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