weekend games were great. hit up gamecenter on friday and got to play a long set with daymendou, which ended up at approximately 2 to 22 in his favor. this is actually not bad for me, and results aside, i felt like i was doing a good job trying to actively outplay his pressure instead of running away until i get chased down and killed with no meter.
saturday i drove up to tag-in battle, where i went for my 7th consecutive win in a streak that started with the first tag-in battle back from COVID, in August 2021, where i won both Rev2 and Strive (lol). since then, they've had six other tournaments (it's a monthly, but they had more COVID-related pauses), and i've won each Xrd bracket but this one. they even put about $250 on my head as a bounty two months ago and i took that home.
the money is nice, but it usually just about covers like, gas and a snack for the drive. i go because i want them to know that it's worth my time to go there and play, not just because it's a great event but because they're good players and i get a lot out of playing them (even though i win a lot). this month i decided to run my Jam on winner's side instead of Chipp, and i blew a solid lead and lost to an up-and-coming Sol player, sending me to loser's bracket, where my Chipp narrowly made it all the way back to grand finals.
in grands, i lost to a good friend who is the sacramento hometown hero. i usually beat him, but he tightened up a couple things i can often use to tip the set in my favor, and i fell short of running it back. the crowd went wild. i've never been someone people root against that hard, and it felt great to give them the narrative climax of a story that had been building for a year.
i love tag-in battle and the local scene because i get to be a bit more of a ham than i do at bigger events with out-of-town competition. it's a fun way to keep things interesting for everyone. a lot of the local heads wanted to see my streak end at the hands of their strongest player, because that's the happy ending to this arc for them. but the funny thing is, they'll cheer for me harder than anyone at majors when they see me playing anyone from outside NorCal, because that's how this works.
training diary stuff
monday practice was good. did my lifts today -- squat + OHP, but 3x10-12 reps at 205 and 95lbs, trying out going back to higher reps for a week or two and seeing how they feel. as a consequence of learning how to lift weights by reading the internet, i've mostly done workout plans that focus on strength building low-reps at high weights, and i figured it's worth cycling muscle-building workouts in there too and seeing how that feels.
Xrd practice session was focused on trying to tighten up some of the gaps i noticed in last week's sets, and then a little bit of sol-specific training to practice for a long set i have with DaveO this wednesday. i've been beating him pretty clean in tournament lately, but it has been a little while since i've played a long set and i think he'll do better there than he has in tournament ft2s.
some notes from practice:
on wall alpha, make sure to hold the last 6 input and delay the P a little bit, seems to stabilize it on the 1p side.
alpha uncling alpha is hard to make consistently a safe jump, but it should be visually obvious so just FD if i see myself coming in late.
training tool seems to have some weird patterns, including not being able to OS 6PH (gets blitz instead) but can OS throw and blitz. seems kinda fucked up.
vs raven jump back jD, seems like 6P 6H might be a better callout than 2H.