itsjustatank Profile Blog Joined November 2010 Hong Kong 9043 Posts Last Edited: 2016-07-30 21:09:22 #1

343: Hello, I'm here with Swedish Delight, who just got 9th place at EVO 2016. Can you introduce yourself?



Swedish Delight: Hey there! My name is James Liu, aka Swedish Delight. I play Sheik and I play Peach against ICs. I'm from New Jersey, the Tri-State region, and I've been playing for about nine years at this point.



343: How did you get started playing Melee? Who'd you grow up playing with?



Swedish Delight: I've mainly played with my hometown friends for quite a while. My brother [E/N: Frank "Mr. F" Liu, a Jigglypuff player] is the one who got me into the game. He would force me to play because he wanted to get really good at the game.



Eventually, I just started picking stuff up. I never got worse, and I would always improve year by year. Then, things really changed when I switched from Fox to Falco and then to Sheik in my college freshman year.



I think I started to learn more about the game once I started playing Sheik.



343: Can you talk a bit about your hometown friends, your crew?



Swedish Delight: My hometown crew used to be called "Holmdel Smash" because we're all from Holmdel, NJ. But we changed it to "BERT Gaming" because of our friend BertBusDriver who really wanted us to get out more. That came about at APEX 2015. So now, we just have our hometown friends and a lot of close friends from school, for example Kevorkian and SamJacobs.



343: Where did your tag come from? Did it come after the rise of the Swedes as a force in Melee?



Swedish Delight: It was actually given to me by BertBusDriver. Around 2010 or 2011, I was still Captain Jaime. Jaime was my Spanish name in high school. But, wow... I think it really was because of when Armada was coming up. We were talking about Sweden and everything Swedish, like Ikea and Swedish Meatballs. "Wow, they're such Swedish delights." And he said, "yeah, that's an amazing name, you should take it!"



Then I did fairly well at



343: How did you improve to your current level?



Swedish Delight: My main mentor before I picked up Sheik was Eggm. He was basically everyone's mentor in New Jersey. He was the best one there. It was mainly him hosting tourneys and telling us all these techniques. I learned all the basic tech things from him.



After he had basically retired, I became friends with a lot of the top players, and I always thought they were better than me, so I asked them for help. Whenever I needed help, just because I knew them, I'd talk to Zoso, Cactuar, Sami [Druggedfox], and... I would follow what they did, and then I would implement what they said.



343: You've been a student for the past four years. Were you busy and did you have time to practice?



Swedish Delight: For the first few years of school, I would not really play that much anyway. I would go to EVO, I would go to APEX, and I would mainly learn from those tournaments. Otherwise, I'd just be playing with friends casually. I didn't really start practicing on my own until Big House 5 last year. That was when I started playing by myself for 10-15 minutes a day, sometimes more, getting to know my character better. And because I'm just playing with a computer player, I can really just think about what are some good moves I could do, or what are some things I need to practice. And because there's no extra pressure from someone else there, I was able to think on my own about what I needed to work on.







343: Cool. Speaking of practice: one major thing Sheiks have to practice a lot now is reaction techchasing after downthrowing fastfallers. Last year, Plup and Druggedfox pushed reaction techchasing to a new level, and nowadays, you're probably one of the best Sheiks at executing it.



But even though the reaction techchase is guaranteed, it's very difficult to execute, and Fox and Falco can punish you really hard for being even a frame too slow. Some players have resorted to reading instead of reacting when they don't think they're executing well, whereas other players believe in "always reacting." Where do you fall in this spectrum?



Swedish Delight: It's different from last year now, because a lot of people have better DI. They really started to incorporate slight DI, so there are so many more options to cover. I've seen Plup try to cover those options by following them with a wavedash after the downthrow. I've been trying to do that, but it's really hard. And today, when there's so much pressure, when you're a little bit—a frame—off, especially against spacies who have a shine, I do resort to just down smashing or dash attacking. They're still okay options. It's just that they take a lot more knowing the other player, reading your opponent, in general.



Best-case scenario is always going for the reaction techchase. But yeah, it depends on the mood, really.



343: This year, in the top 12 of Melee at EVO, there were four Sheik players: you, Plup, Mew2king, and Shroomed. Do you think Sheik is on the way up? Where would you put Sheik on the current tier list?



Swedish Delight: I actually don't think that Sheik is a good character. Every year I've been playing her, she's been dropping lower and lower on my tier list. I mainly think that... considering how much I play this game, I feel like people are bad at this game if I'm able to compete with them. It's not because of Sheik, because I've been destroyed a lot just because of my character, if I'm in a bad position.



I would rank Sheik probably around 6th or 7th? My tier list would be Fox and Falco, then Marth, then Jigglypuff, then Falcon, then... probably Sheik, just because Peach is actually pretty bad. But Peach doesn't do badly against Sheik.



I think a lot of people right now, a lot of space animals especially, just rely on their punish game too much. They don't necessarily work on their neutral and movement. Just because the other character isn't playing as well, they can get a spotdodge shine and automatically win a stock because of that. Of course, there are good spacies players out there, but for a lot of them, it's really based on catching mistakes.



343: Other than spacies matchups, what do you think about Sheik's other matchup spreads? For example, you said you pick Peach against Ice Climbers. Do you think Sheik can compete with Ice Climbers, or do you think Sheiks should always pick up a secondary for them?



Swedish Delight: I think it's definitely doable for Sheik. Against Ice Climbers, I think Sheik wins that matchup, it's just so... it takes so long for me to knock down Nana with a fair, and I can do it with one fair from Peach, so that's why I pick Peach. And my Peach isn't that bad; I like playing that character. I feel like Sheik does okay against every character, if she's in a good position. But when she's in a bad position, she shouldn't be able to touch any of the characters above her. Though I guess Falcon is always a weird one; people always say Falcon gets destroyed by Sheik, but I've seen perfect Wizzrobe. Maybe Falcon's only a little better, or there might not be that much of a difference, but Sheik can get wrecked by every character above her.



343: Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by "bad" versus "good" position?



Swedish Delight: So, Sheik's biggest weakness is actually that she has to either shorthop fair or commit with something like a forward tilt. And if people can read either of those options, then they should be able to go in on Sheik. Her moves are too slow and not strong enough to knock down, so she loses really hard to crouch cancelling. For example, Fox and Falco can crouch-cancel shine, Marth can keep poking at her, and Jigglypuff's crouch cancel is amazing against Sheik. She has lots of ways to combo into rest after crouch-cancelling. Falcon also gets a lot.



Sheik can't do anything unless she gets a grab, and if everyone's looking out for a grab, and they know the timing of the forward airs and the forward tilts, there's only so much Sheik can do. You have to rely on your movement. Again, right now, a lot of people don't have a good neutral with their movement. They rely on their punish game. Even then, they're able to let Sheik recover onstage and stuff. So yeah, I firmly believe what Hax says, that, for example, Fox vs Sheik is like 100-0 (laughs). If the Fox player is better, they should always win, I think.



343: Interesting. Laudandus says this kind of stuff a lot, like "crouch cancel just beats Sheik." (laughs) Recently I was doing some testing, and realized Samus could crouch-cancel Sheik's forward air until 88%. It's pretty ridiculous.



Swedish Delight: Yeah, it's a hard life for Sheik.



343: Who do you think has the biggest influence on your Sheik play?



Swedish Delight: I said Eggm before cause I originally mained Fox, and I played Falco for a bit, too. New Jersey was all spacies. Then I switched to Sheik because Eggm told me to go Sheik. He thought it was good in doubles. I beat him that tournament, at



Not many people played Sheik back then, in 2012, 2013. If you look at the



But right now, I would say Plup is definitely the one I look up to the most. I feel like everything he does is just so amazing. He positions himself the best. As I said earlier, after he down throws spacies or Falcon, he wavedashes in to go follow up. For things like that, and for movement, I think he was the most innovative for a while.



For just general solid play, of course, I looked at Mew2king, and I would just listen to whatever Mew2king says. Every Sheik player, of course, knows that's the original one. For example, there's that one video,



So yeah, I would say the new-school era is Plup, and just general, solid, basic, foundational play, and knowing how to read characters and character matchups, it's Mew2king. Mew2king's Sheik is a little shaky right now. You see him losing a lot of game 1's as Sheik and switching to Marth. He's still a little bit stuck in the old days, when everyone didn't know what to do... no one crouch-cancelled against Sheik, and no one knew how to get around the forward tilt. But even so, he's still amazing.



343: What are your plans for the future, in terms of the game? Are you planning on attending more big tournaments this year, and what are your goals for your Melee career?



Swedish Delight: Right now, I have plans for Big House 6 and Genesis 4. I'm getting free registration to Genesis because of the payout issue they had last time.



I traveled a lot last year, and I felt really tired at times. There were some tournaments where I felt like I could've done better if I were just more well-rested, or if I could get in a couple days earlier to adjust for the time zone difference. For example, I think I could've done better at this EVO if I didn't have to deal with working around time zones, or working around exhaustion. Right now, there haven't been that many tournaments announced ahead of time... oh, I'm gonna go to Shine too. They're able to float people to day two, so I'll be driving after work on Friday for that.



But yeah, I thought I would go to a lot of tournaments and all that, but this game is really tiring. I can see why, for example, Westballz hasn't been doing that well at a lot of tournaments because he goes to so many. And it's true... everyone is pretty good at this game now, and if you're just off by a little bit, there's drastic consequences for that.



I'll see how my schedule is, and I'll have to schedule tournaments months in advance, since they're so tiring. I hope there are more announced, cause right now I only hear about Big House and Genesis, nothing else.



Other than that, I'm definitely gonna be practicing again. I'll try to start streaming once I move into my new apartment. Dan Salvato is leaving his old stuff behind, and I'll be buying it off him, so it'd be a waste if I didn't start streaming.



I still enjoy this game very much. I care about it, and I want to do the best I can. Just because I don't play, quantity-wise, as much, doesn't mean I won't be as good. Really, theoretically, I shouldn't be as good, but yeah, again, right now it's all about people capitalizing on mistakes. I guess that'll never be really fixed, cause everyone makes mistakes.



I'll just continue doing what I'm doing, really, and hopefully start streaming.



343: Can you talk about other up-and-coming players from your region? Who should we watch out for in the future?



Swedish Delight: The up-and-coming players from recently in my area were just old people coming back, which was really funny. For example, Zanguzen in the last couple years. He didn't even go to this EVO, which I'm really sad about. Qerb was supposed to come, but he had emergency things to do. He won the flight from a tournament (



But, I guess, new people...? I mean, there's new people in our region, and they're really young. A lot of them have under a year of experience, and they're definitely taking names.



When I was asked this question a few years ago, I said "Gravy." That was in my sophomore year. He was from Upstate New York at that point. I said, "yeah, that guy's gonna be really good," and look at him now. He did really well [E/N: 17th at EVO 2016]. So, because I had that prediction, I can't make any prediction right now that would be up there with that. I chose him and JesiahTEG, and if you saw the







343: You mentioned that you're working now; can you talk a little bit about what you do outside of Smash?



Swedish Delight: I just graduated from college in May. I went to Rutgers, where I did chemistry. I really focused on school a lot back then. That's why I didn't play that much Smash, and I only traveled last year, during my senior year. It kind of killed my grades, but I would've killed them some other way, cause I was so involved in other things. I had an internship at Colgate, I did clubs, and all that. And I would just go to football games and parties and stuff like that.



Right now, I'm not doing science anymore; I'll just be doing administrative assistant stuff. I'll be managing a small office-type environment at New York Methodist Hospital. I want to be a doctor in the future, so it'll be good experience for me to find out about the hospital and stuff for a year. I'll see what happens after that.



343: Can you elaborate a bit more on what you enjoy doing outside of Smash?



Swedish Delight: In school, I did a lot of research. I was in research labs, and I had an internship at Colgate. That was in oral care, so I was helping to develop toothpaste. I was mainly involved with academic stuff, but after class, I was part of a fraternity, Sigma Pi. We'd do, for example, charity stuff, and party stuff of course. I was involved with a lot of community events at school, for example Dance Marathon. That was a thing I talked about at Pound 2016. I was like, "I'm so tired from this event, I'm not gonna do well at Pound because I barely got any sleep from this event."



343: But you do pretty well.



Swedish Delight: One thing that really helped me this tournament—I wouldn't have gotten 9th place otherwise—was that I started taking up yoga and meditation stuff. That's what PPMD did; he did meditation. I think you need the physical aspect too, so that you can really control your breathing, and how your body performs. That's how I was able to do so well, I feel like, in a lot of tournaments, where I just played all right. I just needed to do what I needed to do. I guess I should've done more today, cause I did really bad. But yeah, that definitely helped me out this past semester for sure, when I went to the yoga club for a couple times.



It's not about how good you play in friendlies. Some people say they're friendlies monsters. It's really about those couple matches you play in tournament. How well you do in those five to ten minutes. Yoga and meditation really help in that crunch time.



343: Cool! Do you have any last shoutouts you want to give?



Swedish Delight: Of course, shoutouts to BERT Gaming. BertBusDriver, Kevin, he got us jackets for this EVO. They're workout jackets, so I'll definitely be using mine. Who else? There's always some consistent people I always just hang out with. So, Slox, but I don't know where he is right now (laughs). Nintendude, I always have a good time with, I always talk to him. People that really helped me out with this game—Druggedfox, Zoso. Santiago, who plays the game even less than I do, but is still amazing. And Michigan, they're my best buddies, and I always end up hanging out with them the most. There's a lot of people (laughs).



I think one of the reasons why I got good was cause I was able to talk to so many of the top players and relate to them. And then, just because I was friendly with them, they would share their knowledge with me.



So I spent a little weekend with Armada during spring break. He taught me a lot about how much he cared about the game, and I thought, "Oh wow, I can never reach that now." But now that I know what it takes to be number one, now that I can quantify that goal and identify it, I can try my best to reach that.



So shoutouts to all the top players for helping everyone like me out.



343: Yeah, the Smash community is a really friendly place. It's really nice. Thanks so much for talking to me!



An interview by: ]343[

Interviewee: Swedish Delight



Editor: itsjustatank

Photos:

CSS: FO-nTTaX



Hello, I'm here with Swedish Delight, who just got 9th place at EVO 2016. Can you introduce yourself?Hey there! My name is James Liu, aka Swedish Delight. I play Sheik and I play Peach against ICs. I'm from New Jersey, the Tri-State region, and I've been playing for about nine years at this point.How did you get started playing Melee? Who'd you grow up playing with?I've mainly played with my hometown friends for quite a while. My brother [E/N: Frank "Mr. F" Liu, a Jigglypuff player] is the one who got me into the game. He would force me to play because he wanted to get really good at the game.Eventually, I just started picking stuff up. I never got worse, and I would always improve year by year. Then, things really changed when I switched from Fox to Falco and then to Sheik in my college freshman year.I think I started to learn more about the game once I started playing Sheik.Can you talk a bit about your hometown friends, your crew?My hometown crew used to be called "Holmdel Smash" because we're all from Holmdel, NJ. But we changed it to "BERT Gaming" because of our friend BertBusDriver who really wanted us to get out more. That came about at APEX 2015. So now, we just have our hometown friends and a lot of close friends from school, for example Kevorkian and SamJacobs.Where did your tag come from? Did it come after the rise of the Swedes as a force in Melee?It was actually given to me by BertBusDriver. Around 2010 or 2011, I was still Captain Jaime. Jaime was my Spanish name in high school. But, wow... I think it really was because of when Armada was coming up. We were talking about Sweden and everything Swedish, like Ikea and Swedish Meatballs. "Wow, they're such Swedish delights." And he said, "yeah, that's an amazing name, you should take it!"Then I did fairly well at Zenith 2013 . I beat Scar and I got 9th, losing to Zoso . At that tournament, G$ and The Moon just kept saying "Swedish, Swedish," so that kept on sticking. They told me, "Oh no, you did well at this tournament, so you can never go back. You can never change your name. We'll always know you as Swedish from now on."How did you improve to your current level?My main mentor before I picked up Sheik was Eggm. He was basically everyone's mentor in New Jersey. He was the best one there. It was mainly him hosting tourneys and telling us all these techniques. I learned all the basic tech things from him.After he had basically retired, I became friends with a lot of the top players, and I always thought they were better than me, so I asked them for help. Whenever I needed help, just because I knew them, I'd talk to Zoso, Cactuar, Sami [Druggedfox], and... I would follow what they did, and then I would implement what they said.You've been a student for the past four years. Were you busy and did you have time to practice?For the first few years of school, I would not really play that much anyway. I would go to EVO, I would go to APEX, and I would mainly learn from those tournaments. Otherwise, I'd just be playing with friends casually. I didn't really start practicing on my own until Big House 5 last year. That was when I started playing by myself for 10-15 minutes a day, sometimes more, getting to know my character better. And because I'm just playing with a computer player, I can really just think about what are some good moves I could do, or what are some things I need to practice. And because there's no extra pressure from someone else there, I was able to think on my own about what I needed to work on.Cool. Speaking of practice: one major thing Sheiks have to practice a lot now is reaction techchasing after downthrowing fastfallers. Last year, Plup and Druggedfox pushed reaction techchasing to a new level, and nowadays, you're probably one of the best Sheiks at executing it.But even though the reaction techchase is guaranteed, it's very difficult to execute, and Fox and Falco can punish you really hard for being even a frame too slow. Some players have resorted to reading instead of reacting when they don't think they're executing well, whereas other players believe in "always reacting." Where do you fall in this spectrum?It's different from last year now, because a lot of people have better DI. They really started to incorporate slight DI, so there are so many more options to cover. I've seen Plup try to cover those options by following them with a wavedash after the downthrow. I've been trying to do that, but it's really hard. And today, when there's so much pressure, when you're a little bit—a frame—off, especially against spacies who have a shine, I do resort to just down smashing or dash attacking. They're still okay options. It's just that they take a lot more knowing the other player, reading your opponent, in general.Best-case scenario is always going for the reaction techchase. But yeah, it depends on the mood, really.This year, in the top 12 of Melee at EVO, there were four Sheik players: you, Plup, Mew2king, and Shroomed. Do you think Sheik is on the way up? Where would you put Sheik on the current tier list?I actually don't think that Sheik is a good character. Every year I've been playing her, she's been dropping lower and lower on my tier list. I mainly think that... considering how much I play this game, I feel like people are bad at this game if I'm able to compete with them. It's not because of Sheik, because I've been destroyed a lot just because of my character, if I'm in a bad position.I would rank Sheik probably around 6th or 7th? My tier list would be Fox and Falco, then Marth, then Jigglypuff, then Falcon, then... probably Sheik, just because Peach is actually pretty bad. But Peach doesn't do badly against Sheik.I think a lot of people right now, a lot of space animals especially, just rely on their punish game too much. They don't necessarily work on their neutral and movement. Just because the other character isn't playing as well, they can get a spotdodge shine and automatically win a stock because of that. Of course, there are good spacies players out there, but for a lot of them, it's really based on catching mistakes.Other than spacies matchups, what do you think about Sheik's other matchup spreads? For example, you said you pick Peach against Ice Climbers. Do you think Sheik can compete with Ice Climbers, or do you think Sheiks should always pick up a secondary for them?I think it's definitely doable for Sheik. Against Ice Climbers, I think Sheik wins that matchup, it's just so... it takes so long for me to knock down Nana with a fair, and I can do it with one fair from Peach, so that's why I pick Peach. And my Peach isn't that bad; I like playing that character. I feel like Sheik does okay against every character, if she's in a good position. But when she's in a bad position, she shouldn't be able to touch any of the characters above her. Though I guess Falcon is always a weird one; people always say Falcon gets destroyed by Sheik, but I've seen perfect Wizzrobe. Maybe Falcon's only a little better, or there might not be that much of a difference, but Sheik can get wrecked by every character above her.Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by "bad" versus "good" position?So, Sheik's biggest weakness is actually that she has to either shorthop fair or commit with something like a forward tilt. And if people can read either of those options, then they should be able to go in on Sheik. Her moves are too slow and not strong enough to knock down, so she loses really hard to crouch cancelling. For example, Fox and Falco can crouch-cancel shine, Marth can keep poking at her, and Jigglypuff's crouch cancel is amazing against Sheik. She has lots of ways to combo into rest after crouch-cancelling. Falcon also gets a lot.Sheik can't do anything unless she gets a grab, and if everyone's looking out for a grab, and they know the timing of the forward airs and the forward tilts, there's only so much Sheik can do. You have to rely on your movement. Again, right now, a lot of people don't have a good neutral with their movement. They rely on their punish game. Even then, they're able to let Sheik recover onstage and stuff. So yeah, I firmly believe what Hax says, that, for example, Fox vs Sheik is like 100-0 (laughs). If the Fox player is better, they should always win, I think.Interesting. Laudandus says this kind of stuff a lot, like "crouch cancel just beats Sheik." (laughs) Recently I was doing some testing, and realized Samus could crouch-cancel Sheik's forward air until 88%. It's pretty ridiculous.Yeah, it's a hard life for Sheik.Who do you think has the biggest influence on your Sheik play?I said Eggm before cause I originally mained Fox, and I played Falco for a bit, too. New Jersey was all spacies. Then I switched to Sheik because Eggm told me to go Sheik. He thought it was good in doubles. I beat him that tournament, at NEC 13 in 2012. I got 2-0'd by Chillin, and then I beat Eggm, so I thought, "all right, I guess there's potential for this Sheik."Not many people played Sheik back then, in 2012, 2013. If you look at the commentary for me and Eggm , Alukard was commentating. He was saying, "oh, this guy is just grabbing all the time, he's like Tope." So I was definitely one of the original reaction techchasers of the new era. It's gotten worse for me though, because, again, DI is better.But right now, I would say Plup is definitely the one I look up to the most. I feel like everything he does is just so amazing. He positions himself the best. As I said earlier, after he down throws spacies or Falcon, he wavedashes in to go follow up. For things like that, and for movement, I think he was the most innovative for a while.For just general solid play, of course, I looked at Mew2king, and I would just listen to whatever Mew2king says. Every Sheik player, of course, knows that's the original one. For example, there's that one video, 1001 Mew2king Edgeguards . I actually looked at that video and was able to incorporate some options because of that.So yeah, I would say the new-school era is Plup, and just general, solid, basic, foundational play, and knowing how to read characters and character matchups, it's Mew2king. Mew2king's Sheik is a little shaky right now. You see him losing a lot of game 1's as Sheik and switching to Marth. He's still a little bit stuck in the old days, when everyone didn't know what to do... no one crouch-cancelled against Sheik, and no one knew how to get around the forward tilt. But even so, he's still amazing.What are your plans for the future, in terms of the game? Are you planning on attending more big tournaments this year, and what are your goals for your Melee career?Right now, I have plans for Big House 6 and Genesis 4. I'm getting free registration to Genesis because of the payout issue they had last time.I traveled a lot last year, and I felt really tired at times. There were some tournaments where I felt like I could've done better if I were just more well-rested, or if I could get in a couple days earlier to adjust for the time zone difference. For example, I think I could've done better at this EVO if I didn't have to deal with working around time zones, or working around exhaustion. Right now, there haven't been that many tournaments announced ahead of time... oh, I'm gonna go to Shine too. They're able to float people to day two, so I'll be driving after work on Friday for that.But yeah, I thought I would go to a lot of tournaments and all that, but this game is really tiring. I can see why, for example, Westballz hasn't been doing that well at a lot of tournaments because he goes to so many. And it's true... everyone is pretty good at this game now, and if you're just off by a little bit, there's drastic consequences for that.I'll see how my schedule is, and I'll have to schedule tournaments months in advance, since they're so tiring. I hope there are more announced, cause right now I only hear about Big House and Genesis, nothing else.Other than that, I'm definitely gonna be practicing again. I'll try to start streaming once I move into my new apartment. Dan Salvato is leaving his old stuff behind, and I'll be buying it off him, so it'd be a waste if I didn't start streaming.I still enjoy this game very much. I care about it, and I want to do the best I can. Just because I don't play, quantity-wise, as much, doesn't mean I won't be as good. Really, theoretically, I shouldn't be as good, but yeah, again, right now it's all about people capitalizing on mistakes. I guess that'll never be really fixed, cause everyone makes mistakes.I'll just continue doing what I'm doing, really, and hopefully start streaming.Can you talk about other up-and-coming players from your region? Who should we watch out for in the future?The up-and-coming players from recently in my area were just old people coming back, which was really funny. For example, Zanguzen in the last couple years. He didn't even go to this EVO, which I'm really sad about. Qerb was supposed to come, but he had emergency things to do. He won the flight from a tournament ( Comboed on Flight 3 ). And Eggm almost came if he won that tournament. JFlex has always been solid, but right now, he's losing to the people he should lose to and winning against the people he should be winning against.But, I guess, new people...? I mean, there's new people in our region, and they're really young. A lot of them have under a year of experience, and they're definitely taking names.When I was asked this question a few years ago, I said "Gravy." That was in my sophomore year. He was from Upstate New York at that point. I said, "yeah, that guy's gonna be really good," and look at him now. He did really well [E/N: 17th at EVO 2016]. So, because I had that prediction, I can't make any prediction right now that would be up there with that. I chose him and JesiahTEG, and if you saw the Red Bull article , it mentioned Jesiah. Gravy said "no matter how much better I got, Jesiah would always beat me." It was really funny when I saw that. I thought, "yeah, definitely." I knew they were really good back then.You mentioned that you're working now; can you talk a little bit about what you do outside of Smash?I just graduated from college in May. I went to Rutgers, where I did chemistry. I really focused on school a lot back then. That's why I didn't play that much Smash, and I only traveled last year, during my senior year. It kind of killed my grades, but I would've killed them some other way, cause I was so involved in other things. I had an internship at Colgate, I did clubs, and all that. And I would just go to football games and parties and stuff like that.Right now, I'm not doing science anymore; I'll just be doing administrative assistant stuff. I'll be managing a small office-type environment at New York Methodist Hospital. I want to be a doctor in the future, so it'll be good experience for me to find out about the hospital and stuff for a year. I'll see what happens after that.Can you elaborate a bit more on what you enjoy doing outside of Smash?In school, I did a lot of research. I was in research labs, and I had an internship at Colgate. That was in oral care, so I was helping to develop toothpaste. I was mainly involved with academic stuff, but after class, I was part of a fraternity, Sigma Pi. We'd do, for example, charity stuff, and party stuff of course. I was involved with a lot of community events at school, for example Dance Marathon. That was a thing I talked about at Pound 2016. I was like, "I'm so tired from this event, I'm not gonna do well at Pound because I barely got any sleep from this event."But you do pretty well.One thing that really helped me this tournament—I wouldn't have gotten 9th place otherwise—was that I started taking up yoga and meditation stuff. That's what PPMD did; he did meditation. I think you need the physical aspect too, so that you can really control your breathing, and how your body performs. That's how I was able to do so well, I feel like, in a lot of tournaments, where I just played all right. I just needed to do what I needed to do. I guess I should've done more today, cause I did really bad. But yeah, that definitely helped me out this past semester for sure, when I went to the yoga club for a couple times.It's not about how good you play in friendlies. Some people say they're friendlies monsters. It's really about those couple matches you play in tournament. How well you do in those five to ten minutes. Yoga and meditation really help in that crunch time.Cool! Do you have any last shoutouts you want to give?Of course, shoutouts to BERT Gaming. BertBusDriver, Kevin, he got us jackets for this EVO. They're workout jackets, so I'll definitely be using mine. Who else? There's always some consistent people I always just hang out with. So, Slox, but I don't know where he is right now (laughs). Nintendude, I always have a good time with, I always talk to him. People that really helped me out with this game—Druggedfox, Zoso. Santiago, who plays the game even less than I do, but is still amazing. And Michigan, they're my best buddies, and I always end up hanging out with them the most. There's a lot of people (laughs).I think one of the reasons why I got good was cause I was able to talk to so many of the top players and relate to them. And then, just because I was friendly with them, they would share their knowledge with me.So I spent a little weekend with Armada during spring break. He taught me a lot about how much he cared about the game, and I thought, "Oh wow, I can never reach that now." But now that I know what it takes to be number one, now that I can quantify that goal and identify it, I can try my best to reach that.So shoutouts to all the top players for helping everyone like me out.Yeah, the Smash community is a really friendly place. It's really nice. Thanks so much for talking to me! itsjustatank and GHOSTCLAW Photographer "im a fucking big fat dirty whale" -EternaLEnVy