Daigo vs. Infiltration SF25th Anniversary Grand Finals match analysis from Arturo Sanchez

Top stuff. Infiltration clearly studied this info before the 25th street fighter tourney

Good stuff but Arturo Sanchez clearly overates Akuma's options after a knock down against ryu's dp. Inf often does a lot of unsafe stuff. for instance,first set up : forward throw, dash dash demon flip kick... Ryu's DP beats it clean and can even get free ultra. Daigo should know that as well as all the people complaining about akuma's mixup. best way to fight it is to know what to look for.

After reading Daigo's book in its entirety, I got a few questions answered that many of us were or are still asking.

1.) Why didn't Daigo counter pick?

2.) Is Daigo salty?

3.) Why is Daigo an "emotional" player? (Alex Valle is often cited as the model for emotional player in the US).

4.) Why is Daigo so stone faced during tournament? Why? He just 3-0 Infiltration and then Infiltration 6-0 him! There must be some sort of emotional response!

5.) What is Daigo's opinion of Infiltration? How would Daigo view Infiltration's win over him? More importantly, what is Daigo's opinion of Infiltration's extremely methodical play style?

All of this are answered fully by the Beast himself in his own book. An amazing read, and I finally know why the Beast is smiling more than before now (as opposed to his angry face when he was younger).

from the very start of the match, his analysis is wrong. Infil jumped from the start bcuz he studied Daigo. Daigo doesn't hesitate to begin a round with hadoken to gain timing and space adv. Infil took a risk and jumped knowing that the worst that can happen is a DP but that he may get a 20-25% combo off the jump. Daigo did not throw hadoken - Infil should have been DP'd but Daigo didn't take a risk of an air tatsu from Akuma - so he went low instead.

Dude talks too much, stops the action too much, and doesn't say anything except the obvious. He's saying what he sees but a good analyst will tell you what the players were thinking and planning. Also, by pausing so f'in much, you can't get the feel of the action.

FAIL

makes me wanna go look up my charas frame data

^^^^

#4 by all means if you don't want the match paused and analyzed (correctly or not) watch the regular match without the analysis. Also you can try doing this yourself maybe to correct where you see him as wrong.

2nd set Infil made Daigo look like a joke. He made the matchup look like what the matchup should look like imo.

His main adjustment was air fireballs. The other huge adjustment was that he saw Daigo would keep throwing fireballs at unsafe distance. Infil jumped in the beginning of a lot of the rounds as well as in the fights and it paid off big. He also realized that after that forward fierce punch, he was not at a disadvantage - even I suppose. So he didn't always need to guard.

The neatest thing i noticed is his distance measuring. It was as if he was fighting on home turf... bcuz he chooses that stage probably bcuz its easier to judge zones. How well he stayed out of distance, came in with an attack or throw was uncanny - unless he was looking at the lines of the stage. I went back and noticed he chose the same stage the last time they fought (evo). I would be very surprised if he could do that if the stage was changed.

Also neat was when Daigo threw fireballs at Akuma on wakeup teleport. Those were not reads imo. There's some technique he's using like an option select type of thing. I'm not all technical so I don't know if it's possible in that situation, but I'm pretty sure that's not a read but rather a little trick.

Bottomline, he had too many options, techniques, advantages for Daigo. Daigo was trying to use fireballs to create openings and train Infil, but infil had his own agenda. Shoulda used Yun and changed stages.

END

I completely agree with you 7, 35 minutes in its first round and half hp. Around 12 minutes later the first match is over...

@7 - by pausing the match constantly and looking at one particular frame, you can't get the feel of the fight - even for proper analysis.

First, Daigo's strategy was to get in close and fight. Low forward distance was NOT where he wanted to be. He wanted to get inside of that distance bcuz it seems Akuma has advantage anywhere except close in where its 50/50 and max screen where its neutral. Due to air fireballs, fast walk and sweep, he has adv in all other zones (unless Ryu makes the right read obviously). Daigo was trying to "train" or bait Infil into something by throwing all of those close fireballs. My guess is that he wanted to get him to think "focus dash" and then make him eat the powerful foward fierce combo. He was not throwing those fireballs to defeat him pixel by pixel.

Also, the 1st set, Infil was susceptible to throws on wakeup, hesitant to gamble a jump in, and was out played during in close fighting. But, I think he noticed that Daigo was throwing many unsafe fireballs betting that AKuma won't jump in. He also probably noticed that he needed to give different looks on defensive wakeup (bcuz of being thrown so often) and that Daigo was susceptible to sweeps bcuz he tries to adjust distance often or like to do quick fireballs in sweep range.

I'll watch the second set now.

I think the analysis is fine buut it's too long. An hour would have sufficed. Next time, Arturo, do it when you aren't sleepy and be more prepared so that you can talk higher levels of meta while analysing the literal matchplay.

^ ^
Yun and Yang are still strong characters imho, people just don't want to work hard with a character. Yang obv got the nerf bat too hard but the twins are still deadly when played to the highest standard . I agree though that Daigo should have picked akuma versus infiltration in the final set. Maybe he hadnt trained much with him beforehand .

Well I think Daigo didn't counterpick because he didn't believe it would make a difference, remember in SEA2012 where he tried to counterpick against Xian's Gen with Guile and Yun and he failed and went back to Ryu and did better with him? I really think Infiltration just outplayed Daigo.

Akuma on wakeup has too many options. It's just best guess for Ryu.

Daigo is the better player, I know he lost but he is by far the better player. Infiltration is good, but his charachter is too strong and too many options Vs Ryu. I'd day that Akuma is the worst matchup for Ryu (weakeup) not far off Dalsim matchup.

^As much as I am a Daigo fan too, I gotta say Infiltration is a better player than Daigo atm. First, because I have never seen Daigo lose to an Akuma player that convincingly and consecutively. Second, if anyone knows the matchup really well, its def Daigo. I mean not only does he plays against the best akumas in Japan (ie,Tokido, Momochi), but he himself played akuma for a while. And third, He lost 6 to 0!. But I will say the Beast will get his revenge one day.

#17 As much as I like Daigo, its kind of silly to broadly claim Daigo is better than Infiltration at this point. Based on Infiltration's track record of the year he's arguably the best SF4 player right now. The only thing is that the skill gap between the 2 isn't that big so anytime the 2 play each other the match could honestly swing either way.

If anything the two are close-equals in my eye.