Thoughts on the recent XBL tournament.
Firstly, thanks to those who put in the time to run the tournament and those who I played matches with. It was run well, without any hitches for the most part. A few people didn’t show, but not to the fault of those who were running the competition. I’d definitely sign up for the next one, whenever that happens.
Thanks again, and gg’s everyone. :karate:
Easily one of the most organized online tournaments I’ve tried. The real time bracket updates were great and the channel was convinient. I had to wait almost an hour to play my first match, but my opponent was a no show so it wasn’t the organizer’s fault.
Hey guys! Glad you all enjoyed the tournament and the overall IRC environment.
We would really like to see the XBL side pick up in regards to overall representation within the group, as lately its been mostly PSN. The tournament was a pleasure to administer.
We will definitely be looking to get more XBL tournies going…so keep an eye out. Outside of that, please drop by the channel more often. It only works the more people visit. On the PSN side sparring sessions are created 24/7 - so if you are looking for a good way to get quality practice in, and feedback to accompany it, you know where to go!
Congrats to Bowser on his win!
Vs Gutabo2
ex headbutt as an AA dont jump in as much, feel free to walk in with honda he has great tools. If you can use his standing RH a bit more. great use of his super I hardly ever see that anymore.
Try not to jump out of the corner. It’s a trap most of the time. excellent work on the hand pressure.
Start doing super if you land HHS.
stop spamming HHS, learn to hit confirm into it/
try getting tricky with hhs mix-ups. Go with the standing rh after the end of some slaps and cr.:lp: xx slaps
if someone is going poke crazy try counter hitting with standing fierce
stop doing wake up ultra it’s worthless unless you can hit a fireball or get a crumple from a FA.
You should work on understanding his normals a bit better as well. Your missing out on a lot of free damage opportunity from not using them.
Besides that I have one hunch about you only because I play Honda.
And if I’m right you really need to stop doing it.
I kinda just popped in after finding this thread and was placed in the tourney because of no-shows. I did have fun even though I didn’t do very well, lol. Regardless, I’m up for the next one.
I signed up on that site, but I’m not leaving feedback because, quite frankly, I’ve forgotten the match-ups lol. I’ve played several people since then and it kinda blurs together for my old ass. 
I should be getting my replacement stick on Tuesday, so it’ll be nice to be able to rely on 6 buttons instead of 3, lmao. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get Guile’s combos down again after so long of not using them.
Anyone want to run some just hit me up on XBL, just make sure to tell me you’re from SRK or I won’t accept it.
Thanks for the tourney guys! Well done!
GG’s all around. I’m going to give some feedback for the people I played in tourney.
Kyarisan (Akuma) vs Luken27 (Ryu)
5-2
Overall your Ryu seems like he has the basics down, you got a little flustered when the crossup tatsu’s started rolling out but you’ll get better at guarding against that as you play more often. As far as your footsies go you should be more aggressive. Akuma doesn’t want to fight Ryu toe-to-toe for very long, and you didn’t really take advantage of that strength. You should be confident with your fireballs - every time I’m going to block a fireball you should dash forward to gain ground. If I neutral jump you should be watching me to see if I air fireball, because if I do, you can rush in and sweep me on my way down. Your crMK has more active frames than mine and your fireball travels faster, so you should be using that as your go-to when up close against Akuma, mixing it in with crMP->crMK xx fireball and, sometimes, not throwing a fireball in your blockstrings and just keeping the pressure on with normals - it is possible for Akuma to focus through your crMK xx hado at it’s max range, and if that happens you’re eating a huge combo. If you are using a hado at the end of a blockstring, you should dash forward afterward to keep yourself in my face because that’s not where I want you in general. You can also play defensively in footsies and crouch trying to bait Akuma’s stRH, because if the first hit is blocked you can punish with whatever you like. You should also remove your random hurricane kicks, they’re punishable by fireballs if I time them properly, and I was often times baiting you at 3/4’s screen and punishing with sweep.
Kyarisan (Akuma) vs DaMoney21 (Balrog)
5-3
You’re not bad, but your headbutts were baited many times, and I think I got a lot of free damage because of that. A meaty sweep beats headbutt on wakeup, so if you’re going to do a wakeup headbutt it needs to be EX. However, like the regular headbutt, it still loses to safejumps and should generally be avoided. The non EX variants have no i frames. You should only use the Ex headbutt on wakeup when you think you can punish a meaty normal (check frame data for specifics) or when you know they timed their jump-in poorly so as to not safejump. To get out of Akuma’s crossup tatsu, like I said in our post-game dialogue, use EX dash straight to absorb the tatsu and you should be out of sweep range by then. Otherwise Balrog has no reliable way out of Akuma’s vortex and is forced to block. Your footsies aren’t bad but I think you could frame trap a little more with your stLP, crLP, and crMK.
Kyarisan (Akuma) vs EyeloveSF4 (Guile)
5-3
Your Guile is improving. One thing you have to remember is that Guile doesn’t get very much from throwing out non-guaranteed flash kicks. Guile doesn’t really benefit from assuming that he thinks he’s figured Akuma out, because one whiffed flash kick is probably going to cost you the round and you won’t get very much damage out of guessing correctly. Although you can get some good damage (for Guile, anyway) with guessing properly with Ultra, the ultra can also be safejumped. On Akuma’s wakeup you need to make sure he blocks your sonicboom and to punish him hard if he teleports toward and behind you. If he teleports away, just continue following the fireball and working him to the corner. You already know what to do when he blocks it. Just keep working on your Guile and hopefully you’ll be able to play against Akuma confidently… it’s an uphill battle for sure though.
Kyarisan (Akuma) vs Sgt Bowser (Gen)
5-4
1-5
3-5
Crazy matches overall man. I have to say I was forced to adapt after set 2 just to stand a chance at the end, but it wasn’t enough as I made some crucial errors that got me supered and ultraed as well as some zoning errors with red fireballs. One thing I noticed was that you usually ate my EX fireballs when I jumped forward at you, and this let me get a big combo in or an untechable knockdown. There’s not much you can do about this I know, but take extreme caution because you really really don’t want Akuma to take control or knock you down. I’ve heard that Gen has one of the best focus attacks in the game, so perhaps you could use that to go between my crMK xx hado. Overall though you have a solid Gen and I look forward to playing against you in the future.
There were a few people that entered the tourney that I never ran into but I wanted to play against, such as killakelly, ryboy, and someone I’ve never played against before (CSOG). It would be cool if we could play sometime and test our skills 
Overall I think the tournament was run very smoothly and will definitely participate in the next one. I don’t deserve as much credit as Nemesys does for running this thing, he was the one who set most of it up.
Great matches, lots of things to learn!
I didn’t use much of his normal because you stuffed them pretty well 
Whenever I tried to use s.:hk: I got hit by yours 
I got the super use from ST, and try to use it whenever against fireballs.
It was really weird because at times I tried to get inside your head and I got dizzy. I haven’t played many mirror matches, and getting out of traps is something I usually don’t have to do(besides an EX butt slam).
I can’t get super out of hands 100%(and it’s still one of the reasons I use the crutch), sometimes I just try too fast. Also I din’t used super in mirror matches and I didn’t try to extend hhs much because I wanted to always have meter ready. At least I landed one ex hhs into c.lp!
Much of my mixups got stuffed too
I should FA more, I barely use the FA. What other normals you think I don’t understand well?
I’ll try not to use crutches, but sometimes(specially teching throws) I don’t think I have much choice(mostly because of the lag). Anyway I’ll work on it, thanks for the heads up.
XBL Tournament Results
XBL Tournament Results**
Congratulations to BongPower for a Clutch Tournament Win
Kyarisan initially sent BongPower to the Loser’s Brackets. Only for BongPower to turn around and make a vicious comeback out of the Loser’s Brackets and reclaim his status in the Finals. BongPower came off strong and reset the match against Kyarisan and took the win by force. That is some clutch shit!
More congratulations to all those who were able to participate in the tournament overall as well as their placings. The Tournament overall started off slow but kicked into speed once the ball started rolling. We had alot of clutch matches going on.
Recap:
Luken27 who was sent to the Loser’s brackets right from the preliminary rounds made his way back to the semifinals of the Loser’s Brackets and put a full stop to KillaKelly/MartinRob/EyeloveSF4’s nonstop reign of terror.
Aboffman/DaMoney21/Sarian/Phatal were pulling in some serious wins but were unfortunately eliminated in the quarterfinals. Nevertheless, they were pulling some insane wins. Close knit…
In the end, a great and exciting time was had by all. I’m glad everything ran smoothly and hope to run more exciting tournaments as the one we ran today. Also, keep in mind the room is always open for sparring sessions, matchup discussions, assistance in frame data and the such. Always pass through and always keep checking this thread for more updated information as time progresses.
Thank you XBL’ers for helping to make this tournament run smooth and be extremely successful in it’s return to rekindling the XBL side of the SRK Team Training room.
Courtesy of the SRK Team Training Mods (DarthPaul, illWill and Nemesys).
had a great time, hope to do it again sometime. glad ti was held on a day i could be around for a while too
XBL Gamertag: Mannebind
Location: Norway
Headset: No (doesn’t work with my stick)
Record Matches: Ask
Dedication: Getting better for the love of the game
Characters: Ryu and Balrog are my top tiers, I dabble in lots of others.
Strengths: Picking up on patterns, adapting.
Weaknesses: Too defensive at times.
Characters Good VS:
Characters Bad VS: Blanka
What I Need to Practice: Execution, defending against higher level mixups and rushdown, option selects.
VS Ryagon
I’m not great with guile myself, so I can’t comment too much, but your attack pattern seemed to stay the same through most of our matches: Sonic boom and advance behind the projectile.
I feel like you should mix it up more, but sadly I don’t have any specific advice except… More ex sonic booms I think. They seem more worth it than to save for the super in my opinion.
With akuma, I’ll just say less air fireballs as they too get predictable 
MAJOR Props to Nemesys & DarthPaul for running this tournament for us. Excellent job, and i’m definitely joining the next one, hopefully gonna make some noise then! Good discussions in the irc chat, fun times. overall.
Reviews on 11/01 tournament:
Time of the event was really convenient and good for alot of people. I think the guys in charge (Nemesys and DarthPaul) handled things pretty well, gave people limits on breaks and were quick on updating results. It was overall an encouraging tournament too because it’s interesting to be part of a group of 16 guys who compete at a pretty high level. Lag and 3-bars or less connection is just that unfortunate factor of these online tourneys but that can’t be helped. (BTW if you live in NYC area, i’m thinking of doing something local)
Bracket setup was good, in fact it seemed to have worked well with double elim, and somehow pinning some of the guys we know to be well-experienced near the finals. Props to Kyarisin/LukenSRK/SgtBowser for making it as far as u did, Luken did well after going down to losers bracket and dominated.
Overall the length of tournament wasn’t bad either considering it was 16 people and double elim. I think 16 is probably a perfect number to run these in the future, because if we go for 32, it would be tougher to manage, tougher to get results, and there would be very little time we can allow for breaks. In addition, if someone or more than one person doesn’t show up/or leaves early, it can hold things up and just cause alot of people to run through the tourney via BYE.
So i think a group of 16 should show, give some leeway for ppl to appear and be on stand-by if someone doesn’t show up, etc.
FEEDBACK:
vs Martinrob
your Ryu
What can I say? It was a good match. I forget how aggressive you can be with your Ryu, and he’s improved a whole lot since the last time we met. I think in the past, I would get the best of your Ryu because you left openings in your combos, we usually went 50/50 or i’d sometimes get more wins, but in this tourney, you did everything right. Your links were good, your pressure was good and I needed to switch things up to get the upperhand, but I was a bit frustrated throughout the whole match because it felt sluggish when I would try to kara throw/poke or SRK. So even when I did switch up and won a pair, you switched your strategy well enough to get the best of me. Good wins. That said, you like to focus bait alot, which is something I should’ve punished but felt too afraid to do. Your jump-ins can get pretty predictable too, so you have the right idea with the pressure, but if i was on point, I would’ve punished those jump-ins alot more. Aside from that good Ryu.
vs Gutabo2
vs EHonda
Don’t know the matchup, i figured while fighting you at least one place to punish if i block your attack. You use hands - cr.mp- hands alot, and it’s good because i have no clue how to counter it, but against someone who knows the matchup, that strategy wont be as good. It’s good pressure though and your reaction timing is good.
Phatal PHD
vs Bison
You have the potential to be a great Bison. You have all the right ideas, i just get the feeling that you’re not using them at the right times. That’s basically your only drawback as a Bison. You need to be exposed to a lot of different scenarios and matchups and see where you should do which attack. I play Bison as my 2ndary and i had the same issues initially but 2 things you need to have down to a science: 1) know your Bison BnBs at least 2 different ones, ones that start with cr. lk and one that starts with cr. lp. Your jump-ins are good, but i’ll fight you in sparring one day with my Bison to show you how to time the jump-ins better and put pressure.
You play a bit too turtle-style when you should be alot more on the mix-up, fast aggressive style. That also means less slides, you did ALOT of those, which led to an easy punish from Ken. Slides should be used in combos OR to punish, or if someone doesnt have a good reversal, u can use it to mix it up after a knockdown. Read your opponent, if he likes to stay in crouch position alot, then time your jump-ins, or do short jump-ins or fake and with DR. Good idea with the warps, and i think you did well with catching me a few times with j. mpx2 into Ultra. That was good and showed me u read my attacks.
That’s basically what Bison has to become to be good in this game, you have to almost anticipate when your opponent will jump in order to stop it with a s. HK, or when they want to fb and you’re close to do s. mK, or time the longer attacks to do a j. HP jump-in attack combo. Overall, work on doing ALOT less slides, alot more grab mix-ups after initial bnb combos. Also another trick some high level players do is to start a block string and OS ultra. it’s pretty interesting and i wanna incorporate that into my game as well.
vs Aboffman
vs Akuma
Wow, I couldn’t have chosen a worse opponent than you: You picked my 2 most annoying matchups because against them Im just STARTING to get an idea of how to fight them well and you made me fight them at your level, which was very challenging. That said, your Akuma was probably your lesser fighter of the two. I was able to punish Akuma well, and you had the right combos, good zoning, and good reaction time with your teleports. With Bison, i needed to put more pressure and i think i got a few games on you that way, which is when you switched to Balrog, but your Akuma can also play a good mix of offensive AND defensive. Also, the connection being 3 bars is frustrating to me because i can try to tech throws as much as i want but it wont happen. You made good use of throw mix ups, your demon flip attacks were becoming a bit predictable, so use those sparingly imo, but the one where u grabbed me to end that one fight was a good surprise.
You have good reaction time, and more often than not, you would punish me when I made a mistake. Decent combos, but theres more you can do and i have a feeling that if you put more time with Akuma he’ll be on same level as your balrog.
vs Balrog
Oooh boy, that’s one matchup that I know i should at least win 50/50 but my opponents vary so much that it’s hard to get a consistent strategy against you Rog players. Good pressure, i found myself in the corner more often than not. Again, the connection wasn’t great and i would find myself not kara-throwing even though my input was perfect. That made the fight alot more difficult because I did not have a good way to mix up. Your combos were fkin scary, man. OMG, it was too painful for me that once you got 1 jab in, that it was a guaranteed 6hit into Ultra. Very very good, and keeps your opponent on their toes. My kara-focus was off that night too, so i’d miss alot of opportunites or just whiff FA, which was stupid. All that said though, alot of fights were down to the wire against my Ken. You were more clutch in crunchtime though and found a way to win. You like to focus at times when it makes you very vulnerable against an aggressive offensive-minded opponent. Against a zoning Ryu, your FAs would make alot of sense, against a Ken/Viper/Rufus though, it may not be your best idea. Overall, your balrog is your strongest and definitely one of the scariest i’ve encountered. I wish our connection was perfect so i could really have given you a better challenge, but you’re definitely clutch in close fights so keep it up.
what do you mean by OS Ultra? what does OS mean?
besides that, thanks a lot for the tips. hopefully we can play some more sometime and you can show me some of those things you mentioned.
OS = option select, it’s sort of like baiting for your opponent to be spamming jabs/ or trying to tech while option selecting during a block string, and you stop your block string mid-way to pull out an Ultra.
Andre did it to Daigo in that Seasons Beatings 4 event. Pretty effective if you play someone who adapts quickly
DaMoney21 :
After we played I thought long and hard of what exactly to tell you and how exactly could I help you. So here goes :
You don’t seem to have anywhere near the grasp of what to do or what you want to do. Assuming Ryu/Boxer are your mains you should really start off by learning Footsies and Zoning (more so with Ryu).
Alot of the time you just stand there or attack highly predictable. I thought maybe you were turtling but you were just standing there waiting for me to do something stupid.
Anyways without giving a wall of text I’ll say try this. . .
Just use Ryu for now and learn zoning and footsies. In those times you are in training mode just make sure you get bread and butters down. Just focus on using nothing but footsies and zoning. Hit confirming c.mk xx hado etc. . .
Sorry this is the best I could do given how many games we played and what you did during those games.
XBL Gamertag: susu2k
Location: Bern, Switzerland
Headset: Yes
Record Matches: Yes…digital camera, no direct feed.
Dedication: Training to compete in next year’s EVO
Characters: Ryu, Akuma, Sagat, Gen
Strengths: Execution
Weaknesses: Character matchups esepcially akuma
Characters Good VS: Ryu, Sagat, Abel, Ken
Characters Bad VS: Akuma, Claw, Balrog
What I Need to Practice: Matchups!!!
can anyone train me so I can get a feedback?
thanks ninja, i decided to go with ryu as my main for now, but without a doubt, i will switch back to rog eventually. But as for learning footsies, and zoning, i will try. Good games. i wish i could remember stuff to talk about you, but i went blank, lets play again sometime. thanks for the help and good games
vs AssassinCreed
Man i always forget to put feedback becase i always forget about how our matches went. Last night when we played i felt you got so much better than you were before. The only thing i can say is that you’re getting very solid.
Oh yea, i remember why i never put feedback, its because you don’t need it. :]
i need to play someone, FierceKick, you want to sometime?
XBL Gamertag: maple maniac
Location: FL Florida
Headset: Yes
Record Matches: sometimes, just ask
Dedication: Training to compete in next year’s EVO
Characters: Rufus, Ken,Akuma, Seth (mainly Rufus, i just started ken, im kinda good with seth and ok with Akuma.)
Strengths: Solid ground game, understanding of game mechanics and theory
Weaknesses: turtles!
Characters Good VS: blanka, boxer, mirror, abel, Sagat, some shoto’s ect.
Characters Bad VS: Dictator sometimes, sometimes shoto’s.
What I Need to Practice: Practice vs characters i have trouble with a a little execution
Guys, im looking for people to play, please just add me and inv me whenever. Thanks in advance