The common mindgames take place in your Neutral game, where it comes to a lot of rock paper scissors scenarios. I'm sure you're familliar with this from several SB guides (including my own) and stuff of the sort.
Basically, I'll set up a situation.
So you begin to notice that when you shield near the ledge that your opponent runs in, empty hops, then grabs you expecting you to spotdodge a dash grab. Then typically FThrows you to push you further off the stage and into an edgeguarding situation.
Now that you know this, you have control over them in one aspect. You can 'condition' them by shielding near a ledge, expecting them to do exactly what you want. Here's where it can get tricky.
Your opponent might expect you to predict them, so you want to throw out an attack that will counter that scenario. While also countering the original. This is not possible with all characters, of course.
Let's say you're playing Mario and they're playing Falcon. You have the option to retreat with an SHop and throw a fireball, but this will only put you more off the stage, and with Mario's recovery and Falcon's DAir, this may not be in your favor.
What do you do then? From my perspective, you have two specific options that are fairly safe.
Option 1: Jab Combo
Start the Jab when you expect the empty hop, do it out of shield of course, so if they go for the dash grab, then will be caught in it, if they go for the expected maneuver, they will get caught in it. What if they Dash attack? They may get caught in it, but that depends on the character. This will also push your opponent away, giving you the time to do as you please and throw them into a similar stage of the neutral.
Option 2: Retreating Pivot Grab
This one, if done properly, will yield the best result, however, is harder to pull off and more specific. If you can pivot grab them just out of their grab range, you'll be able to throw them off of the stage, which puts you in an advantageous position. This will also scramble them if their goal was to do this to you, because now they have to act in a situation they did not plan out. This is particularly good if you catch them in the SHop, because when almost any character is landing, it is very safe to grab. If they Dash Attack, you'll be out of their hitbox range because you retreated a length, if they dash grab, same thing.
What do I commonly see go wrong? I see players rolling behind the other player, however, the common comp player with more than a year of experience will be able to react to you rolling after the SHop, and dash towards you for a punish. Basically, it's not a bad thing to do if you think they'll Dash Attack or throw out a hitbox, but imo, if that was the case then it's better to just shield grab them into a back throw.
Good luck, I still have tons of trouble with this so, I'd say to just sit down with a friend and study each others options in situations. Ya know?
