You didn’t use my old school quote! ASSHOLE!

Great article btw!

SEATTLE

good shit

(Self-confidence) is having confidence in oneself- this is what this article is about.

(Confidence) is generally described as a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective.
- this is the true key to excel in tournament play.
this can only be obtained by very through investigation. and the solution can only be relied upon by practice.

example. ryu. if you never do d+forward, into fireball. in practice mode, in casuals. you will never understand the details about the move. the range, the timing, situations where to use the move, follow ups, the holes.

if you dont know the details, then you will not have confidence to use the move or attack pattern.
because your hypothesis about this attack pattern is untested.
(you may not have a written hypothesis, but your brain will create one without you knowing, and try to solve it unconsciously) and without supporting test data (ie practice / casuals)
YOU CANNOT RELY ON THESE TYPES OF PATTERNS TO BE USEFUL IN TOURNAMENT PLAY.

this will directly cause most people to play “SAFE”. safe is a bad word. id rather use. “brain is confused”

once all these are identified, you MUST use these often, in practice, in casuals.

Part2 FAMILIARITY
in the tournament environment,
Your brain is subjected to unfamiliar stimuli vs what u normally play on.
IE. noise, hype, drama, fear of losing status if losing a match, fantasizing of personal glory.

you may not be able to identify this type of stimulis, but next time ur at a tourney try to see if any of these relate to your personal situation.

dont worry after a few tournaments, you will become familiar with the environment and will adapt well. (adapting to the environment is something humans excell at naturally. you just need to give your brain some direction on what to get better at.)

MY WARNING IS

be careful about Self-Confidence. there is a thin line to cross to become arrogant, and denying your own faults.

if you think ur too good to lose, you will never get better.

we identify problems with mistakes (losses)
we optimize with successes (wins)

Good stuff Mickey! I know we’ve talked about this a little bit before but this completely laid out the conversations in complete detail! I’ve got much to work on and I’m glad you’re helping out by coaching, practicing and stuff like this for me and many others in our scene.

Get hype!

Pat: Good stuff man, I’m glad it can help you out.

Frank: I don’t know if I quite agree with everything that your saying. I feel like what your talking about, with the whole “practice” example, overlooks the idea of a tournament environment. Sure, just because you don’t know how a certain move works means that you shouldn’t do it. However put it this way, I think everyone who plays competitive fighting games understands the idea of an anti air. They put it into practice and they’re highly capable of executing it in matches. At the same time, come tournament time, these anti airs don’t seem to come out as often due to the pressures of tournament play. People freeze up even if they DO understand every technical aspect in the game…I think this goes far beyond practicing…hence why I made the article about confidence instead of practice.

I feel like what you’re talking about with “being confident with a specific hypothesis or prediction” has MUCH more to do with practice and analytics compared to actual tournament play. Once this “hypothesis” is cracked, there’s no need to second guess…you understand whether to do it or not. Point of the matter is that THIS is all about the outer shell of the game…not the psychology that comes with tournaments.

Playing “safe” has to do with the DOUBT that you have in yourself. “Should I attack after my knockdown? What if he reversals on wakeup?” I literally saw this same situation happen in the last Tournament Wars we had…over, and over, and over again. Now in a casual aspect, I KNOW that the specific player would have pressed the momentum after this knockdown because I understand how they play. So why didn’t they do it in tournament? It has nothing to do with the idea of “practice” or “confidence in a specific hypothesis.” It has to do with the fact that in tournament play people freeze up due to the pressures and anxiety that come with competitive play.

At the same time, if the issue was “I don’t know how to press the momentum without my opponent getting out…” now THIS is an instance where the idea practice and analytics can solve the issue. Those issues are VERY easy to solve as they are IN GAME…confidence and composure in matches? Not in game at all…purely based off of the player’s inner mentality, not his skill.

However put it this way, I think everyone who plays competitive fighting games understands the idea of an anti air. They put it into practice and they’re highly capable of executing it in matches.

mickey u can speak for yourself, but dont speak for others.
please dont think everyone has your skill, or your experience, or your knowledge.
“THEY” are capable of anti air? i see people jumpin all the time and not get srk. not a wake up setup, but a normal jumpin. who is this magic “THEY”
change “THEY” to “FEW elites who practice alot”

in casuals i see even less jumpin punishment, because people are very preoccupied in doing damage. not looking for jumpins.

It has to do with the fact that in tournament play people freeze up due to the pressures and anxiety that come with competitive play.

what are the pressures.
what causes people to freeze.
what causes people to have anxiety.

you must identify these and give a solution

your article currently does a good job showing the importance of confidence.
but currently your article does not offer any solutions.

lets discuss verbally at tw! i have a hard time explaining things on forums cause i get too technical and i omit too many details trying to type lol.

oh btw i have identified and i have solutions. hard to understand, but ive only tried to explain it once. (first time in previous post) im still refining my own explanation process.

Oh for sure, I know what you mean. I’d love to go into analytics and actual explanation of everything I said. All in all, this article was about mentality, not analytics or technicalities. Anyone can teach “X beats Y and gets you Z” however a strong mentality serves you so much more then just “knowing” or being “skillful.”

I have a VERY strong understanding of Street Fighter 4. There really aren’t a lot of situations that I can’t break down. People have seen this as they ask me questions, and I give them answers. But until they understand the mentality that comes BEFORE the actual answer to the situation…how well are they truly valuing it? I actually remember having this discussion with you 2 weeks ago Frank! I think you can agree on this at least!

I definitely understand that my skill differs from everyone else’s…whether it be skill, knowledge or mentality, every player is different. My point with that statement was that in a competitive stand point, everyone is well aware that they NEED to anti air, and in most cases players should be able to execute this anti air. NOW…if they CAN’T execute it fast enough, yes…this is a matter of practice of building stronger fundamentals. However my point was that in MANY CASES, players who understand the importance of anti air’s, and even HAVE the ability to anti air….DO NOT always anti air every single time, and at most times this is not due to how they aren’t skillful….if Daigo misses an anti air I can’t say that he missed it because he didn’t PRACTICE enough…All in all, no one is perfect, yet we all know this, HOWEVER, there are certain aspects that can affect the ability to play “on point” and that being tournament pressures.

These pressures can be as little as people just watching you, to even a crowd shit talking you and downing your game play. Granted, I didn’t go into detail regarding tournament pressures that occur, I do try to convey that they are there…and they are DIFFERENT for every player. People freeze because of their doubt, and when you have a crowd going against you, doubt is most DEFINITELY placed in your own abilities. Players freeze up because they doubt their own ability…they begin to question if they can win…tournament NERVES get set in place. It doesn’t always have to be something as huge as the crowd rooting against you or trash talking you….I’ve personally had my confidence shaken IN MATCH when I realized that my opponent’s skill just plain BEAT me…

I didn’t give many solutions as to how you can gain confidence other then to understand why you’ll win instead of just believing in yourself. I tried to convey to “forget the analytics that the match has to offer” so that you can refine a sense of focus in one’s ability, but I guess it wasn’t a good representation of a solution to learning how to become confident within yourself?

The point of the matter is that tournament pressures and anxiety can happen at any time during a match. It’s the confidence and composure you bring in matches that show true testament to a person’s skill…as skill is nothing without a strong mentality behind it.

Great Article…

I think what Mickey is saying is not just true of SF4, but true of all competitive sports, especially where its just on you, like tennis or pool where everything lies solely on your efforts.

In SF4 casuals, you’ll see people going all out, doing combos etc. There is no real pressure. Win or lose its not THAT big of a deal. In tournaments, these same players freeze. Its not like the ability to do the combos or skill went away, they still have it, but all of a sudden you start over thinking…if I lose, will everyone look at me like a scrub ? If I lose, i have to wait till next year or next tournament etc.

You start moving away from your natural style of play and it increases the odds that you will be beaten. I’ve seen cases where a guy gets owned in a tournament. In casual play later on, this same guy owns everyone including the guys that beat him in the tournament. What happened? No pressure at all. A guy jumps, he anti-airs. Even if he misses the anti-air the first time, next time around he goes for it again, as opposed to playing ultra cautious during the tournament.

So its more than having skill. You have to have confidence in your experience and technical ability to bring down an opponent. As Mickey said, positive thinking alone won’t do it. If you have an understanding of the game and tactics that other players commonly use that will give you confidence. Like you know the ins and outs of playing against Blanka for example. You know he’ll commonly go for a slide or if you have a Super charged and he rolls you can hit him after you block. (This is playing as Ryu – I was terrified of playing Blanka at one time but now that I understand what Blanka does and have an answer for it I can sorta relax when playing against him)

The second aspect is actually pulling this skill out under pressure, when you know that if you miss you’ll be off to losers bracket or out of the tournament or whatever..and that’s composure…cause anyone can pull of a FADC to Ultra or whatever in practice, but doing that when the whole world is on your back is a completely different kettle of fish. I think that the combination of these two, plus adaptation (when an opponent hits you with something you’ve never seen before) is probably what separates the good from the greats. That’s just my opinion tho..