Air

April Duels Day 2:

I had a much better sleep mainly because I woke up at around 11 instead of freaking 7 and bought breakfast to eat, it started my day much more energized. Sam and I got McDonald for breakfast (my favorite fast food breakfast) we had it to go and then ate it at the venue “Dickens”.

The tournament schedule was KOF 13 at 11….but like any other tournaments; it’s hard to run the tournament as planned. I was waiting and waiting, eventually I got really tired and slept on the coach until it finally started.

KOF 13 Pool play > Grand Finals:

I basically played all the KOF players from Calgary the day before, and I won almost all my matches made me feel really confident in winning the tournament, if not, at least Grand Finals. The only person that really made me worried was Justin Wong.

I fought my whole way through to winner finals without losing a set. As I expected, I had to face Jwong in winner finals, however, once again, even though against one of the best in America, I was confident. When Jwong attended MLG, I did watch his replay to see what level he is at, and I can obviously see that he is not playing KOF like KOF. He is applying all his fundamentals from various games and with some of KOF’s technologies to play KOF which works but didn’t look too effective to me.

Needless to say, as I thought, Justin didn’t know how to deal with my offensive pressure and I easily beat him 3-0, advanced to grand finals. After beating him, I was confident in taking the whole thing, but yet I was still very scared of Jwong. I have seen his comeback factor in a lot of his past major events; therefore I was hoping that he would get eliminated in loser’s finals, but apparently it didn’t happen.

Grand Finals, since I was in winners, I only had to win 3 sets to win the tournament while Justin had to win 6. Needless to say how amazing Justin’s adaption was….he was extremely hard to defeat and he reset the bracket with a convincing 3-0 victory.

I was scared, I didn’t want to lose and embarrass myself especially the way how I put him in losers. I took a deep breath and a moment to rethink my game plan and restarted my match. It didn’t work, the games are closer, but Jwong still took 2 matches straight and I had to switch characters, since it’s my last chance anyways.

I switched out Kensou (I actually started him the day before this tournament….) with Saiki (actually the one I’ve been using since game release, however, Kensou’s style fit me more) and I was doing better, mainly because I think Jwong didn’t know the match up. I quickly even the score to 2-2 and Jwong switched his characters order in the last set, putting his King as first and he knew that King was the character I had problem with the most and as a result, I couldn’t beat him and lost the tournament. Read the rest of this entry →

Day 2:

Woke up, rushed to the venue because I was running late as usual -_-….I ran in to the venue and there was already a big crowd around the AE streaming station and a match was already happening, it was Alex Valle vs Laugh. Valle took the victory and it was Ricky vs Latif where Ricky won, and then it was my turn to play, Me vs Mike Ross.

AE Top 16 > Top 8:

Mike Ross has always been my demon……Why would I say that? Mainly because E.Honda is one of my strongest match up and I win most of my matches when we play casuals, yet, I lost against Mike every time we faced in tournaments (Canada Cup 2010 and Final Round 14.) Read the rest of this entry →

Day 1:

OMG, I had such a great time during this trip and finally I can share my experience! If you guys read about my experience at SCR, I’ve said that the venue was one of the best one I’ve ever been…..now after NCR, I have to say that NCR’s venue was the best I have ever been in a major. The size of the venue was a bit small for like 400 people, but other than that it was top notch! Especially the stage, that’s what I like the most, a place where the stream is that the players play on and also with that HUGE ASS projector, it was perfect for that many audiences to spectate.

Venue

SSF4AE:

I got there just in time and coincidently both of my pools in SFxT and AE started at the same time, so I basically had to run back and forth to play my matches. In AE I had to face PR Balrog in pool’s winner’s finals and he defeated me. He was so good with the Ryu match up, even with the 2012 I still lost, but I put up a good & close fight.  I was pretty upset to be put into losers so early…………in my mind all I was thinking is that “FUCK, now I only have one life left with so many killers in this tournament, I have to stay strong and win all my matches in order to make it back to Top 8…? It’s nearly impossible……..Arggg”. With that thinking in mind I made myself scared, therefore I quickly went outside of the venue and get some fresh air to wake myself up. It helped myself calm down and break things down in my mind and I said to myself “OK…shouldn’t worry about getting Top 8 so early Read the rest of this entry →