Day 10 - Saitama Final Round Ranbat 4/6/11

There`s this Malaysian Abel player on the shoryuken forums who has always posted good information and videos called hfz69/abelity and before I came to Japan, I contacted him and asked him if he wanted to meet up. He said to meet up at this Ranbat/tourney in Saitama and guess who showed up there?

Tokido!!!!!!!!!!

The ranbat was held as this underground bar and of course smoking is allowed! Woot, I love Japan. The Master is some old rock ponytailed dude right out of the jdoramas who cooks spaghetti and karaage.

Lost in the second round to a Viper and I learned that while Ken/Sakura can mash lp/lk and recover in time to block her ex seismo, Abel doesn`t have that luxury. Shoot have made a mental footnote not to throw escape when in corner.

The ranbat was streamed on ustream under in association with godsgarden. Had a lot of fun playing SF. And I learned that:

- Rose absolutely outpokes Abel and has so much frame advantage that he has to play lame.

- Claw can avoid Abel punishing his wall dive with a roll into ultra by crossing up during the roll in order to reverse the ultra motion. Not sure if Abel can prevent this by not buffering the ultra during the roll. The other way he can avoid that is to land behind Abel so that the ultra will not reach.

- Tokido has a jump at Abel and fireball in his face move on wakeup.

- I am still a scrub SF player.

On my way back, went to Ikebukuro Jumbo Safari since I had to stop at the station and saw this master Sakura player (pic above). He could fadc from normal dp into shp 99%. It was crazy watching him two 3 lk tatsu links into cmk fadc and so easily link it into shp and continue the combo. He even defeated grandmaster Yun player f*ckYun (yes that`s his name). Saw him handily beat a AAA Ken and saw some tricks for Sakura:

- air tatsu over Ken`s head to make the shoryuken whiff.

- after combo into ultra 2 in the corner, dash twice (I think) into a crossover tatsu. Not sure if its safe against dp.

- He like to do vertical jHK against Ken on wakeup. Probably cause it has such high priority that it will trade and Ken can`t juggle with another shoryu.

Big thank you to hfz69/abelity for inviting me to the event and Scott Popular for organising it. I think hfz69 took a video of me getting pawned by Tokido during casuals.