I realize this post is a little late, but bear with me. As you know, about two weeks ago, I endeavored to attend two tournaments in two days in two states while still working the night in between. Surely, I had a death wish, yet here I am-- still alive. As it turns out, the weekend was not as grueling as I and everyone had anticipated. It would have been different if I was the one doing the driving, but I was spared of this task (one I usually take on) by my good friend Bill. As such, I "caught up" on sleep in the car. However, I only ended up sleeping around a total of seven hours over the course of the weekend.
How did I fare? Hard to say. That's not just because of my performance on both days. The Missouri tournament, if it can even be called that, was truly pathetic. There I was, traveled over four hours, about to give up a kidney in order to pay for gas, only to participate in a "tournament" with less than ten entrants and still getting bodied! Two of Missouri's best players and in my opinion among the best in the Midwest, aks216 and Rex0r, came to this event. They were expecting the same thing I was-- tons of Marvel scrubs from the University. Alas, no one was happy when the reality of the situation became apparent. I didn't get to play against a vast array of players, and aks216 and Rex0r didn't get to make good money. There was enough salt in the room to open a mine.
Although MvC3 was the only traditional fighter that was on the tournament schedule for the event. There was more interest in the air for SSF4, and not all of it was coming from me. A SSF4 Round Robin tournament paying the top 2 was thus spawned. It was decided that it would be run first because ironically it had more interest than Marvel. Seven people entered including myself. The guy that drove Rex0r to the event from St. Louis, a Rose player named "Peaceful" was the "more interest" I was talking about. Understandably, he thought his only obstacles to the money were Rex0r and aks216. We did 3/5 game sets. I beat Peaceful 3-1 with my Sakura and 3-0'd everyone else outside of Rex0r and aks. In my matches with those guys, I looked pretty free and failed to take a game off of either of them. I was of course disappointed, but it's good to be reminded of how far I still need to go.
Marvel went the pretty much the same way. Peaceful decided to sit it out, which made me question whether or not I wanted to donate to aks and Rex. I bit the bullet of course out of the spirit of competition or whatever, and proceeded to get touch of death comboed by aks' Magneto. I took a game off of Rex by zoning out his Wolverine, but was beaten pretty soundly in the other two games.
Although the tournaments were a wash at best, I did attract the attention of both Rex and aks with my Street Fighter play. They witnessed how well I did against the others and Rex would later say he enjoyed being challenged in an otherwise very weak field of players. After he had collected his "prize money," I went up to aks and asked him if he still mained Ryu (I knew this from seeing him on SRK), because he counterpicked the entire Round Robin. He replied that he mains counterpick now and no longer plays one character. He added the addendum that he would play me again in a money match against any character of my choosing. I explained that if I didn't already know how good his Ryu was, I would quickly accept a Sakura vs Ryu money match. He was intrigued at my confidence, and thus a 2/3 $1 match was eventually forced out of me (I would have put up more, but had to still pay for food and gas). The match was close. I would eventually come out on top, drawing a response from aks during the match: "I don't think I like this." We played again and he would win his dollar back in another close match. I must have gained some respect because after that he said we could just play the matchup without money at stake.
I did end up having a lot of fun in Columbia, however I can't say it was worth all the money I spent to make the trip. As always I received a lot of compliments regarding my arcade stick and the people there are very sociable, perhaps more than any other place I've been out of state. If the community recruits some more players and I'll be back for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment