This was a different week. Coming off of Smash Summit, I was beat. I quit my job to be able to relax and work when I want. So, after getting probably 5 hours of sleep that weekend, I took Monday off. No IPA. I then didn’t go to the midweekly aka, the BOW tourney on Wednesday. My first tourney of the week was Namki’s and I wasn’t allowed to enter because it was an arcadian. Only unranked players were allowed to enter. I’m lucky enough to be ranked 5th, so I could not enter. I’ve also been ranked locally in the past, which would also disqualify me. While I could not enter, Giden did and he made a real splash.
After losing round 2, Giden made a great comeback through losers all the way to 3rd. He beat 2 other Falcon mains to make it and got a sick finish to one of his sets. Here it is.
After the tourney, I played a few sets on stream. First with PTP. We called it thug finals. It was really just two friends goofing but o lawrd, I dominated. Love u PTP, but you got clipped twice.
After PTP, I fought Puppy. Puppy beat me since I’ve come back. His Kirby gave me a real problem. I only beat him the second time we fought because my Steve was blockin. I wanted to get this down with Palutena because she theoretically fucks Kirby up, so I needed to do this. I did. We didn’t play a set, but he took the first game with Kirby, switched to his other characters, I won against all of them I believe, and then he went back to Kirby for a best of 3 I think. I 2-0ed it and think I’ve found out how to beat it. You get the lead and run. It’s fucking Kirby. He can’t catch you.
Puppy and I only played a best of 3, because I wanted to get a set versus Lutinent L before we left and Namki was going to kick us out soon. L won the arcadian and before the pandemic, he was really giving me problem offline. We actually played a ton online too just to grind and he would destroy me. I wanted a set offline to see where this match-up is now. I took it pretty solid. It was 3-0 and none of the games were too close. L is going to be a threat, but Palu seems to handle Terry well and if she fails, Steve against Terry looks really good.
So with Namki’s not being a real tourney, I needed to go to at least one real tourney. Just my luck, this was the first week of the realest weekly in Colorado. Elite Smash Friday aka, ESF.
ESF was easily the biggest weekly before the pandemic. 100+ average entrances that could break 150. This week, coming back there were like 127 players I think? It was packed. I did really well at my first ESF. I got 9th. Ever since though. 2-2 was a good ESF for me. Same this time apparently.
My first match was against a Samus. I went Palu and did pretty good. I played patient and let him swing and miss to get punished. Both games were 1 stock victories and I won 2-0.
Next was a Yoshi. He was a camping Yoshi… When he’d get a hit, he’d go nuts and in between was just eggs. I lost 2-1. I beat him the second game with some good reads, but in the last game, I kept dash attacking his shield instead of grabbing. I thought about this set a lot after and noticed I need to work on my approaches to camping characters. I think I need to pressure with full hops at them from a 45-degree angle. If I do that with just a full hop, I can bait out a move by double jumping before landing and then punishing that. Either way, it was close but I lost.
Next was OL WILLY WICKERSON. 2-0. Why do I always play Willy?
Next was a Joker. This guy dominated me harder than the Yoshi. Idk why he was in losers that early but I got messed up. I had an SD, but he still ran away with both games. I feel like his actions per second were just super high and I hadn’t played a Joker of his level before. I usually like the Joker match-up, but it was rough this time. I haven’t fought many since quarantine and wow, he’s hard. Down gun and gun in general just made approaching so annoying. I need to familiarize myself with the match-up again and work on being better. This set and a conversation with a fellow player gave me an idea.
So, this friend told me he used to grind at least an hour a day and then do a first to 10 with someone who uses a character that he would study beforehand. I might start to do this but a little tweaked. I don’t think grinding training mode will work great for me. Maybe it would, but it’s not something I want to try yet. I think finding a player for a first to 10 is a good idea. I would choose a character I lost to recently and possibly stream it. I think it’s a good idea so maybe I’ll do that this upcoming week.
Next week tournament-wise, I think a Fort Collins weekly is happening. I think it’s the continuation of the CSU weekly. It was a College club weekly that was pretty much the biggest tournament in Fort Collins. It’s now not at CSU and apparently, there will also be a CSU tourney as well on Tuesday. So that right there will be 2 Fort Collins weeklies a week and the bi-weekly, Namki’s will still be happening. When I started this endeavor, I was planning on two tournaments at least, every week. One was going to be a Denver tournament. That was because of necessity but also, Denver is much more competitive. I might skip Denver tourneys if I do two Fort Collin’s weeklies. I want to continue doing Denver weeklies, but it’s a lot of gas, time, money, and my car literally yesterday started acting up. So we’ll see. Thanks to everyone who’s reading this by the way. I really appreciate it. I know it’s not a ton of people but knowing some people read this is awesome. If you want to follow more of what I do, I have links to my Twitter and Twitch on my main website page. Just click my name at the top of the page and the links will direct you. Thanks again. See you next week.
Bernard Lamar Rice 