Since all I’ve been playing lately is Street Fighter 4, it’s pretty rare that I get any one-on-one play time with any other good players because the game is still so new, there are always at least a few people playing. This means that it’s only been recently that I’ve actually been able to get one-on-one sessions with a couple of players because I’ve been in the right places at the right time. Because of this, I was recently reminded of the value of these sessions because they can help make you an expert at a specific character matchup.

When I was a wee nooblet, 3rd Strike Dudley legend Vic Vance aka Victoly and I would go to Super Arcade and play for an hour or two a few times a week between our classes at Cal Poly Pomona. Even though I was terrible back then and Vic was an established pro, it helped me learn the Dudley vs. Urien matchup because I was forced to get good at it, or be forced to keep losing 20 in a row and hope that Vic didn’t start thinking that he was wasting his time playing me.

Because of the time I put into this two to three years ago, I can say that I am more confident in this match than any other match in the game and it has helped me in my 3rd Strike journey more times than I can count because there are so many solid Dudley players out there that I am able to beat because I trained with the best. It especially helped me when it counted most, which was SBO 2008 in Japan.

My team of Justin Wong and KOfiend had to play a Dudley/Twelve/Chun Li team and when we were coming up with our team order for that particular matchup, in my opinion, it helped a lot that I was so confident in my Dudley/Urien knowledge because it helped to determine our team order. Because I know the match so well, I wanted to make sure that I gave myself the best chance to win for my team by playing against the character I know best. That meant that KOfiend should go up first to see who they put first because Justin was most confident against Chun and I was most confident against Dudley. If I were to go first and they put up Twelve or Chun first, I might have lost because I don’t know the match as well.

What ended up happening is that KOfiend went up first and they ended up putting their Dudley player first. KOfiend won that match, then lost to their Twelve player who I subsequently beat. Had KOfiend lost, though, then I would have gone up against their Dudley player as planned.

Who knows whether I would have won or lost and obviously I’m thrilled with the way things worked out, but I believe that knowing the Dudley/Urien match helped a lot in deciding our team order, which is crucial in any team tournament.