This is issue #17 of thegametwok newsletter, where I share Street Fighter V stats and findings.
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Sunday’s Capcom Pro Tour event win by The4Philzz was more than him finally getting the job done with Falke, although that’s obviously the highlight of the day. The journey has just as many stats as the destination.
With Sunday’s win, The4Philzz improved to 15-11 in CPT Top 8 games using Falke. Only 3 other players have used the character, and they are a combined 11-10. There’s always the belief of one player carrying a character, and The4Philzz is the closest to doing that with Falke.
Here’s the catch about that: 3 of the 4 players who have used Falke in a CPT Top 8 have a winning record. THREE OF FOUR!
The4Philzz: 15-11
Oil King: 5-3
Justin Wong: 3-1
Zabeth: 3-6
Falke, entering Sunday’s Top 8, had a 17-16 record in CPT Top 8 games and yet hadn’t even sniffed a championship series, let alone a semifinal series (Winners Final or Losers Final).
Falke’s match value in those 33 games was 0.37 which lines up with that 17-16 record. It means the users weren’t playing above or below average. The wins and losses that came in those 33 games weighed evenly.
What’s the percentage of games The4Philzz accounts for with Falke, and is it at the top?
If we were to take the percentage of everyone who has a usage share of a character in CPT regular season Top 8s going all the way back to 2016, he is eighth all time with Falke.
Here is a list of the Top 10 players and the percentage of games they account for with a character (games user has played in parenthesis):
RB: 100.0% with Dan (3)
Momochi: 92.3% with Akira (12)
Filipinoman: 83.3% with Rose (5)
Bonchan: 78.6% with Sagat (66)
Infiltration: 77.6% with Juri (66)
GTR: 61.1% with Gill (11)
Kusanagi: 57.9% with Sakura (99)
The4Philzz: 55.3% with Falke (26)
Snake Eyez: 54.3% with Kage (25)
The Griffon Mask: 53.4% with Blanka (39)
There are a few players with a small amount of games. Once there’s another Rose and Dan user, RB and Filipinoman will drop out, respectively. Those with game totals in the 10s are borderline iffy but they can stay.
Before I looked this up I guessed The4Philzz would be in the top 3 with Bonchan using Sagat and Doomsnake using Vega/Claw. But there are other specialists, The4Philzz stands out because of the character he uses.
He got his opportunity once again to make a Top 8 run on Sunday, although it did not start out as promising. He won Round 1 of the first 2 games against Shivryuken and fell behind 2-0 only to eventually take the match.
In total, he won 8 rounds against Shivryuken becoming the 13th player this year to win 8 rounds in a CPT Top 8 match.
Winning 8 rounds is a tough feat considering that a player has to win at least 1 round in 5 games, and nobody’s really trying to accomplish that. The sequence for The4Philzz was WLLWLLWLWWWWW.
When he lost Game 2 Round 3, his match win expectancy based on thousands of previous rounds played was 11.5 percent which obviously is not great but there’s still a chance.
His tournament win expectancy based on thousands of previous rounds played in that specific part of the bracket was 21.5 percent which means most people lost the match from his position but still recovered to win the tournament.
If you look at the sequence again, he won 5 Round 1s. That was weird enough I thought it was a first. Turns out, he was, at that moment, the 35th player to pull that off.
Then he became the 36th to do it in his win against Hurricane in Winners Final.
He’s the only player to win 5 Round 1s of two separate CPT Top 8 matches in the same event.
It was fitting The4Philzz would be the first Falke user in Winners Final of a CPT event. He had been to the semifinal round of a bracket but with a different character … by choice!
On July 27, 2019, at CPT Online Western Europe, he won two consecutive elimination matches using Falke. And then, as he reached Losers Final against Monsieur Crimson, he switched to Ken! Falling deep behind, he switched to Ed!
There was no switching on Sunday in his first-ever trip to Winners Final of a CPT event, which he won.
But he did start Grand Final with to Akira. After nothing came of it in Game 1, he brought in Falke and finished the job.
So here’s a weird situation. He won with Falke, but he also used Akira in the championship series. So technically he also won with Akira.
In the database and in the official records, it will be noted as The4Philz winning a CPT event with Akira and Falke. Akira, despite an 0-1 games record, has a championship series match win.
This has happened before. At Celtic Throwdown 2019, Bonchan started Grand Final with Sagat against NL (using Akuma!). NL won Game 1, and Bonchan switched to Karin. Bonchan went on to win 3 games in a row and take the tournament.
So even though Sagat went 0-1 in games in the championship series, he used Sagat in a Grand Final that resulted in a win.
It could be considered the equivalent of getting an A on a group project in high school where one person did all the work.
One wild part about Sagat’s Grand Final appearance is it remains the only 1 he’s been in. Place your bets on which 0-1 character will return to Grand Final, Sagat or Akira.
Akira’s 1 game reminded me of what happened in August, when Billydate used Ed to win CPT Online South Africa. The first time he used Ed in the Top 8 was in Reset Final and the gamble paid off.
I believe in this state of the game that players do need multiple characters to be successful. For two eventual champions to make a switch extremely late in a tournament is kind of amazing.
After Sunday, Falke jumped into 15th in best win percentage. She’s 12-11 for the year, a .522 win rate.
At the rate the season is going, she will probably need one more Top 8 appearance to qualify for the percentage title. Even if she gets that Top 8 showing, she would have to dominate to contend for the percentage title.
Poison remains the percentage leader at .742, a 23-8 record. Here are the standings.
As far as usage, Urien remains the leader in that department despite not being used for a fifth consecutive Top 8. He still leads with 116 games. With Hurricane using Cammy and getting to third place, Cammy became the second character to break 100 games, getting 1 over that mark.