Went to my first tournament since September of last year. It's the Rock'em Sock'em series in Charlotte, NC. So what did I learn, I still suck at this game, oh wellz. This tournament was a little extra special because we had special guest Dieminion, Flash Metroid, and Noel showing up. Of course this brought out more people, even some that normally wouldn't make the trip to Charlotte. I got to play Flash in some casuals, but unfortunately didn't get the chance to play Dieminion. He asked why I didn't try to tick throw, I said I thought he would be prepared to tech my throws. He says, he's not going to tech a throw that isn't going to happen, which is a trademark of a bad player. I didn't say anything but was like "yeah, that's true" in my mind. Honestly he's a cool guy, but if you play him he won't hold back on his criticisms which I've heard about and didn't have a problem with. He was right, I should have attempted tick throws and not respected him so much.
I spent most of my time watching and playing casuals. I also had a pretty long session with Hitokage. As for the actual tournament, they held SF4 last and it didn't start until 8:30 PM. I had no idea it would take so long to start. Out of the 42 people who entered, 3 had already dropped out, I was close to being #4, but finally they started it and my first opponent was Hitokage. I won but I'm not even sure if it counted because the organizers were talking about rearranging things since players dropped out. Then I played a Guile player and lost. In losers I played a pad Ryu player named Joel. He's from Atlanta maybe DBJ knows him. Before he played me I saw him play Dieminion and was really impressed. In there first match it ended in a double KO. Later he landed a Ultra on Dieminion as he launched a sonic boom. He lost but was really imperssive. During our match I did land some gimmicks on him and took a round, but eventually he won.
After that I took off. The thing is I only slept 2 hours that morning and the drive home from Charlotte(about an hour) was pretty damn scary. Half way through the trip I started getting really sleepy and was swerving quite a bit. Good thing it was late at night and there was no traffic around. I just remember getting home and turning on the stream to see the Grand Finals between Druseph(ATL Honda player) and Dieminion who was playing as Sagat instead. Then I remember waking up in my jeans and hoody. Well that was kind of fun, may go back next month, hopefully with more sleep.