Oh so when Daigo does it it's a read... READ VS. RANDOM 

Diamond fella can't even play a normal chill ranked game in peace without being labeled by half the Fgc community as random and getting compared to daigo

Two reasons that diamond player EX Tatsued: 1: It's unexpected 2: It's funny if it hits

i dont really care if it was random or a read , he got em

"I'm not gonna overextend" COUNTER

What if Daigo just went "yeah idk I was just pressing buttons lmao" in response to this video.

Diago: 60% of the time it works every time

when Daigo does it it isn't a read, it's a write.

Most people in the chat: when I do it it's a read, when my opponent does it it's random and he's bad.

It's random until it works, then it's a read

The average frame data studier Vs. The Average "If it works I do it :)"

You know it's about to go down when he brings out the notepad

There was a Daigo interview during SF4 era a few years ago where he explained that sometimes you have to do unsafe wake up dp on opponents just to show them you're willing to do it, or else they will always pressure you on wake up without fear. Sometimes there's a bigger overall strategy at play than just that one particular moment.

The way I see it is that the Kage player had a read but chose a weird option to execute that read. On the topic of pro player privilege it definitely exists. It always existed but now pro player youtubers like Hook, Punk, and Kizzie have “random” in their regular vocabulary which feeds to that mindset. I’ve definitely seen situations where Hook got anti aired off unsafe air dashes and called his opponent random and chat was agreeing with him.

I've never understood random being listed as a complaint. "Why did he do that? Who does that?" He did it because it worked lol, because he exploited your assumption that he would not do that. Is that a read? Is that random? Is there a difference? If I know you've made the assumption that I won't use DP in an unsafe scenario, then I know that at least once, I can get away with using it. He needed it only once to work.

Kage's EX tatsu is ridiculously fast after the patch and you can see him buffer it like 10 times. He finally does it the moment Karin crouches... I'm not saying its not a little unga, but you can tell there is thought behind it...

This is the paradox: do you remember when Phenom was "random" because he woke up with jab in early sfv with Necalli??

I feel like the justification of the guy was that the time was low and Phenom had the life lead, so he just said fuck it imma ex tatsu, if it hits it hits, it it doesn't then i was going to lose anyway

phenom was looking for everything besides an ex tatsu. If you settled on doing a coin flip. it was a good flip.

Did he just walk up slowly and down smash?

This was absolutely not random. The diamond player clearly was looking for a spot to do the tatsu, he was biding his time and watching his opponent. Even if you look at the footsies, he kept edging forward and watching the Karin step back. This happened repeatedly, with the Kage buffering an EX tatsu each time, waiting for his opponent to blink first. The moment the Karin stepped forward and crouched, implying that he was going to push a button and was buffering something, he let the tatsu rip and it worked. Now, it's a very good question "Why tatsu and not something else?", but the guy clearly thought tatsu was exactly what he wanted to use and he knew exactly what he was fishing for to use it against. Suboptimal? Maybe. Random? Absolutely, definitely not.

Someone in the chat asked a good question. Why was Phenom pressing buttons right there with the life lead? With 20 seconds he could've just timed the Kage out.

"the point of fighting games is to win as consistently as possible" no no no no no. The point of fighting games is to have fun. Some people find fun in doing funny options. It's SFV ranked, there is ZERO risk of losing anything. There are no stakes here. Guy did funny button and it worked. Everyone is overanalysing this.

Ok but hear me out. Ex-Tatsu looks cooler than other options.

sometimes it's both. Example: if you're playing call of duty and you throw a grenade RIGHT at the start of a match across the map, and you kill someone, it's both skill AND random. Meaning you KNOW that's where the enemy spawn is, so if you throw a grenade over there, there's a pretty solid chance you might ACCIDENTLY kill someone. It's skilled luck if that makes sense. Basically, you've played a game so long you have a really good idea of how things are going to play out, so you throw out some high% attacks, and if it hits, it's random, but also not really.

It wasn’t a read, nor was it random. It was half-reaction half-hope-the core of casual fgs.

I can't help but feel like there's some terminology missing here. I don't think the Kage decided last moment to do that ex.tatsu, I think they had an idea in mind even if it was an unnecessary risk. I don't think they were spinning a roulette wheel in their head. And Daigo's dps on the opponent's wakeup didn't all need to hit to affect the rest of the set, right? It feels like 'read OR random' isn't granular enough or perhaps not even the right question.

in the daigo scenario gamerbee was throwing every time he was close to daigo. so with that knowledge daigo just DP'd which beats throws. The other clip with phenom doesn't have the context to help me know it was anything more than random

"Who does that?" Reminds me LTG raging.

1:54 - "He won't do it a 2nd time." - "...Surely, he won't do it a 3rd time." - "......"

Brian upload?? Pog

Lonely Rolling Star such a banger

You can't get salty if you stand in Kage's range throwing buttons with life lead and 20 seconds on the clock. Specially with Karin. So what if what the guy did was random, if your button would get stuffed regardless of the move he used? You still got out mashed.

The funniest thing is he says "he's gonna overextend" then as soon as he overextends he gets hit face on. His own read wasn't even a good read, the opponent however, is godlike.

RIP April the Giraffe :'(

Watching these vids make me want to tune into Brian's streams sometimes. Keep it up 👍🏿

My fighting game play style can be summarized by one phrase: random reads

The fact that we don't see the rest of match on T1tan's side is also a point of contention to me.

It wasnt a read, it was a risk. Ex tatsu reaches at that range, it's fast and probably crushes lows (I haven't sfv'd in a while) and time was low. He took a risk and it worked out. Not everything is a read. I think in the current era of optimizations, players are too attached to what is optimal or "correct" but Phenom was playing "correct" walking just out of range of Kage's stubby normals and what looks like baiting with a short range fast normal before getting clipped by ex tatsu. He's mad because it 's random but the reality is he never considered the option, he was only concerned about Kage's stubby normals and reactable fireball because that's "optimal" neutral play. In reference to Core-A-Gaming's video on player styles, this was a "heart" player move, a risky and unorthodox but not technically incorrect option that worked for the given scenario. We don't know without more info, but I suspect this player isn't playing neutral with ex tatsu all the time. Tl;dr : theoretically optimal play is overvalued and takes up too much space in the lens we use to critique player choices and it's preventing us from appreciating alternative styles of play and decision making in microsituations.

Just call everything that hits you random. The sigma answer

Brian I love your take on these kinds of topics and fully breaking down multiple scenarios to get your point across. I don't even play fighting games that much, but I like watching them and following the mindsets of pro players. You really are giving something special to the community by going in depth with these kinds of things. I really believe you're changing the fighting game community for the better. Prior to getting recommended clips of you in my RU-vid feed, I didn't give a shit about Street Fighter 5 even though my homegirl Sakura was in the game. But ever since I've subscribed, I've been watching your content every chance I can and you convinced me to download SFV and give it another chance.

I found this educational, and really love the FGC time capsule format thing you got going

11:50 Brian kinda got guns tho 👀

I think calling it random simplifies what he did. It was random with the intent of a read. That’s how I see it, at least.

Sajam said fighting games are a genre that you can play perfectly and still lose. Looking down at someone because their play was random, may be exactly why you lost. Sometimes the brain takes the wheel, Sometimes the gut takes the wheel. Both are important Much love Bryan_Fast

I’m glad at least Brian is trying to discuss this in a sensible way. The simple distinction between a read and a random yolo is whether or not a player has collected enough information to reasonably justify the massive risks that don’t make sense on paper. If someone mashes wake up jabs and keeps either catching your mistimed grabs or taking their turn back on your shimmies over the course of two matches, then doing an unsafe crush counter move on your next knockdown would obviously be a viable prediction and thus would qualify as at least a solid *attempt* at a read even if it were to fail. If you’re fighting a Bronze Brazilian Ken who does heavy dp at round start in the very first game y’all have ever played, then that’s obviously a yolo moment. The risk-reward on that is so bad that the only logical reason to do it would be if there was some kind of assurance that it would work, but at that early a stage in the game, such assurances quite literally cannot yet exist. More than anything, the fact that everyone took up their pitchforks and went to war over this clip *without first analyzing the entire match up to that moment* is proof that most of the FGC doesn’t even know what a read is and/or was just looking for an excuse to cheaply dunk on the sub-group that they’re at odds with. Childish and petty af.

What an amazing video, I felt like this was in a court trial and you just broke it down like a lawyer would trying to convey his point to the jury

14:11 This line set everything off. lmaooo That little comic really does narrow all this down though tbh and like you said, we're all gambling by the end of the day.

Well I think it’s really important to hear what phenom says when he gets hit, “who does that?” I think that the move was so unexpected it led to the win, it was random BUT being random is not a bad thing not one bit

I dont think that first clip had enough context to be called either way tbh. That could been the first round of the second game and the Kage couldve had an idea of the Karin's attack timing and didnt want to risk trading.

To me, there is no binary “read” and “random,” there are just reads that are more random than others

A player like Kazanoko is random by design, it’s basically a meme.

I think it's important to put yourself in their mind, we might see it's random and unsafe, maybe in his mind he doesnt know kage like that and thinks if it's spaced its safe. I just think you can't judge at first glance with your own knowledge

what a good fucking channel, every discussion video is a banger

16:44 cut to that Samsho tourney with the commentators going “wow both these players are so patient” over both them crouching for like 5 seconds only to be told one of there controllers stopped working and the other guy was checking up on it.

Wow what an analysis, I subbed for the matches, I stayed for the quality of the channel.

What if t1tan zaraki just wanted to make some CONTENT

Chiming in with this comment before finishing the video, will edit it if necessary: On the read vs random poll you did, I don't think there was enough info, the clip out of context doesn't mean anything because we do not know if phenom had a habit of pressing buttons at that range throughout the match, and also it's important if there's ever been other matches between the two, so if he was doing it throughout the match or in previous matches it was a read, if not it was random. Similar with daigo, ppl will say its a read more because we know that daigo and gamerbee have fought each other several times, they know each other's habits very well so that's why people see them as reads.

reminds me bit of a set i had with an angel rank in dbfz that i also uploaded to yt cause i was so happy about it, where at the start of the game i purposely created a corner szenario multiple times where i started a blockstring but alsways go for the command grab at the same moment in the string, just so that i can go for the simple 5h in the last game when i knew i could kill with the followup and it worked out exactly as i planned, he just pressed a button and got clipped by my fist. the mindgame behind these seemingly simple options can be way more complicated than people think

A read is like a hypothesis Random is a guess

Pure intellectual read. Gandhi style.

I think something you should've also mentioned is the opponent behavior. Maybe if this first clip was longer and we saw a consistent walk pattern on Phenom's part that a tatsu would exploit, we could be more inclined to believe it was a read. A read doesn't need to be the perfect response in order to be a read, like you sort of implied when you said Tatsu worked, but c.MK was better. If I, at bronze, recognize that an opponent will always grab after a fireball, and punish it with LP and that's it, it's still a read even if the punish is a shitty one

Two different situations I don’t think they can be compared.

Great breakdown of 2 situations 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

Anticipation of crouching medium kick, he bet it all and won the world.

"How can we determine if something was a read or if something is random?" We ask the person. Most will be honest.

Same energy as Damian Lillard's "bad shot" against OKC Paul George.

Daigo uses light punch Sfv community: READ POG

That's a very good point. Both plays were indeed amazing reads!

You are very wise with this video Brian

I'm kinda in the mentality if it works, it works. At the end of the day, kage won the round. Sometimes you just don't think about it, and feel like something will work, (as silly as that sounds). That being said, once a match is over, it's always a good idea to see if there were objective better options to implement instead in the future.

Been playing fighting games all my life and I still need to be reminded that winning isn't everything. Thanks for the vid Obama.

I'm very much an advocate of positive meritocracy, but I understand that spontaneity is the spice of life that makes things fun and interesting. Like that Ghandi vs FSP match, I love that shit. Personally, I'd argue that the daigo and zaraki clips are both random, and I love both clips! People really underestimate the power of "Y'know what? Fuck it!", licking the stamp, and just sending it. I love it when "Fuck it!" wins. When something is so uncertain and scary and you just take the risk regardless... in a way, it's the human condition in the span of just a couple of seconds and it's completely understandable to me, especially in moments of pressure like a tourney setting. Take your shot. _"The answer is always 'No' if you never ask."_ -Nora Roberts Well played t1tan-zaraki, all the credit to you. :)

alright, that thumb really got me.

the dog at 8:05 is hilarious for some reason lmao

Dude maybe he was about to crack from the pressure and decided to flip the round then and there to break the tension. Trying to outskill a dude 1000× your rank seems a bit scary to me. I think y'all too good at the game to truly appreciate the perspective of the underdog. A diamond taking out a top player. The risk reward infinitely favors the diamond player.

i can't believe people are getting heated over this

Lmaooo i love Brian's chat "you don't question Daigo" 😭😭

Doesn't kage have an ex fireball that's two frames slower but -2?

This is why I love you Brian

The fact that the clip is even an issue reflects badly on the FGC. Ridiculous.

Me thinks there are a lot of elements to that interaction that wasn't addressed. At 10:17 okay yeah, at that instance where Brian paused fwrd HP, cr. MK, or even VS2 and st. MK would connect. But listen to Phenom on the full clip and where he's positioned for most of it. It's at a range that if Kage overextended with a normal he could get whif punished. At the paused instance it would have connected if Karins was still there. But how many of us have eaten a 30%combo because we hit a button at "that range". Phenom walked there to bait the over-extension of a button to whiff punish it. Kage's Ex tatsu, that just got buffed to be faster, goes over lows, was unexpected, and reaches further than any of the above options. Though a risk, it will tag someone in whiff punish mode. You're not as apt to block when your looking to immediately react with your normal to punish Kage's stubby ones. Also, in context it’s the beginning of a set where you try to establish something. Kage's game plan is to get in your face and Karin can easily zone him out with buttons that lead to a lot of damage. If you can scare the Karin player early into down backing, so she can look out for "random ex tatsu" vrs whiff punishing my approach, walking her down will be easier in the long run.

ty for getting katamari music stuck in my head again

I'm glad you appreciate the amazing soundtrack to RE4 Mercenaries

I love seeing all these different takes from Sajam

Imagine if ex tatsu was Negative FOUR

Brian, I'm so happy a channel like yours exists. I don't even play Street Fighter but your mindset and learning attitude is something I have found to be applicable in many other forms. This is pure and amazing content.

This was great to see happen live

This video should be one of many default demonstrations of the halo effect

Brian divided his chat with the talk about meritocracy like an overhead chop

Brian F doing the lords work. Great vid

A lot of people in fighting games have very rythmic patterns. In that way, you 'know' when they're going to press a button. It's not really a conditioning thing, more so getting a feel for your opponents timing. Problem with that is that it'll always be a guess. Your opponent might suddenly switch their timing. So if this was a read on his opponent, it still was an unfavorable option to go for. I'd say this player had the read and just 'went for it' without considering better options. If he did EX fireball he would've got a kill combo as well but it would've been safe.

How Can we say if it's random or not without the whole fight? Mind conditionning and adaptation to opponent playstyle is part of the read. And Ume is really good at these.

"He's going to overextend. I'm not though." - man who proceeds to overextend

The Kage video seems like he wanted to buffer cr.mk into ex tatsu but maybe did it to quick. I don't see how that was a prediction since if he predicted any button from Karin he could have used ex Hadoken or something safer, It seemed like a lucky mistake or actually random.

People need to drop expectations when playing and give credit when they get hit by something unexpected.

First 2 were very good reactions, other 2 were: first one, educated guess, second, random guess with the probability of hitting and doing massive mental damage, good risk reward decision. He is quick, if the random shit hits and he perceives mental damage, he will do it again just to persuit the mental damage. That wins rounds in the long run because it puts the opponent in defensive mode guessing, "oh no, is he doing that shit again?"

Lonely Rolling Star? I see you Brian

I do think the diamond player's move was random, because there is no clear anticipation or read situations compared to Daigo's game. Simply because its a neutral distance standoff stalemate vs wakeup situation. On wakeup, teching against throws is very much expected, and Daigo's intention and anticipation are very clear with the walk up delayed DP. Not to mention Daigo has massive life lead and the reverse psychology of DP without meter that adds to his read game. However in neutral game with both players not pressing any button for a full few seconds, there is literally no tell sign of any type of play coming, you don't know if its footsies, dash in throw, overhead or what not. Sure maybe the Kage player reacted to the micro walk forward from Karin, but it'd still be a stretch to say he anticipated a button press from his opponent for that tatsu to work. If you think about it, one is a calculated and well timed risky play but won't lose if fail vs the other that is taking huge risk in the heat of a moment betting the round on one last move.

I feel like going into that grand finals daigo had already picked up a lot of info and cues that led to him getting in gamerbees head and determine that he would react and think this way so he went with that, he had the added advantage of being able to see the player and pick up on any behavior and vibe gamerbee gave off whereas online you’re limited to the times you’ve fought the player and really what you know about the player, most of the time who knows who’s on the other side.

I'm not that familiar with sf5 but that move the Kage used was pretty fast. I would think jump in anything would give time for a reaction