The Road to Evo.

I’m getting ready to head out to my first EVO . I cannot say that I am not nervous. I have two months to train myself on the fundamentals of Street Fighter. I have also less time to get used to the changes made in Arcade Edition. You may have seen me playing at the Guard Crush series getting exposed by random players. I honestly do not know how to prep for this. I did go to my first out of state tournament (king of the Couch) recently. I placed 3rd there which is not too bad when I could have placed 2nd. I’ve been playing more people and I found when I’m focused and hitting my links I tend to win. I always thought I was bad at the SF series (I used be so free in the first version of Super Street Fighter IV). I have also been running a lot of sessions at the 8-bit dojo and attending other sessions as well to see how I fare. Recently at a meet up at the Fish Market I took second place in a team tournament with a random partner and also I almost eliminated the final three members of a team in a 4 on 4 exhibition match.

So what is doing me in? I think it’s nerves that are unsettling me. During king of the couch I was in winners finals and completely flustered. I knew the match up but I just couldn’t get into my groove. During the random tournament that happened at the Fish Market I wasn’t as nervous when we were sent to the losers bracket so I was able to play my best and close out and get us to grand finals. I ended up choking harder than the Knicks did that one time. I missed quite a few combos. My team ended up losing but it’s fun to note every team that had a member of the 8-bit dojo finished a pretty high. In the 4 v 4 two of my team were beaten by the same guy. So it was up to the last two people get through the entire team. After eliminating the first guy my teammate proceeded to get scrubbed out. So I ended up fighting 3 bad match up back to back. I did fairly well until the end where I made a pretty bad decision.

However all this stuff aside EVO is a completely different animal. So many good players will be there. I don’t know if I can win the entire thing. I’ve played some of the top players (Justin,Andre,Sabin,etc) but I haven’t fought any Japanese players or what the rest of the country can offer. Xbox Live does not help this any due to lag and other issues. There is also the insane amount of pressure I’ll probably be facing. I was told by a friend that I should listen to music while I play to get ride of that nervousness but I usually listen for everything when I play the game.

What should my goals be for this? I don’t want to place unrealistic expectations on myself of winning this entire thing. Maybe just getting out of my pool should be the main goal for this. Hopefully I don’t end up on the wrong side of an Evo Moment