Mixup

A mixup is a combination of threats that can't all be beaten by one option. The simplest mixup is a mid attack with a low attack, which beat crouching and standing guard respectively.

Enforcing strong mixups and preventing your opponent from doing the same is the goal of movement and pokes. Mixups are “fake” if they can be avoided by reacting, fuzzy guards, or option selects. If a mixup is slow, challenging it can turn the tides even in the face of an overwhelming frame advantage.

More broadly, a mixup can refer to any situation where both players have to guess what their opponent will do. Every situation in Tekken is a mixup in this way, although modelling the more open-ended situations can be difficult.

Modelling

Mixups can be modeled as zero-sum, two player strategic games where the payoffs are how much damage is done. If there's a trade, the payoff is the difference in damage. Frame advantages and okizeme have to be approximated to a damage equivalent. Once modeled, a Nash equilibrium for the game can be computed to get a broad idea of how often each option should be used and how good the mixup is.

For example, if we model Kazumi's FLY mixup after her punishers, we can see that it favors the defender if they play accurately.

Mixup:Kazumi-fly-infinite.gbt (download) ^{What is this?}

Kazumi FLY mixup in mirror after 1+2, ws3, and u/f+2 transitions on infinite stage.

	d	b	SWR	4
FLY.1	29	-31	-68	34
FLY.2	-75	-31	75	79
FLY.4,2	-80	36	36	39
FLY.1+2	24	2	-68	-68
FLY.3+4	64	-68	13	65

Nash equilibrium with payoff -4.79

FLY.4,2

0.39

FLY.1+2

0.33

FLY.3+4

0.28

d

0.35

b

0.44

SWR

0.21

Payoff for dominated options

FLY.1

-17.58

FLY.2

-24.48

4

-11.17

So in general the transitions aren't worth using against a strong opponent. However, enforcing a high risk mixup can be worth it if you're behind: it's no big deal that FLY.3+4 is -15 if you're one hit from death anyway.

It's possible an opponent doesn't know that stepping is an option. But even then the transition isn't worth it.

Mixup:Kazumi-fly-infinite-no-ss.gbt (download) ^{What is this?}

Kazumi FLY mixup in mirror after 1+2, ws3, and u/f+2 transitions on infinite stage. Opponent doesn't know that stepping is an option.

	d	b	4
FLY.1	29	-31	34
FLY.2	-75	-31	79
FLY.4,2	-80	36	39
FLY.1+2	24	2	-68
FLY.3+4	64	-68	65

Nash equilibrium with payoff -1.47

FLY.1

0.38

FLY.4,2

0.26

FLY.1+2

0.36

d

0.33

b

0.52

4

0.15

Payoff for dominated options

FLY.2

-28.62

FLY.3+4

-4.57

But if the opponent stops challenging entirely the mixup becomes worth it. This is fairly obvious since FLY.1+2 has good outcomes against all blocking options.

Mixup:Kazumi-fly-infinite-no-challenge.gbt (download) ^{What is this?}

Kazumi FLY mixup in mirror where opponent only blocks and can't fuzzy guard or react.

	d	b
FLY.1	29	-31
FLY.2	-75	-31
FLY.4,2	-80	36
FLY.1+2	24	2
FLY.3+4	64	-68

Nash equilibrium with payoff 7.42

FLY.4,2

0.16

FLY.1+2

0.84

d

0.25

b

0.75

Payoff for dominated options

FLY.1

-16.22

FLY.2

-41.84

FLY.3+4

-35.48

This is actually useful against strong opponents, since you can do it off of f+3+4 when they're scared or during okizeme. In these situations a fuzzy, sidestep, or challenge is less practical.

There are many other ways for the defender to play poorly and make the transitions worth it (e.g., they could also not punish FLY.3+4 or FLY.4,2 properly on block), but a strategy is only as strong the opponents it beats. If your strategy requires a bad opponent to work, it's a bad strategy. Exploring all the ways in which you can beat weak opponents would take a long time and not be very interesting.

See also

• User:RogerDodger/Mixup exploration