If you’ve played Street Fighter for almost any length of time you’ve encountered the routine rock/paper/scissors situations that so much of the action is based upon. Replace the everyday objects with strike/throw/block and you have the fundamental guessing game the competition is widely based off of, but if it’s a guessing game then how might one become noticeably consistent over others at it?
That’s the age old question of fighting games and one that Diaphone tackles with a bit of a scientific approach in his recent video: How To Guess Correctly In Fighting Games.
You know these kinds of situations specifically in Street Fighter 6 as it doesn’t take long before you find yourself blocking an advantageous Drive Rush attack and then having to guess what your foe’s next offensive move is going to be.
Throws are most immediately threatening thanks to the close proximity of the characters and thus many of us have knee jerk reactions to defend against this maneuver first, but players who cause throws to whiff with movements like back dashes or jumps can dish out much more pain via the full punish counter combos that can come after a successful throw bait.
This truth has led to the saying “take the throw” to become quite prominent in FGC circles, and while this wisdom is generally helpful, it doesn’t paint a full enough picture to ultimately tip the scales in one’s own favor.
Diaphone has put commonly seen SF6 situations under the microscope and used a game theory calculator to really get into the numbers and see what your best bets are at any given point.
How much damage do you stand to lose or gain vs. how likely is an opponent to go for a particular option? The answers vary tremendously as there are tons of additional factors to constantly be considering, but you’ll almost certainly learn more about the process and better your own general approaches to these situations after seeing this helpful breakdown.
Check out the full video here and let us know what points stood out to you most prominently in the comments afterwards.