Importance of secondary characters

Ever since Evo, I've realized that having a secondary character that compliments your main can be a vital asset towards bad matchups that your main character might have. I personally main Ryu, and over the course of time I've found that some of the matchups that I have trouble with are characters like: Blanka, Dhalsim, Sagat, and Viper come to mind. With that, I've decided to pick up Akuma as a secondary. I feel as if he compliments Ryu pretty well as far as specific matchups that might be a bit more difficult for Ryu. Also, Akuma's overall strategy is drastically different then Ryu's in my opinion, setting different goals for different matchups. For instance, Akuma has a lot more tools as far as gaining ground compared to Ryu, through moves like ex demon flip, ex air hadou. In matches that keep Ryu zoned out (Dhalsim and Sagat), Akuma can get in their a bit easier compared to Ryu.

All in all the benefits to having a secondary that compliments your main can be quite useful! There are a few top players who have mains to compliment their secondaries as well...Momochi, Kindevu, Justin Wong all come to mind. Reading the Singaporean SF4 blog, I was reading how Japanese players say that they like to stick to their characters through thick and thin, no matter how high they are on the tier list, they tough it out and try to main their character to the fullest. I think it's a good mentality, and it's not to say that having a secondary would be bad...but I will say that being able to understand the situation you put yourself in is important as well. Valle had a quote that I remember him saying: "If you can't beat a character that you have a disadvantage against, you're going to need to pick up a character that puts the odds at even or in your advantage." The mindset is pretty simple to understand...even if your main can't stand up to your opponent, your going to have to put the odds in your favor in some sort of way...having a secondary character is probably the best way to do so.

- Mickey

My Ryu: Gameplan and improvements

There are some things in which I've personally been trying to practice on with my Ryu.  After Evo I learned a whole lot regarding how to improve, and with that, I made a general gameplan towards my strengths as a player.  My strength mainly resides in my opponents mistakes...or to put it simply, I punish hard for mistakes.  I realized that if I can play a playstyle of punishing, I'll be able to play towards my strength and have a set goal of what I want in my match.  With this play style in mind, I also came to understand that to punish, I would also need to become good at baiting my opponent into mistakes (instead of just hoping that they come to me).  All in all, this post is just a quick "status update" as to what my personal game plan is with Ryu, as well as some other aspects I'm trying to work on with my Ryu.

Game Plan:  During the first match, try to learn as much about your opponent as you can in order to understand how you can learn his play style.  In this first match, play VERY disciplined to learn opponent's habits, patterns, and strengths and weaknesses.  After being able to understand the opponent's play style, learn how to counter it, and possibly set up for baiting later in the set.

Ryu improvements:

 -  Start using: c.mk hadou, sadc, c.mk hurricane/c.hk during footsies to maximize damage and grab momentum from footsie range

 -  Use more empty jump, crouch short combo's after un'techable knockdown's.  

 -  Make it a goal to try to hit f+hp every match.  Figure out how to succesfully hit this attack to execute hard hitting combo's

 - Start using "FA, absorb hit, dash in" more often against pokes or attacks with larger recovery in order to possibly get a free combo.  For example:  Rufus c.hp, Akuma c.hk, Bison s.hk, etc.

 - Start jumping over fireballs on REACTION instead of guessing.  

 - Start using "walk forward, hp shoryuken" as an anti air when not in distance to normally hit the SRK.  Air was doing this to me like crazy...it basically took away jumps in which I thought normally to be safe.  

What you can learn from a beat down!

Been a long time since I've posted...I wanted to talk about my money match with "Air" (a really strong Ryu player) and discuss what I learned through playing him.  After playing Air, I thought about why he won, and it really seemed as if his fundamentals were just plain better then mine were.  I think the essential traits that make up fundamentals are:  spacing/zoning, execution, momentum, adaptation, and discipline.

 = Spacing and zoning is a fairly basic concept...keeping the opponent at bay through controlling space (mainly through using pokes, anti'airs and fireballs).  Air made me realize that it's important to realize exactly WHAT pokes your opponent uses, in order to counter them with the proper poke for next time (adapting while spacing).  Basically, it's one thing to know what your character's best pokes are, but it's another to realize what your opponent is using and adapt to his pokes with a more high priority poke.  Air also showed me that it's VERY important to know your distances to a T, and to NEVER throw out pokes unless I was in range of hitting them.  There were to many times where I would throw a hadouken from a wrong distance, where he would react with a jump in to punish...or he would let me whiff a c.hk (by staying out of it's range) and jump in on me for free, leading to immediate momentum for him.

 = Execution is fairly easy to explain.  Air was crisp on almost all of his combo's and come to think of it, I don't think that he missed a single combo on me at all.  He was pulling 1 frame links off like crazy...combo's like f+hp, c.hp, ex tatsu which does 380 damage.  Aside from being amazing at combo's, he also understood how to maximize damage with his combo's...such as using 2 meters to use: c.mk, hadou, sadc, c.hk OR hurricane kick (depending on range).  Basically not only did he have crisp execution, however he also put importance on maximizing damage when getting even SMALL openings (such as the example given during a footsie battle) instead of just large openings (like a whiff'ed dp).

 = Momentum can get a bit lost in translation, but I personally categorize momentum as being able to capitalize off of opportunities in order to pressure your opponent.  What people don't understand is that when most players think "capitalize off of opportunities" they immediately think knockdowns.  However this wasn't the case when I played Air.  For instance, Air didn't get MANY knockdowns on me, however what he DID do was jump at almost the PRECISE ranges in which I couldn't anti air him consistently.  Whenever Air jumped at me, it was a jump so close to me that I couldn't react to anti air him...thus, free crossover into momentum, putting me in a block string potentially leading to mixups (throw, frame trap, overhead, etc.).  

 = Adaptation was Air's weakest of fundamentals (but when I say weak, it only means that the rest were already so high...Air's adaptation was fairly strong compared to the average player).  He was a fairly reaction based player in which he did safe (and smart) attacks which made it hard to do damage on him.  (For instance, he ONLY jumped on reaction to my poorly thrown hadouken's, OR if he was close enough to get a jump over crossover from being so close to me...safe and smart ways to attack).  However I will say that the ONE set that I beat him at was only because of MY adaptation skills.  I was able to see some of his habits in which he let out in our first 2 matches...I caught on a bit and was able to punish accordingly (he did some risky dp's at times and also let me f+hp quite a bit, while he was knocked down, letting me pressure him a bit for no real consequence).  He eventually caught on to his mistakes and took them away, while at the same time making it harder for me to get damage in on him.  All in all, adaptation is a strong fundamental aspect that everyone should work on when they want to strengthen their game.  I could go on about adaptation for days, but to keep it basic, I would encourage everyone to begin learning how to adapt to their opponent's.  As Bruce Lee said "Be like water!"

 = The only real strange "fundamental" there is discipline....which I personally believe that discipline is where a player doesn't make unwise decisions (bad habits or patterns), and instead a player that plays all around solid.  For instance, instead of backdashing or uppercutt'ing through strings, a disciplined player just blocks.  Basically a player that doesn't put himself into making mistakes in which he could potentially lose damage.  By playing disciplined you make it so that your opponent won't get free damage.  Instead, you make your opponent truly work for his damage instead of just giving it to him because of a good read...For instance there have been so many times where I exploit mashers on wakeup with frame traps or straight up walk up DP's....Bad habits and predictability lead to impatience and undisciplined players!  Don't let that be you!