With all the benefits of calling for double blind pick I outlined in my previous posts, it begs the question: Why wouldn't I do this for all the tournament games I play like SSF4? A fair question indeed.
In Smash, I've competed in enough tournaments where I feel very comfortable with the dilemmas blind pick brings forth. I know of each pro and con a potential character choice of mine brings me versus any given opponent and their character choice. In other games, I don't feel this way. For example, in my last SSF4 tournament I saw my opponent struggle in his first match against a Rose player. He eventually would prevail, but I could tell he didn't know the matchup too well. When it was my turn to play him, I could have easily asked for blind pick and selected Rose (she is my second best character and I consider her a viable alt for me), but I didn't. The reason was that I was not comfortable abandoning my main, Sakura. I had plenty of experience against his character with Sakura and I felt I didn't need to switch characters. Essentially, I didn't want to psych myself out and go with a character I was ultimately weaker as no matter what I felt about the potentially better matchup with Rose. (This is the same situation I described that I wanted to happen to my opponents in Smash)
I feel like I am passed all this when it comes to Smash. I am much more relaxed with my alternate characters so I know when the appropriate time is to utilize them.
Furthermore, I feel people from the traditional fighting game world are not as weak-minded as Smashers and are less prone to give up as significant a psychological advantage as easily. The main reason behind my thinking comes from the fact that smashers have less competitive experience and don't know how to handle oddball situations too well. I can't tell you the amount of times people have sat down next to me before a tournament match only to hear them cry out loud, "How do I fight Yoshi?" or "What do I ban?" "What do I strike?" By making these announcements I already know I hold a significant edge. They've already admitted their lack of knowledge and their lack of a game plan. I have not experienced this phenomena while playing Street Fighter 4 in tournament, even though Sakura is just as unpopular as Yoshi as a tournament character in their respective games.
Thus, I risk turning a psychological advantage into a disadvantage. Even though in Super Street Fighter 4, I have three tournament caliber characters, (Sakura, Rose, Ryu) it is not for my overall benefit to call for blind select at this time. Perhaps in the future, but not right now.
For the record and for anyone else who is wondering, in other games like Blazblue, TvC, and Soul Calibur, I don't have other tournament ready characters outside of my mains in those games, so calling for blind pick is pointless to me. Note that I don't care about being counter picked at the character select screen, I feel it's my job to beat whatever character you choose since in theory all of my matchup knowledge is based around one character. Matchup difficulty is irrelevant. If you're a good enough player to have an alt character that can beat my main, than you're clearly a better player and deserve to win.
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