Unless you are one of the unlucky ones who have a remote, small scene, or one of the lucky ones who are by far the best in the region, odds are that you can play with people of a couple of different skill levels. You’ll probably have people who are better than you, maybe by a large margin. You’ll almost certainly have peers (or rivals) and hopefully you’ll have some people you can certainly beat. In this 3-piece article I will go over my ways to practice with every single player in your journey to become better. We will first look at how to practice against players much better than you, then how you can utilize peers to optimize your practice and finally how newbs are still valuable practice partners, even for the best players. These pieces will be released on April 19th, 21th and 23th.

Against better players

A remark I’ve often heard, coming from worse players when playing against me, is that they cannot move, or do anything, just because I am that much better than them. I ask them what they are specifically working on or trying to improve now that they have a chance to play against a player significantly better than them. The answer I most often receive is “I don’t know, too much is happening and there’s nothing I can work on specifically.” This absolutely breaks my heart, and I hope to inspire you all to practice versus much better players more.

This is by far my favourite category to play in. No one can teach you more than players who are far better than you and know a lot more about the game. I want to illustrate this this by detailing my personal experience. In 2012-2013, I was a huge noob, barely going 2-2 in Dutch tournaments with my Fox. In this time, I would often visit Remen (most of you will remember him from the MLG tournament or as one of the best Dutch players) and get my ass handed to me for 8 hours straight. I would not win a single game and he would consistently 2 or 3-stock me. At first it was demoralizing, but after a while I understood how I could effectively practice while his Falco was beating the living daylights out of me.

The answer to the problem is defensive game. It is an absolutely integral part of Melee. Most of the time new players get the advice to work on their punish game, and rightfully so, because it is much more rewarding in the short term and it is very clear how to improve. However, for me, what distinguishes a decent new player from a good intermediate level player is their ability to not crack in their defensive game. You might win neutral as often as me, but if I get out of every hit taking only 20% and you get combo’d to death because of bad (smash) DI, you get 4-stocked. In fact, the defensive game is so important to me that in the future I will most likely write something to expand on this subject.

While playing against a good player, focus on every single defensive option. How is your crouch cancel? How does he get around it? Did you use the right DI to escape Sheik’s combo’s? Did you SDI Fox’s Up-Tilt up to escape? Could you have chosen a better Firefox angle or, equally important, a different spot to start your Firefox from? Improving in these areas is easiest against much better players, since you will be put in the position to apply these tactics more often by them. And if you do escape a combo or recover well, you can be sure it was because you did it right and not have it be a 50/50 of whether or not they messed up.

Another approach to practicing with top players is asking for advice. It is the most obvious thing you can possibly do and most players are very willing to help, HOWEVER do not be an idiot and ask general questions like “Why are you beating me this hard?”, “How do I play neutral?” or the worst, “What can I improve?” These questions are too broad (what even is neutral?) or have very obvious answers (you need to improve EVERYTHING). Asking questions related to specific situations will provide you with the best results. “What could I do to escape from the corner here?” or “What are good follow-ups after up-throw at this specific DI?” Never be afraid to ask a reasonable question.

I hope this illustrates the value of getting your ass whooped by a better players for hours on end. You have the time to finally practice one of the most important, yet unexplained aspects of the game in a meaningful manner: defense. These players are also a crucial source of information, because they once were bad players like yourself and are often willing to help you along the way. Befriend some better players and play with them as often as you can.