The button is where you can subscribe. Thanks for the support!
When the Capcom Pro Tour schedule was released, the first thing I noticed was the amount of events given to Japan, four in total.
That was great, there was no way the country should be limited to just one or even two Capcom Cup qualifiers.
It also set up a specific situation, if one player got on a roll and won multiple events, the next players down in the finish line would get the spots to Capcom Cup.
That hasn’t happened yet in Japan, but it’s happened twice in North America, the second happening on Sunday. Rob TV, who won first Midwest event, reached Grand Final to make Losers Final the qualifier spot.
Brian F took home the prize, defeating Dual Kevin before falling to Rob TV in Grand Final. I believe it was Ultra David who said it on the broadcast, that this was an ideal finish. If these are the two best players in the region, they should be the two qualifiers to the big show.
Rob defeated Brian 3-1 in Grand Final on Sunday. Earlier this year, he won 3-0 in Grand Final. That’s an .857 win percentage in games in the championship series to go with two wins, which is really incredible.
Nephew, the only other player to win two events this year, defeated Mira 3-0 in the first North America West event. Nephew then split the two championship series matches against Chris CCH, the games totaling 3-5. The two titles are up there with Rob but the 6-5 record (.545) isn’t.
I did a search in the database for the last player in a regular season to post at least a win rate in games in the championship series as high as Rob (.857) while winning at least two events.
There are two players that came up in the search who qualified for both numbers.
801 Strider in 2019 went 12-1 in games in the championship series (.923) and went on to win three events. That was his incredible 2019 run where he won at CPT Online North America West 1, Thunderstruck and Northwest Majors. His G was a dominant force.
Idom in 2019 also went 12-1 in the finals (.923) en route to two wins in the regular season. Both were victories coming from the losers bracket. I’ve made repeated mentions of one of them, CPT Online North America East, which was the last losers bracket run by anyone until Monsieur Crimson’s victory earlier this year.
For Rob to be that convincing says a lot about how he could stack up against the other 31 entrants at Capcom Cup.
There was another Rob stat that kind of blew my mind. To win his two events, he defeated Brian in both Winners Final and Grand Final each time without there needing to be a Reset Final. As the tournament ended, I was thinking that had to be a rarity, the same player defeats the same opponent in Winners Final and Grand Final in multiple Capcom Pro Tour events in a season.
From what I have in the database, that has never happened before.
If we pair it down to just winning Winners Final and then gaining at least a split of the championship series, there are two results.
Fujimura defeated Tokido in Winners Final and Reset Final of both FV x Southeast Major 2019 and Fighters Spirit 2019. A notable part about that is both of the Winners Final contests came down to Game 5 Round 3, but Fujimura prevailed with more than half health remaining.
Xiao Hai defeated Xian in Winners Final and Reset Final of both G League and ZE Fighting Game in 2016, this was back when Xian was using FANG heavily.
Yes those matches were solid decisions in favor of Rob, but they were not gimmies. It’s up for debate whether this is the fighting game community’s version of Affirmed and Alydar — that distinction might go to Punk and Idom — but I wouldn’t mind seeing these guys go at it a few more times in the late stages of events.
Rob’s win also marks the fifth win by a Karin user this year which leads the way. As incredible as that sounds, it’s nowhere close to the top in a single season. That’s partly because of the schedule, but when I mention that Karin was used to close out 12 events in 2019, it’s incredible.
I moved my weekend schedule around for this specific Top 8, not because I was expecting a No Neutral runback. This was the first weekend that Luke became eligible for use in a CPT event.
He did not get used, which means of the final roster, only 11 characters were used in a CPT Top 8 match in their first week of eligibility. Three of those characters came after the first event ever.
In August, I talked about the decision players would have to make regarding Luke: get a head start on the next game now or focus on 2021. Even with players saying how good Luke is, it appears the focus is on right now and the characters that are viable.
Leading the way is Urien, who is up to 196 games used in CPT Top 8 matches. It almost defies logic if you consider that there have been 27 events played and he has only won 1 event, the China regional.
Urien has been in 12 of the 27 events thanks to 18 users.
Even though he has only 1 tournament win, at least the record is near .500, it dipped to 93-94 with Sunday’s outing. It’s not like past years where Cammy dominated the top spot in usage and had an abysmal record.
Only six characters have been used in at least 100 games so far:
Urien 194
Cammy 143
Rashid 124
Karin 120
Guile 114
Boxer 104
Poison still leads in the race for the percentage title with her 26-9 record (.743). Karin is second with a 78-42 record (.650). Ed is third with a 24-14 mark (.632).
Because the percentage title is dependent on how many games get played in a season, players can fall in and out of qualification — think of it like Major League Baseball’s batting title. However, the minimum qualification (every game played divided by the 45 characters, then add 1 game) is 26 games as of Sunday. With four events to go, it looks like Poison will last through to the end.