TSR's Super Smash Bros Thread|SWITCH HYPE TRAIN NOW BOARDING

[Kosheh]

yeah, zero really proved to people that diddy is still good, despite diddy being nerfed to the max. the matchup against sheik was also pretty bad for diddy kong, so i was surprised when zero took his chances and won EVO.

I think that's actually the strategy that Zero was aiming for, and it's a pretty standard one too in the tourney scene. He's basically grooming his opponents via conditioning, but in this case it's much more spread out.
An example of this was in evo in USF4 in 2014, but

SnakeEyez (Zangief) played against Ricky Ortiz (Rufus) with a super conservative Zangief, playing extremely defensively during his first two matches to bait Ortiz into playing more aggressively with Rufus ('cos Rufus pretty much has the upper hand in that fight) SnakeEyez just holds his ground and stays defensive, blocking constantly. He wins the first match by timeout and lets Ortiz win the second one. In the third match, he keeps this playstyle until halfway through the match where he just goes full-out ham and completely wreck Ortiz and his Rufus because SnakeEyez had conditioned him into fighting his defensive playstyle completely wrecking his reads by tossing out jump-ins and Banishing Flats.

Now, it's...a little different when it came to evo. Few people were actually playing Diddy Kong and even Zero himself was sticking with the tourney standards - Zero Suit Samus and Sheik. That's basically all Evo was. Most of the other players were watching Zero's Sheik and trying to figure out strategies to counter it.
Now, when it's the finals of Evo and you're used to seeing Zero's Sheik onscreen and then he picks Diddy Kong (especially when there were no other Diddy Kongs in the tournament), you're pretty much been boned and at this point you're psyched out by the fact that oh god he's playing Diddy Kong I wasn't ready for this waht the hell is this oh my god now I have no stock.

I actually did this myself at local tournaments

At one particular Brawl tournament I attended I bounced between Falco and Marth for friendlies, and getting an idea of the competition's picks. It's especially terrible because a friend I had made had the exact same plan, teasing me that I hadn't seen his main and that I'd be shocked - talking a lotta shit before the tournament started.
When the tournament rolled around, lo and behold I was matched up with him and we both had the same strategy. He picked Falco, thinking he'd one-upped me whereas I picked Ness (who I hadn't played all night) and ended up three-stocking him ending the match with a ridiculous spike into the bottom of Lylat Cruise.
He was so salty afterward I nearly mistakened him for a container of Morton's

And I don't wanna be the smoked butthole here but

I physically flinch every time I read Koopaul´s posts.

"cringe" is a verb that pretty much nails the situation here. "cringe" is to physically flinch, and it's characteristic for people on the Internet to do so in disgust or disapproval