vVv's GH Invitational - All Tournament Videos Are Now Up!!! (3/22/12)

**Brockbfball1563** · Joined: 29 Apr 2007 Posts: 3245 Location: Rochester, NH

I'll post this here as kind of a motivator for those who may think they may not be up to par with some of the "top players." Look at the Galaxy4Gamers tournament I participated in a while back. Look at the players I was personally able to (somehow) beat. marioluigi, schmegery, elScarecrow, TheShadester, and then marioluigi again. Now look at who the players defeated that I beat. ukogmonkey, The-B.O.D., WhYYZ, McSkinny, smokyprogg, Confury, adohuu, flockemokke, acezero, HellAshes, GanonMetroid.

Winners' Bracket

Losers' Bracket

Now tell me, to any normal SH member, am I more skilled at GH, in the traditional sense, than any of the players I just listed. Probably not, and not even close to many of them. I may not be able to squeeze like McSkinny or elScarecrow, I may not be able to FC insane shit like Acezero and TheShadester, and I may not have the incredible consistency of ukog or vVv Acai28, yet I still manage to do well in most tournaments I enter.

I'm going to explain how this is possible for me, a relatively good player but no where near the top, to do this well. You ready? The physical skills of GH only accounts for half of your skill as a tournament player, the other half is mental. Before any given match, I make sure I know my opponent. His best songs, his worst songs, is he a good squeezer, does he choke under pressure, songs I think he'll pick against me, what are songs he'll never expect me to pick, paths I think he will and won't know, if it's online then how will lag affect the match, and possibly most important, do I think he'll know anything about me going into this match?

This is all stuff I do BEFORE actually playing. This may seem like a lot of work, but much of it I already know about many top players, at least in the US. I'm not going to pick a song that I can squeeze the shit out of against smoky or elScarecrow because that would be a waste of a pick since they may beat me, even if I think it's my best song. I've actually picked Chemical Warfare and Speeding, two of my worst songs, in a tournament if I thought my opponent is particularly bad at the skills needed to do well at these songs. Yep, I've picked the songs I'm worst at in tournament play on multiple occasions, and I actually haven't lost when I've done that.

Here are some examples. I played HellAshes at GameUniCon 2009 in RB2 guitar. I obviously knew going in that he was a better FCer than I was but I was a better squeezer and probably knew more paths. He won in Visions, but I tried to think of a song that he would never even consider playing. Anyway You Want It. Easy FC for me and I had a feeling the fast solo parts would catch him off guard, not to mention he'd have no idea what path to use. I ended up winning and then won the tie breaker because I knew the path. In the G4G tournament, I had a feeling Shade probably didn't know any of the songs other than maybe the 4 or 5 most difficult to FC. Bam, I picked Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants and he didn't have a clue what the path was. Neither of us FCed it, but I would have won even if he did just because I knew my opponent.

So if all this stuff goes through my head before even playing, then what goes on during? Even more than that. "Okay, which path will he use? Do I really think he'll FC this? Should I play it safe and use an alternate path? Maybe he doesn't know it and he'll be following my path and I should wait until him following my path will make him overwrite a phrase and screw up the path." And sometimes there's, "Oh, he missed a squeeze. Okay up by 400, don't do anything stupid. Will he try for a double squeeze somewhere? Are they even possible in this song? Should I adjust my path a little?" Then on the other end there's, "Damn, missed a squeeze, down by 400. Okay, where in this song can I get those points back? Should I just wait until after the solo to see if he misses? Think, has he FCed this? What did he write in the comment of the FC? Did he write something like "rererererereFC" or "GOD FINALLY NEVER PLAYING THIS AGAIN" because that could be extremely helpful right now. Play it safe or double squeeze, play it safe or double squeeze, hmm..." And finally there's, "Oh, Acai picked Black Widow. Fuck it, I'm not destroying my hand just to lose by only 100k. Just treat it like a warm up and think about what to pick against him," and then I proceed to think about how he was earlier when he was practicing.

That's what goes on in my head, and really that's what goes on in the head of any great competitor or whatever they play. Linebackers in football are visualizing every possible play before the snap and what they would do in each situation. Shortstops in baseball are constantly thinking about what they will do depending on where the ball will be hit. Golfers are thinking one shot ahead, players in pool think several shots ahead, and I can't even imagine what goes through the head of the best chess players in the world. Think about the greatest Starcraft players. Are the best players always the ones with the fastest fingers and best hand-eye coordination? Usually not. It's the strategy of their game that allows them to win. Know the opponent, the game, etc. GH is just as much of a mind game as anything else. Especially at this level, simply picking a song you think you're good at isn't going to guarantee victory. In many cases, not even close.

In the past, I've always been annoyed by the fact that my knowledge of the game exceeded my actual skill (I know HOW to do stuff, just can't actually do it), but that knowledge ended up really helping me in tournament play. This isn't you just sitting in a chair and playing the same song over and over again for 3 hours until you FC it while not giving a crap about score. You get one shot to do as well as you can against a particular player, and most people have no idea the stress that builds up during a song with everything there is to consider in any given match. This is equivalent to someone kicking field goals at an empty football stadium for hours on end until they manage to make one from really far away, maybe 70 yards or so. Take that kicker and put him in with 3 seconds to go in an NFL game. All of a sudden, that kicker isn't so good anymore. It's tough, but even "lesser skilled" kickers can make them from 50+ yards out if they keep their composure and are always thinking about what to do.

Anyway, I guess that's my little pep talk before this tournament starts. Remember, I'm the guy that couldn't 5* Six on hard until after I got the Log on GH2. I've only gotten 750 on TtFaF (GH3) I think 4 times total. I can't get to the break in The Way It Ends without my arm dying and me breaking out in a sweat. My best FC across all games is Institutionalized, which I got over three years ago. I fail Guitars Suck within the first 30 seconds every time. One of my biggest achievements was FCing the first half of solo b in Jordan one time, after playing for hours that day and practicing the section for months. This is me, yet I'm also somehow one of the more successful tournament players in the country. Most of the players in this tournament are far more skilled than I am, so I'm expecting some great things to come out of this tournament.

Good luck to everyone, and have fun!
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