Wednesday Session at John Choi's

We ended up training at John Choi's place on Wednesday before ReveLAtions. I got to play Terry, John Choi, Ricky, and Rom(Yang).

I played Terry to see how he was doing. He has got much better since we last played. I still trolled him most of the time but it was fun to see his improvements. :)

I played John Choi's Ken for a bit. I was able to keep up. I couldn't throw out low forward since his would beat mine. I stayed outside of step kick range to fireball, ex fireball, or sweep it. Occasionally, I was able to buffer crouch strong into fireball or ex fireball. I was successful for most of the part until I got to the corner. From there I had to block a barrage of mix-ups and block strings. It was quite tough to deal with it. However, as soon as I got out of the corner I felt much at ease. I noticed John's block strings intended to push me in the corner. I tried to stand my ground but I would let him in and eat a step kick. I also got to play his Sagat. I attempted to use standing strong into fireball or ex fireball to beat his standing short. I'd beat it sometimes since my low forward loses to his standing short. Other times I would get punished with a fireball or a tiger knee. John was telling me that it is better to use standing jab to fight Sagat in that situation. I agreed with him since using strong leaves me to be punished much easier than jab. Also, the recovery frames are significantly different.

After playing John, I got to play Ricky. It was amazing to play him. His movements with dive kicks, block strings, and frame traps changed in mere seconds. I worked on blocking and teching most of his mix-ups and I did pretty well. Offensively speaking he shut me down. His reactions were very fast. I had done jump back fierce to bait his dive kick. The next time he saw it he baited my jump back fierce and did jumping round house. His pressure was very strong as well. In this match-up I attempted to work on defense and I believe I did well.

Finally, I played Rom. I had studied his match against Tokido in a 3rd strike finals. He played it similarly. I was able to keep up. Yang's tools to deal with fireballs was hard to deal with. Ryu can't do much about the corner pressure as well. I am still learning the match-up though so I'll let you guys know if I notice anything notable. Aside from the standing short I used to beat his dive kicks there was nothing I had noticed at the time.

-Miky