Arturo Sanchez won the Mortal Kombat 9 tournament at the Toronto Fighting Game Championships XII earlier today. He did it coming out of the losers bracket and pulling the very rare 3-0, 3-0 win.

For the second time in five days, a 6-0 has happened in a championship. OnlineTony 6-0'd ComboJack at Wednesday Night Fights in the Super Street Fighter IV finals.

A 6-0 is rare, just because you're asking the losers bracket finalist to be nearly perfect against the player who can give up a loss and still prevail.

I took a look at my database, and the five-day gap between the two 6-0s is the shortest gap since May 30, 2010, to June 8, 2010, a span of nine days.

On May 30, Justin Wong defeated Andy OCR in the finals of NorCal Regionals 7. Nine days later, Anton Herrera defeated Stoic to win the AllisFighter 1.4 Online Ranbat.
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Adam Apicella, a representative of Major League Gaming, posted a message on Twitter hoping to get some response:

"If you could choose 2 fighting games to be on the 2012 circuit (only 2!), what would they be #mlg?"

There was plenty of response, well more than 50 at-replies. I looked at all of the replies and calculated the totals. There were some people that posted only one game, then there were people that posted 3 games. I included those responses. There was one person that posted about eight games, and that was the only one I didn't include (come on man). I also added responses that were obviously jokes because I also wanted to see how serious people took the request.

At least one person admitted that he wanted an obscure game (Soul Calibur II) just so he could win everytime. 

The top two games in this poll are fairly obvious, but perhaps the spread isn't? To me, I was wondering who would get third. My choices are Super Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat, in part because there is a good collection of Mortal Kombat-exclusive players. I'm not sure if that is the case with the Versus series.

And the winner is ...

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The Rise of the Web Warrior tournament series continued last night, and ... well, I'm not sure what I watched exactly. However, I must say congrats to Far Beyond Death for winning. He will enter the round robin series in a couple weeks. The stats of the match can be found on the Fighting Game Stats database.

Today's Stats Series podcast talks about championship matches so far in the Rise of the Web Warrior tournament series.

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It's Wednesday, meaning that the Starbase, Guard Crush and Wednesday Night Fights series resume.

I wanted to post a quick note regarding the last five finals for Starbase and Guard Crush. Are there noticeable differences between the East Coast and West Coast events?

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The Daigo Runback took place this past weekend, and I computed a lot of stats from that match. i talk about a few of those stats on today's Stats Series podcast.

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Since there was no winner in the Get Your Tournament contest, that doesn't mean I'm going to go spend the $20 Chipotle gift card (even though I'd like to, because it's Chipotle). I'm going to run another contest!

Hopefully, we'll get a winner this time.

Starbase Arcade plays host to a weekly tournament series, and the guys at iPLAYWINNER bring you the crispy broadcast.

Here's the challenge: Pick the winner of this Wednesday's Super Street Fighter IV tournament at Starbase Arcade.

Since I'm guessing a few players will get picked a couple times, the tiebreaker will be whom that person defeated in the championship.

As an example:
Player X wins. She beat Player Z in the championship.
Player X wins. She came back from losers to beat Player Z.

To win the contest, all you have to do is get the champion correct. In case more than one person gets it correct, then we'll use the tiebreaker. If there's still a tie, then I'll hold a random drawing Thursday afternoon to determine the winner.

The winner will receive a $20 gift card to Chipotle.

In case you need help, the previous champions have been Hoodaman (last week) and Filipino Champ (won the two previous before that). Crizzle has also reached the finals.
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Here's some additional rules:

• Again, I'm only shipping this to the U.S. Sorry, international followers.
• If the tournament is canceled or does not finish before a winner is a determined, then the contest is off, and I'll run another contest at a later time (oh please don't let this happen).
• The person you pick must win the tournament outright. If your pick resets the bracket and then loses in the second championship match, it does not count.
• You can't enter this contest if you're entering the tournament, sorry.
• If the tiebreaker is needed and nobody gets the tiebreaker correct, then everyone involved in the tie is put in the drawing.
• Your first guess is your guess (I will screencap the guesses as they come in).
• The deadline to enter is 7 p.m. PT Wednesday!
• Good luck!

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... NOBODY!

I can't believe it.

In this contest, I asked people to guess the winner of the Daigo Umehara vs. Poongko match and guess the total amount of first-hits (first attacks) the winner would have. At stake was a $20 gift card to Chipotle.

More info after the jump (if you haven't watched the match yet and don't want to be spoiled, don't go to the jump).

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Daigo Umehara and Poongko went at it in a post-Super Battle Opera match. It was a 19-game series (first to 10) and it was a runback from their meeting at Evolution 2011, where Poongko did in Daigo.

I hid the score and quick recap, which is below the video if you don't want to be spoiled:

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This is a very quick Stats Series podcast, which I talk about OnlineTony213's second consecutive win at Wednesday Night Fights. Hopefully I'll have time to break it down a little further, because he's putting up some gaudy numbers.

In the meantime, you can check out stats from the match and the series over on the Fighting Game Stats database.

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"Whatthefat" on Team Liquid's forums posted a hefty analysis, breaking down economic management between different skill levels in Starcraft II. It's a long read but well worth it. I found it interesting because it allows me, a noob still learning the game, to understand why players act the way they do and what to look for at certain parts of a match.

Go here for the full breakdown.

Like others in the community, I am fascinated by many of the questions pertaining to macro and overall skill. Is there a significant difference between Grandmaster and Master level players in how consistently they make workers? What about Bronze and Silver level players? Grandmaster level players are presumably better at spending their money than other players, but how much better are they than Diamond level players, and how do Diamond level players compare to Bronze level players? Finally, how does income relate to unspent resources exactly, and is it possible to define some sort of approximate measure of macro skill to assess self-improvement?

Graphic by Team Liquid. no comments