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There comes to a point where a player has reached a certain level that they cannot plateau any higher. Now they are desperately doing worse, not as confident as before, and their drive is slowly drifting away. You practiced your combos in the training room, you beat the computer senseless a million times, and you have exposed yourself in a tournament environment. What else is missing? Why am I doing worse? It’s an easy answer that most people don’t realize. Your love of the game is lost. All you want to do now is to win and prove yourself to the community that you’re a top player.This is a very common situation for lots of players, but having love for the game or for your character will show a lot more signs of improvement than someone whose only interest is to win. If you look at the player DJ Huoshen on how he play and how he reacts to things. You can tell that he loves to play with the team he uses; Felicia/Skrull/Taskmaster. He loves this game and he takes the game as it is. He understands that the game is cheap and his characters have a high chance of losing but he makes it work and still comes out on top. Why? Because he loves to play the game. He doesn’t just care about winning. Winning is nice but staying true to your heart means a lot more and that’s where winning matters the most.This obviously doesn’t mean that if you pick the character you like, you will win all your matches. There are broken things in every game that will just prevent your success.Phoenixbut as long as you tried your best and your love in the game will be there, you will have a much more clearer outlook on things and what little things to improve on for your next match, tournament, and etc.If you look at the way Japan plays, they just stick to one character. Something that every country is doing now. The reason why they stick to one character is because usually that’s their favorite character and of course you want to be the best with that character. Japanese players are skilled enough to play every character and they can counter pick if they wanted too, but most of the time they will stick to their guns and grind it out the hard way.If you follow this concept, it opens up gateways on how to play the character differently and what unique ways to fight your bad match ups.For Example: Sagat vs. Rufus is generally a bad match up for Rufus because of Sagat’s zoning option with his tiger shots, his standing hard kick as a strong poke and his Kara DP or F+HK which can stop Rufus' air mobility. The way for Rufus to win is to knock Sagat down and mix him up on his wake up. I thought to myself how to prevent Sagat from starting up his defense. Well, if you guys watch my Rufus vs. Sagat matches. I love to sweep Sagat's standing hard kick. This causes a hard knockdown which lets Rufus starts his offense up. I knew that wasn’t enough so I thought to myself, how else can I knock him down. I then use my ex messiah kick properties to go through his tiger shot zoning and catch him before he can recover. This also lets me start my offense with dive kick pressure. I believe my favorite one is using my standing HK (The Ballet Kick) I use this on every character because they love to jump away from Rufus since they are scared of the dive kick pressure and because the move has a upper hit box, it will stop the character from jumping and then it’s a free juggle for me into Ultra #1.Never give up and do not think you’re bad at the game. Success does not happen overnight. It takes time and patience. Play hard and play because you love to play. Think back on why you started to pick up fighting games and have faith in your character and yourself.Justin Wong is a member of Evil Geniuses, you can find more information about this organization at http://www.myeg.net