and probably would’ve won <3 Lee inb4nojohns

I write this essay because oftentimes browsing the boards on this forum I see two types of players. There are people who have experience in tournaments and people who analyze the mechanics of the game. Both types of players have intelligent posts, helping advance the meta-game and bringing up relevant information. However oftentimes while reading different character boards I see a lot of what has come to be known as “theory craft”. Much can be learned from analyzing frame data and what’s possible, but when this is done it often ignores the reality of an actual match.I have a unique perspective on this game because I spent roughly a whole year not going to tournaments, but watching videos, keeping track of results, and practicing with my brother. It wasn’t until I went to tournaments that I was able to understand what I’m writing now however, because often times what should happen on paper isn’t what happens in an actual match, and I’m here to explain why. Most of this discussion I’m going to use matchups I understand fluently, as well as matchups that people will see often in tournament and videos. Meta knight vs. Snake, Meta knight vs. Dedede, and Snake vs. Dedede will be heavily used because I understand these matchups at the highest competitive level from both sides. Just for credibility reasons here are some videos of me playing the matchup (as unfortunately some people on this board won’t believe anything you say unless you have a video/results of beating someone good. I will cite videos of myself playing as well as videos of other generally regarded top players so that readers will see where theory meets reality. That’s the point of this thread really, to explain where theory meets reality and where it doesn’t. I’m going to try extremely hard to keep this focused, though I could write hundreds of pages on this and I’m likely to go off on tangents that go into more detail.Now I’m going to talk about the WRONG kind of theory craft. I often see these kind of statements on the boards. (I’m not exactly sure if these numbers are correct but I read them somewhere, for purposes of this thread the numbers aren’t important):MK vs. Snake on the ground.Metaknight’s forward tilt comes out in 4 frames. Metaknights forward tilt slightly outranges the first hit of snakes forward tilt and comes out faster. MK’s forward tilt is disjointed, and can be slowed down. This means that it beats Snakes dash attack, dash grab, and sidestep. This means the only thing that should beat it is a perfect powershield of the first hit to a shieldgrab.Snake’s forward tilt comes out in 5 frames. The second hit of Snakes forward tilt outranges all hits of MK’s forward tilt but takes 8 frames to come out.Theorycraft:Most of the time, theory craft isn’t even this good. A lot of the time you see even worse kind of theory, like saying Snake should never beat Dedede because Dedede’s walking grab beats all of snakes approach options. It beats all of Snakes approach options EXCEPT sidestep. But a theory crafter would tell you that you should never run up to Dedede and sidestep because they could read it. Of course they could read it but this game is about what your opponent is expecting at an individual mix up. In all matchups you have to take a risk in order to get reward. Meta knight is an easy character to use because the risk reward on most of his moves is very lopsided. Anyway back on track.(Back to the above bolded) Now in the heat of an actual match, this kind of theory is irrelevant. Now some of you may ask, why? The simple answer to everything that doesn’t match up with theory that you may see in a match is this.Theory craft is often based on what someone “should” be able to do. For example, Meta knight and Dedede are at a standing position, neither character moving. Meta knight jumps and tornados toward Dedede. Dedede has a few options to beat/avoid tornado. He can shield/roll backwawrds/Utilt. But often when watching a match, you see at Dedede player sidestep and then get sucked into the tornado afterward. This happened because the Dedede player was expecting something else, and simply reacted to Meta knight’s movement in anticipation of a dash grab/dash attack. To make this relevant here’s a video where I’ll point out another example of reacting, and guessing wrong.Redhalberd (MK) vs. Seibrik (Dedede):20 I tornado’d toward Seibrik. Understanding the matchup he shielded long before my tornado reached him. But he dropped his shield and dashed toward me. Why? This is becasue he saw me stop my tornado for a fraction of a second. In experience, he recognized this as me seeing him shield and deciding to retreat. He then dashed after me to punish a landing. But this is where theory ends and MINDGAMES begin. I stopped my tornado on purpose for this very reason. Understanding what your opponent is expecting and doing something that doesn’t necessarily make sense on paper is what happens at the highest level in this game.:38 I try the exact same tactic with tornado. This time he doesn’t fall for it. He holds his shield then rolls around it. Luckily Tornado is a versatile enough move for me to get away because I recognized that I wasn’t going to hit with it.:54 I shuttle loop. He dash shields toward me to beat the glide attack and grab me. Instead of glide attacking I cancel it and sidestep, then punish the after lag.1:22 I shutte loop again. This time Seibrik is wary because I sidestepped last time. But I’m one step ahead, and I expected him to adapt. The logical thing to beat my sidestep would be to dash shield. Even if he wasn’t close enough to me to grab me out of it it’s still the most logical option based on my last choice. So I dashgrab. On paper this doesn’t make sense, which is exactly why it worked.To make a long story short, these explanations are made to explain why what you should expect over the course of a match should change as your opponent adapts to you. Against people you play against regularly it’s likely you’ll be familiar with things they will or will not try. When watching high level players, you probably notice that the mixup game changes, because after being dash grabbed while dash shielding, a player may dash shield again, but bait it with a sidestep this time. This is how mix ups generally progress, and a players ability to predict and manipulate what his opponent will be expecting gives them control over the match.There is no formula to making the right choice when this game is played at the highest level. It’s simply about adapting and feeling out your opponent. Sometimes you “just know” when your opponent is going to do something, based on patterns from earlier mix ups. The speed at which you recognize and react to patterns is what determines how lethal you are over the course of a set. Often times you will see a trend where one player win game one of a set in WF/LF, but then gets beaten 3 times in a row afterwards. Or a set where one player wins the first match, then the other player 3 stocks them the next match. This is because the player who “adapted” became used to either his opponents options or patterns. Ganondorf is bad because his moves are generally slower than human reaction, oftentimes, you don’t have to “guess” what he’s going to do. You can watch and because of the nature of his moves, react and punish. That’s adapting to a character’s options. That’s why someone playing a top tier character may lose to a lower tier only once, and after that never lose again. In some matchups, one player dominating the other is as simple as understanding their opponents options. In other cases however, adapting is a matter of getting used to an opponent’s patterns. The speed at which you realize that your opponent repeatedly does Z if put into situation one, will allow you to start capitalizing on it. If your opponent continues doing it you can punish it continually, and expect them not to adapt very quickly. Once they realize that they’re being read they may begin trying another option, and this is where the process starts over. Matches happen so quickly that it’s extremely difficult to consciously think “my opponent did this last time, I should do X and expect Y”, so most of it comes to instinct, which is why some people just seem naturally **** at this game. The speed at which you naturally react is what determines what most people would agree on is overall skill.Concerning watching matches on youtube and how people use them wrongly forI’m an avid watcher of brawl matches on youtube. Don’t believe me? Look for my comments on every ****ing video. Before I was able to go to tournaments I didn’t watch videos the right way. I would see someone get ***** by someone I hadn’t heard of and say “wow, he’s getting *****, he must suck”. While browsing the boards, I see even worse things, usually influenced by player bias and holding players on a pedestal. “M2K nearly lost that match, he must’ve been sandbagging”, or “wow Player X really doesn’t know this matchup (due to them regarding player X as amazing and assuming he should win because they read on the boards that the matchup was 60:40”. Understanding a matchup from both sides is extremely important to understanding what’s going on when you’re watching a video. That’s the only way to understand the mix up game thoroughly, and what was going through each players head when they made each decision. Then when someone is losing, you can determine whether it’s because they’re getting outplayed, don’t understand the matchup and the options they have or because their character simply doesn’t have the options to deal with something.Judging matchup off of videos/single matches as a method is a horrible idea. Less than 10% of what happens at tournaments actually ends up on youtube, and single matches or even sets aren’t representative of matchup ratios. Before you can determine matchup ratios here is what you need to look at.– Unfortunately this is difficult to judge, especially in brawl, where experience, matchups and knowledge actually come before skill in many situations. However if you’re going to use a video in itself to try and representative of a matchup ratio, it is important that first, the players are playing at a high level. Secondly it’s important that the players are close to equal skill level. Judging this can be difficult, as brawl isn’t “balanced” in such a way that evenly skilled players will go even however. But matchup ratios are made under the assumption that players are of roughly even skill level. I like to use my matches with Seibrik as examples because I believe us to be on a very close to even level.– How well are both players aware of their options. The problem with this is that it’s generally judged off one’s knowledge of the current metagame, and in many places the metagame is underdeveloped, making it difficult to judge “what one could be doing”. (Notably, you can only learn matchups from playing them. Watching a video can tell you what your options are, but, and you have to do something first before you’ll remember it forever. This will speed up how quickly you can recognize things in matchups.)“example” – I lost to Lee Martins Lucario in tournament after beating him in MK dittos. I was extremely unfarmiliar with the matchup and continuously got punished by dairs. It was only after the match that I realized that MK’s Utilt completely beats out dair from the ground. I could have played a much safe game if I had known that in advance*a bit from Seibrik*“Another example you could use is Me vs Esam, DDD vs Pikachu. Before i experimented with the matchup, ddd's were convinced it was a 70/30 or worse, because of the way they were used to playing DDD walking around, going for grabs. When they met someone (pika) that countered DDD specifically with grabs, and didn't get punished BY grabs as hard as DDD is used to, DDD players nationwide called it quits. All because they're general style was shut down, as you said.After I did my experimented, i found that if DDD stays on platforms, (plays gay) camping bairs and dairs from the very begining of the match, it is now a dead even matchup, as pika doesnt have much to do vs bair, as it beats out his projectiles and all his attacks in general save thunder. So as you also stated regarding stages, the only time this matchup is truely what people believe is when it's played on FD, which when banned, the set as a whole, becomes even.”Oftentimes in friendlies and even in tournament you’ll see people winning/losing matchups. But that isn’t necessarily related to the actual matchup ratio if one player isn’t playing the matchup correctly. This may be due to nervousness/lackof knowledge/personal style.example: Ally vs. Mikehaze, M2K vs. Diddy. Using your “regular style” in certain matchups won’t necessarily work, even if you know that other things are require to tilt the matchup back in your favor. You may see other players who are generally regarded as “less skilled” doing better in these matchups, because they’re using a more appropriate style.“example” – Metaknight can turn a 60:40 matchup into an 80:20 matchup using a CP stage. M2K vs. Mikehaze on SV in comparison to M2K vs. Mikehaze on brinstar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdZH_mLyEs0 – See set for details.Once you have determined which of these factors is present in a match or tournament set you can determine roughly who has an easier time with a matchup, whether a matchup is possible and at what level (general competitive level or top player level: For example, Kirby vs. MK is impossible at the highest level, as Kirby should be unable to kill MK if he plays the correct defensive or even offensive style. At the highest levels of gameplay now top MK players play a clean and safe enough game to avoid this, and even if they do make mistakes, the amount of punishment they receive in comparison to reward should never be enough to win a match. However MK vs. Kirby at the casual level, where both players leave multiple openings and make “mistakes” you will see that Kirby doesn’t have as much trouble, as Kirby can actually get more reward than MK with single moves.) *back to before parentheses* why the player who lost did lose.So basically the idea of this thread is to help people understand when something is a relevant statement and when something isn’t as well as helping understand when an option should be dismissed or should be looked into further. I remember when people said Snake’s C4 was useless because humanly anyone should be able to see it coming and react to it. I remember when people would dismiss techniques like reverse grenading and illusion cancelling. When people would watch Japanese players and say “oh that’s just being flashy”. Or when people looked at Ally and said “oh, he’s not that good. Most of that stuff wouldn’t work on good people”. This game is about what people are expecting. When watching a video it’s easy to say “I would’ve expected that” but you didn’t experience the previous mix ups that may have conditioned the strategy to work. It was only after extensively learning MK vs. Snake from both sides that I actually understand what’s going on when I watch M2K vs. Ally. People leave comments on youtube all the time saying “someone should’ve seen something coming because it was obvious” but you would do almost anything if you know your opponent is expecting something else.” The speed at which people are able to react as well as experience determines what gets punished and what doesn’t. People make judgements about when something is worth the risk of trying to punish and when something isn’t. That’s why some matches are closer than others. One player adapts and then the other player adapts back. The degree to which each player adapts determines how much one player wins by.Anyway I hope that you found this to be an enjoyable read. If it didn’t make sense then I’m sorry as it was a lot to follow. With this I’m hoping to bridge the gap between theory craft and competitive matches, as well as clean up the way that general smash analyzes videos. This game has a lot of untapped and ignored potential and approaching learning the right way is a good direction for everyone.I’ll do my best to answer questions, critics and comments.edit:BTW Seibrik edited this so that you dont have to read my crappy typos and broken thoughts.