Playing to Learn

[-Big_-Blue 9]

Good Read.
I commend your efforts on this matter.

 

[Autx]

Awesome essay, thanks for all the effort and thought u put into it, this should be stickied on the front page for chrissakes!

 

[MookieRah]

I am gonna PM Panda to remind him to sticky this like he said he would.

 

[Crizthakidd]

everytime u add more things i get better at the sense of smash man thank you. im thinking diff. and playing smarter, more effeciently. a lot of it is just your way of thinking but sometimes ill vs someone and not think at all and oging by instinct alone or reactions isnt good

 

[pika-power]

MookieRah, this is exactly what I was looking for a few weeks back.

I wanted to know where a newbie to competitive should start. Looks like I have found a good guide! I cannot believe no one thought to link me here. (Not all scrubs are allergic to a bit of text)

At the moment, I am a Toon Link player. I am just casually trying out SHDA, learning about jumping with X, and I am trying to teach myself how to tilt with the normal stick and how to smash/aerial reliably with the c-stick.

 

[NintendoMan07]

I'm glad this is helping other people... but I'm such a blockhead at this point that I WISH this could help me.

I'm a Casual Novice, I guess... but I don't feel I deserve to be placed that high.

Thanks for posting this MookieRah, but I'm far below the level I need to be to use this. I haven't attended a tournament yet.

 

[J4pu]

Good read, thanks for taking the time to write it/copy paste it here from the last place you wrote it.

 

[AlAxe]

Great read. I think this stuff about observation is just what I need to take my game to the next level.

 

[JigglyZelda003]

I'm glad this is helping other people... but I'm such a blockhead at this point that I WISH this could help me.

I'm a Casual Novice, I guess... but I don't feel I deserve to be placed that high.

Thanks for posting this MookieRah, but I'm far below the level I need to be to use this. I haven't attended a tournament yet.

now thats not true you could start working on some things he mentions now. i think im somwhere inbetween casual novice and novice b/c i have not attended a tourney yet either, but i can take what i learn here against the people i normally play with.

@OP it was a great read

 

[kidbu916]

Bring
Up
My
Post

 

[SoliceTK]

Wonderful guide bro, thank you so much for the tips.

 

[Al_Di_Medola]

id say im somewhere around intermediate/ journeyman acording to your post... and ive hit the "plateu" you talked about... and it sucks.
after reading this, however, I wonder if i ever will REALLY advance much more...
it saddens me

 

[Zolga Owns]

I think i fall into high Novice category or low intermediate . This is a great thread I will check back here often.
Wish there were tournaments in my area...

 

[Turbo Grafx-16]

I need a post to subscribe and can't think of anything original so...great thread, thanks for making it.

 

[OmegaXF]

This told the truth in tenfolds. This is by far one of the best threads I've ever read on SWF.

 

[whoami777]

Heh, i gotta say i like this essay.

the stuff about being confident is so true. I remember my first ssbm tourny. i was 10 years old (yeah im young) and it was at a local game store. there wasnt any prize really and it was just for kicks. i thought i was so good at the game, because i kicked my step-bro's *** at ssbm. of course, my bro was the only person i had ever played and as it turns out, we both sucked at the game, lol.

of course, in the first round i got destroyed. i was so shaken up that i broke down crying and had to leave.

it didnt help that afterwards, my parents (who never really played the game) tried to cheer me up by telling me that it "looked like i was winning, because my percentage was so high the whole game"

*pointless anecdote over*

but yeah, everything here is true, lol. applys to a lot of games, too. the whole, wake-up-one-day-and-your-skills-are-suddenly-better thing happens to me for every game i play. i thought it was just me

 

[JigglyZelda003]

lol at the parents.

 

[Popertop]

The thing about analysis and player habits and stuff is way true.
I've just started to get better again, now I can identify player habits sooner and punish them for it.
so fun.

 

[QuickBlade]

Great read, I'd say I'm probably at the journeyman level... I seem to have hit a plateau. When I first looked at this a big Wall 'O' Text warning sounded in my head but when I actually started reading it I noticed it was very well written and made alot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to put this together, it should definately be stickied, this thread will help many people out.

 

[studly]

i defenetly have hit a few of those mental walls in my smash career..thanks i needed that encouragement

 

[Solaris1110]

One of my favorite ways of establishing dominance in my opponent is being Marth, and doing a successful counter on every attack your opponent tries to make. He'll eventually try to grab you, and that's when you do your Forward B mindgame shenanigans. Everything accelerates from there.


It was interesting to read this seeing as I'm in the process of getting good at Melee again, and I always had the mindset that everyone else was way above me, able to outthink my every move.

However, when I played my brother, even though I lose to him as much as I lose at smashfests, I really felt that I was able to beat him. (like he's my brother, how could he really out-think me) In the end, I figured him out and am now able to beat him easily, which then gave me great confidence in my Melee play. The next smashfest I went to, I was on par with the rest of the players. So yeah, that pretty much showed me how self-doubt has such an extreme effect.

 

[eyestrain92]

This is... Amazing. Half of this I knew, but the other half answers questions I ask myself. I shake when nervous, I studder when nervous, I also teared up in the final match of a Poketourney once. I'm taking Speech/Debate for immersion therapy. I never seem to bog down when I'm antagonizing or when I have an opponent, but for some reason in games where I'm not staring my foe down, I tend to revert to nervous habits.

This builds my confidence. I'm going to take as much of this as I can remember all at once. Thank you.

 

[Yinlong]

thanks for this advice man
i'm learning dragonic reverse faster now ahah i can get it 1/3 tries now
+1

 

[egan]

sweet essay maybe i can actually get better now

 

[gunterrsmash01]

part about doubting yourself makes ur chances of losing higher is so true, sometimes i just cant do anything but doubt myself because i am scared of my opponent/ someone help it only happens when i play someone i have lost to in the past.

 

[Zealouz]

This was one of the most well written things I've read in a while on the internet. I'm not even kidding. This helped me a lot for stuff even outside the brawl scene.

 

[Sino]

part about doubting yourself makes ur chances of losing higher is so true, sometimes i just cant do anything but doubt myself because i am scared of my opponent/ someone help it only happens when i play someone i have lost to in the past.

If it only happens to people you lost against its no big deal. If you lose again there is nothing good or bad to it, because you already lost another time of him. And if you win, jahoo you are know better than him.

I have it the other way around. If i won of someone I need to prove myself again that i'm better. Or against someone i don't know I must prove myself to. To someone i lost to there is nothing to prove, because I already lost another time from him.

 

[chrisb9393]

good stuff man thanks

 

[ZeroFox]

Brilliant. Even as a seasoned competitive smasher, it never hurts to learn more about the game.

 

[Buuman]

Amazing thread. Probably the best advice thread next to "keep losing, try this"
Really this game comes down to mentality and essentially psychiatry and Mook wrote a perfect guide to it. :D

 

[Samuelson]

this thread is pretty amazing. Great read!

 

[M@v]

great read and very informative. Im itching to get my 1st chance at an out of state tourney. Been to a few locals already. You describe all the details of playing against the other player, not their character.

 

[FBM]

Good advice. It was only hampered by the single greatest abomination of a word: "proactive." The classical opposite of "reactive" is "active" and it generally replaces " proactive" in every instance when you might ever want to use it.

 

[Ripply]

I think I'm Novice. With that being said, thanks a whole lot for explaining this to me, MookieRah. There were all of these different terms and techniques being tossed around, like B-sticking and etc., and I had felt overwhelmed and unconfident. Now that you've told me to take one thing at a time, that's just what I'll do. I've also felt controlled in certain matches, where someone was just beating me around mercilessly.

Thank you very much!

 

[Skyflyer]

Dammit, I'm a journeyman. Ive been at the same level for like a month, lol.

 

[neon..?]

good job with this guide.

 

[unwelc0med]

i want to enter a tourny D: i'm the same age as cpu

that's ok then..
man, gotta enter a tourney.

 

[Zylar]

I just discovered the competative game scene like (one, two) about four weeks ago.
Now, I know how to actually handle the new wealth of information of SSBB.
Man, when I was a casual, and when I played with other casuals, we used to have an angry state. If someone totally messed with the other because of accidentally finding a brickwall, the other would get all angry. At first angry people were good suddenly taking over the momentum, but then some of the casuals (Me included) was that the angry people only enforced their faulty strageties further, pursue more (Even when it isn't smart to do so.) and do things faster, thus making mistakes faster. Now that I think about it, whenever I play my rival (Who has constantly been at my same level and I can't get ahead of him for too long), it is all about the mindgame.
Perfecto guide, Thx.

 

[ptown]

if you guys liked reading this (which is an awesome read), i also suggest looking up david sirlin here and reading some sections out of his book, playing to win. he's a well known street fighter player and designer of the upcoming remake/game, super street fighter 2 turbo hd remix coming out on xbox360 and ps3.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/

 

[NeoCrono]

This is the BEST thread I have ever read on the boards. Mind games are the best tactics ever!!!!!!!!!!