LMAO!


Go man, maybe you'll run into J.O.P., there's rumors of him coming back to MK you know.

If you can go, you should I doubt this next tournament will be half as bad as that cluster of madness. You're still maining Smoke right?

Oh and also, I will be sure to follow this and root for you.

Good luck man

First off, thank you for the support guys. The trip ended up being very worth it.

I went after all, and I got second place. There are cell phone vids of the matches, so I might be able to get those for you guys. Despite all my stuffy analysis, you guys will see that I get nervous and scrub it out just like any other scrub. Nonetheless, it's healthy and necessary to get exposed every once in a while. I'll post more details when I'm not dead tired, but here was the general top (well, there were only eight players, so um, yeah).

1. Quan Chi
2. Smoke (Temp)
3. Kitana
4. Scorpion/Kano
5. Scorpion/Freddy
6. Kenshi/Cage
7. Noob
7. Smoke (got pissed and didn't show up for losers bracket)

It's cool man, I totally understand what you mean. Both me and Espio already posted videos of our butts getting kicked lol.







LOL! Chris G.'s bro maybe?



2nd place is great, congrats!

My friend posted some of the matches. The first video is my first match in the tourney, and the second is winners finals against the guy who ultimately won. Let me know what you guys think.

BTW, the reason the guy paused in the first video is because he thought his controls were messed (said his x-ray wasn't working; if you pay attention to the vid, the reason is obvious). I didn't mind since it was the guy's first tournament. I hope he doesn't get discouraged by his performance.

As for Chris (Quan Chi), total props to the guy. Fun to talk to, knew his shit, and it was a blast playing the matches and casuals with him (And Espio, Chris plays a SICK Stryker).

Anyway, all criticism is welcomed, but go easy on me. Two criticisms which I'll go ahead and preempt are "Why do you not follow up your air punches with a Smoke bomb," and "why do you keep dropping your combos?" For the first criticism, it's because my reactions are rather poor and I failed to read the jumps usually. For the second, I think much of that has to do with playing a lot online and simply being nervous. Once I realized I was dropping too many combos, I shortened my juggles. Anyhoo, more videos will be posted when my friends upload them.

First Match

Winners Finals


Hehe, having other people watch your stuff definitely puts things into perspective. I did finally check out the footage of you guys playing, and both of you guys are pretty good. Honestly, there are parts in my above vids that watching again made me nauseous. Still, better to get criticism now than at Evo.

Oh God, I feel bad for the first guy, 1/2 of meter empty and he wonders why the X-ray isn't coming out. ^.^


Quan Chi match:

Liked the rune trap into sweep mix-up in the very first round (plus the meter building during the trance with 2 whiffed specials). Very entertaining first match, he caught you quite a few times with his f1, 2 string which hits low on the second hit.

Love the sweep from you at the very start of game 2. Again he caught you with the same string (f1, 2). I know this string can catch me as well off guard. I think the problem might be when I think of low hitting strings I usually think of kicks, not punches so it can catch me by surprise.

That f1, 2 string of his brought him a lot of success overall. I like what he did at 8:08, canceled one block string into the other. I don't know much about Smoke's frame data, but that's maybe something you could work on. For example, when you see your opponent blocking your 3, d1, 2 string maybe you could stop at d1(mid-way through) and then re-start the string. I don't know if it's worth doing though, I'm not familiar with Smoke's frame data.

Also, sorry about mostly commentating Quan Chi, it's just that I play with him here and there so it's easier for me to commentate him, I don't play much with Smoke. I noticed you used Smoke's enh. "Akuma teleport" a lot and didn't use enh. shake. Any particular reasons for that? Btw, I liked when you baited his skydrop teleport with multiple Akuma teleports in succession (game 3, I believe it was, you were in the left corner) and I liked you teleporting in after air grabs to continue pressure.

Overall, very entertaining to watch!

OMG......that poor guy thinking your meter was his meter.....


Now for the finals match, very entertaining, Quan Chi v.s. Smoke match up

I really adore your Smoke, you are literally on point with your pressure and I love how you punish Quan Chi's whiffed teleports with grab.

*grabs pen to take notes*



You're on point with your evasion as well, great use of his Smoke away.

My only major observation is to add that there's that one Quan Chi combo(where he has the skull into your stomach) hits low to where you have to crouch block it or fuzzy guard it, I only mention this because I saw it tripped you up a bit (and I struggled with it a lot myself).

You did very well, you should be proud of how well you played Smoke. Playing that well means you put in a lot of time for your main.

As for the Quan Chi player, he's really solid as well, great mix ups and fascinating meter building strats. I know I'd for sure love to play both of you.

And he plays Stryker? <3 He's the king of underused characters, very nice, would love to see that.

I wish you played on PSN, that would be absolute boss status.

Such awesome footage.


P.S. I'm looking into going to a tournament in Michigan soon, there was allegedly a scene in Kalamazoo( which is like 4-6 hours away from me...I think.).

Yeah, I knew Quan had both an overhead and a low-hit with his strings, so I tried to 50/50 with my blocking. If memory serves me right, I was a little more successful in grand finals, but not much more.


I do have a have some throw resets with 3, d-1, 2 string, but whenever I tried to do it, my muscle memory kicked in and finished the string anyway, lol. Granted, I do need to learn frames for my character, and I especially need to learn safe up-close pressure that doesn't conclude after my main string. Quan Chi has been a thorn in my side since my first tournament match with Red Soul (GG, buddy), so I'm going to spend some serious time with Quan and reverse engineer him.


lol, it's all good.


Well, there are two reasons for that. I perform it on wake-up to remove myself from the guessing game. If EX-Parry gets baited, Quan has a ton of answers to it. Also, I can take myself away from the corner depending on my current position.

The second reason is that enhanced parry too often doesn't behave properly. I've done that parry on reaction so many times only get to get a standing jab. I've also been hit out of Ex-Parry on wake-up quite consistently, and for some reasons I've had better luck with the invincibility on Ex-Akuma wake-up.

Enhanced parry is a good option against characters with a strong air game (Sonya's dive kick), and I love that it gives me a free oki situation, but more often than not, I find it's not a good gamble. Ex-Akuma teleport will at least reset my position and maybe even put me at corner advantage.


Thanks, man. Criticism is always much appreciated. I really hope we can get loser's finals posted so you can see Jewelman's Kitana play. He was the guy who took first place at our last local tournament (he's also debatably one of the best Honda players in the world. He beat Mike Rossin the Evo PSN online tournament). Very curious as to what you would think.


Thanks. Quan is definitely one of my demons, but I know how much Quan-players tend to rely on whiffed-telestomps. Even though those things put me in a guessing situation, my philosophy has always been that if I misread the whiffed telestomp, the worse case scenario is a 10% life loss. I'd rather take the hit than have to worry about Quan getting in with a high-low mix up.

And smoke away is one of the defining points of my style. I personally believe success with Smoke means never letting your opponent achieve his ideal spacing. It's near-impossible to lock down Smoke once he has meter, and he can get a lot of free meter with turtling Akuma teleports.


Yeah, defense in general is my weakest attribute. Maybe that's why Smoke and me jive so well: he's got a lot of escape options and a decent pressure game.

If I remember correctly, both Quan's overhead string and low-hit string both can be extended into long combos. I know the low-hit one can, so I'm going to feel stupid if the overhead one doesn't, lol.


Much thanks. Feedback means so much to me, so I really do appreciate the responses. One reason why I want to be good at this game is so I can associate myself with my favorite character in a meaningful way. At my local scene, I primarily play SSF4AE, and one day I heard some guy (who presumably didn't know my name) refer to me as "that Rose player from Corpus." That made me feel ridiculously fuzzy inside.


His Stryker was a moving wall. The guy's fundamentals are so on the dot, so once his Stryker got in mid-range, I felt like my options zero'd out.

He was crazy nice too. Truly a scholar and a gentleman.