got some light morning heavy bag rounds in and played in REV2SDAY. decent run, finished 5th, generally happy with how i played.
i've been finding for a while now that watching replays of other players isn't very helpful, so i think i need to get back in the habit of watching mine with a more critical eye for bets that didn't pay off, drops, and mistakes in neutral. i'm trying to refine my tournament playstyle that is intentionally skewed to more reliable, consistent decision making, and replay study should be good for reevaluating my own risk/reward decisions.
this process is not new to me, but it has been a while since i've applied it to my tournament play since outside of Evo and CB all the locals and netplay events are not quite as "serious" in terms of weight or stakes and so i haven't been quite so disciplined with big-picture gameplans.
this is something that bears is really good at. his tournament consistency comes from the work he's done mapping out his personal chipp flowchart to every possible situation. he moves quickly because he already knows what he wants to do next. my consistency comes from playing a lot and quickly building up the player-specific matchup dossier (sharingan!), which is viable in a smaller scene like Xrd's but still means that tournament runs are riskier. building up my decision-making discipline and weighing resource availability in my decisions are definitely dope things to spend time on leveling up; i just need to find a way to do it that doesn't feel rote or boring.
it reminds me a little bit of my brazilian jiu jitsu practice. i haven't trained in years because of COVID, but when i was competitive, my tournament game was fairly linear and conservative because tournaments are expensive, and the coach i got the most competition experience under has a very straightforward game that plays well against high-tension competitive matches. when i'm sparring, though, i'm a lot more loose and playful. i like to match my partner's pace, i have fun doing stuff that is clean and efficient and graceful. i like exposing mistakes in someone's pressure or weight distribution or grip, i like slowly coaxing a submission or a sweep out of someone and feeling them slowly exhaust all their options. when i roll with people, i like feeling like our roll is conversational.
i loved competing because it gave me a strong motivation to test myself and ensure that what i was learning could be effective against full resistance, but i had a lot more fun rolling to learn (and teach). i think this is true for me with fighting games, too, so i think that getting better at systematizing my gameplay is a good thing to work on. maybe it's drawing a more explicit difference in my mind between my 'tournament chipp' and 'casuals chipp' to get some separation between the two.