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TL;DR: Advanced players utilize self-expression methods to build an image to make their opponents hold certain beliefs about them, then confuse the opponents by betraying those beliefs completely.
TL;DR: Advanced players utilize self-expression methods to build an image to make their opponents hold certain beliefs about them, then confuse the opponents by betraying those beliefs completely.


A lot of getting good at Tekken has to do with how accurate our predictions are. This is quite a difficult task because you can never accurately read an opponent’s thought process on WHY his decisions were made. What I mean by this is that although you might be able to predict that the opponent will use an EWGF or your opponent might duck etc., you can’t really accurately deduce on what went through his head to make that decision. But because Tekken is a game that is decided by moves that are materialized in-game, we can get kind of close on predicting WHAT the opponent will do. And the more we understand the opponent, the more likely we will be able to accurately predict what the opponent's next action will be. So even though we may never be able to see through the opponent’s decision making process, we can try to understand what is going through his head and get close to it.


A lot of getting good at tekken has to do with how accurate our predictions are. This is quite a difficult task because you can never accurately read an opponent’s thought process on WHY his decisions were made. What I mean by this is that although you might be able to predict that the opponent will use an ewgf or your opponent might duck etc, you can’t really accurately deduce on what went through his head to make that decision. But because tekken is a game that is decided by moves that are materialized in-game, we can get kind of close on predicting WHAT the opponent will do. And the more we understand the opponent, the more likely we will be able to accurately predict what the opponent's next action will be. So even though we may never be able to 100% see through the opponent’s decision making process, we can try to understand what is going through his head and get close to it.
It is quite easy to predict the opponent's next move based on your observations. Everyone has at least some kind of habit and moves they like to use because they are the efficient, and this tendency becomes more apparent the less advanced a player is. As you reach the late orange ranks and the early red ranks, you can commonly find the most efficient form of play style from a character. In this context, efficient meaning frame-efficient and the appropriate use of many of their moves depending on the distance and situation. However, as the ranks go higher, players become better at advanced mind games and start to deviate from the most efficient form of their character usage basically becoming less efficient but more unpredictable. Because being efficient with your character can be interpreted as acting out of habit. For example, for a Mishima player it is common to think “Yes, at this distance, people usually run into the EWGF so I will EWGF right now because it works the majority of the time”. This type of mindless gameplay will get you murdered in an advanced level death match. Basically, the most efficient form of character is easy to predict once you are used to the opponent’s character. So the opponent’s character is the single most important factor to base your predictions.
 
 
It is quite easy to predict the opponent's next move based on your observations. Everyone has at least some kind of habit and moves they like to use because they are the efficient, and this tendency becomes more apparent the less advanced a player is. As you reach the late orange ranks and the early red ranks, you can commonly find the most efficient form of play style from a character. In this context, efficient meaning frame-efficient and the appropriate use of many of their moves depending on the distance and situation. However, as the ranks go higher, players become better at advanced mind games and start to deviate from the most efficient form of their character usage basically becoming less efficient but more unpredictable. Because being efficient with your character can be interpreted as acting out of habit. For example, for a mishima player it is common to think “yes, at this distance, people usually run into the ewgf so I will ewgf right now because it works the majority of the time”. This type of mindless gameplay will get you murdered in an advanced level death match. Basically, the most efficient form of character is easy to predict once you are used to the opponent’s character. So the opponent’s character is the single most important factor to base your predictions.
 


However, the more advanced a player becomes, the less the player will act out of habit and will act more out of observation of their opponent's past actions. This seems like quite the irony and doesn’t seem to make sense at first: if advanced players play based on how their opponent’s play, how does the mind game of two advanced players against each other even work? Well, one part is that you HAVE to attack your opponent in order to win so you’re going to have some tendencies no matter what. And this is where the concept of in-game image comes in.
However, the more advanced a player becomes, the less the player will act out of habit and will act more out of observation of their opponent's past actions. This seems like quite the irony and doesn’t seem to make sense at first: if advanced players play based on how their opponent’s play, how does the mind game of two advanced players against each other even work? Well, one part is that you HAVE to attack your opponent in order to win so you’re going to have some tendencies no matter what. And this is where the concept of in-game image comes in.


In-game image is a term I borrowed from a Texas Hold ’em tactic called “Table Image”. It is basically your perceived image at the table you are sitting at. For example, you can act like an idiot who will go all-in frequently at almost every single hand you are involved in and people will know that statistically you cannot be holding a great hand. Or you can act real conservative and only raise strong when you got better than a pair of Kings in your hand. Basically, in advanced level poker, players switch up their table image and exploit their opponents by using a counter strategy of their perceived table image. If you are perceived to be the conservative player in your table, you can raise the pot with trash hands and your opponents will get scared and fold and you can basically steal small amounts of money away from them. If you are perceived to be the maniac, you can have pocket aces and raise all-in but your opponent who has an Ace King will think you have nothing and call your ‘bluff’ and lose all their money. Advanced level Tekken players do the same thing through self-expression. But before we go into detail on the methods of self-expression, let me give an example of how image building works for in-game image to help with your understanding.


In-game image is a term I borrowed from a Texas Hold’em tactic called “Table Image”. It is basically your perceived image at the table you are sitting at. For example, you can act like an idiot who will go all-in frequently at almost every single hand you are involved in and people will know that statistically you cannot be holding a great hand. Or you can act real conservative and only raise strong when you got better than a pair of Kings in your hand. Basically, in advanced level poker, players switch up their table image and exploit their opponents by using a counter strategy of their perceived table image. If you are perceived to be the conservative player in your table, you can raise the pot with trash hands and your opponents will get scared and fold and you can basically steal small amounts of money away from them. If you are perceived to be the maniac, you can have pocket aces and raise all-in but your opponent who has an Ace King will think you have nothing and call your ‘bluff’ and lose all their money. Advanced level tekken players do the same thing through self-expression. But before we go into detail on the methods of self-expression, let me give an example of how image building works for in-game image to help with your understanding.
Example: In far distance, Paul uses df+2 once. Opponent does not have any way to punish. Opponent runs in a little closer but is cautious since he knows Paul might do another df+2 if he tries to run in. Paul back dashes and uses df+2 again. Opponent still isn’t able to punish. This time the opponent is a lot closer so they have a brief exchange. Distance becomes quite large again. Paul does another df+2 in mid to far distance. Opponent is fully aware that Paul is trying to get lucky and is hoping that he will run into df+2. So opponent dashes in again but guards, being cautious about another df+2. So when Paul dashes in, opponent back dashes and is getting ready to punish thinking the df+2 will come out. However, the Paul player is an advanced player and is fully aware that the opponent is going to guard due to the frequency of df+2 he has spammed. He dashes in and does a qcf+3 betraying the opponent’s prediction.


In this example, the Paul player has built an image of being a df+2 spammer in the moment. Opponent observes and is cautious of the df+2, therefore when the opponent becomes cautious of the next situation a df+2 will come out, Paul betrays his image and hits the opponent with a low. Basically he MAKES his opponent believe that another df+2 will come out and therefore predicts that he will defend and uses that information against him.
 
Example: In far distance, Paul uses d/f+2 once. Opponent does not have any way to punish. Opponent runs in a little closer but is cautious since he knows Paul might do another d/f+2 if he tries to run in. Paul back dashes and uses d/f+2 again. Opponent still isn’t able to punish. This time the opponent is a lot closer so they have a brief exchange. Distance becomes quite large again. Paul does another d/f+2 in mid to far distance. Opponent is fully aware that Paul is trying to get lucky and is hoping that he will run into d/f+2. So opponent dashes in again but guards, being cautious about another d/f+2. So when Paul dashes in, opponent back dashes and is getting ready to punish thinking the d/f+2 will come out. However, the Paul player is an advanced player and is fully aware that the opponent is going to guard due to the frequency of d/f+2 he has spammed. He dashes in and does a qcf+3 betraying the opponent’s prediction.
 
 
In this example, the Paul player has built an image of being a d/f+2 spammer in the moment. Opponent observes and is cautious of the d/f+2, therefore when the opponent becomes cautious of the next situation a d/f+2 will come out, Paul betrays his image and hits the opponent with a low. Basically he MAKES his opponent believe that another d/f+2 will come out and therefore predicts that he will defend and uses that information against him.
 


If you think about it, this is how the most famous mind game in Street Fighter works. Ryu throws two fireballs in a row. The opponent probably assumes that Ryu might throw another fireball and will likely try to jump over and kick. But Ryu does not plan on using another fireball this time and is predicting that his opponent will jump with a pretty high chance... He is ready to use shoryuken as soon as he sees his opponent jump! Three fireballs in a row doesn't mean the opponent HAS to jump. He can still guard the fireball and take some chip damage. But he would be missing out on an opportunity to possibly extract some good damage. The fireball is not a 50/50 mix up with the shoryuken because nothing happens to the opponent if he doesn't jump. However, spamming the fireball often does make the opponent want to capitalize on the opportunity to punish with a jump kick. And exactly because of the fireballs, Ryu can pretty accurately predict that opponent's preferable solution to counter an expected fireball is to jump.
If you think about it, this is how the most famous mind game in Street Fighter works. Ryu throws two fireballs in a row. The opponent probably assumes that Ryu might throw another fireball and will likely try to jump over and kick. But Ryu does not plan on using another fireball this time and is predicting that his opponent will jump with a pretty high chance... He is ready to use shoryuken as soon as he sees his opponent jump! Three fireballs in a row doesn't mean the opponent HAS to jump. He can still guard the fireball and take some chip damage. But he would be missing out on an opportunity to possibly extract some good damage. The fireball is not a 50/50 mix up with the shoryuken because nothing happens to the opponent if he doesn't jump. However, spamming the fireball often does make the opponent want to capitalize on the opportunity to punish with a jump kick. And exactly because of the fireballs, Ryu can pretty accurately predict that opponent's preferable solution to counter an expected fireball is to jump.


The principle concept to creating your in-game image is this: Rather than trying to predict your opponent’s next action with thousands of different possibilities, plant an idea into his head about what type of play style you have and therefore predict his action (since he will be observing what you are doing). In a way, we are basically forcing them to make a decision. If I walk up to a random woman and say “Hi”, there are a million different things that could happen including the person saying her greetings back, giving me a strange look, ignoring what she heard, walking away, saying stuff like “do I know you?”, or straight up freaking out on me etc. But if I walk up to the lady and yell “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that?”, I can predict with a certain accuracy that she would be confused and talk back to me with a sort of statement that is intended to figure out what is going on. Action causes reaction, therefore, expressing yourself is important in creating an image.
The principle concept to creating your in-game image is this: Rather than trying to predict your opponent’s next action with thousands of different possibilities, plant an idea into his head about what type of play style you have and therefore predict his action (since he will be observing what you are doing). In a way, we are basically forcing them to make a decision. If I walk up to a random woman and say “Hi”, there are a million different things that could happen including the person saying her greetings back, giving me a strange look, ignoring what she heard, walking away, saying stuff like “do I know you?”, or straight up freaking out on me etc. But if I walk up to the lady and yell “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that?”, I can predict with a certain accuracy that she would be confused and talk back to me with a sort of statement that is intended to figure out what is going on. Action causes reaction, therefore, expressing yourself is important in creating an image.


Self-expression to create an in-game image is done through taking any kind of action. The important thing is that it should send a clear message to your opponent: you are looking for a CH, you are going for big mixups at almost every single opportunity, you are trying to throw them as much as possible etc. Anyways, there are mainly five methods of self-expression that sort of blend into each other:
Self-expression to create an in-game image is done through taking any kind of action. The important thing is that it should send a clear message to your opponent: you are looking for a CH, you are going for big mixups at almost every single opportunity, you are trying to throw them as much as possible etc. Anyways, there are mainly five methods of self-expression that sort of blend into each other:


    Method of attack: what moves are you using to attack with? most characters have at least one or two over powered moves such as ewgf for mishimas, qcb+4 for Paul, d/f+2 for many characters, b+1 for steve, iWR+2 for dragunov and claudio etc. This makes you fit into the stereotype of a typical mishima/paul/steve player etc and will make it easier for the opponent to predict your next move. If you know this fact, you can use it against them.
# Method of attack: what moves are you using to attack with? most characters have at least one or two over powered moves such as EWGF for Mishimas, qcb+4 for Paul, d/f+2 for many characters, b+1 for steve, iWR+2 for dragunov and claudio etc. This makes you fit into the stereotype of a typical Mishima/paul/steve player etc and will make it easier for the opponent to predict your next move. If you know this fact, you can use it against them.
 
# Timing of attack: self-explanatory. How frame-efficient are you with your attacks? Are you utilizing a lot of defender exploitation methods?
    Timing of attack: self-explanatory. How frame-efficient are you with your attacks? Are you utilizing a lot of defender exploitation methods?
# Frequency of attack: how often you attack is an important factor to determining your expressiveness. The more often you attack, the more likely the opponent will take risks with predicting and immediately counter or dodge & punish your attacks. The less frequently you attack, the less likely the opponent is going to be ready for your attack. Are you a pressure machine that tries to attack at every opportunity by utilizing small frame advantages (or try to SS attack often on frame disadvantages)?
 
# Frequency of risk taking: how often are you taking risks? do you blatantly duck a lot? do you try to iWS punish your opponents often? do you hopkick often? do you use dangerous lows often? do you try to poke out the opponent when you are in frame disadvantage? how much frame disadvantage will it take for you to NOT even try poking? the frequency of your risk taking behaviors determines a lot of the opponent’s response. If you duck often, it is very likely that your opponent will start using a lot of mids. If you try to iWS your opponent often, your opponent will start using less jabs and highs and try to CH you with mids or delayed quick CH moves. If you hopkick often, you opponent will jab more often to catch you in air, wait for you attack many times and stop ducking as much in order to punish you. If you use a lot of risky lows such as hell sweeps, your opponent will start throwing out more CHs and hopkicks etc and start blocking low a lot more.
    Frequency of attack: how often you attack is an important factor to determining your expressiveness. The more often you attack, the more likely the opponent will take risks with predicting and immediately counter or dodge & punish your attacks. The less frequently you attack, the less likely the opponent is going to be ready for your attack. Are you a pressure machine that tries to attack at every opportunity by utilizing small frame advantages (or try to SS attack often on frame disadvantages)?
# Movement: Self help guru Tony Robbins commonly says “motion creates emotion”. This is true in Tekken as well. If you stay still, the opponent will have no idea what you are thinking. It also makes it easier for them to estimate the distance for their moves and make it land or not whiff. If you are in constant motion, the opponent cannot easily determine if you are going to dash in and attack or backdash and make their moves whiff etc. Also as mentioned in previous posts, proximity creates pressure on the opponents. Like everything else, movement is a form of information exchange where you are expressing your intentions to attack or to escape the situation. Lack of movement = lack of self expression. Some of you might be wondering, "Well then, what about when you stop moving all of a sudden? That seems to be pretty effective?". And this is true to a certain extent. Especially with characters like Paul, moving and suddenly stopping seems like he is getting prepared for an attack. And I go over this concept in my previous post "Defender Exploitation".
 
    Frequency of risk taking: how often are you taking risks? do you blatantly duck a lot? do you try to iWS punish your opponents often? do you hopkick often? do you use dangerous lows often? do you try to poke out the opponent when you are in frame disadvantage? how much frame disadvantage will it take for you to NOT even try poking? the frequency of your risk taking behaviors determines a lot of the opponent’s response. If you duck often, it is very likely that your opponent will start using a lot of mids. If you try to iWS your opponent often, your opponent will start using less jabs and highs and try to CH you with mids or delayed quick CH moves. If you hopkick often, you opponent will jab more often to catch you in air, wait for you attack many times and stop ducking as much in order to punish you. If you use a lot of risky lows such as hell sweeps, your opponent will start throwing out more CHs and hopkicks etc and start blocking low a lot more.
 
    Movement: Self help guru Tony Robbins commonly says “motion creates emotion”. This is true in tekken as well. If you stay still, the opponent will have no idea what you are thinking. It also makes it easier for them to estimate the distance for their moves and make it land or not whiff. If you are in constant motion, the opponent cannot easily determine if you are going to dash in and attack or backdash and make their moves whiff etc. Also as mentioned in previous posts, proximity creates pressure on the opponents. Like everything else, movement is a form of information exchange where you are expressing your intentions to attack or to escape the situation. Lack of movement = lack of self expression. Some of you might be wondering, "Well then, what about when you stop moving all of a sudden? That seems to be pretty effective?". And this is true to a certain extent. Especially with characters like Paul, moving and suddenly stopping seems like he is getting prepared for an attack. And I go over this concept in my previous post "Defender Exploitation".
 
 
Practical examples/applications:
 


Example 1 - The sidestep mix ups: Many characters have a sidestep low and a mid move to use as a mixup. These are very effective tools. However, the more often you attack with sidestep mixups, the more likely your opponent will be waiting for you to sidestep at a certain point and counter you with moves such as standing 4, d/f+2, or the hopkick even before you can initiate the mixup. In situations like this, advanced players often will side step and NOT attack and instead either play the waiting game or dash in etc. For example, your opponent will be waiting for you to jab and do a SS mix up. After blocking the jab, they will wait for a half beat and try to counter. However, if you have used a bunch of sidestep mix ups, you can next time do things such as jab-d/f+2 or a slower CH move and expect your opponent to be CH by it instead. Or you could even just SS and then back out to play the waiting game.
=== Practical examples/applications ===


# Example 1 - The sidestep mix ups: Many characters have a sidestep low and a mid move to use as a mixup. These are very effective tools. However, the more often you attack with sidestep mixups, the more likely your opponent will be waiting for you to sidestep at a certain point and counter you with moves such as standing 4, d/f+2, or the hopkick even before you can initiate the mixup. In situations like this, advanced players often will side step and NOT attack and instead either play the waiting game or dash in etc. For example, your opponent will be waiting for you to jab and do a SS mix up. After blocking the jab, they will wait for a half beat and try to counter. However, if you have used a bunch of sidestep mix ups, you can next time do things such as jab-d/f+2 or a slower CH move and expect your opponent to be CH by it instead. Or you could even just SS and then back out to play the waiting game.
 
# Example 2 - Jab spamming: Once you start jab spamming with 1 or 1,2 etc in certain situations such as when you are closing distance with your opponents, your opponents will at some point try to duck and punish or use a high crush move to counter it. Instead of using a jab next time, you can use moves such as d/f+2 or a type of hop kick etc to try to catch the opponent using a iWS move or a slower high crush move.
Example 2 - Jab spamming: Once you start jab spamming with 1 or 1,2 etc in certain situations such as when you are closing distance with your opponents, your opponents will at some point try to duck and punish or use a high crush move to counter it. Instead of using a jab next time, you can use moves such as d/f+2 or a type of hop kick etc to try to catch the opponent using a iWS move or a slower high crush move.
# Example 3 - Paul spamming qcb+4: this one is a pretty common example for most decent level Pauls. Once the perfect distance is created, Paul players often qcb+4 just like Mishimas would EWGF at the perfect distance. The Paul player could either reduce the frequency of his qcb+4 and make the opponent think they are safe to attack, or they could instead spam it frequently and then predict the opponent ducking at some point and use quick mids such as deathfist.
 
# Example 4 - Big mix up man: The more often you use big mix ups against opponents, the more likely they will try moves such as the jab, standing 4, d/f+2, or hop kick before you can do a mix up. You can do a big mix up a couple of times then try to play the waiting game on them to punish their options. You could also certainly try to CH them before their moves are activated as well.
# Example 5 - Dashing in with a pattern: The more frequently you try to close the distance against your opponent in the neutral, the more likely he will try to time an attack at the moment of your dash. You can utilize dash guards or off-timing movements in order to punish your opponents or catch them off guard and close the distance even further.
 
# Example 6 - Micro movement guru: The more often you utilize micro movement/timing guard etc to neutralize most of the opponent’s time efficient attacks options, the more likely he will try to use defender exploitation methods (if he is advanced). After utilizing movement as a neutralization method often, you can expect them to try a sort of defender exploitation method and counter before they try to close the distance. Sometimes you can catch them with d/f+2 or hopkicks etc but those are pretty big risk taking methods - hence why jabs and standing 4 etc are used more often in advanced levels.
Example 3 - Paul spamming qcb+4: this one is a pretty common example for most decent level Pauls. Once the perfect distance is created, Paul players often qcb+4 just like mishimas would ewgf at the perfect distance. The Paul player could either reduce the frequency of his qcb+4 and make the opponent think they are safe to attack, or they could instead spam it frequently and then predict the opponent ducking at some point and use quick mids such as deathfist.
# Example 7 - Solid player gone wild: The less you use risky mix ups, the more likely the opponent will care less about your mix up attempts and sort of allow you to do those mix ups by respecting your turn to attack. If you have been playing solid for quite a while, you can use this against your opponent and act like you are completely insane and use heavy mix ups to chip out huge chunks of your opponent’s health in a round and win easily. These are what I call designer matches where you intentionally do something radically different to win a single match. Designer matches can be most frequently found in tournaments.
 
# Example 8 - All-in with not much to lose: If you are winning 2 rounds to 0 in a match and have been playing solid, you can often use risky mix ups/moves in the 3rd round in order to try to win a match. This is another form of a designer match. If it works, you win easily. If it doesn’t work, now your opponent thinks you are an insane person who will try to use risky moves often so he has more things to worry about. If you are using high risk lows, most opponents have no reason to low parry your lows: they will duck and punish as it usually does at least 15-20 points more damage. However, once opponents start ducking, you can start mixing up low risk lows and mids which is not ideal for the opponent since he was expecting to extract about 70 points of damage by blocking your low. Now he is in a losing game in terms of damage by trying to duck your low risk low since he has to risk eating a relatively strong mid. Also, once an opponent starts ducking they sacrifice mobility and therefore allows you to easily approach. This means that defender exploitation and the waiting game becomes easier for you to do.
# Example 9 - Reversal at the ready: If a Yoshimitsu player uses his flash often every time he is cornered in a wall, the opponent will become wary of attacking. After Yoshimitsu several times attempting the flash, the opponent will wait to punish the flash. However, Yoshi can instead use other methods such as throwing to escape the wall situation. This kind of tactic also applies to characters such as geese with his reversal and using moves such as his b,b,u/b at wall to push the opponent far from the wall.
 
# Example 10 - Turtles get crushed: characters like Dragunov have extremely strong pressure tools and not attacking would be the worse thing to do against these characters because they will corner you at a wall within seconds. Dragunov players will many times abuse this fact and use moves such as d+2, SS d+2 or iWR+2 to continuously apply pressure. Opponents often get frustrated at this point and will try to attack as fast as possible when Dragunov creates distance in order to not allow him to continue the iWR+2 pressure. This is why Dragunov’s backdash qcf+3+4 (sliding move) gets CH often in these situations.
Example 4 - Big mix up man: The more often you use big mix ups against opponents, the more likely they will try moves such as the jab, standing 4, d/f+2, or hop kick before you can do a mix up. You can do a big mix up a couple of times then try to play the waiting game on them to punish their options. You could also certainly try to CH them before their moves are activated as well.
# Example 11 - WS+4 often after d+2: If the opponent Dragunov uses d+2 and I decided to WS+4 often, it is very likely that he will try to SS punish me the next time around. And the next time around I can anticipate this and either use a tracking move or an off-beat CH move. Worst case scenario, I get hit by Dragunov’s WS+4 after his d+2 (unless he is used to my thought process).
 
# Example 12 - Kazumi 1+2: Advanced level Kazumi players often throw in 1+2 at seemingly random times. Usually these timings are when opponents are dashing in, when opponents are sidestepping etc. This works because Kazumi’s 1+2 is a 12 frame mid that has decent tracking with two separate hits that is almost impossible to interrupt and also moves her forward. Basically it is stupid good even though there is quite a high risk. If the Kazumi player starts sprinkling in this move often, opponents will get defensive because they want her to whiff the 1+2 and miss out on opportunities. This is when Kazumi can utilize defender exploitation instead of using her 1+2.
# Example 13 - About to chain throw you: When king players are low on health and opponents are high on health, they almost always try to go in and chain throw to kill the opponent off since that is the only way to extract big damage. Advanced players already know this, therefore will often duck in these situations. King players who know this dash in and CD WS+1+2 instead in these situations even when they haven’t been doing a CD mix up previously.
 
# Example 14 - I like to poke: If an opponent hits me with his pokes and tries to utilize defender exploitation but I keep poking him out of those, it is very likely that the opponent will use some sort of CH move next time he hits me with a poke. It is often safe to duck in situations like these because the opponent either utilizes the waiting game or will try moves such as standing 4, so I can instead duck and attempt to punish his CH.
Example 5 - Dashing in with a pattern: The more frequently you try to close the distance against your opponent in the neutral, the more likely he will try to time an attack at the moment of your dash. You can utilize dash guards or off-timing movements in order to punish your opponents or catch them off guard and close the distance even further.
# Example 15 - Not gonna get hit by your rage art: a common trend that has developed in Tekken 7 is to not attack immediately after blocking an opponent’s move when they are low in life because of their rage art. This is especially true against someone who is known to use the rage art often. So advanced level players often dash in and attack instead of trying to attack immediately. So if I do a d/f+2 and it gets blocked, I can often expect the opponent to not attack immediately and dash in and attack due to rage art. However, that means if I do two d/f+2s in a row or do an off-beat standing 4, he might get CH by it instead… Just food for thought.
 
 
Example 6 - Micro movement guru: The more often you utilize micro movement/timing guard etc to neutralize most of the opponent’s time efficient attacks options, the more likely he will try to use defender exploitation methods (if he is advanced). After utilizing movement as a neutralization method often, you can expect them to try a sort of defender exploitation method and counter before they try to close the distance. Sometimes you can catch them with d/f+2 or hopkicks etc but those are pretty big risk taking methods - hence why jabs and standing 4 etc are used more often in advanced levels.
 
 
Example 7 - Solid player gone wild: The less you use risky mix ups, the more likely the opponent will care less about your mix up attempts and sort of allow you to do those mix ups by respecting your turn to attack. If you have been playing solid for quite a while, you can use this against your opponent and act like you are completely insane and use heavy mix ups to chip out huge chunks of your opponent’s health in a round and win easily. These are what I call designer matches where you intentionally do something radically different to win a single match. Designer matches can be most frequently found in tournaments.
 
 
Example 8 - All-in with not much to lose: If you are winning 2 rounds to 0 in a match and have been playing solid, you can often use risky mix ups/moves in the 3rd round in order to try to win a match. This is another form of a designer match. If it works, you win easily. If it doesn’t work, now your opponent thinks you are an insane person who will try to use risky moves often so he has more things to worry about. If you are using high risk lows, most opponents have no reason to low parry your lows: they will duck and punish as it usually does at least 15-20 points more damage. However, once opponents start ducking, you can start mixing up low risk lows and mids which is not ideal for the opponent since he was expecting to extract about 70 points of damage by blocking your low. Now he is in a losing game in terms of damage by trying to duck your low risk low since he has to risk eating a relatively strong mid. Also, once an opponent starts ducking they sacrifice mobility and therefore allows you to easily approach. This means that defender exploitation and the waiting game becomes easier for you to do.
 
 
Example 9 - Reversal at the ready: If a Yoshimitsu player uses his flash often every time he is cornered in a wall, the opponent will become wary of attacking. After Yoshimitsu several times attempting the flash, the opponent will wait to punish the flash. However, Yoshi can instead use other methods such as throwing to escape the wall situation. This kind of tactic also applies to characters such as geese with his reversal and using moves such as his b,b,u/b at wall to push the opponent far from the wall.
 
 
Example 10 - Turtles get crushed: characters like Dragunov have extremely strong pressure tools and not attacking would be the worse thing to do against these characters because they will corner you at a wall within seconds. Dragunov players will many times abuse this fact and use moves such as d+2, SS d+2 or iWR+2 to continuously apply pressure. Opponents often get frustrated at this point and will try to attack as fast as possible when Dragunov creates distance in order to not allow him to continue the iWR+2 pressure. This is why Dragunov’s backdash qcf+3+4 (sliding move) gets CH often in these situations.
 
 
Example 11 - WS+4 often after d+2: If the opponent Dragunov uses d+2 and I decided to WS+4 often, it is very likely that he will try to SS punish me the next time around. And the next time around I can anticipate this and either use a tracking move or an off-beat CH move. Worst case scenario, I get hit by dragunov’s WS+4 after his d+2 (unless he is used to my thought process).
 
 
Example 12 - Kazumi 1+2: Advanced level Kazumi players often throw in 1+2 at seemingly random times. Usually these timings are when opponents are dashing in, when opponents are sidestepping etc. This works because kazumi’s 1+2 is a 12 frame mid that has decent tracking with two separate hits that is almost impossible to interrupt and also moves her forward. Basically it is stupid good even though there is quite a high risk. If the kazumi player starts sprinkling in this move often, opponents will get defensive because they want her to whiff the 1+2 and miss out on opportunities. This is when kazumi can utilize defender exploitation instead of using her 1+2.
 
 
Example 13 - About to chain throw you: When king players are low on health and opponents are high on health, they almost always try to go in and chain throw to kill the opponent off since that is the only way to extract big damage. Advanced players already know this, therefore will often duck in these situations. King players who know this dash in and CD WS+1+2 instead in these situations even when they haven’t been doing a CD mix up previously.
 
 
Example 14 - I like to poke: If an opponent hits me with his pokes and tries to utilize defender exploitation but I keep poking him out of those, it is very likely that the opponent will use some sort of CH move next time he hits me with a poke. It is often safe to duck in situations like these because the opponent either utilizes the waiting game or will try moves such as standing 4, so I can instead duck and attempt to punish his CH.
 
 
Example 15 - Not gonna get hit by your rage art: a common trend that has developed in tekken 7 is to not attack immediately after blocking an opponent’s move when they are low in life because of their rage art. This is especially true against someone who is known to use the rage art often. So advanced level players often dash in and attack instead of trying to attack immediately. So if I do a d/f+2 and it gets blocked, I can often expect the opponent to not attack immediately and dash in and attack due to rage art. However, that means if I do two d/f+2s in a row or do an off-beat standing 4, he might get CH by it instead… Just food for thought.
 


So these are relatively simple examples of expressing yourself and creating an image. But creating a perceived image and their counter plays can vary depending on character and has a thousand different ways in application. As a side note, utilization of the in-game image as a feature of mind game is the reason why I personally dislike the term “respect” and “conditioning your opponent”. They are terms that seem to imply that your opponent is simple minded and you can somehow MAKE them act a certain way. “You gotta make him respect you! Show him why he needs to respect you so he doesn't use those moves!”, “You gotta condition your opponent so you can make them react the way you want them to next time!” are all completely ridiculous statements. Mind games aren't that simple.
So these are relatively simple examples of expressing yourself and creating an image. But creating a perceived image and their counter plays can vary depending on character and has a thousand different ways in application. As a side note, utilization of the in-game image as a feature of mind game is the reason why I personally dislike the term “respect” and “conditioning your opponent”. They are terms that seem to imply that your opponent is simple minded and you can somehow MAKE them act a certain way. “You gotta make him respect you! Show him why he needs to respect you so he doesn't use those moves!”, “You gotta condition your opponent so you can make them react the way you want them to next time!” are all completely ridiculous statements. Mind games aren't that simple.


As mentioned previously, you cannot MAKE your opponent do anything in Tekken because you can't read their exact thought process on WHY they are doing a certain action. You can only guess WHAT they would do. "Conditioning your opponent" is used in the wrong context in this community. Your opponent isn't a puppet you can manipulate no matter how much of a skill gap there may be between the two of you. Although as you get better and better at mind games you may be able to predict your opponent's next action with pretty high accuracy, you will never be able to guess exactly when and how they will attack, especially when you are in advanced levels. You might be able to read the situation and pretty accurately deduce, "OK, right now I have high health and he has low health. The only thing he can realistically do to win is to hit me with a rage drive so I will not duck no matter what", and would probably a high chance that the opponent would use the rage drive right away. But there is no way you can manipulate a situation so that you will know exactly when and how he will use the rage drive. The opponent might be advanced enough to not use the rage drive and use that as a blackmail and hit you with multiple lows until your health gets low enough that you would HAVE to make a choice between standing or ducking. Again, you cannot manipulate your opponent. You can only guess. And what I'm advocating is that because (and only because) your opponent is smart and observant, by understanding your own image you will be able to pretty accurately predict what the he will do to counter you. You are not manipulating; you are predicting.
 
As mentioned previously, you cannot MAKE your opponent do anything in tekken because you can't read their exact thought process on WHY they are doing a certain action. You can only guess WHAT they would do. "Conditioning your opponent" is used in the wrong context in this community. Your opponent isn't a puppet you can manipulate no matter how much of a skill gap there may be between the two of you. Although as you get better and better at mind games you may be able to predict your opponent's next action with pretty high accuracy, you will never be able to guess exactly when and how they will attack, especially when you are in advanced levels. You might be able to read the situation and pretty accurately deduce, "OK, right now I have high health and he has low health. The only thing he can realistically do to win is to hit me with a rage drive so I will not duck no matter what", and would probably a high chance that the opponent would use the rage drive right away. But there is no way you can manipulate a situation so that you will know exactly when and how he will use the rage drive. The opponent might be advanced enough to not use the rage drive and use that as a blackmail and hit you with multiple lows until your health gets low enough that you would HAVE to make a choice between standing or ducking. Again, you cannot manipulate your opponent. You can only guess. And what I'm advocating is that because (and only because) your opponent is smart and observant, by understanding your own image you will be able to pretty accurately predict what the he will do to counter you. You are not manipulating; you are predicting.
 


Conclusion: Understanding your own perceived image is an important tool for predicting what your opponent’s next action will be. You can create your in-game image quickly by DOING things. The more you do, the quicker your opponent gets what type of player you are. Through these different types of self-expression, you can give the opponent as much information as possible in a given time frame, fast. Some players might be afraid of this because they think “if the opponent understands who I am quickly, I will run out of material and he will then see right through me”. It’s quite the contrary. Because I know that the opponent sees me as a certain type of player, I am able to more accurately pin point what he is going to do next. Yes, self-expression does expose many of your cards. However, this is exactly how you come up with more material. When your mind goes blank, your brain will realize it hit a wall and will come up with another way to resolve the issue. If you don’t come up with a solution in the moment, you can always reflect back onto your game and think about solutions which will only make you a better player. This is what creativity is. You find different paths through trial and error. The more you expend all your cards, the more you will be able to come up with new ones. People who seem incredibly creative and are even called geniuses are just people who happen to see opportunities that others haven’t exploited yet. Creativity isn’t about trying something radically crazy - it’s finding a real-world solution through ways that others haven’t tried before. And the best way to get creative is through trial & error, and critical analysis.
Conclusion: Understanding your own perceived image is an important tool for predicting what your opponent’s next action will be. You can create your in-game image quickly by DOING things. The more you do, the quicker your opponent gets what type of player you are. Through these different types of self-expression, you can give the opponent as much information as possible in a given time frame, fast. Some players might be afraid of this because they think “if the opponent understands who I am quickly, I will run out of material and he will then see right through me”. It’s quite the contrary. Because I know that the opponent sees me as a certain type of player, I am able to more accurately pin point what he is going to do next. Yes, self-expression does expose many of your cards. However, this is exactly how you come up with more material. When your mind goes blank, your brain will realize it hit a wall and will come up with another way to resolve the issue. If you don’t come up with a solution in the moment, you can always reflect back onto your game and think about solutions which will only make you a better player. This is what creativity is. You find different paths through trial and error. The more you expend all your cards, the more you will be able to come up with new ones. People who seem incredibly creative and are even called geniuses are just people who happen to see opportunities that others haven’t exploited yet. Creativity isn’t about trying something radically crazy - it’s finding a real-world solution through ways that others haven’t tried before. And the best way to get creative is through trial & error, and critical analysis.


Most players utilize their in-game image to one extent or another. However, they are only aware of certain situations and do not know how to expand upon the endless possibilities. Next time you review a match of yours where you were having trouble winning, think about what kind of image you were projecting to the opponent and what you could have done.
Most players utilize their in-game image to one extent or another. However, they are only aware of certain situations and do not know how to expand upon the endless possibilities. Next time you review a match of yours where you were having trouble winning, think about what kind of image you were projecting to the opponent and what you could have done.


    Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If not, was I abusing the situation enough so I could benefit from it?
* Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If not, was I abusing the situation enough so I could benefit from it?
 
* Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If he was being observant, how could I have predicted his next move and countered it instead? Was I even aware of what kind of image I was projecting?
    Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If he was being observant, how could I have predicted his next move and countered it instead? Was I even aware of what kind of image I was projecting?
* What kind of methods can I utilize to express myself clearly, as fast as possible? Are those methods efficient or are they relatively dangerous methods that can get me into a lot of trouble?
 
* Have I been mindlessly playing the game in a way that I haven't even been thinking about what kind of message I am expressing with my movement, my attack rhythm, my risk taking actions etc?
    What kind of methods can I utilize to express myself clearly, as fast as possible? Are those methods efficient or are they relatively dangerous methods that can get me into a lot of trouble?
* Was there noticeable patterns in the opponent's intent/expression that i should have been able to recognize and exploit? Has my observation skills been so poor that I have fell for the same things over and over again?
 
*  Was the opponent advanced enough to utilize in-game image to his benefit? If so, how did he switch up his tactic that I lost in the mind game department and what could I have done to safely escape his plan had I known that he was about to make a move?
    Have I been mindlessly playing the game in a way that I haven't even been thinking about what kind of message I am expressing with my movement, my attack rhythm, my risk taking actions etc?
 
    Was there noticable patterns in the opponent's intent/expression that i should have been able to recognize and exploit? Has my observation skills been so poor that I have fell for the same things over and over again?
 
    Was the opponent advanced enough to utilize in-game image to his benefit? If so, how did he switch up his tactic that I lost in the mind game department and what could I have done to safely escape his plan had I known that he was about to make a move?
 


Hope this helps.
Hope this helps.


P.S. I was originally working on another post that was about countering the opponent’s counter called “Layers of Mind Games” but it got really long and had branching ideas which is the reason why I created this post as a supplement. It is already half way written, however might take some more time due to my laziness.
P.S. I was originally working on another post that was about countering the opponent’s counter called “Layers of Mind Games” but it got really long and had branching ideas which is the reason why I created this post as a supplement. It is already half way written, however might take some more time due to my laziness.


Feedback is much welcomed. Please let me hear your comment if you have any questions/suggestions!
Feedback is much welcomed. Please let me hear your comment if you have any questions/suggestions!
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Foreword: If you haven’t read my previous posts (especially 103-106), please do so because many of the concepts I mention in the previous posts are utilized in this one.
Foreword: If you haven’t read my previous posts (especially 103-106), please do so because many of the concepts I mention in the previous posts are utilized in this one.


You block Devil Jin's f,F+2. You dash in but immediately block because you fear he might do a 1,1,2 or EWGF, or if he dares to be so bold, possibly an uf+4. Instead, you get hit by a hellsweep. Your mind goes blank. You can't believe what just happened. All you can think about is literally, WTF. Why would he do that? What was he even thinking? What if you didn't even dash in? Is he out if his mind?
 
You block devil jin's ff+2. You dash in but immediately block because you fear he might do a 112 or ewgf, or if he dares to be so bold, possibly an u/f+4. Instead, you get hit by a hellsweep. Your mind goes blank. You can't believe what just happened. All you can think about is literally, WTF. Why would he do that? What was he even thinking? What if you didn't even dash in? Is he out if his mind?
 


This post is going to be a long one and not my personal favorite because I feel like it's almost unnecessarily long. But as I've mentioned before, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain an advanced mind game concept in a few sentences without it sounding like complete nonsense. In this post, I will go over the multi layers of mind games. There are multiple different aspects of mind games which includes but is not limited to "Defensive Patterns", "Whiff Strategy", "The Waiting Game", "Initiator Advantage", "Defender Exploitation”, and “In-game Image Betrayal”. But there are many different “lenses” to see a certain interaction and explain them in a different way, and there sure as hell are different mind game angles that I am not aware of, or unable to explain due to lack of experience.
This post is going to be a long one and not my personal favorite because I feel like it's almost unnecessarily long. But as I've mentioned before, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain an advanced mind game concept in a few sentences without it sounding like complete nonsense. In this post, I will go over the multi layers of mind games. There are multiple different aspects of mind games which includes but is not limited to "Defensive Patterns", "Whiff Strategy", "The Waiting Game", "Initiator Advantage", "Defender Exploitation”, and “In-game Image Betrayal”. But there are many different “lenses” to see a certain interaction and explain them in a different way, and there sure as hell are different mind game angles that I am not aware of, or unable to explain due to lack of experience.


For example, ONE aspect of In-game Image betrayal can be interpreted as "Opportunity Baiting". Opportunity baiting usually happens in situations where you can duck a certain move or string. Use enough highs, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to duck to punish your high. Use enough linear moves, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to SS the move. You basically set up bait by letting them know there is an opportunity, and when you think its about time they went for it, you catch them with a mid or a tracking move etc. But this is just one aspect of the in-game image betrayal procedure and if you only knew about opportunity baiting, you'd probably not see other aspects of in-game image betrayal tactics. On the other hand, the person who understands the in-game image concept would not have much trouble recognizing opportunity baiting situations and other situations as well while his opponent might not. This type of meta awareness of mind games persists throughout the game in high levels and someone who does not have the complete picture of the procedure will eventually be exploited or have real difficulties defeating certain opponents even if they are relatively familiar with the character.
For example, ONE aspect of In-game Image betrayal can be interpreted as "Opportunity Baiting". Opportunity baiting usually happens in situations where you can duck a certain move or string. Use enough highs, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to duck to punish your high. Use enough linear moves, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to SS the move. You basically set up bait by letting them know there is an opportunity, and when you think its about time they went for it, you catch them with a mid or a tracking move etc. But this is just one aspect of the in-game image betrayal procedure and if you only knew about opportunity baiting, you'd probably not see other aspects of in-game image betrayal tactics. On the other hand, the person who understands the in-game image concept would not have much trouble recognizing opportunity baiting situations and other situations as well while his opponent might not. This type of meta awareness of mind games persists throughout the game in high levels and someone who does not have the complete picture of the procedure will eventually be exploited or have real difficulties defeating certain opponents even if they are relatively familiar with the character.


Although many of the concepts that I’ve previously mentioned kind of meld into each other, without being able to consciously identify and categorize concepts, one would have a difficult time consciously applying those concepts into play and self-reflecting in order to prevent themselves from making the same mistakes again. In the same token, one would have a difficult time defeating an opponent who is utilizing multiple advanced mind game tactics due to not being able to actively change his behaviors based on the situation he is in.
Although many of the concepts that I’ve previously mentioned kind of meld into each other, without being able to consciously identify and categorize concepts, one would have a difficult time consciously applying those concepts into play and self-reflecting in order to prevent themselves from making the same mistakes again. In the same token, one would have a difficult time defeating an opponent who is utilizing multiple advanced mind game tactics due to not being able to actively change his behaviors based on the situation he is in.


If you get two players with different levels of mind game proficiency to play each other, on the surface, it may look like both players are quite on par and holding their own respective grounds when playing against each other. However, there will always be that one deciding factor that the opponent would be able to exploit and win matches significantly more frequently in the long term even if it looked like he just got lucky and happened to choose the right option. Being able to identify different mind game tactics are important not only for winning, but also for being able to quickly advance your skill level. The more overarching tendencies you can identify and categorize, the better your chances of progressing to a higher level if you put time and effort into playing the game.
If you get two players with different levels of mind game proficiency to play each other, on the surface, it may look like both players are quite on par and holding their own respective grounds when playing against each other. However, there will always be that one deciding factor that the opponent would be able to exploit and win matches significantly more frequently in the long term even if it looked like he just got lucky and happened to choose the right option. Being able to identify different mind game tactics are important not only for winning, but also for being able to quickly advance your skill level. The more overarching tendencies you can identify and categorize, the better your chances of progressing to a higher level if you put time and effort into playing the game.


This applies to anything in life. Let’s say you are learning how to shoot a rifle. There are pretty important fundamentals in learning how to shoot a rifle that are not that obvious at all such as stopping to breath so your rifle doesn’t move up or down, trigger squeezing softly so that you don’t yank your rifle into a different direction the last minute when it’s shooting, compensating for bullet drop or bullet climb depending on distance etc. And if you don’t know any of these factors, it is unlikely that you will figure them out yourself unless you are experimenting and analyzing your shooting sessions. The first step to solving a problem is identifying the issue. If you don’t know there is a problem in the first place, how will you fix it?
This applies to anything in life. Let’s say you are learning how to shoot a rifle. There are pretty important fundamentals in learning how to shoot a rifle that are not that obvious at all such as stopping to breath so your rifle doesn’t move up or down, trigger squeezing softly so that you don’t yank your rifle into a different direction the last minute when it’s shooting, compensating for bullet drop or bullet climb depending on distance etc. And if you don’t know any of these factors, it is unlikely that you will figure them out yourself unless you are experimenting and analyzing your shooting sessions. The first step to solving a problem is identifying the issue. If you don’t know there is a problem in the first place, how will you fix it?


That being said, I would like to dispel the common myth that mind games just continue to rotate like rock paper scissors. This is true to a certain extent but a gross over simplification of the complexity that arises in a 3D fighting game and is a reflection of one's likelihood on failing to learn and progress. That’s like saying all you have to do to get good at lifting weights is to put in hard work, eat well, and sleep well. It is true to a large extent, but is too much of a simplification. Tekken mind games are not based on a making the correct 33.3% decision. It is based heavily on logic such as risk vs. reward but also heavily based on observations and predictions. Mind games continuously build on each iteration and evolve.
That being said, I would like to dispel the common myth that mind games just continue to rotate like rock paper scissors. This is true to a certain extent but a gross over simplification of the complexity that arises in a 3D fighting game and is a reflection of one's likelihood on failing to learn and progress. That’s like saying all you have to do to get good at lifting weights is to put in hard work, eat well, and sleep well. It is true to a large extent, but is too much of a simplification. Tekken mind games are not based on a making the correct 33.3% decision. It is based heavily on logic such as risk vs. reward but also heavily based on observations and predictions. Mind games continuously build on each iteration and evolve.


Tekken mind games revolve around the collection of data on the opponent, and you have to continuously build and revamp your tactics based on the opponent's current behaviors. To be good, you make calculated risks based on past observations which improve your odds of winning. As a side note, if you are familiar with advanced rock paper scissors tactics, you would understand that although the game seems deceptively simple and seems to revolve around a random chance of 33.3%, there are people who are actually really good at it because it involves mind games. A skill can be learned in almost anything that is repeated, no matter how complex it may be. You can even get good at flipping a coin or rolling a dice!
Tekken mind games revolve around the collection of data on the opponent, and you have to continuously build and revamp your tactics based on the opponent's current behaviors. To be good, you make calculated risks based on past observations which improve your odds of winning. As a side note, if you are familiar with advanced rock paper scissors tactics, you would understand that although the game seems deceptively simple and seems to revolve around a random chance of 33.3%, there are people who are actually really good at it because it involves mind games. A skill can be learned in almost anything that is repeated, no matter how complex it may be. You can even get good at flipping a coin or rolling a dice!


But yes, sometimes you are forced into a situation where basically you HAVE to make a decision. The basic premise is this: you are face to face with your opponent as he has dashed into you. You basically have only few choices. Let’s say at the moment you can only attack, duck, or back dash. These type of mind games usually rotate around depending on the frequency of the opponent’s attack or type of attack he does etc. which I go over in the previous post, “In-game Image”. If the opponent has been using a lot of mixups, it is very likely that I will try to CH in between. But the opponent can predict that I will try to attack and use a CH move before I do. And if I’ve gotten hit by the opponent’s CH and learned my lesson, I might freeze up in a similar situation and allow a mix up from the opponent. These type of mind games do rotate because of mind games.
But yes, sometimes you are forced into a situation where basically you HAVE to make a decision. The basic premise is this: you are face to face with your opponent as he has dashed into you. You basically have only few choices. Let’s say at the moment you can only attack, duck, or back dash. These type of mind games usually rotate around depending on the frequency of the opponent’s attack or type of attack he does etc. which I go over in the previous post, “In-game Image”. If the opponent has been using a lot of mixups, it is very likely that I will try to CH in between. But the opponent can predict that I will try to attack and use a CH move before I do. And if I’ve gotten hit by the opponent’s CH and learned my lesson, I might freeze up in a similar situation and allow a mix up from the opponent. These type of mind games do rotate because of mind games.


So let's go over some of these situations where you are forced to make a decision. These are simply common tendencies in the advanced level community that have been identified as legit tactics and have continuously evolved. The first technique I would like to go over is something I decided to label as Countering the Neutralization (CTN). The definition is not that important - I just needed to define it for the sake of this post. CTN and its branch offs are relatively unknown techniques outside of Korea and Japan due to the high level of play required from both players in order to even be able to engage in the concept. It certainly does exist within the flowchart patterns of some players, but many players only know it as a gimmicky trick they can use and do not understand the underlying core principles behind it. But before we go over CTN, let me define what neutralization means.
So let's go over some of these situations where you are forced to make a decision. These are simply common tendencies in the advanced level community that have been identified as legit tactics and have continuously evolved. The first technique I would like to go over is something I decided to label as Countering the Neutralization (CTN). The definition is not that important - I just needed to define it for the sake of this post. CTN and its branch offs are relatively unknown techniques outside of Korea and Japan due to the high level of play required from both players in order to even be able to engage in the concept. It certainly does exist within the flowchart patterns of some players, but many players only know it as a gimmicky trick they can use and do not understand the underlying core principles behind it. But before we go over CTN, let me define what neutralization means.


What I call neutralization in this context is simply a micromovement that will allow you to safely make your movements without getting hit by the majority of opponent moves. You could call many of the micro movements such as sidestep-guard, sidestep-backdash etc to be a neutralization technique. One of the most widely known neutralization tools is the dash-guard. The dash-guard is an extremely useful tool for three reasons:
What I call neutralization in this context is simply a micromovement that will allow you to safely make your movements without getting hit by the majority of opponent moves. You could call many of the micro movements such as sidestep-guard, sidestep-backdash etc to be a neutralization technique. One of the most widely known neutralization tools is the dash-guard. The dash-guard is an extremely useful tool for three reasons:


    It allows you to approach the enemy but not get hit by the majority of their moves if they attack. If it is a punishable move such as hopkick, you can block and punish. If it is a non-punishable move such as Hwoarang's d/f+2, you get the frame advantage. Although not moving at all and making the opponent whiff their move would be the best solution, advanced level players many times attack only upon seeing forward movement from the opponent. Therefore dash guard is one of the better solutions to force your opponent to attack (otherwise, defender exploitation happens) and 'steal away' their frame advantage by making them use a move that is negative frames on block.
It allows you to approach the enemy but not get hit by the majority of their moves if they attack. If it is a punishable move such as hopkick, you can block and punish. If it is a non-punishable move such as Hwoarang's d/f+2, you get the frame advantage. Although not moving at all and making the opponent whiff their move would be the best solution, advanced level players many times attack only upon seeing forward movement from the opponent. Therefore dash guard is one of the better solutions to force your opponent to attack (otherwise, defender exploitation happens) and 'steal away' their frame advantage by making them use a move that is negative frames on block.
 
    Even if your opponent doesn't attack, you will be much closer to your opponent which registers to them as a threat. By dash-guard (the key is to NOT hold back and immediately go into neutral because if you hold onto back and start walking backwards, it will tell your opponent that you are not planning on attacking), it feels like your attacks will come out at any time. Advanced players also utilize dash-back dash (the basic movement for the waiting game), and also have tactics such as dash-guard-mix up if an attack didn't come out during dash-guard. Techniques such as dash-guard are only possible in games like tekken because the fastest moves are generally 10 frames or more which is quite slow from a fighting game perspective. This would be an extremely dangerous tactic in games like SF even if you could guard in between dashes because the fastest moves are anywhere from 3-5 frames. It takes 3-5 frames AT BEST to even be able to input f,f.


    The opponent is often not entirely sure what you are going to do. Are you going to dash guard? Are you going to backdash and try the waiting game? Are you going to forward-guard AKA play footsies to try to bait an attack? Attacking while hoping the opponent runs into your attack is a prediction, therefore a risk that you are taking. Even if the opponent guards your attack, the momentum shifts in the opponent's favor. Therefore the attacker often decides not to attack at all. And this is also when defender exploitation can happen. Because of all these factors, the dash-guard becomes a more viable option. It just opens up another opportunity to pressure the opponent without taking damage. It's almost like getting a free chance, hence why it is such a popular technique to employ.
Even if your opponent doesn't attack, you will be much closer to your opponent which registers to them as a threat. By dash-guard (the key is to NOT hold back and immediately go into neutral because if you hold onto back and start walking backwards, it will tell your opponent that you are not planning on attacking), it feels like your attacks will come out at any time. Advanced players also utilize dash-back dash (the basic movement for the waiting game), and also have tactics such as dash-guard-mix up if an attack didn't come out during dash-guard. Techniques such as dash-guard are only possible in games like Tekken because the fastest moves are generally 10 frames or more which is quite slow from a fighting game perspective. This would be an extremely dangerous tactic in games like SF even if you could guard in between dashes because the fastest moves are anywhere from 3-5 frames. It takes 3-5 frames AT BEST to even be able to input f,f.


The opponent is often not entirely sure what you are going to do. Are you going to dash guard? Are you going to backdash and try the waiting game? Are you going to forward-guard AKA play footsies to try to bait an attack? Attacking while hoping the opponent runs into your attack is a prediction, therefore a risk that you are taking. Even if the opponent guards your attack, the momentum shifts in the opponent's favor. Therefore the attacker often decides not to attack at all. And this is also when defender exploitation can happen. Because of all these factors, the dash-guard becomes a more viable option. It just opens up another opportunity to pressure the opponent without taking damage. It's almost like getting a free chance, hence why it is such a popular technique to employ.


Advanced players do not use dash-guard at all times, but they use it with enough frequency that they will block the opponent's move when they are skeptical, or when they recognize them as a standard baiting situation. The neutralization technique is so effective that even if you know the opponent is going to dash into you, it is hard to make them pay for doing so. However, with the rise of dash-guard usage, players started developing unique strategies that counter the dash-guard. And these strategies are what I call Countering the Neutralization (CTN).
Advanced players do not use dash-guard at all times, but they use it with enough frequency that they will block the opponent's move when they are skeptical, or when they recognize them as a standard baiting situation. The neutralization technique is so effective that even if you know the opponent is going to dash into you, it is hard to make them pay for doing so. However, with the rise of dash-guard usage, players started developing unique strategies that counter the dash-guard. And these strategies are what I call Countering the Neutralization (CTN).


CTN for dash-guard: 1+2 throw
CTN for dash-guard: 1+2 throw
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Example: Counter to dash guard - use a 1+2 throw More effective with characters that can use a 1+2 throw without having to dash or if you can buffer it into a move.
Example: Counter to dash guard - use a 1+2 throw More effective with characters that can use a 1+2 throw without having to dash or if you can buffer it into a move.


One of the most common CTN strategies is to use a 1+2 throw when you expect your opponent to dash-guard because the 1+2 throw has a fast 12 frame execution and will likely beat the opponent even if he tried to attack while dashing in. As you know, counter throws are even harder to break due to animations getting mixed in and your hands possibly being on a different position from the 1+2 buttons. And even if the opponent doesn't run in, the 1+2 throw has a pretty fast recovery so it is relatively unlikely that you will get punished unless the opponent is familiar with the tactic and was waiting for it.
One of the most common CTN strategies is to use a 1+2 throw when you expect your opponent to dash-guard because the 1+2 throw has a fast 12 frame execution and will likely beat the opponent even if he tried to attack while dashing in. As you know, counter throws are even harder to break due to animations getting mixed in and your hands possibly being on a different position from the 1+2 buttons. And even if the opponent doesn't run in, the 1+2 throw has a pretty fast recovery so it is relatively unlikely that you will get punished unless the opponent is familiar with the tactic and was waiting for it.


CTN for dash-guard: generic d+4 or high crushing lows
CTN for dash-guard: generic d+4 or high crushing lows
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Example 3: Counter to dash-guard. Use a high crushing low attack
Example 3: Counter to dash-guard. Use a high crushing low attack


The 1+2 throw CTN strategy was extremely effective at first because the dash-guarding opponents did not expect it at all. But nowadays most advanced level players are very familiar with the tactic and easily break the 1+2 throw even in counter situations because they know there is a chance that the opponent will try this tactic. Therefore, players started developing other CTN tactics for the dash-guard which is to use a low. For some characters, this is quite a natural option but for other characters it is not. The faster the move, the better so the generic d+4 is one of the best moves for that since it also has a high crushing property built in although the damage may be low. The initiator’s advantage also makes it quite scary for the attacker to poke him out of his gd+4. Other moves used for the dash-guard CTN involve high crushing lows that move forward such as dragunov's d+2, or some opponents will just blatantly use a strong low even if it is short reach if they think they've gotten a good read on their opponent. As a side note, it is usually advised to use this kind of tactic only in specific situations with moves that push you back but have no punish (DJ’s ff+2, Lee’s ff+3, Paul’s qcb+2 etc).
The 1+2 throw CTN strategy was extremely effective at first because the dash-guarding opponents did not expect it at all. But nowadays most advanced level players are very familiar with the tactic and easily break the 1+2 throw even in counter situations because they know there is a chance that the opponent will try this tactic. Therefore, players started developing other CTN tactics for the dash-guard which is to use a low. For some characters, this is quite a natural option but for other characters it is not. The faster the move, the better so the generic d+4 is one of the best moves for that since it also has a high crushing property built in although the damage may be low. The initiator’s advantage also makes it quite scary for the attacker to poke him out of his gd+4. Other moves used for the dash-guard CTN involve high crushing lows that move forward such as dragunov's d+2, or some opponents will just blatantly use a strong low even if it is short reach if they think they've gotten a good read on their opponent. As a side note, it is usually advised to use this kind of tactic only in specific situations with moves that push you back but have no punish (DJ’s ff+2, Lee’s ff+3, Paul’s qcb+2 etc).


Counter to the CTN: dash-low parry or a jump status move
Counter to the CTN: dash-low parry or a jump status move


Example 1: Counter to dash guard - d/b+4 (in close distance, just needs to be high crush). In this case, LowHigh knew it would be a jab or a high crushing low move. He should have dash low parried but did not succeed.
Example 1: Counter to dash guard - d/b+4 (in close distance, just needs to be high crush). In this case, LowHigh knew it would be a jab or a high crushing low move. He should have dash low parried but did not succeed.


Due to the rise of CTN with gd+4, players started developing unique micro movements such as dash-low parry. Players who incorporate this specific movement are also great at punishing the whiffed 1+2 throw or standing 4 etc with 1,2 which is better than nothing. This technique works great in advanced levels because most advanced players use a low or high when opponents are dashing in. Counter intuitively, it is almost safe against your opponent unless he is a less advanced player who likes to throw out hopkicks.
Due to the rise of CTN with gd+4, players started developing unique micro movements such as dash-low parry. Players who incorporate this specific movement are also great at punishing the whiffed 1+2 throw or standing 4 etc with 1,2 which is better than nothing. This technique works great in advanced levels because most advanced players use a low or high when opponents are dashing in. Counter intuitively, it is almost safe against your opponent unless he is a less advanced player who likes to throw out hopkicks.


Counter to the Counter CTN: d/f+1 or hopkick
Counter to the Counter CTN: d/f+1 or hopkick


The obvious anti dash-low parry tactic would be to use a quick mid or to just hopkick. So advanced players mix in d/f+1 or a hopkick (only when they think they have a good read) as a shielding attempt instead of jab, standing 4 etc. Mishima players would actually be quite familiar with this kind of technique because opponents like to dash and duck to wait for the ewgf. This might seem like everything comes back full circle and you can just sort of hopkick while opponents run in. But it is important that you understand WHY your opponents are getting hit by the hopkicks. The primary difference would be that now your opponent knows that you are the type that will hopkick when they dash in, hence the next time your opponent dash-guards, you could go back to using a low and basically the opponent would be getting mixed up every time he dashes in. The opponent who doesn't even understand any of these tactics would just be getting hit by d/f+2 and getting launched every time they run in or barely blocking it and just thinking to himself "phew, I almost got launched right there". But it doesn’t even stop there. The recent trend in the advanced level tekken players is to not even try to dash-guard in many of these situations and use a poke instead in order to further confuse the opponent. If your opponent is almost certain that you are going to dash-guard, don't give him what he is expecting.
The obvious anti dash-low parry tactic would be to use a quick mid or to just hopkick. So advanced players mix in d/f+1 or a hopkick (only when they think they have a good read) as a shielding attempt instead of jab, standing 4 etc. Mishima players would actually be quite familiar with this kind of technique because opponents like to dash and duck to wait for the EWGF. This might seem like everything comes back full circle and you can just sort of hopkick while opponents run in. But it is important that you understand WHY your opponents are getting hit by the hopkicks. The primary difference would be that now your opponent knows that you are the type that will hopkick when they dash in, hence the next time your opponent dash-guards, you could go back to using a low and basically the opponent would be getting mixed up every time he dashes in. The opponent who doesn't even understand any of these tactics would just be getting hit by d/f+2 and getting launched every time they run in or barely blocking it and just thinking to himself "phew, I almost got launched right there". But it doesn’t even stop there. The recent trend in the advanced level Tekken players is to not even try to dash-guard in many of these situations and use a poke instead in order to further confuse the opponent. If your opponent is almost certain that you are going to dash-guard, don't give him what he is expecting.
 


As you can see, the depth of thinking is vastly different even when the mind game seems like it came back full circle and the resulting attacks are the same. Playing against someone who has all of these different levels of CTN options is like playing poker with someone who always has a ace hidden up their sleeve. You won’t understand why you lose! Mind games rotate only on the basis that you know all options for that specific situation. If you don’t know the options, it is likely that you are going to not be able to compete many of the times. So development of mind game aspects such as the dash-guard and the overall encompassing of many different mind game tactics (many of which that are mentioned in my previous posts) are what I call the layers of mind games. The reason why I don’t call it LEVELS of mind games is because there are so many different ways of thinking about a situation that it is not valid to say someone simply is at a higher level of mind game. Two advanced player might each have 8 different major mind game concepts that they understand and utilize but some of those concepts might be slightly different in how they fundamentally understand it. A mind game can stem off one situation, but progress into a complexity that would only be discoverable with careful analysis. A player who doesn’t know much mind game concepts would never be able to understand what is really going on when playing someone with more layers of mind games than him.
As you can see, the depth of thinking is vastly different even when the mind game seems like it came back full circle and the resulting attacks are the same. Playing against someone who has all of these different levels of CTN options is like playing poker with someone who always has a ace hidden up their sleeve. You won’t understand why you lose! Mind games rotate only on the basis that you know all options for that specific situation. If you don’t know the options, it is likely that you are going to not be able to compete many of the times. So development of mind game aspects such as the dash-guard and the overall encompassing of many different mind game tactics (many of which that are mentioned in my previous posts) are what I call the layers of mind games. The reason why I don’t call it LEVELS of mind games is because there are so many different ways of thinking about a situation that it is not valid to say someone simply is at a higher level of mind game. Two advanced player might each have 8 different major mind game concepts that they understand and utilize but some of those concepts might be slightly different in how they fundamentally understand it. A mind game can stem off one situation, but progress into a complexity that would only be discoverable with careful analysis. A player who doesn’t know much mind game concepts would never be able to understand what is really going on when playing someone with more layers of mind games than him.


And this is the biggest reason why I have continuously advised people against playing someone higher than their level. You will NOT learn. If the difference in mind game concept utilization is only about 1 or 2 layers of difference, you may be able to overcome the difference and learn from it. However, if there is about 3 or more layers of difference, you won't even understand what is going on or why you are losing! This is quite counter intuitive because we think by playing higher level players, we can learn how to play better.
And this is the biggest reason why I have continuously advised people against playing someone higher than their level. You will NOT learn. If the difference in mind game concept utilization is only about 1 or 2 layers of difference, you may be able to overcome the difference and learn from it. However, if there is about 3 or more layers of difference, you won't even understand what is going on or why you are losing! This is quite counter intuitive because we think by playing higher level players, we can learn how to play better.


But humans only learn by trying different things. Playing someone way over your level is literally like shooting darts in the dark. You have no idea what is going to happen, and there is no way to accurately gauge your results because your opponent is changing them up by utilizing mind games. You won’t see the pattern because it is too complex for you. On the flip side, playing someone way under your level results in something similar. You have no incentive to change your behaviors because you can pretty much do the same thing over and over again and beat your opponent. Even if in your mind you feel like you are doing the same thing, your opponent will never be able to see the big picture and figure out how you are winning. If you want to get better at the game quickly, play someone at your level, and play them many times. These are why death matches are so great for your development. But better than death matches is to have someone on your level as a training partner and play countless matches against him until both your abilities start expanding. Humans easily give up with an impossible challenge in front of them. In a study on rats play-wrestling with each other, it found that when the stronger rat does not allow the weaker rat to win over more than 30%, the weaker rat loses motivation and will refuse to invite the stronger rat to play with him again. On the contrary, Humans become lazy and lose motivation with too easy of a task. Give a man a task to make a 10 sandwiches, he will begrudgingly do so without the slightest hint of motivation. Give a man a task to make 10 sandwiches within a minute, he suddenly sees it as a challenge and will try to cut down his time through trial and error and will try to achieve perfection. So with the right amount of challenge, humans can continuously feel motivated and progress little by little. If you play someone at your level over a sustained period of time, you will start recognizing patterns and slowly but surely start changing up your tactics in order to become less predictable and defeat the opponent. This kind of incremental change and learning is not possible with someone who is not on your level because humans only adapt their behavior when they can recognize the immediate problem in front of them. Always defeating your opponent is not a good situation for motivating yourself to improve because you have absolutely no reason to do so! You can be shitty at punishing or shitty at combos, yet you if you still win, why would there be much incentive to improve?
But humans only learn by trying different things. Playing someone way over your level is literally like shooting darts in the dark. You have no idea what is going to happen, and there is no way to accurately gauge your results because your opponent is changing them up by utilizing mind games. You won’t see the pattern because it is too complex for you. On the flip side, playing someone way under your level results in something similar. You have no incentive to change your behaviors because you can pretty much do the same thing over and over again and beat your opponent. Even if in your mind you feel like you are doing the same thing, your opponent will never be able to see the big picture and figure out how you are winning. If you want to get better at the game quickly, play someone at your level, and play them many times. These are why death matches are so great for your development. But better than death matches is to have someone on your level as a training partner and play countless matches against him until both your abilities start expanding. Humans easily give up with an impossible challenge in front of them. In a study on rats play-wrestling with each other, it found that when the stronger rat does not allow the weaker rat to win over more than 30%, the weaker rat loses motivation and will refuse to invite the stronger rat to play with him again. On the contrary, Humans become lazy and lose motivation with too easy of a task. Give a man a task to make a 10 sandwiches, he will begrudgingly do so without the slightest hint of motivation. Give a man a task to make 10 sandwiches within a minute, he suddenly sees it as a challenge and will try to cut down his time through trial and error and will try to achieve perfection. So with the right amount of challenge, humans can continuously feel motivated and progress little by little. If you play someone at your level over a sustained period of time, you will start recognizing patterns and slowly but surely start changing up your tactics in order to become less predictable and defeat the opponent. This kind of incremental change and learning is not possible with someone who is not on your level because humans only adapt their behavior when they can recognize the immediate problem in front of them. Always defeating your opponent is not a good situation for motivating yourself to improve because you have absolutely no reason to do so! You can be shitty at punishing or shitty at combos, yet you if you still win, why would there be much incentive to improve?


But you might know of a guy who says he got really good by playing the best players in his region. And this is probably true. But I highly doubt that playing against players who are leagues above your own is the reason he got better for multiple reasons:
But you might know of a guy who says he got really good by playing the best players in his region. And this is probably true. But I highly doubt that playing against players who are leagues above your own is the reason he got better for multiple reasons:


    It is very unlikely he only played against that better player without playing any of his lesser skilled friends. With stepping stones in between, he would have been able to identify his problems and become better at the game.
* It is very unlikely he only played against that better player without playing any of his lesser skilled friends. With stepping stones in between, he would have been able to identify his problems and become better at the game.
 
* Advanced players are often used as reference for new patterns and combos etc. Just by mimicking the best players you can advance your game significantly. You also have to make less mistakes against the better players
    Advanced players are often used as reference for new patterns and combos etc. Just by mimicking the best players you can advance your game significantly. You also have to make less mistakes against the better players


    I highly doubt that the advanced player was truly advanced. Tekken is a game with a huge learning curve. Just getting down the basics of punishing, frames, side stepping, back dashing, throw breaking, combos etc would easily get you up to a relatively high rank even without much mind games. And you could optimize your game as a beginner against these type of players who I think fall into somewhere in the region of yellow/orange ranks. To prove how hard tekken fundamentals are, I once created a new account and reached Warrior with Paul by only using deathfist and demoman (no backdashes, no sidesteps). I was even getting promoted off guys with over 2,000 matches (some who were using WD mixups and multiple ewgf etc) with only two moves. And I was only utilizing my observations, and two mind game concepts: defender exploitation and In-game image betrayal. Most of these players were simply just lacking fundamentals such as punishing or frames, and they would often duck for no good reason. Imagine if I punished properly and did my combos correctly as well. I would have easily reached the orange ranks. All without much mind games. Mind games are only developed when you meet another player at a similar level to you.
I highly doubt that the advanced player was truly advanced. Tekken is a game with a huge learning curve. Just getting down the basics of punishing, frames, side stepping, back dashing, throw breaking, combos etc would easily get you up to a relatively high rank even without much mind games. And you could optimize your game as a beginner against these type of players who I think fall into somewhere in the region of yellow/orange ranks. To prove how hard Tekken fundamentals are, I once created a new account and reached Warrior with Paul by only using deathfist and demoman (no backdashes, no sidesteps). I was even getting promoted off guys with over 2,000 matches (some who were using WD mixups and multiple EWGF etc) with only two moves. And I was only utilizing my observations, and two mind game concepts: defender exploitation and In-game image betrayal. Most of these players were simply just lacking fundamentals such as punishing or frames, and they would often duck for no good reason. Imagine if I punished properly and did my combos correctly as well. I would have easily reached the orange ranks. All without much mind games. Mind games are only developed when you meet another player at a similar level to you.
 


Conclusion: Mind games are a complex subject that can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person. In order to get good, you must continuously try to find patterns within the chaos you are experiencing and develop your own understanding of the game. The easiest way to do this is to find someone who is at a very similar level to you and continuously play against them. This way, you will recognize patterns way faster. Contrarily, if you play someone way above or below your level, you will not develop better mind games either because you just don't understand what is going on (and likely never will unless you play other players as well to benchmark), or because you just don't need to. It is pretty much an evolution process. Think about the character match up, think about your opponent's tendencies, and start accumulating a deep understanding of the game and create your own layers of mind games that opponents will have trouble exploiting.
Conclusion: Mind games are a complex subject that can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person. In order to get good, you must continuously try to find patterns within the chaos you are experiencing and develop your own understanding of the game. The easiest way to do this is to find someone who is at a very similar level to you and continuously play against them. This way, you will recognize patterns way faster. Contrarily, if you play someone way above or below your level, you will not develop better mind games either because you just don't understand what is going on (and likely never will unless you play other players as well to benchmark), or because you just don't need to. It is pretty much an evolution process. Think about the character match up, think about your opponent's tendencies, and start accumulating a deep understanding of the game and create your own layers of mind games that opponents will have trouble exploiting.


If you think about it, even the basic mind game of attacking an opponent has quite a bit of depth to it:
If you think about it, even the basic mind game of attacking an opponent has quite a bit of depth to it:


    mid/low mixup
* mid/low mixup
 
* defender can logically pick the least damaging option or the most punishable option
    defender can logically pick the least damaging option or the most punishable option
* defender predicts mid/low mix up and tries to poke attacker before the mix up can be executed
 
* attacker uses counter such as d/f+2, predicting defender using predictive pokes
    defender predicts mid/low mix up and tries to poke attacker before the mix up can be executed
* defender utilizes movement to neutralize most options from attacker
 
* attacker uses defender exploitation to defeat opponent's movement
    attacker uses counter such as d/f+2, predicting defender using predictive pokes
* defender reacts to movement and attacks before opponent can utilize defender exploitation
 
* attacker dashes in then uses waiting game, punishes the defender for whiffing
    defender utilizes movement to neutralize most options from attacker
 
    attacker uses defender exploitation to defeat opponent's movement
 
    defender reacts to movement and attacks before opponent can utilize defender exploitation
 
    attacker dashes in then uses waiting game, punishes the defender for whiffing
 


Even side step mind games can get pretty complex:
Even side step mind games can get pretty complex:


    after attacker's d/f+1 gets blocked, the attacker sidestep’s the defender’s linear moves and punishes
* after attacker's d/f+1 gets blocked, the attacker sidestep’s the defender’s linear moves and punishes
 
* in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep, defender uses a tracking move to prevent attacker from side stepping
    in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep, defender uses a tracking move to prevent attacker from side stepping
* in order to defeat the defender’s tracking moves, attacker uses 1,2, standing 4, or another d/f+1 etc
 
* in order to defeat the attacker’s poke after d/f+1 which is usually minus frames, defender uses moves such as 1,2 or standing 4
    in order to defeat the defender’s tracking moves, attacker uses 1,2, standing 4, or another d/f+1 etc
* in order to defeat the defender’s pokes, attacker starts utilizing the waiting game mostly through sidestep-guard or sidestep back dash
 
* in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep-guard (or possible high attacks), defender utilizes moves such as generic d+3 (couching 3 for most characters)
    in order to defeat the attacker’s poke after d/f+1 which is usually minus frames, defender uses moves such as 1,2 or standing 4
 
    in order to defeat the defender’s pokes, attacker starts utilizing the waiting game mostly through sidestep-guard or sidestep back dash
 
    in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep-guard (or possible high attacks), defender utilizes moves such as generic d+3 (couching 3 for most characters)
 


Other examples of how mind games can go deep in very specific situations:
Other examples of how mind games can go deep in very specific situations:


    Paul being able to CTN a sidestep-guard with his demolition man. Demolition man tracks sidesteps and there are specific situations where this will hit clean if the opponent tries sidestepping or sidestep-guard instead of backdashing.
* Paul being able to CTN a sidestep-guard with his demolition man. Demolition man tracks sidesteps and there are specific situations where this will hit clean if the opponent tries sidestepping or sidestep-guard instead of backdashing.
 
* A common situation of mid-high string tactic: using patterns such as Paul's WS+3 (guarded) followed by a gd+4 or his 1+2 throw or a d/f+2 where if the opponent is not used to the depth of this type of tactic, they will come out losing often in that specific situation.
    A common situation of mid-high string tactic: using patterns such as Paul's WS+3 (guarded) followed by a gd+4 or his 1+2 throw or a d/f+2 where if the opponent is not used to the depth of this type of tactic, they will come out losing often in that specific situation.
* There are also tactics such as blocking moves such as gd+4 and not punishing on purpose but dashing in and attempting a mid etc to CH or catch the opponent sidestepping etc.
 
* If opponent tries to sidewalk in order to avoid DJ/Kazuya's hellsweep or EWGF etc, they can CD~b, EWGF which will track the opponent's sidewalk. This is an advanced Mishima tactic that is commonly used among higher level Mishimas, especially in korea.
    There are also tactics such as blocking moves such as gd+4 and not punishing on purpose but dashing in and attempting a mid etc to CH or catch the opponent sidestepping etc.
* If you are really low on health (enough to die by a crouch jab or gd+4), there are many mid-high strings (if used without delay) that will beat a crouch jab or gd+4 and will CH your opponent. This is more of a gimmick but if you know the tendency of your opponent, you can take advantage of this.
 
* Mind games develop deep in certain situations often because of the character choices you both have. Depending on the match up, you might have to restrict using a certain move or it can be greatly beneficial for you to start abusing a certain move etc. There are countless possibilities in going deep about a certain situation.
    If opponent tries to sidewalk in order to avoid DJ/Kazuya's hellsweep or ewgf etc, they can CD~b, ewgf which will track the opponent's sidewalk. This is an advanced mishima tactic that is commonly used among higher level mishimas, especially in korea.
 
    If you are really low on health (enough to die by a crouch jab or gd+4), there are many mid-high strings (if used without delay) that will beat a crouch jab or gd+4 and will CH your opponent. This is more of a gimmick but if you know the tendency of your opponent, you can take advantage of this.
 
    Mind games develop deep in certain situations often because of the character choices you both have. Depending on the match up, you might have to restrict using a certain move or it can be greatly beneficial for you to start abusing a certain move etc. There are countless possibilities in going deep about a certain situation.
 


My next post will likely be my last in the tekken mind game series. It should be about the thinking process of experts and the correct mindset/habits to hold when playing tekken. Personally it would be my favorite topic but as always, it might take a little while for me to write.
My next post will likely be my last in the Tekken mind game series. It should be about the thinking process of experts and the correct mindset/habits to hold when playing Tekken. Personally it would be my favorite topic but as always, it might take a little while for me to write.

Latest revision as of 16:40, 18 November 2023

Tekken Mindgames Series

original by u/jpjhun, edited by me

101: Defensive Patterns

The ability to recognize general patterns is very important in Tekken. The first step to getting fairly advanced is to recognize an opponent's defensive patterns.

I’d say there’s probably three main defensive styles.

Shielding

Shielding is a defensive style where opponents will use defensive moves that will CH you when you try to approach. These include hop kicks, df+2s, 1,2 strings, or for e.g., Paul's qcb+4 etc. I myself have a pretty strong shielding tendency with Paul.

The first key to defeat shielding is dash guard. You dash (f,F) and guard (B) so you don’t get hit by random attacks and it's also preferably better to keep just a slight bit of distance for the opponent’s main moves to whiff so you can whiff punish the moves.

The second key to defeat shielding style is to know when the opponent gets scared to attack. If you punish the opponent’s shielding attempts successfully multiple times, the opponent will eventually back off or try a less scary variant of shielding. You have to boldly go in at this point and throw/mixup etc. If your attempt of going in boldly succeeds, many inexperienced opponents' mind game will go blank at this point because their general game plan has gone to shit; they feel like they cannot attack because they get punished, but if they don’t attack they get mixed up. They will panic and might go back to shielding only to get punished by you again. After that, they might go into extreme defensive mode, but then you just need to scrape (chip life off) the shit out of them.

Turtling

When the opponent turtles, they almost never attack and just keep backdashing without attacking when they don’t think they have the advantage. Another characteristic about turtles is that they mostly ignore lows because it is (game-theoretically) inefficient to block lows. Overall, turtling is a very rare style because it is not actually very efficient as you are giving up your chances of attacking. Nonetheless, you will see this style every now and then.

I taught my friend how to defeat this style when we first started playing (he complained that he didn’t know how to beat me because I wasn’t attacking that much). Basically, you just boldly approach and chip the shit out of these opponents with fast, efficient low attacks. With Devil Jin, it was db+2, d+4, d+3 and hellsweep. The key is to mix up the low moves and not use the same ones so the opponent doesn’t know the correct distance and timing of what type of low move will come out. For Nina, I guess it will be db+3, d+2, d+3, her sweep etc. There is no such opponent who will never block low moves, they will eventually start blocking lows. So you just need to increase your low move rate and the opponent will start blocking lows and you can throw in uf+2 etc in between. Eventually, their whole style will go to shit and they will want to attack every now and then, but if they don’t, you just keep mixing up.

Opportunistic

You can say that the opportunistic defensive style is the less aggressive version of the shielding style, or the more aggressive version of the turtling style. They are usually really good with their stepping - meaning that they know which way to sidestep to avoid your main attacks and also know the correct distance for your main moves to whiff. These players are extremely good with backdashing, backdash side stepping etc. They usually collect information on you with their defensive style and will look for timings when you will have to come in deep and df+2 or hopkick at those times.

Against these styles, you just have to be quite careful when going in and not attack too much. You too will have to know the correct distance to defeat your enemy. Look at the EVO Japan 2018 Top 8 matches. If you watch most of these matches, the players are just focused on keeping the correct distance and do not attack that much.

102: Whiff Strategy

Whiffing moves in Tekken is generally dangerous due to whiff punishes, but depending on the character and also depending on distance, whiffing moves are many times used as bait for a trap. For example, a common trap is to whiff a move from mid distance that recovers much faster than the animation suggests, then do a hop kick while your opponent runs in. From the opposite perspective, when you whiff a move and are on the defense, many opponents like to run in and do a mixup (and this is why the hopkick works as a trap). Most intermediate and semi-advanced players have a set pattern on how they play this situation and don't know how to fix this because they aren't fully aware of it. Therefore, I will go over trapping strategies (when an opponent is trying to bait you) and defending strategies (when you whiff a move yourself and are in a pretty big frame disadvantage).

Trapping Strategies

After the opponent whiffs a move, they will usually attempt to bait you. You will see that many opponents have a fairly set pattern in these situations.

The Ducker

These type of opponents love to duck after a close range whiff (usually range 0-1) and do an iws2 or duck-hopkick. You can usually tell if they are the reacting or predicting style by how fast their ws2 comes out. If the move comes out immediately, they are simply taking a risk and predicting that you will try 1,2 or a slower move etc. If the move comes out slower, this means that the opponent is waiting for you to use a move and as soon as they see something (you moving or using a jab or whatever), they use the ws2. The tricky part about the latter is that these opponents are usually advanced enough to stand back up quickly if they don't see an attack so hopkick may or may not work against these opponents. The safest way to defeat the ducking type opponent is to use a safe, rewarding mid such as df+2 which is relatively fast and will CH the opponent if they try a ws attack.

The CH Fisher

Opponents will whiff a move either on purpose or after failing a shielding attempt from around range 2 and will use a CH move. Advanced players and players who use Jack-7/Feng do it at a closer range as well since they have an i10 CH move. Almost anyone who is decent in Tekken will have a tendency to do this and they usually have their own favorite move and situation. This type of opponent also has two types where one opponent will predict that you close the distance and pre-emptively throw out a move, and the other type will wait for your dashing movement and will reactively throw out a move. Both can be successfully defeated by dash guard, but the predicting type can be punished harder by you simply standing still and then punishing the whiff. If you find it hard to punish, simply do the following:

  1. You see your opponent whiff a move mid distance. You predict that he will throw out another df+2 etc expecting you to run into it, so you stand completely still
  2. Count in your head, "OK, that was the timing for my dash. I waited half a beat and now I'm gonna run in"
  3. As you are dashing in, you see that your opponent is whiffing their d/f+2 or hopkick right in front of your face and you can now punish strong. Simply put, just wait half a beat, then dash in and punish.

The counter to the second type that waits until they see you dash is to either dash guard (if they use hopkick etc), or a very short dash quick CH move. The second option is more dangerous, but you can experiment with your timing to see if it works. Another type is the ones that use either 1,2 or simply a jab (or EWGF for Mishimas). If you get used to these guys, you can just dash crouch (f,F,db) and WS punish.

The Defender

Opponent whiffs a move and just tries to backdash or block which is technically considered the default, normal, "by-the-book" strategy. Almost everyone has a CH tendency in range 2, so the defender type is most common in range 0-1 because they are too scared to do anything now that it is "your turn" to attack. Against these opponents, you get a free mixup or even a dash mixup.

Defending Strategies

After you whiff a move and you are certain that your opponent is going to attack (basically, you are in the third situation of the trapping patterns), you will see that many opponents have a fairly set pattern of how they conduct their business.

The lightning-fast punisher

Usually fairly advanced players, this type of opponent is waiting for you to do anything, and is going to punish as fast as possible. It takes willpower to maintain this type of fast punishing mentality because you have to concentrate deeply on the opponent's action instead of letting your mind flow naturally and looking at the game in a bigger picture. Anyways, usually if you whiff a move against these players you are fucked. But if you realize your opponent is one of these lightning-fast punishers, you can bait them by whiffing a quick string on purpose. For example, Dragunov or Feng 1,3. Paul has a really good one which is 2,3 and if the second hit CH by itself, it will give Paul a free combo. Kazuya also has 2,2 that works in a similar way. Many other characters have these kinds of moves that are good bait strings. Once you successfully counter these opponents, one of three things are going to happen.

  1. Your opponent sucks and they will continuously get baited by this strategy from time to time.
  2. Your opponent starts getting a grasp of what you are doing and is going to drop the fast punishing mentality and become fairly bad at punishing out of fear that you are going to bait them with strings again.
  3. If they are advanced, they will just drop the fast punishing mentality and play the game in different ways without sacrificing their punishing capabilities too much.

The normal timing punisher

A punish that comes at a more average timing. Against fast recovery moves, this attempt to punish often fails. Your best bet is to block, but if you know your opponent's whiff punish will come out somewhat slowly, you can always predict their punish attempt and counter it. This kind of tactic is commonly used against Mishimas as they have EWGF primed. You duck immediately hoping that they wouldn't be able to punish your whiffed move and WS punish immediately. Basically, you are utilizing the first situation in the trapping patterns. If their attempted punish move is punishable on block, you block their move and reverse-punish them instead.

The mixup man

Will run up to you when you whiff a move and do a mixup. Hopkick or df+2 these guys or you can even use a slower CH move that does high damage (Paul's qcb+4 for example). Very common among Mishimas as they have a FUCKING RIDICULOUSLY LONG RANGE LOW. If in close range, you have to tread carefully as you may get CH by a slower mixup move (Jin's db+4 for example) even if you attempt quick pokes such as 1,2 or jab.

The super slow punisher

Either really bad at the game, or really advanced. You usually don't have enough frames to sidestep from these guys so your best bet is to backdash. Even if you try to CH with a fast poke such as 1,2, it is likely that you are going to lose and get hit by their slow punish attempt. If the opponent is bad at the game, they will attempt a slow punish with a normal punish move. However, if the opponent is advanced, they will attempt their 'slow punish' with a CH move under the prediction that you will try to poke. This is usually done by waiting a split second then attacking, or dashing in and using a CH move. Also as a side note, this strategy is very common among Dragunov players advanced or not (iWR+2).

Note that the more advanced the player, the faster they are to adapt between these play styles and the better they are at mixing up between these strategies. However, for lower level players, once you figure out that their playstyle fits one of the above categories, you can completely dismantle them by countering their play style, and their general game plan will go to shit. After that their offense/defense becomes really bad and you can almost do whatever you want. But by not knowing these concepts, you are just kind of blindly playing Tekken and you will just think "Oh, I just met someone who was a bad match up for me" when against someone who counters your play style. Therefore you will never really improve or take a really long time to improve, only to fall back into forgetting these basics. As a side note, many high level players instinctively know these concepts - they just don't know how to explain it because it's a complex subject and there is so much more to mindgames than simply the above.

103: The Waiting Game

The concept of what I call the waiting game, is the most basic of all mindgames in fighting games, which roughly translates to rock-paper-scissors. So what is the waiting game? It is a mindgame based on the fact that you have frame advantage over your opponent. The basic premise is simple: "I'm about to attack you so you better do something about it!", and you wait until your opponent attacks you and punish. In 2D games, this would involve pretending to attack, then guarding the opponent's shoryuken during wake up. Wait-punish. However, due to Tekken being a 3D game, there is more to this simple dynamic than rock-paper-scissors would suggest. In this post, we will dive into the complexity that arises from a seemingly simple mindgame.

When you have frame advantage over your opponent, obviously it is considered "your turn" to attack. The more frame advantage you have, the less options your opponent has. So let's say you are at about -5 frame disadvantage. You have four options:

  1. Defend: Expect the opponent's mix up and guess accordingly
  2. Attack: Mash in an attempt to counter the opponent's attempt to use a mix up
  3. Evade: Sidestep in the hopes of avoiding the opponent's attack and being able to punish your opponent's attack
  4. Forfeit: Back out. Even if the opponent lands a low, you will likely be able to create distance, therefore making it harder for the opponent to continue on. If the opponent does a mid, you block.

Conversely from the opponent's viewpoint:

  1. Mixup: Use a mixup to net some reward
  2. Counter Hit: Use a CH move predicting that the opponent will mash, because they are trying to prevent you from using a mixup
  3. Track: Use a homing move to track the opponent's sidestep
  4. Wait: Back out or wait, predicting the opponent will do an attack. Punish afterwards

Now at first sight, it might not seem obvious who has the better options. Let's do a deep dive comparison into the options:

Defend vs. Mixup

The attacker's base attack is usually a quick low. Many of these quick lows high crush as well, making the opponent's quick high attacks void, which is even more effective. The mid mixup would also likely be a fast but decent damaging poke that is safe. But for the risk of chipping off some life, the opponent may be able to low parry the low, or do a side step, or do some kind of reversal for the mid making the exchange quite unfavorable for the attacker. Also, there are fuzzy guards, timing guards, and micro movements to void many options in this exact situation. Therefore, you can say that once your (a) intention of attacking and (b) attack timing is read by the defender, the attacker is technically in unfavorable odds. If you are certain that your opponent is going to be defending, him knowing your intention of attacking is not a bad thing, because all you need to do is change your attack timing. Use a stronger, slower mix up. Dash in and use a mix up. Sidestep and use a mix up. The options are unlimited. However, to change up your attack timing means that you are sacrificing the fastest route of attack, opening yourself up to bigger counter hits. Ultimately, the defender seems to have almost as much advantage as the attacker does.

Attack vs. Counter hit

When the defender is in -5 frame disadvantage, there is not a lot of offensive options that he can use. Even an i10 jab will hit at the same time as a launching df+2, for which the opponent will get a juggle. But if you read that the opponent is going to go for a big mixup, you can usually squeeze in stronger, slower moves to prevent your opponent from attacking. Of course, this works for the attacker as well. If he thinks you will try to attack, he has +5 frames and therefore more time to squeeze in a large CH move. However, this kind of situation does not arise that much in higher level Tekken. The reason is obvious. The defender does not usually like to attack in situations like this. Therefore, the attacker gets bolder in their attacks. Even if the defender decides to attack, it is usually with moves such as 1,2 that don't do much to change the pace of the game i.e. a small risk. So in more advanced levels, the attackers often sidestep, sidestep-dash, or simply dash up to the opponent in situations like this allowing them to land more efficient mixups (and to change their timing of attack to beat advanced defence). The movement also allows for the attacker to often times dodge retaliatory jabs. Again, in reverse, this opens up the attacker to larger attacks from the defender such as df+2, but that means the defender used df+2 as a prediction. In a -5 frame situation, that becomes an i20 move, making it extremely dangerous. Basically, the Counter hit option is what the defender instinctively fears the most, and what makes the attacker's mixups work in his favor.

Evade vs. Track

Many moves in Tekken track in certain directions. Therefore, the evade option is used by more advanced players who are familiar with the attacker's moves. However, a dash attack or sidestep attack etc. would often times track this sidestep attempt. The attacker can also use homing attacks in order to prevent the defender from sidestepping and make it easier for them to use mixups next time. Since sidesteps can be extremely rewarding, but at the same time very dangerous, many advanced players resort to micro movements such as sidestep guard, sidestep backdash, sidestep attack etc. in situations like these, which are a more efficient option. Sidestep backdash will often result in slower tracking moves getting blocked, and linear moves getting avoided. Sidestep attacks also have their merits but can in turn be caught by slower moves such as df+2, even if they are relatively linear.

Wait

Finally, we get to the waiting game. In Tekken, the waiting game can work in two ways. First is the basic way of waiting game: since the opponent doesn't have a lot of options, 1,2 or jabs are the default expected offensive option from the defender. At first thought, it is almost insane to think that the defender will do a hopkick as a default option in -5 frames but given that your high crushing low would evade his 1,2 and his hopkick defeat your low, it wouldn't be too far out there to think that the defender could possibly hopkick. So if you think your opponent is not the risk taking type (will low parry or duck instead of trying hopkick), it might not be a bad options to crouch. But the safest option for you here would be to sidestep-punish (and thus why sidestep during frame advantages are so commonly used). But as you get more advanced in the game, there is much less predicting because you cannot read the opponent's mind 100% of the time and trying to predict all the time would basically mean that you are gambling a lot. So advanced players use calculated predictions a lot of times based on the opponent's movements. "I see the opponent dashing in! He is probably going to do a mix up. Must hopkick, df+2 or 1,2 before he is able to land his attack" This is why you will see a lot of advanced players dash into opponent's faces and then just back out. Proximity creates pressure, the opponent is able to use much more moves now that he is closer to you than when he was further out. You feel like the opponent is going to attack, but you don't know what he is going to do. You try to prevent him by attacking, but he has already backed out. Now he is punishing you with his hopkick instead. This is the advanced level waiting game. This is the ultimate reason why the attacker has a huge edge over the defender - a chance to whiff punish the defender's attack. And if you watch high level Tekken games, especially Koreans, you will actually see them attempting this a lot (with some characters more so than others due to their punishing capabilities).

Forfeit

As for the defender, he will usually be happy if you are playing this waiting game because if he backs out as well, he gets to reset the situation. However, if you think about the attacker's perspective, yes, he has lost his chance to take some life off his opponent, but he has also not taken damage either and has plenty more chances to do this. The defender will think "OK, last time he didn't attack. Surely he is going to try to do something this time. I am going to defend. Oh shit, he's running in my face again. I have to do something, I have to do something! Attack, attack!" and there goes half his life bar after his whiff. As a side note, Knee is pretty damn good being patient like this and creating multiple opportunities where the opponent can't help but try to attack.

Example of the waiting game in action by LowHigh's Katarina: Successful Attempt, Failed to punish

104: Initiator Advantage

The initiator's advantage is a very simple concept that most decent tekken players instinctively understand, but even if a concept is almost instinct among many, it's always better to have a deeper understanding of a concept so you have the ability to properly analyze your game. The initiator's advantage is where your opponents are not able to respond to your quick pokes as fast as they should in theory. For example, most df+1s or 1,2s are -1 on block. If the opponent is a newbie, their default response would be to jab in between so that they could beat the initiator's attack. However, more advanced players will mix in high crushing moves, sidesteps, crouching, backdash punish etc. in order to beat those autopilot responses. Therefore, the better you get at Tekken, the more thoughtful you become while responding to simple pokes. This means that after guarding simple & quick pokes (jab, df+1, magic 4, the 1st or 2nd hit of a string etc.), the initiator has a pretty good advantage even though the move might be negative in frames when blocked. This is because the intiator would already have a plan of action loaded up in his brain as soon as his df+1 is guarded, but the opponent would have to quickly decide what he needs to respond with. And a wrong response is many times punished hard.

For example, Let's take Lee. His df+1 is i13, -1 on block. The following situations could arise -

  • df+1 guarded: initiator sidestep guards - would avoid opponent's jabs, df+1 (depending on sidestep direction), hopkicks etc. and would guard opponent's tracking moves
  • df+1 guarded: initiator does sidestep 4,4 - would avoid opponent's jabs, df+1 (depending on sidestep direction), hopkicks etc. and would CH opponent's slow moves
  • df+1 guarded: initiator does another df+1 - would beat opponent's slow moves such as hopkick, df+2, and would hit the opponent if he crouched. Will be defeated by 1,2 or standing 4
  • df+1 guarded: initiator does d+3 which is a high crushing quick low that is -3 frames on hit - defeats opponent's quick high attacks, hits if opponent is standing. Will be defeated by hopkick or crouching
  • df+1 guarded: initiator does 1,2 - will only be defeated if opponent does 1,2 which doesn't hurt that much. Likely will not be punished strong even if opponent is crouching unless he absolutely predicted the 1,2

As you can see, the opponent has to be very careful and would have trouble responding the correct way unless he has some kind of a read or advantage. But even so, say for example, Lee does df+1 (guarded) - sidestep df+1 or d+3 or 4,4. The opponent now has to again deal with the situation after those moves. This is why you will see many advanced players seemingly boldly use things such as df+1 (guarded) - df+1 even though they are in frame disadvantage. They are not being bold. They are using calculated risks that take advantage of their initiator advantage to minimize damage to them with the goal of hopefully baiting the opponent to make a mistake.

Another example is strings such as Katarina's 4,4,4,4,4 or her ws3,3,3,3,3

  • 4 = -7 frames, but most opponents are hesitant to attack afterwards because she has follow up attacks. This allows Katarina to be bold and even attempt mixups while opponent is waiting for the 2nd string to come out.
  • 4,4 = -7 frames, but most opponents expect the 3rd attack to come out as well
  • 4,4,4 = -5 frames, but she also has her 4th and 5th strings which makes the opponent hesitant to try big mixups aftwards

The opponent's response will often not be frame-perfect after guarding these strings. Katarina can also duck jabs and do her crouching mixups, sidestep mids, or use her 4,4,4 string again or df+4 to CH slower moves. Therefore, mixing up the 4 or 4,4 or 4,4,4 or 4,4,4,4,4 is pretty important in order to ruin your opponent's plan. If you just keep using 4,4,4, your opponent will very likely get used to your patterns afterwards and start responding properly since you are in negative frames (meaning technically you have a bigger chance of making a mistake since the opponent can apply the waiting game on you).

Summary of the initiator's advantage required elements:

  • a quick poke or string with relatively fast recovery that give opponents very little time to make decisions. This results in the opponent either becoming more likely to make mistakes (autopilot response) or very hesitant to attack even when he is in frame advantage
  • various plans of action that minimize risk to the initiator. This allows you to think half a beat faster than your opponent as soon as they guard or get hit by your poke. Basically, you already have a plan of action as soon as you see your poke go out, but your opponent has to quickly realize what just happened and make a decision
  • variety, in order to give the opponent the element of surprise (confusion) which lowers their response time unless they are on autopilot. Basically, you break apart your opponent's thought patterns so they lose their plan of action and have to quickly react to what just happened and come up with a completely new plan

In conclusion, although theoretically, using only the most efficient/effective moves seems like the best option at all times, due to the initiator's advantage it is much more profitable to utilize variety to your benefit to confuse your opponent. Variety makes it harder for your opponent to predict and expect what's coming next. Although an advanced player will generally predict what type of action you will take ("I think he's going to use a tracking move but I'm not 100% sure so I'll do a sidestep backdash", "I think he will do a big mixup so i'll try to CH", "I think he's going to sidestep attack so I'm going to df+2", "I think he's going to try to use a CH move on me so I'm going to sidestep guard" etc.), if you utilize the initiator's advantage, it becomes harder for opponents to predict your moves and it also ruins their plan of action if the predicted move doesn't come out. Even if you whiff your move, if the opponent wasn't expecting such a move, it is quite likely your opponent will not be able to punish it. If you are stuck using the same moves over and over again, I'd advise you look at high level Korean players of your character and see if they use seemingly ineffective moves. Some characters have more of these kind of moves that can be utilized as tools for initiators advantage, but all characters have at least some.

If you want a deeper understanding of the initiator's game in action, take a look at this match from Lowhigh's Katarina where he uses a lot of these concepts with moves such as d+3, df+1, 4,4,4 string series, df+4, d+4 etc.

P.S. Initiator's advantage also applies to moves such as d+4. Even though you are in frame disadvantage (-2 frames), you have many ways to defeat the opponent's attacks. Opponent does jabs or standing 4 as a default? Respond with another low kick/crouch jab or a high crushing move. Opponent does df+1? Crouch jab wins or you can even sidestep depending on direction. Opponent does sidestep? Another d+4 will likely track. Opponent does hopkick (very unlikely)? ws4 will float the opponent. Opponent just backs off? Another d+4 will hit. Opponent tries to low parry or sidestep or dash in for a mixup? ws2 will launch them and many times it will track certain sidestep directions depending on the move.

105: Defender Exploitation

A Law player in Korea once did an experiment on how much ‘frame advantage’ Law gets after going into the slide motion and the opponent tries to block the slide. The experiment went like this: Law does slide motion - opponent tries to block low - Law dashes up and does a mixup. It took about 28 frames MINIMUM for the opponent to respond after the slide motion. That is how long it takes for the opponent to decide to get out of defense mode once they are mentally preparing to block an attack.

Defender Exploitation is literally just that. You are exploiting the fact that your opponent has decided to defend. You can have just a simple +1 frame advantage off a jab. But if you are certain that your opponent is going to guard, you can use a more aggressive and slower approach and that is where the fun starts. This works because it takes longer than expected for opponents to transition from deciding to defend to deciding to attack.

The defender’s mentality (or defense mode) happens for mainly 4 reasons:

  1. Opponent is scared of CH
  2. Opponent is waiting to punish you or is expecting a move to come out and is preparing to block
  3. Opponent is preparing to utilize movement to neutralize most of your attack options
  4. Opponent doesn’t know what to do and just froze up

Beginner players must keep in mind that the benefits of defender exploitation only becomes apparent as you climb the ranks up higher. I would say in general, if you are above the red ranks, you are able to utilize this concept more to your advantage. Reason being: the more advanced you and your opponent become, the more likely your opponent is going to utilize movement to avoid many of your moves. In lower levels, many players are not really good at utilizing movement in a meaningful way. Therefore, they utilize (often inefficient) predictions to try to win a match. Also, opponents are often unfamiliar with frames and will attempt attacks when they should be guarding. In higher level Tekken, players understand that constantly attacking is not the best option due to movement, reversals, low parries, high/low crush moves, power crushes, block punishes etc. In fact, as I've mentioned before in the "Initiator Advantage" post, even if you are in frame disadvantage, being 100% correct about your opponent's attack timing many times puts the attacker in a losing position in the long term due to the abundant evasive/reversal/low parry etc. options. The only time this doesn't really apply is against walls where you can basically murder your opponent by risking a mixup (the return is better than the risk plus the chance to easily win a match). The more advanced you get, the more you realize that constantly attacking is not really that beneficial, especially if your attack timing is read.

In order to avoid having their attacks mostly neutralized, advanced players commonly utilize off-beat attacks which can theoretically seem inefficient. However, if you understand the mindset of the defender, you will be able to often massively benefit from this.

An obvious example of defender exploitation I will go over now is the Mishima wavedash. If not able to punish with EWGF, Mishimas often apply mixups after an opponent whiffs a move. However, if correctly timed, many of these plainly-timed mixups can be guarded by reaction/fuzzy guard/timing guard/micro movements etc. Therefore, most Mishimas do a wavedash to hide their attack timing. This has 4 benefits:

  1. Opponent HAS to guess whether to duck or not
  2. Opponent does not know when the attack will come out. This means that even if the opponent ducked to block the hellsweep, it would be ballsy for him to continue to duck. Most opponents will stand up at this point, only to get hit by hellsweep once they stand up (it is one of the hellsweep techniques to use hellsweep a half beat after they have visually confirmed that the opponent has ducked). If the opponent gets used to this and continues to duck, then the Mishima can visually confirm that as well and use a mid to launch the opponent.
  3. Due to option 2, if the opponent gets impatient and tries to attack, the Mishima player can CH with EWGF etc. Also, even if they try to SS, incorrectly timed SS will get launched by EWGF
  4. Whiffed moves from wavedash such as EWGF are difficult to punish due to not being able to predict the attack timing

All of the above also applies to non-Mishima characters for defender exploitation as well, albeit it may not be as scary as the Mishima options. Let's take Paul in a situation where the opponent is in defense mode:

  1. Paul can do a mixup. With opponent's backdash or micro movements, it is very unlikely that Paul will land a clean demoman. Therefore, in defensive situations most opponents choose not to duck against Paul because it is the less damaging option. However, Paul can use moves such as SS+3 which is -12 frames on block (and has a strong guaranteed follow up if CH). Many mid mixup options exist combined with SS+3 such as deathfist, qcb+1, qcb+2, f+1+2, u/b+2 etc. Paul can also elect to use qcf+3 which is -14 on block but has a good mixup move which is qcf+3+4. All options are almost impossible to visually confirm and block - you have to guess once you are already in this situation.
  2. Once Paul goes into SS, it is usually not a good idea to attack because if the opponent tries to attack (even if it is a hopkick) after visually confirming the SS, SS+3 will often times CH. qcf+3 works in a similar way. Therefore, when Paul goes into SS or qcf motion, opponents again expect an attack to happen and freeze up, going into guard mode. If Paul goes into qcf, he can cancel out with his SS mixups which is generally a safer option for Paul, and if the opponent freezes up after SS, Paul can dash in and do a qcf mixup which in this case, he can even likely mixup with a demoman to extract more damage. This works because the opponent froze up and was not able to move properly. Basically in this situation, the opponent does not know when Paul will attack.
  3. Due to option 2, if the opponent gets impatient and tries to attack, he might get CH by qcb+1, ub+2, ss3 or qcf+3 etc. Paul can also utilize the waiting game and punish strong with deathfist etc. or expect the opponent to attack and use moves such as qcb+4 or df+2. Many of these moves track SS to one degree or another as well, especially when opponent does not time his SS properly.
  4. Whiffed moves during these off-beat attacks can be harder to punish. Have you ever unexpectedly blocked a deathfist etc. and failed to properly punish it? Have you ever seen your opponent unexpectedly whiff a very punishable move and failed to punish it? This is when this usually happens.

So as you can see, non-Mishima characters have a similar way of exploiting the opponent when they go into defense mode. They use slower, more powerful moves that often times require closing of the distance. Every character pretty much has these options but might require different methods to access the moves such as crouching, sliding, closing distance, going into a stance, executing a special movement, sidestepping etc. When a character does not have more powerful mixup options, it is usually because they have a ridiculously overpowered tool that covers for it in the form of CH, special moves such as ki charges, various low options (sometimes unparryable moves included) combined with evasive and powerful mids, or in Dragunov's case, his iWR2.

Let's do a quick examination on each character to see what kind of powerful mixup options they have:

  • Akuma: Can apply powerful mixups out of his demon flip which is dangerous to use if the opponent is expecting the flip. However, he has constant access to his high risk d+4 and also has powerful mixups once his gauge is charged.
  • Alisa: does not have much powerful mixup tools. d+3 is risky but can go into stance or crouch in order to apply safer mixup options. Also has the chainsaw stance
  • Asuka: d+1+2. Also 3~4 but this is quite reactable.
  • Bob: CD mixups, powerful 1+2 throw
  • Bryan: qcb+3 and taunt
  • Claudio: db+3 (technically blockable on reaction but becomes harder to block with special inputs or movement), SS+4 and starburst moves including STB d+2,2
  • DJ: hellsweep
  • Dragunov: One of the exceptions to the rule. His only real mixup option is d+2 and a mid. However, his iWR+2 is an extremely overpowered pressure tool which will push you towards the wall within a short period of time if you continue to block. Therefore, against Dragunov you are forced to attack more frequently in order to prevent him from applying iWR+2 pressure on you. It also helps that d+2 is hard to low parry.
  • Eddy: stance mixups
  • Eliza: stance mixups (risky). db+4 (risky and not particularly good if not CH). decent mixup options only in close distance. pretty good damage mixup options when gauge is charged in close distance (becomes very powerful at wall). has a ridiculously over powered pressure tool (jump qcb+4) which is used to cover up for the lack of strong lows
  • Feng: qcf mixups, SS mixups, BT mixups
  • Geese: d+1+2 is reactable but harder to react with movement mixed in. SS3. Does not have strong mixup option except that he constantly has d+4 and various chains that apply pressure to opponent. becomes ridiculously powerful with gauge charged (one mistake could mean death)
  • Gigas: quite a rare breed due to his constant access to his powerful d+2 but his strong mid options are usually quite unsafe or slow. Also has a powerful 1+2 throw
  • Heihachi: db+2 (kind of reactable), FC.df+4, hellsweep (after 1st hit) mixups along with the extremely powerful mid options such as ff+2 or f+4
  • Hwoarang: stance mixups, BT mixups
  • Jack: b,db,d,df+1, db+2, FC.df+1+2, crouching also gives him access to a safe and decent damage low. However, Jack is one of the best characters that can create defender exploitation situations due to his f+2, db+1, df+2, and 2. Due to his i12 low db+1, opponents have to always be aware of ducking or low parrying. His i10 CH move f+2 makes it scary for opponents to attack as well. And his df+2 goes under jabs. Although all of these moves have major faults, they are nonetheless effective at making opponents go into defense mode. And therefore Jack players are able to dash in and mix up f,F+1 and FC.db+1 etc.
  • Jin: hellsweep & f,F+3
  • Josie: CD mixups
  • Katarina: FC.df+4, ws3,3,3,3,3 (hit confirmable. Can stop on 3rd hit if opponent did not get hit). Her db+3 is quite reactable
  • Kazumi: RSS mixups
  • Kazuya: hellsweep, f,F+3 etc. FC.df+3+4 is a great tool because it ignores opponent’s quick high attacks and also will works as a mixup as well and is only -11. Benefit of this move is opponent becomes more hesitant to attack and then mixup city happens
  • King: Most powerful mixup comes from his chain throws which the opponent has to 100% guess.
  • Kuma: hellsweep, hunting stance mixups
  • Lars: f,F+4,3. FC mixups allows for safer low but almost all his lows are super high risk. Lars’ options other than his lows are extremely good so he kind of covers up with his other moves.
  • Law: sliding, powerful 1+2 throw, f+2+3 throw useful to opponents not expecting
  • Lee: sliding, FC.df+4
  • Leo: db+4,2 or df+2+3 (reactable if opponent is completely prepared) in close distance or FC.df+3. Also has qcf+1
  • Lili: BT mixups. Normal low options are usually reactable if opponent is completely prepared. However, becomes harder to block with various moves/movement: f,F+4, db+3+4. Lacks the tools if BT mixups and f,F+4 etc are not used.
  • Ling Xiaoyu: AOP mixups, SS mixups, BT mixups
  • Lucky Chloe: lacks strong mixup tools. d/f+4 (reactable), FC.df+1, powerful 1+2 throw, not-so-great Cali roll mixup, strong basic pokes and powercrush move b+1+2 covers for a lot, her various lows are kind of hard to punish, Cali roll does incredible amount of damage
  • Master Raven: powerful mixups from qcf, db+3 etc
  • Miguel: lacks strong mixup tools. his db+1 is reactable and other lows are chipping tools. can only apply pressure with df+1 series and uf+1, b+3. hence why Knee says “if you’re using Miguel, you’re just making the game harder on yourself”
  • Nina: d,df+4 (unsafe, kind of reactable), chain throws, poison breath
  • Noctis: kind of lacks the strong mixup tools. demoman (requires close distance), db+1+2 (very hard to react to especially if db+1+2 is mixed in often), FC.df+2, d+2 (unparryable) combined with ridiculously powerful mid tools such as iWR+1+2 or db+1+2 (long reach, tracks, almost impossible to punish), ridiculously good punishing options (f+2, df+2), front roll mixups
  • Paul: demoman (requires close distance), SS+3, qcf+3, qcb+3,2,1
  • Shaheen: sliding, SNK mixups
  • Steve: db+3,2 (requires close distance, unsafe), d+2 string, FC.df+1, ALB mixup, ext DCK f+2 (breaks guard)
  • Yoshimitsu: FC.df+1 or FC.db,b+1 (unblockable. technically reactable as well), Seppuku, ub+1+2 , n+1 (the unblockable sword spinning thing), stance mixups

As you can see, so much more options open up when distance is closed and allowed to use slower moves (although a few characters actually lack the ability to force a strong mixup). Opponents instinctively fear allowing this to happen. That is why movement is utilized as a pressure tool in advanced Tekken instead of simply attacking.

Advanced players more often than not use visual confirmations instead of pure predictions to carry out their game. This includes movement, and this is why defender exploitation really works in the attacker’s favor since the opponent is unable to visually confirm many of the attack options. But the real benefit of defender exploitation is that it allows you to land CHs more often. Since taking advantage of the opponent’s defense mode means that you are being inefficient with frame utilization, that means that the opponent could try to attack in between (because if not, the attacker will just dash in his face and apply pressure tools). Hence, you will land more CHs if you attack EFFICIENTLY with normal timing attacks instead of using off-beat attacks. So in advanced play, you will see normal timing attacks mixed in with off-beat attacks that essentially make the opponent not able to accurately predict the opponent’s next move.

Example 1 - utilizing defender exploitation to close the distance

Example 2 - defender exploitation combined with micro movement. d/f+1 hit, sidestep, dash, d+3. attempts waiting game after d/f+1 hits by SS. dashes in and does a mixup since opponent did not attack. These type of micro movements are designed to avoid most common responses from the opponent and almost automatically punish/mixup depending on what the opponents response is. It is seemingly simple and perhaps seems almost mindless, but a lot of thought has gone into developing a method to quickly continue aggression without having it seem like you are just standing and waiting for an attack.

Example 3 - LowHigh going into crouch mixup after opponent's whiffed move instead of immediately trying for a quick standing mixup. works because he has constantly been using d/f+4 during the match to attempt CHs

Example 4 - LowHigh going into crouch mixup after a jab which is only +1 frame. He makes this safer by sidestep ducking so he can avoid the opponent's quick linear moves.

Example 5 - attempting defender exploitation mixup and failing

Example 6 - utilizing defender exploitation with stances and special movement - Wecka Ling Xiaoyu

Example 7 - Common example of Law attempting slide motion to put opponent into defense mode

Example 8 - Knee using taunt jet upper after an Mr. Naps' whiffed move. Mr. Naps likely had enough time to jab in between or SS but because he was in defense mode, he was hit by the taunt. Bryan players who utilize taunt well naturally come to an understanding of the defender exploitation and other advanced concepts. Hence probably why Mr. Naps became one of the best players in the U.S. with almost no competition

Example 9 - Knee utilizing defender exploitation by attempting a mixup with iWS+1 against Mr. Naps by dashing multiple times. The dash motion makes it seem like qcb+3 will come out any time which is why Mr. Naps does not attack.

Example match: This LowHigh (Paul) vs Knee (Kazuya) match has an incredible amount of defender exploitation. This is mostly because these characters have non-traditional ways of attacking. Although Kazuya can be utilized as a pure 50/50 character, his hellsweep is high risk compared to the damage it does. Kazuya is better utilized with CH, punishing, and sneaking in lows while going mostly for his safe mid mix up options. Same goes for Paul. Although he has powerful mixup tools, his lows are generally unsafe and is better to sneak them in every now and instead focus more on CH and punishing. Therefore, defender exploitation and the waiting game is highly utilized to make the opponent impatient to maximize the chance of CHs and punishing.

Side note 1: defender exploitation is also the reason why players often get hit by off-beat df+2s a lot. You have the frame advantage, dash into opponent's face, don't do anything for a split second, initiate df+2. Opponents will often get CH by it or try to sidestep (too slow) and get launched.

Side note 2: Defender exploitation also works in mid distance as well. A common example is Hwoarang's f,F+4 or Kazumi's wr2. If opponent freezes up to guard these moves or try to sidestep, the attacker can just simply run up and do a mixup or apply other pressure tools (in Hwoarang's case, it's common to use 1,2 to track sidestep and go into his stance). You might be thinking "Well, surely the opponent will react by the time Hwoarang is running up" but it takes longer than you think for the defender to realize that Hwoarang is already up in their face. This type of attack often throws the opponent off because they were expecting a mid range move to come out.

Conclusion: Defender exploitation is beneficial because of four reasons:

  1. It makes it harder for your opponents read your attack timing or what type of attack you are going to use. You might not even attack and utilize the waiting game after applying pressure with movement!
  2. If you KNOW your opponent is going to guard, you can "gain" more frame advantage than what the frame data suggests because it takes longer than expected for your opponent to get out of defense mode
  3. CHs become easier if you mix in off-beat attacks with regularly timed attacks (the theoretically correct attacks according to frames). This is because the opponent becomes impatient due to "losing" a lot more frames than he theoretically should. "Oh, he's dashing in my face after a jab is he? Next time I will use a df+2 and get him". Instead, he gets hit by a jab-standing 4 or jab-df+2 basic flowchart pattern by the opponent. If your opponent doesn't understand these concepts, it will feel to them like you are constantly changing up your play style and he will never be able to truly understand what you are doing
  4. You are able to collect data on your opponent while you are delaying your attacks and would be able to better predict his next move when a similar situation arises.

Defender exploitation, the waiting game, initiator's advantage etc. are all advanced concepts that are seemingly counter intuitive because you are not playing the game in a mathematically correct way. However, understanding and utilizing of concepts like these are what truly separates the best players from the others. You can easily tell how good someone is at tekken by the frequency of theoretically correct attacks they attempt. Counter intuitively, the more frequently a player attacks at theoretically correct timings, the less likely he is a truly advanced player although he might be pretty damn good. The only thing these players are focused on is "I've got to attack before the opponent has a chance to do so and condition my opponent!". To one degree or another, they utilize the waiting game or defender exploitation as well. However, they are not really aware of the concepts so they will eventually revert back to merely attacking at every opportunity they get again. Although some of these players might be known to be a tournament-level player, it is unlikely they will be able to hold their ground against the best players in the community especially in longer death matches.

Thanks for reading.

106: In-game Image

TL;DR: Advanced players utilize self-expression methods to build an image to make their opponents hold certain beliefs about them, then confuse the opponents by betraying those beliefs completely.

A lot of getting good at Tekken has to do with how accurate our predictions are. This is quite a difficult task because you can never accurately read an opponent’s thought process on WHY his decisions were made. What I mean by this is that although you might be able to predict that the opponent will use an EWGF or your opponent might duck etc., you can’t really accurately deduce on what went through his head to make that decision. But because Tekken is a game that is decided by moves that are materialized in-game, we can get kind of close on predicting WHAT the opponent will do. And the more we understand the opponent, the more likely we will be able to accurately predict what the opponent's next action will be. So even though we may never be able to see through the opponent’s decision making process, we can try to understand what is going through his head and get close to it.

It is quite easy to predict the opponent's next move based on your observations. Everyone has at least some kind of habit and moves they like to use because they are the efficient, and this tendency becomes more apparent the less advanced a player is. As you reach the late orange ranks and the early red ranks, you can commonly find the most efficient form of play style from a character. In this context, efficient meaning frame-efficient and the appropriate use of many of their moves depending on the distance and situation. However, as the ranks go higher, players become better at advanced mind games and start to deviate from the most efficient form of their character usage basically becoming less efficient but more unpredictable. Because being efficient with your character can be interpreted as acting out of habit. For example, for a Mishima player it is common to think “Yes, at this distance, people usually run into the EWGF so I will EWGF right now because it works the majority of the time”. This type of mindless gameplay will get you murdered in an advanced level death match. Basically, the most efficient form of character is easy to predict once you are used to the opponent’s character. So the opponent’s character is the single most important factor to base your predictions.

However, the more advanced a player becomes, the less the player will act out of habit and will act more out of observation of their opponent's past actions. This seems like quite the irony and doesn’t seem to make sense at first: if advanced players play based on how their opponent’s play, how does the mind game of two advanced players against each other even work? Well, one part is that you HAVE to attack your opponent in order to win so you’re going to have some tendencies no matter what. And this is where the concept of in-game image comes in.

In-game image is a term I borrowed from a Texas Hold ’em tactic called “Table Image”. It is basically your perceived image at the table you are sitting at. For example, you can act like an idiot who will go all-in frequently at almost every single hand you are involved in and people will know that statistically you cannot be holding a great hand. Or you can act real conservative and only raise strong when you got better than a pair of Kings in your hand. Basically, in advanced level poker, players switch up their table image and exploit their opponents by using a counter strategy of their perceived table image. If you are perceived to be the conservative player in your table, you can raise the pot with trash hands and your opponents will get scared and fold and you can basically steal small amounts of money away from them. If you are perceived to be the maniac, you can have pocket aces and raise all-in but your opponent who has an Ace King will think you have nothing and call your ‘bluff’ and lose all their money. Advanced level Tekken players do the same thing through self-expression. But before we go into detail on the methods of self-expression, let me give an example of how image building works for in-game image to help with your understanding.

Example: In far distance, Paul uses df+2 once. Opponent does not have any way to punish. Opponent runs in a little closer but is cautious since he knows Paul might do another df+2 if he tries to run in. Paul back dashes and uses df+2 again. Opponent still isn’t able to punish. This time the opponent is a lot closer so they have a brief exchange. Distance becomes quite large again. Paul does another df+2 in mid to far distance. Opponent is fully aware that Paul is trying to get lucky and is hoping that he will run into df+2. So opponent dashes in again but guards, being cautious about another df+2. So when Paul dashes in, opponent back dashes and is getting ready to punish thinking the df+2 will come out. However, the Paul player is an advanced player and is fully aware that the opponent is going to guard due to the frequency of df+2 he has spammed. He dashes in and does a qcf+3 betraying the opponent’s prediction.

In this example, the Paul player has built an image of being a df+2 spammer in the moment. Opponent observes and is cautious of the df+2, therefore when the opponent becomes cautious of the next situation a df+2 will come out, Paul betrays his image and hits the opponent with a low. Basically he MAKES his opponent believe that another df+2 will come out and therefore predicts that he will defend and uses that information against him.

If you think about it, this is how the most famous mind game in Street Fighter works. Ryu throws two fireballs in a row. The opponent probably assumes that Ryu might throw another fireball and will likely try to jump over and kick. But Ryu does not plan on using another fireball this time and is predicting that his opponent will jump with a pretty high chance... He is ready to use shoryuken as soon as he sees his opponent jump! Three fireballs in a row doesn't mean the opponent HAS to jump. He can still guard the fireball and take some chip damage. But he would be missing out on an opportunity to possibly extract some good damage. The fireball is not a 50/50 mix up with the shoryuken because nothing happens to the opponent if he doesn't jump. However, spamming the fireball often does make the opponent want to capitalize on the opportunity to punish with a jump kick. And exactly because of the fireballs, Ryu can pretty accurately predict that opponent's preferable solution to counter an expected fireball is to jump.

The principle concept to creating your in-game image is this: Rather than trying to predict your opponent’s next action with thousands of different possibilities, plant an idea into his head about what type of play style you have and therefore predict his action (since he will be observing what you are doing). In a way, we are basically forcing them to make a decision. If I walk up to a random woman and say “Hi”, there are a million different things that could happen including the person saying her greetings back, giving me a strange look, ignoring what she heard, walking away, saying stuff like “do I know you?”, or straight up freaking out on me etc. But if I walk up to the lady and yell “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that?”, I can predict with a certain accuracy that she would be confused and talk back to me with a sort of statement that is intended to figure out what is going on. Action causes reaction, therefore, expressing yourself is important in creating an image.

Self-expression to create an in-game image is done through taking any kind of action. The important thing is that it should send a clear message to your opponent: you are looking for a CH, you are going for big mixups at almost every single opportunity, you are trying to throw them as much as possible etc. Anyways, there are mainly five methods of self-expression that sort of blend into each other:

  1. Method of attack: what moves are you using to attack with? most characters have at least one or two over powered moves such as EWGF for Mishimas, qcb+4 for Paul, d/f+2 for many characters, b+1 for steve, iWR+2 for dragunov and claudio etc. This makes you fit into the stereotype of a typical Mishima/paul/steve player etc and will make it easier for the opponent to predict your next move. If you know this fact, you can use it against them.
  2. Timing of attack: self-explanatory. How frame-efficient are you with your attacks? Are you utilizing a lot of defender exploitation methods?
  3. Frequency of attack: how often you attack is an important factor to determining your expressiveness. The more often you attack, the more likely the opponent will take risks with predicting and immediately counter or dodge & punish your attacks. The less frequently you attack, the less likely the opponent is going to be ready for your attack. Are you a pressure machine that tries to attack at every opportunity by utilizing small frame advantages (or try to SS attack often on frame disadvantages)?
  4. Frequency of risk taking: how often are you taking risks? do you blatantly duck a lot? do you try to iWS punish your opponents often? do you hopkick often? do you use dangerous lows often? do you try to poke out the opponent when you are in frame disadvantage? how much frame disadvantage will it take for you to NOT even try poking? the frequency of your risk taking behaviors determines a lot of the opponent’s response. If you duck often, it is very likely that your opponent will start using a lot of mids. If you try to iWS your opponent often, your opponent will start using less jabs and highs and try to CH you with mids or delayed quick CH moves. If you hopkick often, you opponent will jab more often to catch you in air, wait for you attack many times and stop ducking as much in order to punish you. If you use a lot of risky lows such as hell sweeps, your opponent will start throwing out more CHs and hopkicks etc and start blocking low a lot more.
  5. Movement: Self help guru Tony Robbins commonly says “motion creates emotion”. This is true in Tekken as well. If you stay still, the opponent will have no idea what you are thinking. It also makes it easier for them to estimate the distance for their moves and make it land or not whiff. If you are in constant motion, the opponent cannot easily determine if you are going to dash in and attack or backdash and make their moves whiff etc. Also as mentioned in previous posts, proximity creates pressure on the opponents. Like everything else, movement is a form of information exchange where you are expressing your intentions to attack or to escape the situation. Lack of movement = lack of self expression. Some of you might be wondering, "Well then, what about when you stop moving all of a sudden? That seems to be pretty effective?". And this is true to a certain extent. Especially with characters like Paul, moving and suddenly stopping seems like he is getting prepared for an attack. And I go over this concept in my previous post "Defender Exploitation".

Practical examples/applications

  1. Example 1 - The sidestep mix ups: Many characters have a sidestep low and a mid move to use as a mixup. These are very effective tools. However, the more often you attack with sidestep mixups, the more likely your opponent will be waiting for you to sidestep at a certain point and counter you with moves such as standing 4, d/f+2, or the hopkick even before you can initiate the mixup. In situations like this, advanced players often will side step and NOT attack and instead either play the waiting game or dash in etc. For example, your opponent will be waiting for you to jab and do a SS mix up. After blocking the jab, they will wait for a half beat and try to counter. However, if you have used a bunch of sidestep mix ups, you can next time do things such as jab-d/f+2 or a slower CH move and expect your opponent to be CH by it instead. Or you could even just SS and then back out to play the waiting game.
  2. Example 2 - Jab spamming: Once you start jab spamming with 1 or 1,2 etc in certain situations such as when you are closing distance with your opponents, your opponents will at some point try to duck and punish or use a high crush move to counter it. Instead of using a jab next time, you can use moves such as d/f+2 or a type of hop kick etc to try to catch the opponent using a iWS move or a slower high crush move.
  3. Example 3 - Paul spamming qcb+4: this one is a pretty common example for most decent level Pauls. Once the perfect distance is created, Paul players often qcb+4 just like Mishimas would EWGF at the perfect distance. The Paul player could either reduce the frequency of his qcb+4 and make the opponent think they are safe to attack, or they could instead spam it frequently and then predict the opponent ducking at some point and use quick mids such as deathfist.
  4. Example 4 - Big mix up man: The more often you use big mix ups against opponents, the more likely they will try moves such as the jab, standing 4, d/f+2, or hop kick before you can do a mix up. You can do a big mix up a couple of times then try to play the waiting game on them to punish their options. You could also certainly try to CH them before their moves are activated as well.
  5. Example 5 - Dashing in with a pattern: The more frequently you try to close the distance against your opponent in the neutral, the more likely he will try to time an attack at the moment of your dash. You can utilize dash guards or off-timing movements in order to punish your opponents or catch them off guard and close the distance even further.
  6. Example 6 - Micro movement guru: The more often you utilize micro movement/timing guard etc to neutralize most of the opponent’s time efficient attacks options, the more likely he will try to use defender exploitation methods (if he is advanced). After utilizing movement as a neutralization method often, you can expect them to try a sort of defender exploitation method and counter before they try to close the distance. Sometimes you can catch them with d/f+2 or hopkicks etc but those are pretty big risk taking methods - hence why jabs and standing 4 etc are used more often in advanced levels.
  7. Example 7 - Solid player gone wild: The less you use risky mix ups, the more likely the opponent will care less about your mix up attempts and sort of allow you to do those mix ups by respecting your turn to attack. If you have been playing solid for quite a while, you can use this against your opponent and act like you are completely insane and use heavy mix ups to chip out huge chunks of your opponent’s health in a round and win easily. These are what I call designer matches where you intentionally do something radically different to win a single match. Designer matches can be most frequently found in tournaments.
  8. Example 8 - All-in with not much to lose: If you are winning 2 rounds to 0 in a match and have been playing solid, you can often use risky mix ups/moves in the 3rd round in order to try to win a match. This is another form of a designer match. If it works, you win easily. If it doesn’t work, now your opponent thinks you are an insane person who will try to use risky moves often so he has more things to worry about. If you are using high risk lows, most opponents have no reason to low parry your lows: they will duck and punish as it usually does at least 15-20 points more damage. However, once opponents start ducking, you can start mixing up low risk lows and mids which is not ideal for the opponent since he was expecting to extract about 70 points of damage by blocking your low. Now he is in a losing game in terms of damage by trying to duck your low risk low since he has to risk eating a relatively strong mid. Also, once an opponent starts ducking they sacrifice mobility and therefore allows you to easily approach. This means that defender exploitation and the waiting game becomes easier for you to do.
  9. Example 9 - Reversal at the ready: If a Yoshimitsu player uses his flash often every time he is cornered in a wall, the opponent will become wary of attacking. After Yoshimitsu several times attempting the flash, the opponent will wait to punish the flash. However, Yoshi can instead use other methods such as throwing to escape the wall situation. This kind of tactic also applies to characters such as geese with his reversal and using moves such as his b,b,u/b at wall to push the opponent far from the wall.
  10. Example 10 - Turtles get crushed: characters like Dragunov have extremely strong pressure tools and not attacking would be the worse thing to do against these characters because they will corner you at a wall within seconds. Dragunov players will many times abuse this fact and use moves such as d+2, SS d+2 or iWR+2 to continuously apply pressure. Opponents often get frustrated at this point and will try to attack as fast as possible when Dragunov creates distance in order to not allow him to continue the iWR+2 pressure. This is why Dragunov’s backdash qcf+3+4 (sliding move) gets CH often in these situations.
  11. Example 11 - WS+4 often after d+2: If the opponent Dragunov uses d+2 and I decided to WS+4 often, it is very likely that he will try to SS punish me the next time around. And the next time around I can anticipate this and either use a tracking move or an off-beat CH move. Worst case scenario, I get hit by Dragunov’s WS+4 after his d+2 (unless he is used to my thought process).
  12. Example 12 - Kazumi 1+2: Advanced level Kazumi players often throw in 1+2 at seemingly random times. Usually these timings are when opponents are dashing in, when opponents are sidestepping etc. This works because Kazumi’s 1+2 is a 12 frame mid that has decent tracking with two separate hits that is almost impossible to interrupt and also moves her forward. Basically it is stupid good even though there is quite a high risk. If the Kazumi player starts sprinkling in this move often, opponents will get defensive because they want her to whiff the 1+2 and miss out on opportunities. This is when Kazumi can utilize defender exploitation instead of using her 1+2.
  13. Example 13 - About to chain throw you: When king players are low on health and opponents are high on health, they almost always try to go in and chain throw to kill the opponent off since that is the only way to extract big damage. Advanced players already know this, therefore will often duck in these situations. King players who know this dash in and CD WS+1+2 instead in these situations even when they haven’t been doing a CD mix up previously.
  14. Example 14 - I like to poke: If an opponent hits me with his pokes and tries to utilize defender exploitation but I keep poking him out of those, it is very likely that the opponent will use some sort of CH move next time he hits me with a poke. It is often safe to duck in situations like these because the opponent either utilizes the waiting game or will try moves such as standing 4, so I can instead duck and attempt to punish his CH.
  15. Example 15 - Not gonna get hit by your rage art: a common trend that has developed in Tekken 7 is to not attack immediately after blocking an opponent’s move when they are low in life because of their rage art. This is especially true against someone who is known to use the rage art often. So advanced level players often dash in and attack instead of trying to attack immediately. So if I do a d/f+2 and it gets blocked, I can often expect the opponent to not attack immediately and dash in and attack due to rage art. However, that means if I do two d/f+2s in a row or do an off-beat standing 4, he might get CH by it instead… Just food for thought.

So these are relatively simple examples of expressing yourself and creating an image. But creating a perceived image and their counter plays can vary depending on character and has a thousand different ways in application. As a side note, utilization of the in-game image as a feature of mind game is the reason why I personally dislike the term “respect” and “conditioning your opponent”. They are terms that seem to imply that your opponent is simple minded and you can somehow MAKE them act a certain way. “You gotta make him respect you! Show him why he needs to respect you so he doesn't use those moves!”, “You gotta condition your opponent so you can make them react the way you want them to next time!” are all completely ridiculous statements. Mind games aren't that simple.

As mentioned previously, you cannot MAKE your opponent do anything in Tekken because you can't read their exact thought process on WHY they are doing a certain action. You can only guess WHAT they would do. "Conditioning your opponent" is used in the wrong context in this community. Your opponent isn't a puppet you can manipulate no matter how much of a skill gap there may be between the two of you. Although as you get better and better at mind games you may be able to predict your opponent's next action with pretty high accuracy, you will never be able to guess exactly when and how they will attack, especially when you are in advanced levels. You might be able to read the situation and pretty accurately deduce, "OK, right now I have high health and he has low health. The only thing he can realistically do to win is to hit me with a rage drive so I will not duck no matter what", and would probably a high chance that the opponent would use the rage drive right away. But there is no way you can manipulate a situation so that you will know exactly when and how he will use the rage drive. The opponent might be advanced enough to not use the rage drive and use that as a blackmail and hit you with multiple lows until your health gets low enough that you would HAVE to make a choice between standing or ducking. Again, you cannot manipulate your opponent. You can only guess. And what I'm advocating is that because (and only because) your opponent is smart and observant, by understanding your own image you will be able to pretty accurately predict what the he will do to counter you. You are not manipulating; you are predicting.

Conclusion: Understanding your own perceived image is an important tool for predicting what your opponent’s next action will be. You can create your in-game image quickly by DOING things. The more you do, the quicker your opponent gets what type of player you are. Through these different types of self-expression, you can give the opponent as much information as possible in a given time frame, fast. Some players might be afraid of this because they think “if the opponent understands who I am quickly, I will run out of material and he will then see right through me”. It’s quite the contrary. Because I know that the opponent sees me as a certain type of player, I am able to more accurately pin point what he is going to do next. Yes, self-expression does expose many of your cards. However, this is exactly how you come up with more material. When your mind goes blank, your brain will realize it hit a wall and will come up with another way to resolve the issue. If you don’t come up with a solution in the moment, you can always reflect back onto your game and think about solutions which will only make you a better player. This is what creativity is. You find different paths through trial and error. The more you expend all your cards, the more you will be able to come up with new ones. People who seem incredibly creative and are even called geniuses are just people who happen to see opportunities that others haven’t exploited yet. Creativity isn’t about trying something radically crazy - it’s finding a real-world solution through ways that others haven’t tried before. And the best way to get creative is through trial & error, and critical analysis.

Most players utilize their in-game image to one extent or another. However, they are only aware of certain situations and do not know how to expand upon the endless possibilities. Next time you review a match of yours where you were having trouble winning, think about what kind of image you were projecting to the opponent and what you could have done.

  • Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If not, was I abusing the situation enough so I could benefit from it?
  • Was the opponent observant and reacting to your perceived image? If he was being observant, how could I have predicted his next move and countered it instead? Was I even aware of what kind of image I was projecting?
  • What kind of methods can I utilize to express myself clearly, as fast as possible? Are those methods efficient or are they relatively dangerous methods that can get me into a lot of trouble?
  • Have I been mindlessly playing the game in a way that I haven't even been thinking about what kind of message I am expressing with my movement, my attack rhythm, my risk taking actions etc?
  • Was there noticeable patterns in the opponent's intent/expression that i should have been able to recognize and exploit? Has my observation skills been so poor that I have fell for the same things over and over again?
  • Was the opponent advanced enough to utilize in-game image to his benefit? If so, how did he switch up his tactic that I lost in the mind game department and what could I have done to safely escape his plan had I known that he was about to make a move?

Hope this helps.

P.S. I was originally working on another post that was about countering the opponent’s counter called “Layers of Mind Games” but it got really long and had branching ideas which is the reason why I created this post as a supplement. It is already half way written, however might take some more time due to my laziness.

Feedback is much welcomed. Please let me hear your comment if you have any questions/suggestions!

107: Layers of Mind Games

Foreword: If you haven’t read my previous posts (especially 103-106), please do so because many of the concepts I mention in the previous posts are utilized in this one.

You block Devil Jin's f,F+2. You dash in but immediately block because you fear he might do a 1,1,2 or EWGF, or if he dares to be so bold, possibly an uf+4. Instead, you get hit by a hellsweep. Your mind goes blank. You can't believe what just happened. All you can think about is literally, WTF. Why would he do that? What was he even thinking? What if you didn't even dash in? Is he out if his mind?

This post is going to be a long one and not my personal favorite because I feel like it's almost unnecessarily long. But as I've mentioned before, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain an advanced mind game concept in a few sentences without it sounding like complete nonsense. In this post, I will go over the multi layers of mind games. There are multiple different aspects of mind games which includes but is not limited to "Defensive Patterns", "Whiff Strategy", "The Waiting Game", "Initiator Advantage", "Defender Exploitation”, and “In-game Image Betrayal”. But there are many different “lenses” to see a certain interaction and explain them in a different way, and there sure as hell are different mind game angles that I am not aware of, or unable to explain due to lack of experience.

For example, ONE aspect of In-game Image betrayal can be interpreted as "Opportunity Baiting". Opportunity baiting usually happens in situations where you can duck a certain move or string. Use enough highs, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to duck to punish your high. Use enough linear moves, and your opponent will see an opportunity and want to SS the move. You basically set up bait by letting them know there is an opportunity, and when you think its about time they went for it, you catch them with a mid or a tracking move etc. But this is just one aspect of the in-game image betrayal procedure and if you only knew about opportunity baiting, you'd probably not see other aspects of in-game image betrayal tactics. On the other hand, the person who understands the in-game image concept would not have much trouble recognizing opportunity baiting situations and other situations as well while his opponent might not. This type of meta awareness of mind games persists throughout the game in high levels and someone who does not have the complete picture of the procedure will eventually be exploited or have real difficulties defeating certain opponents even if they are relatively familiar with the character.

Although many of the concepts that I’ve previously mentioned kind of meld into each other, without being able to consciously identify and categorize concepts, one would have a difficult time consciously applying those concepts into play and self-reflecting in order to prevent themselves from making the same mistakes again. In the same token, one would have a difficult time defeating an opponent who is utilizing multiple advanced mind game tactics due to not being able to actively change his behaviors based on the situation he is in.

If you get two players with different levels of mind game proficiency to play each other, on the surface, it may look like both players are quite on par and holding their own respective grounds when playing against each other. However, there will always be that one deciding factor that the opponent would be able to exploit and win matches significantly more frequently in the long term even if it looked like he just got lucky and happened to choose the right option. Being able to identify different mind game tactics are important not only for winning, but also for being able to quickly advance your skill level. The more overarching tendencies you can identify and categorize, the better your chances of progressing to a higher level if you put time and effort into playing the game.

This applies to anything in life. Let’s say you are learning how to shoot a rifle. There are pretty important fundamentals in learning how to shoot a rifle that are not that obvious at all such as stopping to breath so your rifle doesn’t move up or down, trigger squeezing softly so that you don’t yank your rifle into a different direction the last minute when it’s shooting, compensating for bullet drop or bullet climb depending on distance etc. And if you don’t know any of these factors, it is unlikely that you will figure them out yourself unless you are experimenting and analyzing your shooting sessions. The first step to solving a problem is identifying the issue. If you don’t know there is a problem in the first place, how will you fix it?

That being said, I would like to dispel the common myth that mind games just continue to rotate like rock paper scissors. This is true to a certain extent but a gross over simplification of the complexity that arises in a 3D fighting game and is a reflection of one's likelihood on failing to learn and progress. That’s like saying all you have to do to get good at lifting weights is to put in hard work, eat well, and sleep well. It is true to a large extent, but is too much of a simplification. Tekken mind games are not based on a making the correct 33.3% decision. It is based heavily on logic such as risk vs. reward but also heavily based on observations and predictions. Mind games continuously build on each iteration and evolve.

Tekken mind games revolve around the collection of data on the opponent, and you have to continuously build and revamp your tactics based on the opponent's current behaviors. To be good, you make calculated risks based on past observations which improve your odds of winning. As a side note, if you are familiar with advanced rock paper scissors tactics, you would understand that although the game seems deceptively simple and seems to revolve around a random chance of 33.3%, there are people who are actually really good at it because it involves mind games. A skill can be learned in almost anything that is repeated, no matter how complex it may be. You can even get good at flipping a coin or rolling a dice!

But yes, sometimes you are forced into a situation where basically you HAVE to make a decision. The basic premise is this: you are face to face with your opponent as he has dashed into you. You basically have only few choices. Let’s say at the moment you can only attack, duck, or back dash. These type of mind games usually rotate around depending on the frequency of the opponent’s attack or type of attack he does etc. which I go over in the previous post, “In-game Image”. If the opponent has been using a lot of mixups, it is very likely that I will try to CH in between. But the opponent can predict that I will try to attack and use a CH move before I do. And if I’ve gotten hit by the opponent’s CH and learned my lesson, I might freeze up in a similar situation and allow a mix up from the opponent. These type of mind games do rotate because of mind games.

So let's go over some of these situations where you are forced to make a decision. These are simply common tendencies in the advanced level community that have been identified as legit tactics and have continuously evolved. The first technique I would like to go over is something I decided to label as Countering the Neutralization (CTN). The definition is not that important - I just needed to define it for the sake of this post. CTN and its branch offs are relatively unknown techniques outside of Korea and Japan due to the high level of play required from both players in order to even be able to engage in the concept. It certainly does exist within the flowchart patterns of some players, but many players only know it as a gimmicky trick they can use and do not understand the underlying core principles behind it. But before we go over CTN, let me define what neutralization means.

What I call neutralization in this context is simply a micromovement that will allow you to safely make your movements without getting hit by the majority of opponent moves. You could call many of the micro movements such as sidestep-guard, sidestep-backdash etc to be a neutralization technique. One of the most widely known neutralization tools is the dash-guard. The dash-guard is an extremely useful tool for three reasons:

It allows you to approach the enemy but not get hit by the majority of their moves if they attack. If it is a punishable move such as hopkick, you can block and punish. If it is a non-punishable move such as Hwoarang's d/f+2, you get the frame advantage. Although not moving at all and making the opponent whiff their move would be the best solution, advanced level players many times attack only upon seeing forward movement from the opponent. Therefore dash guard is one of the better solutions to force your opponent to attack (otherwise, defender exploitation happens) and 'steal away' their frame advantage by making them use a move that is negative frames on block.

Even if your opponent doesn't attack, you will be much closer to your opponent which registers to them as a threat. By dash-guard (the key is to NOT hold back and immediately go into neutral because if you hold onto back and start walking backwards, it will tell your opponent that you are not planning on attacking), it feels like your attacks will come out at any time. Advanced players also utilize dash-back dash (the basic movement for the waiting game), and also have tactics such as dash-guard-mix up if an attack didn't come out during dash-guard. Techniques such as dash-guard are only possible in games like Tekken because the fastest moves are generally 10 frames or more which is quite slow from a fighting game perspective. This would be an extremely dangerous tactic in games like SF even if you could guard in between dashes because the fastest moves are anywhere from 3-5 frames. It takes 3-5 frames AT BEST to even be able to input f,f.

The opponent is often not entirely sure what you are going to do. Are you going to dash guard? Are you going to backdash and try the waiting game? Are you going to forward-guard AKA play footsies to try to bait an attack? Attacking while hoping the opponent runs into your attack is a prediction, therefore a risk that you are taking. Even if the opponent guards your attack, the momentum shifts in the opponent's favor. Therefore the attacker often decides not to attack at all. And this is also when defender exploitation can happen. Because of all these factors, the dash-guard becomes a more viable option. It just opens up another opportunity to pressure the opponent without taking damage. It's almost like getting a free chance, hence why it is such a popular technique to employ.

Advanced players do not use dash-guard at all times, but they use it with enough frequency that they will block the opponent's move when they are skeptical, or when they recognize them as a standard baiting situation. The neutralization technique is so effective that even if you know the opponent is going to dash into you, it is hard to make them pay for doing so. However, with the rise of dash-guard usage, players started developing unique strategies that counter the dash-guard. And these strategies are what I call Countering the Neutralization (CTN).

CTN for dash-guard: 1+2 throw

Example: Counter to dash guard - use a 1+2 throw

Example: Counter to dash guard - use a 1+2 throw More effective with characters that can use a 1+2 throw without having to dash or if you can buffer it into a move.

One of the most common CTN strategies is to use a 1+2 throw when you expect your opponent to dash-guard because the 1+2 throw has a fast 12 frame execution and will likely beat the opponent even if he tried to attack while dashing in. As you know, counter throws are even harder to break due to animations getting mixed in and your hands possibly being on a different position from the 1+2 buttons. And even if the opponent doesn't run in, the 1+2 throw has a pretty fast recovery so it is relatively unlikely that you will get punished unless the opponent is familiar with the tactic and was waiting for it.

CTN for dash-guard: generic d+4 or high crushing lows

Example 1: Counter to dash guard - Use a forward moving low (works better if high crush)

Example 2: Counter to dash guard. Use a forward moving low

Example 3: Counter to dash-guard. Use a high crushing low attack

The 1+2 throw CTN strategy was extremely effective at first because the dash-guarding opponents did not expect it at all. But nowadays most advanced level players are very familiar with the tactic and easily break the 1+2 throw even in counter situations because they know there is a chance that the opponent will try this tactic. Therefore, players started developing other CTN tactics for the dash-guard which is to use a low. For some characters, this is quite a natural option but for other characters it is not. The faster the move, the better so the generic d+4 is one of the best moves for that since it also has a high crushing property built in although the damage may be low. The initiator’s advantage also makes it quite scary for the attacker to poke him out of his gd+4. Other moves used for the dash-guard CTN involve high crushing lows that move forward such as dragunov's d+2, or some opponents will just blatantly use a strong low even if it is short reach if they think they've gotten a good read on their opponent. As a side note, it is usually advised to use this kind of tactic only in specific situations with moves that push you back but have no punish (DJ’s ff+2, Lee’s ff+3, Paul’s qcb+2 etc).

Counter to the CTN: dash-low parry or a jump status move

Example 1: Counter to dash guard - d/b+4 (in close distance, just needs to be high crush). In this case, LowHigh knew it would be a jab or a high crushing low move. He should have dash low parried but did not succeed.

Due to the rise of CTN with gd+4, players started developing unique micro movements such as dash-low parry. Players who incorporate this specific movement are also great at punishing the whiffed 1+2 throw or standing 4 etc with 1,2 which is better than nothing. This technique works great in advanced levels because most advanced players use a low or high when opponents are dashing in. Counter intuitively, it is almost safe against your opponent unless he is a less advanced player who likes to throw out hopkicks.

Counter to the Counter CTN: d/f+1 or hopkick

The obvious anti dash-low parry tactic would be to use a quick mid or to just hopkick. So advanced players mix in d/f+1 or a hopkick (only when they think they have a good read) as a shielding attempt instead of jab, standing 4 etc. Mishima players would actually be quite familiar with this kind of technique because opponents like to dash and duck to wait for the EWGF. This might seem like everything comes back full circle and you can just sort of hopkick while opponents run in. But it is important that you understand WHY your opponents are getting hit by the hopkicks. The primary difference would be that now your opponent knows that you are the type that will hopkick when they dash in, hence the next time your opponent dash-guards, you could go back to using a low and basically the opponent would be getting mixed up every time he dashes in. The opponent who doesn't even understand any of these tactics would just be getting hit by d/f+2 and getting launched every time they run in or barely blocking it and just thinking to himself "phew, I almost got launched right there". But it doesn’t even stop there. The recent trend in the advanced level Tekken players is to not even try to dash-guard in many of these situations and use a poke instead in order to further confuse the opponent. If your opponent is almost certain that you are going to dash-guard, don't give him what he is expecting.

As you can see, the depth of thinking is vastly different even when the mind game seems like it came back full circle and the resulting attacks are the same. Playing against someone who has all of these different levels of CTN options is like playing poker with someone who always has a ace hidden up their sleeve. You won’t understand why you lose! Mind games rotate only on the basis that you know all options for that specific situation. If you don’t know the options, it is likely that you are going to not be able to compete many of the times. So development of mind game aspects such as the dash-guard and the overall encompassing of many different mind game tactics (many of which that are mentioned in my previous posts) are what I call the layers of mind games. The reason why I don’t call it LEVELS of mind games is because there are so many different ways of thinking about a situation that it is not valid to say someone simply is at a higher level of mind game. Two advanced player might each have 8 different major mind game concepts that they understand and utilize but some of those concepts might be slightly different in how they fundamentally understand it. A mind game can stem off one situation, but progress into a complexity that would only be discoverable with careful analysis. A player who doesn’t know much mind game concepts would never be able to understand what is really going on when playing someone with more layers of mind games than him.

And this is the biggest reason why I have continuously advised people against playing someone higher than their level. You will NOT learn. If the difference in mind game concept utilization is only about 1 or 2 layers of difference, you may be able to overcome the difference and learn from it. However, if there is about 3 or more layers of difference, you won't even understand what is going on or why you are losing! This is quite counter intuitive because we think by playing higher level players, we can learn how to play better.

But humans only learn by trying different things. Playing someone way over your level is literally like shooting darts in the dark. You have no idea what is going to happen, and there is no way to accurately gauge your results because your opponent is changing them up by utilizing mind games. You won’t see the pattern because it is too complex for you. On the flip side, playing someone way under your level results in something similar. You have no incentive to change your behaviors because you can pretty much do the same thing over and over again and beat your opponent. Even if in your mind you feel like you are doing the same thing, your opponent will never be able to see the big picture and figure out how you are winning. If you want to get better at the game quickly, play someone at your level, and play them many times. These are why death matches are so great for your development. But better than death matches is to have someone on your level as a training partner and play countless matches against him until both your abilities start expanding. Humans easily give up with an impossible challenge in front of them. In a study on rats play-wrestling with each other, it found that when the stronger rat does not allow the weaker rat to win over more than 30%, the weaker rat loses motivation and will refuse to invite the stronger rat to play with him again. On the contrary, Humans become lazy and lose motivation with too easy of a task. Give a man a task to make a 10 sandwiches, he will begrudgingly do so without the slightest hint of motivation. Give a man a task to make 10 sandwiches within a minute, he suddenly sees it as a challenge and will try to cut down his time through trial and error and will try to achieve perfection. So with the right amount of challenge, humans can continuously feel motivated and progress little by little. If you play someone at your level over a sustained period of time, you will start recognizing patterns and slowly but surely start changing up your tactics in order to become less predictable and defeat the opponent. This kind of incremental change and learning is not possible with someone who is not on your level because humans only adapt their behavior when they can recognize the immediate problem in front of them. Always defeating your opponent is not a good situation for motivating yourself to improve because you have absolutely no reason to do so! You can be shitty at punishing or shitty at combos, yet you if you still win, why would there be much incentive to improve?

But you might know of a guy who says he got really good by playing the best players in his region. And this is probably true. But I highly doubt that playing against players who are leagues above your own is the reason he got better for multiple reasons:

  • It is very unlikely he only played against that better player without playing any of his lesser skilled friends. With stepping stones in between, he would have been able to identify his problems and become better at the game.
  • Advanced players are often used as reference for new patterns and combos etc. Just by mimicking the best players you can advance your game significantly. You also have to make less mistakes against the better players

I highly doubt that the advanced player was truly advanced. Tekken is a game with a huge learning curve. Just getting down the basics of punishing, frames, side stepping, back dashing, throw breaking, combos etc would easily get you up to a relatively high rank even without much mind games. And you could optimize your game as a beginner against these type of players who I think fall into somewhere in the region of yellow/orange ranks. To prove how hard Tekken fundamentals are, I once created a new account and reached Warrior with Paul by only using deathfist and demoman (no backdashes, no sidesteps). I was even getting promoted off guys with over 2,000 matches (some who were using WD mixups and multiple EWGF etc) with only two moves. And I was only utilizing my observations, and two mind game concepts: defender exploitation and In-game image betrayal. Most of these players were simply just lacking fundamentals such as punishing or frames, and they would often duck for no good reason. Imagine if I punished properly and did my combos correctly as well. I would have easily reached the orange ranks. All without much mind games. Mind games are only developed when you meet another player at a similar level to you.

Conclusion: Mind games are a complex subject that can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person. In order to get good, you must continuously try to find patterns within the chaos you are experiencing and develop your own understanding of the game. The easiest way to do this is to find someone who is at a very similar level to you and continuously play against them. This way, you will recognize patterns way faster. Contrarily, if you play someone way above or below your level, you will not develop better mind games either because you just don't understand what is going on (and likely never will unless you play other players as well to benchmark), or because you just don't need to. It is pretty much an evolution process. Think about the character match up, think about your opponent's tendencies, and start accumulating a deep understanding of the game and create your own layers of mind games that opponents will have trouble exploiting.

If you think about it, even the basic mind game of attacking an opponent has quite a bit of depth to it:

  • mid/low mixup
  • defender can logically pick the least damaging option or the most punishable option
  • defender predicts mid/low mix up and tries to poke attacker before the mix up can be executed
  • attacker uses counter such as d/f+2, predicting defender using predictive pokes
  • defender utilizes movement to neutralize most options from attacker
  • attacker uses defender exploitation to defeat opponent's movement
  • defender reacts to movement and attacks before opponent can utilize defender exploitation
  • attacker dashes in then uses waiting game, punishes the defender for whiffing

Even side step mind games can get pretty complex:

  • after attacker's d/f+1 gets blocked, the attacker sidestep’s the defender’s linear moves and punishes
  • in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep, defender uses a tracking move to prevent attacker from side stepping
  • in order to defeat the defender’s tracking moves, attacker uses 1,2, standing 4, or another d/f+1 etc
  • in order to defeat the attacker’s poke after d/f+1 which is usually minus frames, defender uses moves such as 1,2 or standing 4
  • in order to defeat the defender’s pokes, attacker starts utilizing the waiting game mostly through sidestep-guard or sidestep back dash
  • in order to defeat the attacker’s sidestep-guard (or possible high attacks), defender utilizes moves such as generic d+3 (couching 3 for most characters)

Other examples of how mind games can go deep in very specific situations:

  • Paul being able to CTN a sidestep-guard with his demolition man. Demolition man tracks sidesteps and there are specific situations where this will hit clean if the opponent tries sidestepping or sidestep-guard instead of backdashing.
  • A common situation of mid-high string tactic: using patterns such as Paul's WS+3 (guarded) followed by a gd+4 or his 1+2 throw or a d/f+2 where if the opponent is not used to the depth of this type of tactic, they will come out losing often in that specific situation.
  • There are also tactics such as blocking moves such as gd+4 and not punishing on purpose but dashing in and attempting a mid etc to CH or catch the opponent sidestepping etc.
  • If opponent tries to sidewalk in order to avoid DJ/Kazuya's hellsweep or EWGF etc, they can CD~b, EWGF which will track the opponent's sidewalk. This is an advanced Mishima tactic that is commonly used among higher level Mishimas, especially in korea.
  • If you are really low on health (enough to die by a crouch jab or gd+4), there are many mid-high strings (if used without delay) that will beat a crouch jab or gd+4 and will CH your opponent. This is more of a gimmick but if you know the tendency of your opponent, you can take advantage of this.
  • Mind games develop deep in certain situations often because of the character choices you both have. Depending on the match up, you might have to restrict using a certain move or it can be greatly beneficial for you to start abusing a certain move etc. There are countless possibilities in going deep about a certain situation.

My next post will likely be my last in the Tekken mind game series. It should be about the thinking process of experts and the correct mindset/habits to hold when playing Tekken. Personally it would be my favorite topic but as always, it might take a little while for me to write.

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