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West Coast Warzone 2 was held two weeks ago and I wanted to do a writeup on the event, but I've been super busy with school and work eating up my time. Thrust07 suggested that I record a videolog instead of writing about it in order to save time. I considered it, but figured it wasn't really my style. Maybe in the future I'll try it out, though for now I'll stick with what I know. 

"If you're not Top 8, then who the fuck are you?"
-Alex Valle

I'm no stranger to tournaments. On the other hand, I'm not exactly someone who is "known" at every tournament, either. I've fought my share of big names in a competitive setting and for the most part, gotten crushed many of those times. It seemed for a while that I was hitting a plateau. But this year I made a resolution to try and play Street Fighter every day. And I started to realize that I was doing better.

The first tournament I went to this year, I lost to two players who I tend to lose to in the past, but both matches were much closer in each case. I think I placed 14th or something lame like that. Two weeks ago, I attended my second tournament of 2010, a much bigger tournament. I placed in the top 8 of 34 players.
My accumulated experience took me somewhere. Hopefully someday, it'll "pay off".

Actually, two weeks ago was also the first time I had ever taken a road trip with people outside of my family. In the time before this, I was feeling crappy with a sore throat and runny nose. Lately, when I had attended a large Street Fighter event I usually got sick afterwards. So I saw a nurse practitioner and she told me it was just my allergies acting up, recommending I take some Claritin. On the road and for a good part of my time down in So. Cal. my ears kept going off balance, refusing to pop. Regardless of all these things, I was feeling determined to beat some ass that weekend and do good in the tournament.

When I asked for time off work for this trip, I initially didn't ask for Monday off since I figured I would just drive down there by myself and just leave early on Sunday. The way things worked out, I was scheduled to work at 4pm on the Monday when we traveled back North. My only option besides calling in sick that day was to switch hours with someone and I'm glad I did. We didn't get back to the Bay until much later than 4pm.

I ended up leaving for Vestax's house in San Francisco and getting caught in gruesome Friday/Easter weekend traffic. All these factors aligned against me, but when things did get going and we were on the road, I was beginning to feel the excitement. We made great time on the night trip down and Thrust, being the first driver, made sure we started things right. The first song played was Kid Cudi's Heart of a Lion.

Sometime before we made our first stop, a somewhat familiar song shuffled on from his iPod that boosted me up. I could figure the band was Jimmy Eat World, but couldn't put my finger on the song.
"What song is this?"
"Sweetness"

When we did make our first stop to switch drivers, fill up, and grab snacks, I bought: a large bottle of water, a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar, some blue sour straws, and a can of salt & vinegar Pringles (for comical reasons). Thrust was kind enough to offer me gum whenever my ear pressure was acting disagreeable. Some road trip advice from Vestax was to "always have something in your mouth," particularly useful for the driver since he needs to stay awake. I didn't really get any sleep in the car since I was too excited. However, we got a few decent hours of sleep when we got to Vestax's cousin's place.

Thrust: "I can't sit down."
Me: "Why?"
Thrust: "I'm too hype."

On the next day, Saturday, we arrived at the hotel a bit later than the scheduled time and Thrust still made it a point to bump Heart of a Lion as we rolled in. Fortunately, they had not started yet and we walked in on DarkGaiden and afrolegends playing casuals. This was my first time bringing the camcorder I bought recently to any event and I only had about an hour's worth of recording time available. I figured I'd just save it for my own matches and any in the finals that interested me. It was surprising to see damdai running the bracket and refreshing to see many of the familiar faces of the So. Cal. region. Even though I was disappointed that all of them weren't present, there were still a lot of fine players in attendance making it comparable to a Super Turbo Black Bracket of Death at EVO.

Not long before damdai started calling names did L2P ask me to hold his camcorder and record while he played his HDR match. I asked him to do the same for me and I think I ended up playing first.

Bit of a rough start, but it was good to get in my groove. Later on, my roadmates were having a tough time. Thrust especially had difficult opponents in damdai himself and EA Megaman. After he lost to damdai, I shared with him three lines that I had written in my steno book.

I can beat anybody in this room!
No Fear!
BREATHE, FOCUS

Vestax ended up losing to PR Balrog and The Aqua Snake. I ended up recording only one of my other matches (DarkGaiden held the camcorder for me) because the rest of my matches were on the WCW live stream and John Rog, the tournament director, said that they'd be archived. Although my match versus PR Balrog wasn't recorded in its entirety due to technical difficulty.

Aqua Snake had already put me into the Loser's bracket by the time I had to fight this one. But before that, I had to fight Antonio Diaz, maybe better known as BlueTallCans. He's a top So. Cal. Blanka player and there was a time not too long ago when I had never been able to defeat him (online) even though the matchup favors Dee Jay. I had to fight him once in the Winner's bracket and again in Loser's bracket. It's an occurrence known as "double jeopardy" and a natural flaw of the double elimination format. There was actually quite a bit of it in the HDR tournament.

I was happy and surprised to fight on the stream so much and even happier that I managed to beat Antonio twice. His status and recognition as a great player made my accomplishment feel worthwhile. Unfortunately, I lost to two other great players. Fei Long is said to be a another good matchup for Dee Jay traditionally, but Aqua Snake always gives me trouble whenever I fight him online and I was pleased to finally face him offline as well. I shook his hand before our match and we took it to the third and last game where he put me in Loser's. The second game went so damn fast and it seemed like he just stole the momentum from me (or made his own!).

Every time I had to go on the stream, I made it a point to be comfortable before I started to play. I'd take my jacket off, strap down my stick, put down my cellphone, take out my keys (I actually got this idea from Antonio), and I even took my shoes off when I played against Antonio. I drank plenty of cold water provided by the venue. It's important to remain calm and focused at a tournament. Damdai told me that my last match for the day was Antonio in Loser's bracket and after that, I shook Antonio's hand, walked off the stage and was greeted heartily by my crew.
I'd never gotten so far before in a tournament of this magnitude. I looked at the bracket and saw that tomorrow I had to play Alex Valle.

The guy who put Valle in Loser's was SnakeEyez, a (in)famous online pad player. Needless to say, he's really good and fucks me up all the time. He made his fame by playing Ken, but has lately been playing Zangief. He once accused me of using turbo online and I was hesitant to confront him about it, but when I played him in a casual game, I mentioned it briefly and he said something like "Yeah, I do that a lot" and we just laughed it off. It was so fun to watch and play everyone offline. All the HDR players tried to get some casuals going in EA Megaman's hotel room after the event hall shut down, but the hotel security wasn't having it and put their foot down. And even before that, since there were only two HDR stations, I asked my So. Cal. pal, Sweet Johnny V, if he wanted to play AE on one of the PS2s that were running 3S. It was just sitting there abandoned with two sticks plugged in. His initial reaction was no, sipping on his Newcastle. I somehow talked him into it and Paro-Da eventually joined us, shit was too fun.
"Yeah man, some of those old guys hit you a few times and you're fucking dead." (Old characters, he means)
-SweetJV

Sunday, we were getting ready to go to the Long Beach Marriott for the finals when there was an earthquake going on. It wasn't very severe, but definitely palpable. Later when we got to the hotel, L2P told Thrust and I that he was in the event hall at the time of the earthquake and the chandeliers were really noisy and shakey. He said he got the fuck out of there, every man, woman and child for themself. Funny stuff and funny guy, that L2P.

When we were driving out there on Sunday, I asked Thrust to bump the Jimmy song for me and when he dropped Vestax and I off to go look for parking (since we were running late again), he asked me: "What were those three lines?" checking to see if my mind was in the right place. There was too much going on in my head and I just remembered "I can beat anybody in this room." I was thinking about the matchup mostly and Valle's style, what I should be expecting. I asked DGV, Vestax, and afrolegends all their opinions on Valle's style of play. The most useful advice I got was from afrolegends, who not only plays Dee Jay but plays against Valle all the time. He told me to just play my game and that I had a solid Dee Jay. That's sort of a masked message; he pretty much just told me to play with confidence. I think it worked because I was less-scared than I thought I would be.

"Sometimes the best chance of winning is the presence of confidence rather than the skill at hand."
-Alex Valle

The Dee Jay/Ryu match favors Ryu, but Valle focuses more on playing against the player rather than a character in a match. If confidence took me this far, how can I go wrong? When James Chen and John Rog called my name after DGV vs damdai, I went over and set up. As Valle was checking buttons, I said to him,
"Today, I will either be the-guy-who-beat-Alex-Valle or just another guy who lost to Valle." And he said back to me in an amused tone,
"It's been happening a lot lately."
"I just hope we have a great match."
"Sure."

I should've had that first game, but I dropped a huge combo at the very beginning and only earned one round. Some guy yelled "Hold back to block!" when I was trying to bulldog Valle in the first round of the second game. I shook it off and kept trying to get in, but Valle anti-aired me more this time. After it was over, we shook hands and I went back to spectating and recording. Valle had to fight SnakeEyez (double jeopardy, I'm telling you), so maybe it was a good thing that the crowd didn't get to see SnakeEyez wreck me, hah. But all in all, I still felt like I did what I set out to do. I didn't get paid, but the time will come for that.

Afrolegends won HDR by defeating SnakeEyez with Boxer. Afterwards, the HDR guys got a station going for casuals the rest of the day. And there was even a little ST going on not too far away on a laptop where MadCatz set up their table. I got a taste of James Chen's Cammy with my Dhalsim and I admitted that I didn't know much about that matchup, but wanted to learn because all I really knew is Cammy's j. strong beats all of Sim's anti-airs. Jchensor taught me that the only AA Sim has versus Cammy is his down+back roundhouse from a distance. He also mentioned how he chimed in on Cammy's changes during HDR's development, but Sirlin refused to listen.

I forget if it was on Saturday or Sunday night when Thrust, DGV, and I went out to eat at Norm's. I wanted to try it because a friend of mine who lives in So. Cal. recommended it to me. It was fantastic decompression after all the stressful and intense tournament play. Hanging out with faraway friends is another great bonus in addition to offline play at tournaments.

My handle was botched constantly on the stream because the commentators didn't have a copy of the bracket when the players were playing. I registed as Count Fuddulous on the WCW site since it asked for my Gamertag and I associated that with my XBOX360 Gamertag. If I had known that I'd be on the stream so much, I would've just left it at Fudd. Oh well, at least I got Monday off so we could take our sweet time in So. Cal. and getting home. Two weeks ago, some people at that event knew my name. But now, a lot more people know and since then, I've received many congratulations on my placement.

I'm still amazed at how well Afro plays Dee Jay and conquers strong Ryus.
"He charges so well" -DGV
"Afro is so safe" -damdai
DGV said that "he just knows" when to jump in. I want my Dee Jay to be that good someday.
Here is my shout-out post on SRK.