This is issue #11 of thegametwok newsletter, where I share Street Fighter V stats and findings.
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Before getting into the meat of today’s newsletter, I wanted to make a couple of notes about Sunday’s Capcom Pro Tour Central America East tournament, won by MenaRD.
MenaRD has his own library full of stats, so there’s plenty to choose from, but here’s one to note: to get to the championship series, he had to survive a Game 5 Round 3 against Mono.
With the win, MenaRD improved to 11-5 in Game 5 Round 3s in CPT Top 8 matches.
The only problem in mentioning this stat was I forgot to take out the postseason stats and the 2020 Capcom Pro Tour Season Final, which had 7-game series instead of 5-game series.
But I didn’t want to put a wet blanket on the stat and start over so I kept it and looked up the all-time standings of Game 5 Round 3s. MenaRD is tied for sixth all time in Game 5 Round 3 wins.
The list of players to even have 10 wins in that specific round is almost a who’s who of the Capcom Pro Tour:
Tokido: 21-13
Punk: 17-7
Bonchan: 13-7
Luffy: 12-8
Fuudo: 12-11
MenaRD: 11-5
Phenom: 11-6
Problem X: 11-8
Daigo Umehara: 11-11
NuckleDu: 10-14
Big Bird: 10-16
Ed is such a rarely used character, I have to give a mention when he gets some screentime in a CPT Top 8 bracket.
It’s almost unbelievable that Ed made an appearance in his fourth CPT Top 8 bracket this year. Infiltration got it started on May 16 and reached the championship series against NL. The next week, Kheios got a shot. On July 11, Bad Juri went with Ed in China. 0stress made Top 8 this past weekend and took Ed to Losers Final.
Before this 2021 surge by Ed, he hadn’t been used since the 2019 Last Chance Qualifier by Trashbox. It was only 1 of 2 CPT Top 8 appearances in that year (regular season and postseason combined).
0stress’ run to the top 3 was also unexpected, in part because first timers rarely make a push like that with a character rarely used like Ed.
0stress is the third player to use Ed and finish third or better. I mentioned Infiltration already, there’s also The4Philzz, who used Ed in Losers Final of CPT Online Western Europe on July 27, 2019.
The full list is in the play index if you want to do some more deep diving.
Fourteen events have passed in the 2021 Capcom Pro Tour season, it’s a good time to take a look at the character standings and other totals to see how they’ve changed since earlier in the season.
Initially I didn’t want to look until it was time to write this a few days ago, but I kind of spoiled it myself earlier this month when I was trying to compare character stats as part of another esports project. Then came the announcement about Luke and his potential impact when he gets released in November.
Here’s what it looks like from the database perspective:
This is quite the stunner, because earlier this year I said Cammy was probably going to win the 2021 usage title, the mythical award given to the character who is used in the most CPT Top 8 games.
Right now, as we near the midway point with two new characters officially becoming eligible today, it’s Urien by a healthy margin.
Urien, despite not being used on Sunday, is the first and so far the only character to break 100 CPT Top 8 games this year, with 116 games. Cammy is second at 89.
Doesn’t seem like a 27-game lead is insurmountable with more than half of the regular season still to go, but considering how few events there are remaining, this is going to be a tough road for Cammy to break through.
It’s all about the 1-and-1 theory. Cammy playing a full match means a minimum 3 games. But if she faces a Urien, then she doesn’t close in on the standings. If two other characters get used in a match aside from her, that’s also a lost road.
Urien benefits by getting into games and Cammy not, that’s the advantage of having the lead.
It could be said that this was the case in two of the past three regular seasons, with Cammy having the lead at the midway point. But she blew the doors off of any chance of anyone else catching her that it really didn’t matter.
Perhaps people will enjoy that she’s not leading at this point with a chance to win her fourth usage title.
Here’s hoping that the usage title race doesn’t become a runaway the way it has previously. Those are not fun. There’s still a chance for this usage title chase to be competitive, but it’s up to Cammy and the rest of the field to catch Urien.
In 2017, I was obsessed with a Top 8 matchup chart since people were consistently debating who had the upper-hand in every matchup. Since there were more than 50 CPT events that year, the chart was robust. Even Ryu registered a total! OK, it was an 0-3 score for the year, but at least he was there.
I moved away from the matchup chart to focus on other stats going forward but still built it out for each season.
Here’s the 2021 version. (Larger version in case the email doesn’t expand)
The matchup chart is a good reminder of characters and matchups that have happened but do not come to mind. For example, who remembers the 12 games Rashid and Zangief played? Yes, it actually happened. The 5 Abigail vs. Claw games were also a reality, that’s a contender for most unlikely CPT Top 8 matchup in 2021.
Urien has a 58-54 record this year in his 112 non-mirror games, and his matchups have been close. He’s faced 19 different characters, 10 of which he has a winning record against. But the biggest win margin is 3, a 10-7 advantage against Chun Li and a 3-0 win against Dhalsim. He’s played it close against the rest of the field.
Let’s breakdown Urien’s 2021 match history even further by looking at his win probability added.
If we assign a value to every round he’s won and lost based on the score of the match, we can get a general idea of his match value. This can be important because character switches are allowed in most fighting game events. I talked a little about this in a previous issue.
Of Urien’s 19 different matchups, he has a positive win probability added value against 9, and it’s not much. Only in 1 of the 9 positive matchups is where the win probability added value is higher than .500, and it’s against Ed, where the value of his games is .593. That’s not spectacular.
The 10-7 advantage Urien has against Chun Li sounds great until you see that the win probability added value is 0. Yep, even though Urien has won 3 more games and 6 more rounds than Chun Li, it’s where Chun Li won her rounds and games that has pulled her value even with Urien. Kind of amazing that Urien is putting in so much work, and that’s the end result.
Urien’s true value being mediocre is nothing new. When Cammy lapped the field in 2018, it was tough to find a matchup that favored her.
If you talk to the hot take experts (read: Twitter), they’ll say Cammy had a good matchup against almost everyone. The stats that year say otherwise. Straight-up games won and lost, it was not good. When it came to win probability added value, it was abysmal.
In addition to the usage title, there’s also the percentage title, the other mythical award given to the character that has the best winning percentage at the end of the regular season.
This doesn’t just go to any character who wins. To qualify, a character has to meet the minimum amount of games appeared. This prevents a character from going 1-0 the whole year because obviously that doesn’t make sense.
In previous years, the minimum requirement is the total amount of CPT Top 8 games played divided by every eligible character on the roster, then round the number, then add 1 game. There have been 586 CPT Top 8 games played so far this year, which means the average if we include Akira, Luke and Oro (and not Eleven) would be 13 games.
So unfortunately, E Honda who is 2-1 and has the second best win rate at .667, does not qualify.
Right now, the leader is Poison, who is 17-8 on the year, a .680 win rate. Bison/Dictator is second at .622.
Urien is outside of the top 10 but hanging in there with a positive win rate. But it’s going to be a long climb to get to the top of these standings.
While he’s in the upper half, he’s got a ways to go on another list. If he can make some waves in the second half of the CPT season, Cammy’s 3 wins in 4 events will be an afterthought.