Continuing the learning process, breaking the 1000 pp wall

So to continue where I left off earlier, right now I'm kind of stuck around the 1000pp range on XBL. It's not that I'm not skilled I realized the other night, it's that I haven't learned how to read people and prepare for random stuff that you see online.

It's very difficult to advance past this group of people who are somewhere between the 1000pp to 2000pp range. It's not that they are bad, it's that they have learned a gimmick and that I don't learn what the gimmick is until it's too late or I get mindfucked too easily.

When I face people above 2000pp I don't get blown up at all, I stand toe to toe with some great players because I know what I should expect. I have a basic overall knowledge of certain matchups that gets me really far and I have solid play that has improved a lot due to guidance from Air. An example of this would be a match I had last night. It was against I think the #12 Abel on XBL. I teched 90% of his throws, beat all his mixups after seeing them once and was prepared for the rolls and threw him out of them about 80% of the time. I was within pixels of winning the match so I tried to chip him out with a nicely spaced jab fireball. However since I hadn't really played against an Abel I was unaware that he could on reaction punish me with U1 and pass through my fireball to end the match.

Even though I lost the match I felt good about it. But I also realized that online play while may be frustrating at times it serves as a really good opportunity to get information about matchups. Also the other major thing that you can get out of online play is it will force you if you want to advance to learn to test and read your opponent. Which is why I think I'm stuck at 1000pp. Not because I suck, but because I haven't learned to test and read people correctly, I've just been playing my game with Ryu and to really progress I have to learn to read and adapt my game to not only the matchup but the player as well.

So today is Jan 31, and I'm at about 1000PP and 3000BP. After I get back from Winter Brawl in Feb, I'll report back with how far I've made it. Hopefully I get to squeeze in some time for another lesson with Air. But for now I'm simply going to use online play to build a base of knowledge about the other characters and develop my reading/Yomi skills.

It seems tough but Evo is about 6 months away, there is still plenty of time to improve before I get there.

I'll see you all online, if you want to hit me up sometime for a match my GT is Jbourne001

Starting from scratch with Ryu and the learning process

So greetings people,

It's been a while since the last post and I figured I'd update things. So first of all, the hotels for Evo have been booked. So I'm definitely going. Before then, there is at least 1 major I'm going to attend (Winter Brawl) maybe 2 (Civil War).

Now to the meat of this post. I decided to learn Ryu and main him. I really do like the character in just about every way. Even from just the character design and story, he simply wants to be the best, which I can identify with. In the game sense he has a great set of tools that for the most part can let him handle just about every character in some fashion, sure he has some hard matchups but that's just part of the game and you have to work around them.

Like with any character the first thing you learn is yourself, learn your normals what you can do, what's good and what sucks. That is relatively easy, anyone can do a dragon punch or c.mk to fireball in a few minutes.

Then you get to see what happens with your character versus other people. First I started out with some simple goals of working on my footsies and successfully dragon punching jump ins. After a while you realize it's not enough. You need to have a game plan and that's where learning matchups and reading your opponent is important.


Not everyone you run into online is going to be playing the same game you are, you'll run into all kinds of random stuff that you just kind of look at and go "really?, did you just do that?, why?". What I've realized after a while of playing on my own and later with some instruction is that for Ryu, matchup knowledge is crucial and you have to read your opponent. When I say read, I mean learn to predict what they are going to do.

This reading of your opponent is known as "Yomi" and for Ryu it is incredibly important to learn to read your opponent which is a skill I am in the middle of developing of. Part of reading your opponent is testing them, seeing how they react and keeping that in mind, at the same time though keeping in mind your opponents other options.

I've been getting some help though in upping my basic game play, trying to move beyond the wall of people online with the random BS that you run into. I've taken a couple lesson with Air-Ryu and once I did that I noticed my gameplay became much more solid. But it's at that point you realize how important the Yomi aspect of Ryu's game is. I realize I have that much farther to go, but I'm up for the challenge.

I'm going to make a list of some issues I have with my game play so that I have a record of them and work on them.

1. I need to make my AA dragon punches deeper, I'm letting people off too easy
2. I have to consistently punish jumpins much better, I tend to get mindfucked when people just keep doing the little hops over me, gotta remember that I have a nice C.FP.
3. Be more careful with anti-fireball hurricane kicks, the ground hurricane kick has it's uses for that but you have to have down their fireball pattern first.

I will add more of these soon. Feel free to leave comments.

Peace out,

Jon