Canada Cup 2010 summary

- Official site here.

- GG organizer, Inaba-san, mentioned that Mago won $1,600 (Canadian dollar?) in the money match tournament on Friday night. Umehara got 2nd.

- Umehara won a casual exhibition 7-0 to the Canadians losing just 4 rounds. Mago lost to JSMaster, but won the rest (6) losing 5 rounds. (Details here)

- (Mago interview) He said he doesn't really listen to music but he liked Porno Graffitti back then. Mike Ross joked that everyone likes porn. (Though they actually know the band.)

- The commentators didn't know that Umehara is using noise-canceling headphones. I thought everyone knew this.

- Around 13,100 viewers peak.

- GODSGARDEN team restreamed, they showed a video letter from Umehara at the end. This video is made for school festival at Trident Computer Technical School.

- Umehara won SSF4 and SSF2THDR Singles, Mago got 2nd. Their team got 3rd.

- Top 8 analyzed.

Daigo Umehara
2-0 Stevercakes
2-0 Enigma Saint
2-1 Riceta
2-1 James Jones
2-0 Jozhear

2-0 Mike Ross (Easier than expected)
2-1 Mago (Highlight is when he uses Flying Buster Drop to stop Rekkuu)
2-0 Mago

Mago
2-0 Philly Mah
2-0 Orikasa
2-0 Xtremer
2-1 Gootecks
2-0 Hai

2-0 JSMaster
1-2 Umehara
2-0 JSMater
0-2 Umehara

Team Japan (Umehara, Mago, Air)
- Went to top 4 by using Air only.
- Mago OCD'd once, and played a game againt JSMaster.
- Umehara only played one game against JSMaster.

2-3 Team Spiral Guys Fanclub
3-0 Team Calgary

Umehara interview
- He confirmed that his hobby is finding some delicious food.
- He's not married.
- He unintentionally dodged the question "Who's the strongest player?" He said they're many strong players and he couldn't tell. Thank God. Because if he answers, other players will be like "Daigo looked down on me!" like what happened months ago. (Umehara isn't an Internet person so he doesn't watch and know many foreign players.) Also, people should stop asking this kind of questions.

Media
- Spooky's YouTube channel
- Mago and drinking game: Part 1 and 2
- A picture on Mad Catz Twitter
- A Canada Cup article on Wild GunMen


Thoughts

The stream
Team Spooky almost failed for being mad at the restreaming when GODSGARDEN team was doing it. GG team didn't know what to do but Spooky's face made an awkward atmosphere for a long while. It seems like he cares too much about the viewer count and doesn't like a free PR. (And GG will only get 1,500 viewers due to Nico's limit.)

In the past, I heard Team Spooky used to restream a tournament from the other team before so I don't think Spooky has the right to say this. He also keeps telling people that it's all our fault if the stream isn't smooth, which is not quite accurate. I can confirmed that most of the time, Spooky's stream is NOT smooth, same with the entire Ustream. Why? Bandwidth has nothing to do with this is incorrect. But even with broadband, it's useless if it can't deliver the consistency of the dara transfer. This happens when you're in another countries or living far away outside the city. Setting is another cause, this's why the Japanese restream was smoother than the real stream in latest SoCal Regionals, even they're both using Ustream. (Nico also never lags, unless bad day) What he should say is "We don't want to lower the stream's bit rate, so you better get a better Internet."

In the end, Spooky gave an acknowledgement and KSK said it's a relief.

Anyway, everyone including me must thank Spooky for doing this. Other than the lag, the sound quality of the microphones, and the off-topic chatting, everything was good. The onscreen graphics was great. We got to see both player names and team names and he kepts updating the score on the screen, unlike Level|Up series. He didn't keep people waiting. His play-by-play commentary was good as well.

Guile - Fei Long
I totally expected Ryu vs. Fei Long with Umehara's new strategy, but Umehara showed once again why he's the best. Using Guile to counter Fei Long is very effective. Sonic Boom has faster recover than Hadoken so Mago can't jump in. Mago has to use Rekkuu to get in, but that's when he has to take a big risk against Flying Buster Drop, with great reaction to boost. This leaves Mago to play only ground game, but Guile can use Sonic Boom to poke and he can poke better than Ryu even with his normals. (And Umehara is master of poking.)

Mago's Boxer
Many people didn't know that Mago has Boxer as a sub, but if you saw Kao TV, you'd know. In a very old video, Mago even revealed to Umehara himself that he's been practicing Boxer.