MGL VERSUS: Weekly SSFIV: AE 2012 Results and preparation for SoCal Regionals

Hello, folks. Last night we had a quite a few people show up at Milpitas Golfland for a decent sized SSFIV: AE 2012 session and tournament.

SSIV: AE 2012 Top 8 (25 entrants)

1. Kelvin "Mak Daddy" Jeon (Makoto)
2. Kimo Pamintuan (Hakan)
3. Haaris Abbasi (Ryu)
4. Marcos "El Cubano Loco" Blanco (Claw)
5. Geoffrey "Uuyupop" Yoon (Guy)
5. Rocky (Cody)
7. Julio Fuentes (Yun)
7. Brian "BJ" Jeon (Cody)

Kelvin has been on fire as of late with his patented Makoto play earning his second straight tournament victory. Kimo tore through the brackets and had a reset in grand finals against Kelvin which made for a hype finale; earning him a much deserved second place finish. Both players have shown with hard work, determination and showing very little emotion that they have what it takes to make it to the top.

I ended up getting fourth place as you can see from the above results which is ok. I ended up losing Kelvin in   a close set (2-1) and got destroyed by Haaris' old-school Ryu gameplay (2-0). Haaris did a weird ambiguous setup on me which made me block the right way and blew up my crouch tech with an EX Tatsu after catching my bad jump-in when I had the lead with j.mp>U1. It got into my head which made me not want to crouch tech in the subsequent rounds and he blew me up with throws which garnered him a 2-0 victory over me. I've beaten him many times in the past, but this was his first time beating me convincingly as well as against Geoffrey's Guy.

Needles to say, I was not pleased.

Now, Socal Regionals in Irvine, CA is coming up two weeks from today. I wanted to attend the past three, but couldn't because of work and lack of funds at the time. Not the case this year thankfully. I'll be attending SoCal Regionals with Khiry "Kurokiba" Crawford, my bud Cisco Resendes and possibly some other people who will room with us.

I've been trying to get in as much practice as I can for this event with the best players here in Norcal. I feel like I have something to prove when I participate in this event since I consider SoCal to have the best players when it comes to fighting games. My goal is to at least make top 32 or top 16 and work from there. I have been trying to get as many sessions and spend time in training mode as much as possible all while working full time at the same time. It's difficult, but hopefully I should do well once SCR rolls around.

And not just me. I want everyone from NorCal who is going to this event to step their game up and do well at this event. We've always had a huge rivalry with SoCal and they are usually the better players. With that being said, I have that we have the stronger player base as of late when it come to both AE 2012 and UMVC3. Let's go and show SoCal we are not free!

My SSFIV: AE 2012 Tier List and my personal worst Claw match-ups

Hello, everyone. Here's my AE 2012 tier list. Thanks to Nacer for the inspiration to write a short post about this.

S: Cammy, Adon, Fei Long
A: Akuma, Ryu, Seth, C. Viper, Yun, Sakura
B: Rufus, Zangief, Makoto, Ibuki, Claw, Dictator, Boxer, Sagat, Ken, Honda, Cody, Abel
C: Gen, Guy, Yang, Rose, Gouken, Dhalsim, Blanka, Guile, Oni, E. Ryu, Chun-Li, El Fuerte, Juri
D: Dee Jay, Dudley, Hakan, T. Hawk, Dan

Personally, I feel my worst match-ups are definitely Cammy, Gen, Akuma and Honda. I also feel like sometimes a really good Guile or Dictator player beats Claw a lot as well, although I think they are mostly even compared to the top four I just mentioned.

I have seem to hit a wall against Cammy and Gen with Claw so I might start counter-picking with Dictator. He was my secondary in Vanilla SFIV and lately I have been playing him in training mode, in casuals and at a couple of the local tournaments as of late. My confidence in playing Dic is getting better by the day so hopefully I can bust him out more often if my Claw isn't doing so well on certain dasy or in certain character or player match-ups I have trouble with.

I'll still be mostly playing with Claw since I'm the most comfortable with him in almost every match-up. There is still room for improvement with my Claw play as well.