Learning to properly range Chun’s standing roundhouse, standing fierce, crouching short, crouching fierce is a lot harder than it was in Third Strike.  Standing roundhouse is so high it goes under Blanka, but so far it’ll hit farther than I think.  Crouching fierce also moves her slightly forward, and I’m also getting into the habit of attempting to duck certain characters’ crossups and punish with throw, depending on the hitbox of their crossup.  If croucing fierce finishes fast enough, I might be able to use it to crawl across the ground a bit.  I also hit it and somehow it worked as anti air once, which was a little strange.

Also, I need to make sure the opponent isn’t baiting EX Spinning Bird Kick, or else I’ll get owned.

After this session with Terrybogus, I played a Boxer and a Sagat online, and wiped the floor with both of them.  I feel like it’s still my strong matchup, and Ryu and Ken are two of my worst.

Rufus is a beast, as far as I’m concerned, and I put this vid as the featured video for a while just because I’d like to learn more about the matchup. Chun wins this one, but against a better Rufus, I’d say his mix-up game is way too aggressive and fierce to deal with easily. The Rufus players I’ve seen have a somewhat different style, and I think his play will change a lot as time goes on and the state of the art advances in SF4.

[MP4]

It’s quickly getting to the point where I play more often than I can post, which is probably a good thing.  Solid matches against Chun, Boxer, and basically everyone else.  I need to use focus and just plain backdash, and also not fall prey to lots of focus attack games.  Cookies played a good Cammy using the Cannon Strike tricks the kids are doing these days, and helped by his Akira-trained execution… makes for some savage competition.  As far as I’m concerned, that style of play is the Cammy to beat these days.  I need to start using my notebook more to keep track of things as I think of them, because this post is almost a week late.

Had a solid 2-3 hours of games with my boy Terrybogus and Boxer.  I learned a lot about the matchup, like what to punish, what to stuff, etc.

• Always hit any sort of dash punch with Chun’s Ultra
• Chun-Li’s instant overhead goes in an arc over a forward moving opponent for wakeups or predicted Dash Punches
• If no Ultra, go for EX Spinning Bird Kick
• Baiting headbutts is the way to go

I need a lot more sessions like this in order to get better.

Played probably 20 games tonight, mostly against Kens, Dictators, and Blankas.

Ken: Still getting beat by scrubs.  If they just abuse jump roundhouse/mk mixup, I need to be able to do something about it, so I started jump roundhouse, but they can just switch from late roundhouse to early, and also air Hurricane Kick.  On the ground seems like the same lose/lose situation: if I go for big punishers, I never hit, if I try footsies, I eat a fierce shoryu that puts the match in his favor.  I can’t turtle, and I can’t rushdown, so I have no idea what to do

Dictator: Seems hard to punish his ground game, scissor kicks and sweeps.  I think I need to keep the fireball pressure on. Ek suggests outpoking him, which is probably the only way.  Trying to counter his air game is a little hard for me, I need to find a good one to play against.

Blanka: I played one who knew I had a hard time punishing Blanka ball, and countered every cross-up attempt with electricity.  I successfully traded the Ultra once, but I want to learn how to hit them out of it.  This matchup is the one I feel the most optimistic about rushing down and poking.  I’ve also been practicing using Chun’s Ultra to punish missed Blanka ball and EX ball, which paid off big time.