Mah Bro

Well my brother is the only person I can play much with during the break. He's decent but not much of a challenge. But its cool, I am really getting used to tech-chasing and DIing during my practices with him. I'm trying to teach him what I know, but i think its just going to take him a lot of mere playing to get used to everything. He originally played Sheik, then switched to Zelda, but now he's favoring Ganon. Haha, another Ganon in the South. I wonder why the South loves Ganon so much.

Anyway, I think I'm as close to being an actual competent player as I've ever been. I think once I get used to DIing and tech chasing, I will actually be a decent player. Then I will have to find the next key step to getting to the next level.

I plan on going to Pound 3 in Baltimore, which will presumably be the last really big Melee tournament (its like a week or two before Brawl is released), so that means I have about 2 months to practice, and perhaps I can beat some guys in my pools at Pound, something I still have yet to do lulz. I'm sure they will still have melee tournaments after Brawl is released, at least during the beginning. If not, they will probably have them at the big tournaments. And my practice in Melee will almost certainly help in Brawl. I'm sure tech chasing is still in the game, and just general fighting strategies. I can't wait.

Smash Fest and DP

I played with munkus and anomaly the other day, and i feel like i'm getting a lot better. I'm way more confident with my Captain Falcon. I've been practicing with him the most out of every character i think. i've been practicing my sheik as well.

I think I mentioned DP in my last post. I played him first round of reflex's tournament..any way he put vids up of our set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLzpDk8NC4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6nhvteueyI

he raped me of course, pretty badly.

i'm actually not too ashamed of how I played with roy. Yoshi's Story isn't one of my best roy stages, and i did have a few button slips, but i did alright. I think I need to use neutral-airs more. I noticed that in this match roy's shffld n-airs were effective at pre-empting aerial attacks.

i played pretty shitty with Falcon though. I just was making all the wrong choices. I kept going for knees when I should have just went for up-airs.

but I think the biggest lesson I learned from watching these videos is that I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO FUCKING D.I.

I have a bad habit of D.I. ing toward the opponent, which basically leads to endless combos, as you can see. I need to work on that. I can't work on it too tought with anomaly and munkus because I dont think they've picked up on it as well as higher level players, but we'll see.

Reflex's Mega Fun Smash Challenge

Reflex held a tournament this weekend, and I rode up there with rob, moogle, coach, and duchock. The day before the tournament a bunch of people stayed over Prac's house just like they did for G4S4. I got to play a lot of matches with chad, iori, spaceballs, and coach. It was fun, and I think i played about as good as I can. In the tournament, There were no pools, so you kind of had to be good if you wanted to play more than two matches. I had to fight DP, a really good Mario player and then, JMOAN another player from the mid-south power rankings. I also teamed with Rob, and that was fun even though we got quickly dismantled, first by Laijin and Renegade, then by Bloshi and JMOAN. We have never played on teams before, plus we're neither really good at teams to begin with, but those guys are just good. Laijin has gotten pretty good over the past couple of years. Moogle was eliminated by reflex and then JMOAN, and I think those are matches he could have won. It seems like moogle is always one of the top ten players at least, at each tournament, but his results rarely indicate that. Coach and Moogle got fourth in teams out of 18 teams though, so that's cool. They were really close to getting third, just barely losing to XIF and Marty, a double Peach team. I hope they keep teaming, both moogle and coach are getting better, they'll be a money team in no time i think.
Anyway, I'm really learning to tech chase a lot more. With Roy I can tech chase with forward-b and grabs, I need to learn how to do it with other characters. I have to make it a habit just like teching. That shouldn't be too hard. I think once tech-chasing becomes second-nature, I will move to a higher echelon of play. A lot of times I lose simply because I'm given no room to even move because of good tech chasing.
I can notice myself getting better though, and I'm very happy with that
playing against Laijin and especially JMOAN, I've learned that Roy's just not good against sheik. Those needles really fuck him up, plus sheik can combo Roy really easily. I played fox against JMOANS sheik and got him down to 2 stock, and considering my lame fox, i think that's pretty good.
This tournament had free food. that was aweseome.

Improvement Thoughts
One thing that i've got to do is practice better control over my character. I think I'll have to move faster and mess up less if I want to be successful. I play a patient game, but that doesn't mean stop moving. When I play slow, it just makes it easier for the opposition to predict me. I've been playing some falcon and fox recently, and i play a lot better with them when I play really fast. you have to be REALLY fast to play falcon effectively.
Also I just have to be more graceful in my movements. I need to incorporate more wavelanding on ledges and I need to be able to pull off whatever move i need to do at that time.
Also, I'm going to study every character matchup and learn things like how fast they tech roll, how long before they recoever in the air, etc.

My Sheik is terrible, i need to study that.