The X-Factor

I was just recently watching The X-Factor on FOX. For those of you who don't know what the X-Factor is, it's a singing competition that is held in the US and various different countries to find the newest singing talent in the world. As I was watching, a handful of top 64 participants began to sing. However, those handful of singers actually forgot the words they had worked so hard to remember and perform to in front of the 4 judges. And as I was watching, it reminded me of a tournament environment.

Stream is officially up!

I'm able to stream now! All thanks to my buddy Seummy. He generously lent me his computer for the time being. I will be streaming Super Street Fighter 4 AE v. 2012 PC Version more often. But as of now, I will be streaming DotA 2 just to keep the stream active. Plus, I enjoy playing DotA 2! :)

Here's the link:

Watch live video from xsk_samurai on www.twitch.tv
Don't forget to follow me on twitter @XsK_Samurai for feature updates on the stream. Enjoy!

-Miky

Counter Picking ft. Sanford Kelly

I came across a video I found quite interesting and wanted to write about it. Here's the video:

 
(Video courtesy of youtube.com/deadlybison)

For those of you who don't have time to watch it, Sanford Kelly summarizes his opinion on the East Coast scene. However, he mentions something that caught my mind: counter-picking.

NCR Final ft. PR Rog

NCR Day 1 was coming to a close. I lost to Clockwork in attempts to making it to Day 2. His Doom/Ammy combination was something I couldn't keep up with (and this is before he abused the team hyper combination with Doom/Ammy). I didn't make it out of my pools in KOF XIII or SFxT.

Day 2 was pretty eye opening for me. I had to play PR Balrog in winners. I decided NOT to study any of his matches the day before and it definitely cost me.

Here is the match against PR Balrog and I (courtesy of youtube.com/ShoryukenTube). The match started out okay, but went downhill from there.

NCR 10 Part 2

The next event was KOF XIII. I had recently picked up KOF XIII because it was a game I believed would help with my main game (Street Fighter).

I ended up not making it out of my pools and struggled against TC|TheBeast on stream against his Billy. Although I had no match-up experience against him, I gave him a decent fight.

NCR 10 Part 1

Hello everyone! I know... I know... It's been a long time since I've blogged, but I have a lot of experiences I have bottled up to share with you all. I'll start with NCR 10 in San Francisco, California.

Before I start I just want to say I haven't been writing for personal reasons. I had become so busy with school and work that I needed to take time off of writing. For example, most of my assignments were writing assignments that were to be submitted through online. After I would finish I didn't want anything to do with my computer.

Hello once again!

Hello everyone! I apologize for the lack of posts. Family, school, and work have been keeping me quite busy. On top of that, I've been practicing with the local scene (Fresno) quite a lot.

BrokenTier Sponsorship Application

BrokenTier is interested in opening up new divisions in the fighting game community by allowing players to apply, via an application, to their company. I went ahead and applied as well as made a copy of what I wrote to share with you guys.

Hit the jump to see what I wrote. Enjoy!

Questions from the Unknown Part 3: Ryu - Ending Your Combos

Unknown said...

When do you use cr.mp, cr.mp, cr.hk? instead of say, cr.mp, cr.fp, XX wk.tatsu? Why? I understand that the 1st combo would keep them close and allow for mixup opportunity. Do you do that combo vs characters that you want to rush down? Do you do it vs characters without srk? Does it depend on the player and not the character? (IE it's a player that you think is good at being aggressive, so you use the wk tatsu to push them away)


There are a couple of reasons why I end my combo into a sweep, Tatsu, or DP.

Questions from the Unknown Part 3: Close Standing Roundhouse

Unknown said...


What benefit is there in using cl.HK? I saw Daigo using that in the past and I see laugh use it sometimes. I saw it vs Viper and someone else. Dont remember.


Considering old videos of Daigo playing Ryu, there are some reasons to why he (or other Ryu players) tend to use close standing round house in general.

Questions from the Unknown Part 2: Punishing Focus Attacks with Low Forward

Unknown said...

Also, do you always do cr.mk XX wp.srk[light punch shoryuken] when u see focus? Is that safe if they backash? Are there characters with a quicker back[d]ash that can punish it?

Month of December: Statistics

This month has been another great month in terms of my blog. I've reached yet another successful month (at least for me).

Hit the jump to see the statistics and where they came from.

SCR 2011 - FGC_XsK_Samurai

For those of you who weren't able to catch the stream, I added a new tag (FGC) at SCR. The reason for the tag was my one-day sponsor by Ryan Anderson (twitter: @entrerix).

The idea was to create a sponsor by the community for the community. This also correlates to the whole FGC and MLG clash everyone has been arguing about.

Happy New Years!

I apologize for posting so late about the new year. I had just recently got a new keyboard. My old keyboard had water spilled all over it thanks to my niece.

During New Year's Eve, I drank a lot and played more black jack with the family. We ate lots of great foods and the next day my sister had us over for some hangover Pho.

Merry Christmas

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday. Without the support of you guys I wouldn't be where I am today.

I will be spending Christmas at my parents home. We will eat and celebrate with my niece and nephew opening their presents.

SCR - AE2012 and UMVC3

SCR 2011 was definitely a tournament I was looking forward to. I had practiced a lot and wanted to accomplish good results. However, I didn't place well and I feel my results reflect the way I had prepared.

For UMVC3, I lost to Fanatiq and Olaf. I didn't really put much time practicing for this game in the hopes that pure fundamentals was enough. I was most definitely wrong and deserved the results for UMVC3.

There wasn't much to say during Olaf's match since I don't exactly remember what happened. However, against Fanatiq, I eventually ate setups that I normally do on other people. The trick is not to push block while your incoming character comes in otherwise you eat a normal or drones.

Having prepared for AE 2012, the event finally had started. I was looking forward to progressing well enough to make it to the next day. However, I made a mistake I had done in the past.

Canada Cup: WDM.Luffy & Xian

After my tournament loss to eLive.Pro|RF, I was extremely frustrated. I immediately looked for redemption and asked RF to a money match, but he wanted to watch the rest of the tournament.

I felt I had to play someone so I looked for some money matches around the venue. The Canadians were a little reluctant to money match, but that didn't bother me. Then I found WDM.Luffy and Xian.

Canada Cup: eLive.Pro|RF

If you guys haven't seen my tournament match against eLive.Pro|RF here's the video:



In the first set I played the match-up correctly. I played patient and pushed him to the corner (as your supposed to in this match-up). Most of my training for this match-up was against John Choi. However, RF was giving me lots of chances to get a life-lead. I took the first set easily.

Canada Cup: Kineda (Terry)

I know it's quite late to post about Canada Cup, but I feel an obligation to finish some of the players left on the list. I won't be doing Bas or Mago since I don't remember what it is I want to write. It's been way too long for me to remember.

Kineda (Terry) had some great advice for me while at Canada Cup. However, it didn't come from him. He said it had come from other top players. Although he didn't mention their names I was able to bug him about what they had said about me.

SCR - AE2012

Still doing lots of training for SCR. Sorry for the lack of posts. I am just focusing on AE2012 since it hasn't been out too long. Just doing some preparing and training for the coming event.