This is issue #19 of thegametwok newsletter, where I share Street Fighter V stats and findings.
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Sunday’s Capcom Pro Tour Online Central America West 2 event seemed like the longest event of the year. There were several Game 5 Round 3s, a couple of technical pauses, and players going back to character select more often.
Kusanagi, a frequent Top 8 competitor with Sakura, finished the job with Kage to qualify for Capcom Cup.
What I noticed about this Top 8 was that the stats mentioned recently and earlier in the year have held up.
In last Monday’s newsletter, I made note of the top character specialists. The4Philzz, the top Falke player in the world, obviously holds a lot of weight with that character, and this subject was brought up because he won his event. Kusanagi was in the top 10 with his Sakura.
Entering Sunday, Kusanagi held almost 58 percent of the share of CPT Top 8 games that had Sakura. I expected him to go as far as possible using her.
But in Winners Final against Vicaron’s Urien, he pulled out Kage and won and then prevailed in the runback against Vicaron in Grand Final to take home the title.
Kusanagi had used Kage before, in the first CPT Online Central America West event against Uriel Verlorio. That resulted in a win. So this shouldn’t have been a surprise but it did seem like it.
Initial thought was to look at the match history. However, there hadn’t been a Kage vs. Urien matchup in a CPT Top 8 game before Sunday. Next thought was to look at some other shoto results in CPT Top 8 games entering Sunday:
Urien vs Ken: 11-9 overall, 1-0 in 2021
Urien vs. Ryu: 3-2 overall, 3-2 in 2021
Urien vs. Akuma: 29-41 overall, 1-3 in 2021
Those aren’t convincing numbers to say that it’s worth it unless a player is looking for something specific in the matchup. Conclusion was Kusanagi knew something that made the Kage choice worth it. And it paid off in getting the CPT win.
Sunday was Kusanagi’s fifth trip to the final dance of a CPT event and second trip this year. Understand who he had to deal with in those previous Grand Final matches: one of the best G’s in 801 Strider, one of the best Guiles in Caba, former Capcom Cup champion MenaRD, and a top Cammy user in Gama who qualified for this upcoming Capcom Cup.
One of the cool parts of following this year’s pro tour is seeing the rare events happen. Other followers know about Falke and Ed. Last year Cody won a CPT event because of Rumours, one of the best players in Australia.
It’s seeing the players who have come close finally get the job done. Rumours was one of the winningest players in the Gfinity Elite Series but was unable to capture the title; he wins a CPT event. The4Philzz was a constant threat with Falke, reaching multiple Top 8s; he breaks through and wins. Kusanagi was one of the Sakura mains who showed us what’s possible all these years, he wins regional titles in the Intel World Open and the CPT.
It has me curious as to who will be next to break through, whether it’s a character or player.
When I mentioned earlier that the stats held up, it was in part because of Kusanagi’s want to go back to character select following a loss.
He lost 4 games in his Top 8 run on Sunday and went back to character select each time. He was 3-1 in the ensuing games. With those 4 games, he’s now 10-2 following a loss where he goes back to character select, aka takes a timeout.
In one of the early issues of the newsletter, I said NuckleDu was the most notable player to go back to character select following a loss. After Sunday, I would say Kusanagi is now the player we should look at as the test case.
From that issue of the newsletter:
Whenever his next tournament is, I’m curious whether opponents will try to run at him and establish tempo. But even if he loses, he’ll probably go back to character select, take a breath and regroup. The power of a timeout. He’s used it well so far.
Now that we know Kusanagi went back to character select following a loss each time on Sunday, here were his average round times on Sunday in each scenario:
Overall: 52.3 seconds
Game 1s: 52.3 seconds
Games following a win: 50.4 seconds
Games following a loss: 55.7 seconds
Perhaps things would change when I made note of his stats — not because I have any pull or something of that nature, but players like to mix things up to stay ahead of their opponents.
Kusanagi stayed true to what he knows. He takes a timeout, he regroups, he wins. It did not change from the previous CPT event. That’s what I mean when I say the stats held up.
I have 2016 CPT Top 8 ranking events, 2019, 2020 and 2021 year-to-date stats of players who go back to character select following a loss. Here is a list of the five players who have the highest match value under those circumstances (game result in parenthesis).
Kusanagi 2.39 (17-6)
NuckleDu 2.25 (24-18)
Pikoro 1.99 (10-8)
Big Bird 1.13 (5-1)
Phenom 1.09 (6-2)
Here’s how to interpret this — the value of Kusanagi taking all of those timeouts has been worth more than 2 whole match wins.
Now if we filter to just 2021 CPT Top 8s, here’s the top 5:
Kusanagi 1.91 (10-2)
Infiltration 0.95 (4-0)
XsK Samurai 0.66 (3-0)
Apollo 0.60 (2-1)
Momi 0.54 (1-0)
Kusanagi’s value of taking all of those timeouts has been concentrated to this season. It truly is impressive.
It’s still unknown whether more players will follow suit and go back to character select every time following a loss. I am not surprised that the next 2 players who have the highest match value are Infiltration and Samurai, 2 really well-rounded players.
One sort-of-related note I wanted to point out before going was that even though this felt like the longest Top 8 of the year, by rounds it was not.
There were 111 rounds played, tied for the third most this year. Brazil had 114, France/Spain/Portugal had 113.
However, Brazil and France/Spain/Portugal both had Reset Finals, Central America 2 did not, so that’s why Sunday’s Top 8 seemed like it was the longest, because the average match on Sunday had 11.1 rounds, the others were 10.3 and 10.2, respectively.