Why don’t you go and watch gamerbee vs justin videos. I know for a fact they’re around about even in matches. Gamerbee beat him at evo 2010, ss2k12 . Justin beat him at ECT4. I think they both won a match at Sb vs redemption. It’s pretty damn close.
You are questioning a guy who got 2nd in evo 2012 , 5th in evo 2010, 5th in shadowloo showdown 2011 & 2012 . Let me remind you that Shadowloo showdown was a tough tournament with a high density of top players. He has more than proved himself on the level of any of the top american players.
Poongko has proved himself to a lesser extent but top 8 at EVO in consecutive years 2011 and 2012 is pretty damn good. He also got top 8 in godsgarden 4 , one of the toughest tournaments ever.
The only US guy to top 8 twice is Ricky. He is probably the strongest us player overall imo.
Not sure how you can argue they are not at the level of us players. Yea, they lose matches here n there. That’s the nature of a highly competitive tournament game with a best of 3 format. Overall though , its reasonable to say they are very close .
You are trying to defend your stance so hard it’s becoming painful to see . At the end of the day, Xian lost those close matches. So clearly he was behind overall by a small margin relative to the top japanese. My usage of the term “spanked” was over the top but at the end of the day he lost some of those tie breakers. The final result was 2-5 for him and I question his match with Bonchan . Akuma ?? really Bonchan? His akuma is nowhere near good enough especially relative to his world class sagat. I think he was just feeling himself a bit after his impressive first day beating Daigo and xiao hai.
Eh , that accomplishment actually goes to xiao hai .
Guys, come on. It’s pretty reasonable to compare gamerbee , xian and poongko’s performances at tournaments with US players and their performance at the topanga asia league, and then make an extrapolation as to how the top US players would fair.
I feel this argument cannot go much further if you are not willing to accept certain evidence and scrutinise it properly. The top US players could do well in a topanga league but its far more likely they would fill out the bottom spots as xian, poongko and gamerbee have done. They have all beaten the top japanese guys in various tournaments but here is direct evidence in a league format how the results become more meaningful with increasing sample size. My hypothetical argument is just that, but to question its integrity on the grounds of logic is completely naiive.
ok so how DO we assess someones skill level? not everyone can go to japan, not everyone can go to all the tournaments, and apparently tournaments dont mean much anymore period soooo…how do we figure out how good someone is?
Bonchan was using Akuma, a character he just recently started using. Why he chose to use his Akuma, I’m not really sure but I wouldn’t really use Xian’s win over Bonchan’s Akuma as anything too meaningful.
The problem I have is that your numbers are off. It’s not just “more than 20”, it’s more like, over 100. Yes, 100. The 20 players you refer to are probably the 20 that have ever traveled to the US in their life time, when there are TONS of equally solid players that have never been outside of Japan.
My main issue is the lack of knowledge of the scene and continuously basing everything that’s happening in the world, from American tournaments. I will reiterate - Evo is NOT the highest level tournament. It is greatly absent of the vast majority of the top players in the world. Godsgarden, SBO and the various 5on5 cup tournament events you see in Japan, are far far more abundant and concentrated in high/grandmaster level players.
Do you really need to fight Daigo (or insert top player name) to know that you are not stronger than that player?
Eh, Gamerbee has placed very high in almost every American tournament…and did you forget that he got second at Evo?
dx2, do you actively pay attention to a match as it’s going on…or is it just one big blur until you see the final score at the top saying 2-0 or whatever, in which it then registers for you?
You don’t need this “evidence” in the form of those players having to play each other, to make reasonable conclusions.
Use your eyes to watch what these players do and your brain to access how well they do it. Results can be useful, if there’s enough of them (1-2 small sets in a tournament is probably not enough), but what happens in those matches, regardless of who wins or losses, is probably better evidence.
After watching Infiltration the things he does are far beyond any other player on the planet. Footsies, reactions, mind games, perfect spacing, download speed, execution. He is better than everyone else. At Everything. The guy has even dominated top players with Hakan the worst character in the game.
Well if you think that, then you really haven’t been following the scene or the top players much at all.
Also, who are these “top players” he has beaten with Hakan? I only see he has played against FChamp(not the best Dhalsim but a good player), Hugo101(not a top player) and Snaffoo(not a top player) in the US. FChamp mainly lost due to having no clue what to do about Hakan, and it was probably the case with the other players too. Regardless, they aren’t “top players” and if you think they are top players, then what I said about you not following the scene and not knowing who the real top players are, is pretty evident.
Also regardless of whether he has a good Hakan, it’s pretty irrelevant. No one knows how to really fight him that well. He is also not the best Hakan by any stretch, that would probably go to ebi from Japan.
Also on a seperate note, I think a lot of people forgot what happened when Daigo was not using an underpowered character vs. Infiltration:
Fixed for you, he is still unoiled one of the worst. Just he is not that bad, how a lot people still would think about him.
You can´t blame anybody not having the knowledge of fighting against Hakan, because this is a game, where 70-80 % of the players pick Shotos, so what are you expecting? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JM-cleOi64
(FChamp said once ago, on Cross Counter TV, Hakan has/had some 1-9 matchups, so it looks like he has seemingly knowledge about Hakan xD)
I don´t want to say, but a majority of the characters in this game aren´t having a big frequency of appearing, even a lot of top 10 chars like Seth or Makoto, but nobody says, when they win that the opponent didn´t had a clue what to do about Seth or other Vega etc.
You know that Dhalsim has nowadays a really bad matchup against Hakan and even Yun barely wins against Hakan. Not a bad development from Super(7-3 for Dhalsim) to AE2012(9-1 for Hakan is too high, but it goes into this direction).
EBI has more Hakan knowledge compared to Infiltration, sure, but Infiltration is simply a much better player and can compensate his lack of Hakan knowledge through his better fundamentals, however EBI has indeed a better Hakan, his Hakan looks also more entertaining in my opinion.
I didn’t blame them at all for not knowing the matchup against Hakan…just saying it isn’t too meaningful to bring up Infiltration (or anyone’s) Hakan really as an argument for them being so great that they beast with a low tier like him.
Can’t really say Infiltration is a much better player than Ebi. Hakan is generally a big question mark when it comes to a player’s skill (if you judge on who the Hakan player has beaten), but it’s very clear from Ebi’s matches that he has some incredible hit confirmation and mindgames. I’m sure he would be even stronger if he used a stronger character like Akuma.
I don’t even have 1% of Japanese in me. Alas a longtime dream of mine was to climb to the top of the mountain in fighting games, to win majors and eventually be considered the best or among the best. However due to my inferior genes, I realize the folly in such ambitions. I’ll content myself in being mediocre. Oh cruel fate…if only I was Japanese, I could have been a contender.
Thats why i stopped playing starcraft… i just wasnt korean enough. your telling me i need to be Japanese to be good at street fighter? Well fuck it i guess im gonna go hoop/play football/run marathons and do what my genes are good for
Who? There are only a handful of well known foreigners playing 3s in Japan right now as far as I know. And all of them are doing pretty well in the Danisen battles. Who are these players who go back and get crushed?
Of course, AE Yun is all Daigo’s superior Japanese skills. I mean, he was nerfed far more than Akuma and is still considered a solidly bad matchup for him, whereas many consider Ryu - Akuma even, and in any case at most 6-4 in either direction, so clearly Ryu is super gimped in the Akuma matchup.
What “far more domination” he sees in NCR 9 Top 8 vs. 25th Grand Finals I don’t know, both have actual, solid matches with one player still clearly holding the upper hand. Still, funny how he mentions NCR 9 which is an old version of the game, an old playstyle for Infiltration, and then jumps to the 25th Anniversary tournament. I mean, this little thing happened somewhere along the way…
I don’t think anyone that is giving an unbiased opinion on that would suggest it was because daigo is a better player. AE yun obviously had a good advantage there. You can’t really draw anything meaningful from that particular match in terms of player strength .