last night i played in REV2SDAY and got 3rd, losing a close set to Bread in WF and then losing a '3-0 but it was close' to DaveO.
losing to bread is whatever at this point; the matchup is tough and we tend to go back and forth in bracket these days. i generally played it well.
DaveO was a bit of a rude surprise because i generally come out ahead in our bracket encounters these days, most recently with a 2-0 in R2D before Evo, and then another 2-0 in our Evo pools. i did not expect to get 3-0ed after that, and it got me good, because we were scheduled to play a ft7 showmatch for Deadass Guilty Gear today.
i was shook. fresh off of losing the Jam/Sol matchup to TheMiku at Tag-In, and barely winning the Chipp/Sol matchup against them, i suddenly wasn't as confident in my grasp of the matchup as i had been up until then.
i rewatched the set after dinner, then went back and rewatched key parts in slow motion. i did my best to identify what wasn't working. i'd rewind key segments over and over to examine where i needed to reroute my decision schema, or break down recognizable sequences to see if i could determine how and when he was making decisions in advance or when he was reacting to what he saw on screen. i made a list of roughly 15 notes, grouped into phases of the game (neutral, offense, defense), and then i edited them to be as concise as possible, in order to make them more easily readable during the set. the shorter the idea, the fewer conditionals or branches, the less room it takes up on the screen with my notes on it, the less room it takes up in my brain.
today, i took off from work a few hours early to play my match. we were the main event, so i hit Bread up for some warmup games while i waited for the opening matches to play. he had been working on his Sol over the last couple months, and he helped me prepare for DaveO before Evo. in that set, i think he took one or two games out of fifteen or twenty.
'hold on, let me dust off my DaveO impression' he joked. i told him not to worry about it; i was just going to practice playing the way i wanted to try playing against him today. it felt awkward and stilted at first, but over the course of maybe a dozen games i managed to take the 'do this/don't do that' notes and integrate them into my play on the spot. when i found myself lapsing back into doing things i specifically decided i shouldn't do against him, i recognized it, and i corrected myself as best i could.
we ended up going about even. not a great omen, i thought.
if you want to know how the story ends, it's over here.
training notes
Did my tuesday workout (4 rounds of light kickboxing work in the morning) and my wednesday workout (3x20 swings, bench 155 3x10, deadlift 205 3x10). new work schedule is helping me get workouts done in the morning, which feels fantastic.
also did some +R practice today after the showmatches. drilled some of the movement and combo execution stuff i've been working on. (note on sbjc: the jump comes later than you think after the sb. slow it down.) tried Chipp's combo routes on Venom for a bit. then beat up a bunch of randos on quick match until Blitz put me down. i think i'm a bit toasted for competition so i probably won't enter WNF +R tomorrow. would be a good day to take it easy.