing up he can’t block low attacks like Gief’s crouching short, so the crouching short hits him. The other reason is that characters like Ryu who have dragon punch motion reversals can’t both crouch block and input the dragon punch motion at the same time, just because one requires down-back and the other requires down-toward. If Poongko is inputting down-toward when Itabashi touches him with low short, Poongko gets hit. The weird thing about crouching short is that it’s actually not a safe block string (ie doing crouching shorts repeatedly doesn’t put the opponent in constant blockstun), meaning the opponent can actually escape with a well timed reversal. But if you use crouching jabs, which do make a safe block string, your opponent can stand up into them if he’s trying to hold up and be safe because they don’t hit low. Luckily it’s pretty hard to do a properly timed reversal in between crouching shorts because you’d have to do the entire dragon punch motion while in blockstun from a crouching short, which is pretty fast.
2:57: I don’t want to go back through all these videos, but if you’ve watched them, you’ve seen that Itabashi usually goes for the down+short knees crossup instead of the fierce splash crossup. The knees beat or whiff through Ryu’s dragon punches, but they don’t offer the same kind of post-crossup options because they just don’t do enough blockstun for Gief to hit Ryu with them in the hand, land, and start a crouching jab/short before Ryu recovers and can dragon punch etc. By contrast, fierce splash gives you all day to do a crouching normal even after getting blocked at the opponent’s head, but unfortunately it makes Gief’s body so wide that he can get hit by things he beats or whiffs through with the tiny hittable hitbox of the knees. Usually you want knees because it’s safe, but sometimes you want fierce splash because of its extra options. Itabashi has gone splash a couple times so far this game. If Ryu thinks Gief is going knees, there’s no point in doing a dp to try to beat the air attack (he can just wait until Gief lands for that), but if he thinks Gief is going splash, Ryu can dp and trade, just like this. Itabashi goes splash, Poongko goes dp, and the result is that Itabashi loses both his lifebar and positional advantages because of a trade dp into ultra juggle.
3:18: Looks like Itabashi predicted jump hurricane but didn’t get his headbutt out in time, resulting in a weird situation where he and Poongko land at about the same time. If Itabashi had woken up with lariat here, he could have knocked Poongko’s jump down, but, well, wakeup lariat is pretty retarded. I would have just sat there too.
3:31: This is a short buffered ex hand gone weird. The short is blocked, triggering the ex hand, but Poongko stops blocking and gets hit by the hand, but Itabashi thought the hand would get blocked because he saw the short get blocked and couldn’t react to the hand hitting in time, so he fadcs back, losing the advantage from the hand and leaving him with no bars of meter. You don’t want to have no bars against Ryu; ex hand is the best thing you have to dissuade Ryu from doing fireballs in footsies, especially when you’re low on life like Itabashi is and can’t afford to many focus-throughs.
3:35: Daaang, see? If he’d had meter here, this short buffered hand would have been the end of the match. Make sure you’re buffering the hand with jab+strong just in case something like this happens; strongs don’t usually combo and fierces never do, and only jabs recover in time to have any chance at blocking something like Ryu’s 3 frame super.
3:40: Why does Itabashi put a standing strong into this fireball, you say? This is another footsie trick, and Itabashi’s been doing it the whole game (although it hasn’t paid off too much). Basically, Ryu’s hitbox extends out when he does a fireball and the strong extends farther out than it looks, so Itabashi is trying to trade his strong for Ryu’s fireball, which would be great here because that would finally kill Poongko off. Unfortunately Itabashi is a little too far for it to work (although not as far as off as you might think).
3:43: It’s kind of hard to tell if this is the range where Ryu’s jumping roundhouse beats lariat or not. I think Itabashi made a good call in not risking it.
3:56: Ok, so. Why does Itabashi not do ex hand for chip damage? I saw someone post that question, I think in the general SF4 forum. The reason is that he doesn’t get a very good chance. If Itabashi whiffs ex hand, he knows he’s dead; Poongko’s not gonna just watch him fly by and not do anything about it. It might look like 3:46 is a good spot, just as Poongko comes down from that jump, but actually I think Itabashi’s just barely out of range for it to work. I don’t think Itabashi expected this dash-up ex dp; I know I didn’t.
So, interesting match. I think Ryu beats Gief by a little bit. I’ve been thinking about saying that for a long time, maybe 3/4 of a year, but I haven’t come out and said it much. Imo Ryu has a slight advantage in footsies, which hurts because that makes Gief want to jump a little more than he should against a character with retardedly good antiair options like Ryu. Gief also can’t get free fierce splash crossup pressure like he can against most characters, and Ryu has dp fadc into either safety or big ultra combo as well, so Gief’s up-close game isn’t as strong as it is in some other matchups. So, slight loss in footsies and slightly less of an advantage compared to most matchups up close, but the killer is that jump air hurricane kick. Gief could totally go even with or beat Ryu if he could really reap the rewards of the corner, but he can’t, because most of the time Ryu will try to air hurricane out to completely reset the situation.
I’m gonna talk about Itabashi v Pei Hoon’s Sagat sometime soon too. Itabashi plays the Sagat matchup really differently from how I do, so there are some cool things for me in those games.
You wanna look at some of my matches again? I would recommend the one I had against Josh where he used Blanka.
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Hey, I beat a guy’s Blanka that qualified for a semifinal spot at Evo lol.
Btw, do you have any recent vids of yourself up UD? I wish I coulda played you when you were down at Brian’s. Too bad you couldn’t come on a Friday when all of us go.
I tried the short into ex hand thing. The only problem was, I was getting the hands even when I whiffed the short. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing wrong. Am I pressing PP too quickly or too late? I really need to master that technique. Some Ryus out there have really good footies and I need every advantage I can get.
Hello,
Some video of my Zangief in “first to 5” challenge.
Kilivan (Zangief) vs Infexious (Ryu)
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Kilivan (Zangief) vs Bushinnr1 (Boxer)
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Feel free to post any comments or advices, thanks.
I only watched real quick, but at about 40 seconds you do a reg green hand in the second vid with ryu. It’s pretty unsafe on hit so you don’t really want to do that.
I do like however that you had a pretty good poke game going on prior to that. I’ll watch more later.
Awwww… what a waste of the super bar at the end of round 1. Should have gone with the ultra. Would have still missed though…
Aw man! You shouldn’t have tried that ultra at the end there! Any hit would have sufficed! I always try to tell myself that. Only hit them with what is needed to kill them. The ultra is much tricker to land than say an EX hand or a sweep.
Nice win in the 2nd game though.
lol the super came out on accident and I know the ultra woulda missed.
Also yeah, I regretted going for the ultra, shoulda just lariat or something.
But yeah, that Blanka got a semi spot in Evo. Trust me though, he is really good.
Here’s my matches from the EVO qualifier tourney where I get owned hard.
Dagger_G
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Eric Lee
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Things that beat Seth J.HP:
S.mp when it whiffs just in front of your face
crouching mp
jump forward lp
crouching lariat
Man, that match looks frustrating. It almost seems like a pretty good gief can lose to a blanka that just backs up and does balls(since that was the dude’s whole strategy). If you get in any trouble do ex rainbow. I could teach a 9 year old, or a particularly smart ape(maybe one from NASA) to execute that strategy and it would take a pretty good gief to beat it it seems like, correct me if I am wrong. I might try picking blanka next time I fight a good gief, I don’t know how to play blanka but it doesn’t seem like that really matters too much.
heres a few matches with me and NicaKO
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let me know what you think
Reposted from the crossup option select thread, a little thing on how to use crossup option selects: [media=youtube]FC8UIIm704I"[/media]
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0:28: This jump fierce was in your face for like half a second. When you’re at this range and you see Seth neutral jump, press that strong button. If he presses fierce, you’ll hit it, and if he doesn’t, oh well, no repercussions.
0:34: I know the natural feeling is to crouch block as the default block position, but you can’t do that against Seth. Unless he’s in your face, you should be standing, because that stupid jump fierce of his can hit you from pretty far away.
0:37: It looks like you react to this walljump with a neutral jump, presumably for headbutt purposes, but it didn’t come out in time. It’s a good idea, but make sure you press that up+fierce as soon as possible in this situation. I think it would have worked if you’d done it as fast as you can.
0:42: You’re doing a lot of regular green hands, which I don’t really like. You don’t really need to rush in in this matchup, and when his neutral/back jump fierce takes up most of the screen, doing green hand really isn’t advisable. Now, ex hand is a different story. If you’d done ex hand to ultra in this exact situation, he would have lost 3/4 of his life.
0:48: You just had a couple times here where you could have jabbed or stronged his jump fierce. Just outside Seth’s jump fierce is not a bad range for Gief to be.
1:06: Awwwww, why was this toward jump fierce? Was it supposed to be neutral jump headbutt? If it had been, you might have won the round. I don’t like toward jumping at Seth in general, he just has too many great antiairs; dp to juggle, ex dp to juggle, jump attack, ultra, and super are all legit. I personally prefer to try to set myself up as a wall that just keeps moving forward than to try to really attack him. He knows that you literally have an instant kill button when he has about as much life as he does right now; he should be really scared of that.
1:21: Like SSJGB says, jump toward jab beats Seth’s jumping fierce. If you’re gonna try a toward jump (which, again, I’m not a huge fan of personally), and you expect Seth to do jump fierce, you should have a jab out.
1:36: I definitely don’t like punch lariat in this matchup, especially through booms. Wherever Seth is on screen he has punishments for it, be it jump fierce, ultra, super, walldive headstomp, jump toward roundhouse into combo, etc. An occasional punch lariat at the tip of Seth’s jump fierce range if you expect a fierce, ok, but I’m not even a big fan of that. It’s much safer to do kick lariat through booms, although even kick lariat isn’t necessarily safe.
1:39: Get that jab/strong out!
1:49: You can trick Seth’s dp into losing to your crossup knees much like you can with Ryu’s, so keep that option in mind. I know you’re going for the counter hit headbutt, but I don’t think that works.
1:51: This was a free headbutt. At the range Seth jumps back at, it’s almost certain he’s going to try to wall jump out, but even if he doesn’t, a headbutt would have enough range to knock him. If you see Seth jump when you’re in this situation, jump up+fierce for awesomeness.
1:55: Yeah, I really think you should give the green hand a rest. What are you rushing for? There are 65 seconds on the clock, and you can survive several more booms, a few more jump fierces, and maybe even a full combo. Don’t be so hasty.
1:59: So let’s look at the last ten seconds or so and see why you ended up losing. At 1:52, you jump toward and either get antiared by Seth’s fierce or you keep moving and walk into it. Right after that, you jump toward and get beaten by Seth’s jump fierce. Then you green hand up and eat another jump fierce. Then you ex hand through the boom and eat a standing normal, which thankfully wasn’t comboed out of. Then you try walking forward or something (hard to tell) again, and get jump fierced again. Then you keep walking forward and get standing fierced for the loss. At 1:51 you have about a quarter of your life left, and then you lose it all to Seth’s chip-damage level normals in only 7 seconds. At 1:51 there were 68 seconds left on the game clock, you had enough life to get hit by Seth 5 times and still live, and Seth didn’t have super or ultra; in other words, things were ok. Instead of trying to slowly and methodically walk him backwards, you rushed in and killed yourself.
I’d like to see you deal with Seth’s jump fierce a little better. Again, your options are standing jab or strong on the ground from just outside the fierce’s range, neutral jump headbutt from just outside the fierce’s range, jumping jab (both neutral jump and toward jump), ex hand under the fierce into command grab, or occasionally a punch lariat just under the fierce’s fists. Once you make Seth wary of using that fierce, the matchup will become a little more reasonable. So, that and being less hasty are my two main points of advice.
lol, thanks for writing that match up even though I didn’t even want to watch that display of scrubbiness again. To be honest, Kyle told me that he would use his Seth against me weeks ago, but I had no way of practicing because he’s the only one on the island that plays him. He doesn’t like using his Guile against me even though he still beats me a majority of the time.
And yeah at 1:06 I screwed up. My execution was kinda bad that day, I was a little razzled at my bracket placement since Eric and Kyle were the two guys I absolutely did not want to face.
And yeah, don’t mind me picking Sagat lol. I suck with him.
Wow, thanks for the tips UD. I’ll try the s.strong more in this match up. Dodging Seth’s fierce is so unbelievably annoying. I’ve been trying to psychic tag his standing fierce with kick lariat by baiting it. It might work a few times until they wise up. It seems to work much better on Sim than on Seth.
yea, seth is so messed especially that 28 hit combo 0_o
Mattpsx2: You should have asked me to help you out on seth training. I also use Seth as a secondary character. 