Do You Think About Your Options Mid-Battle?

[MarioMan01]

Within my school, I have yet to be consistently be beaten by anyone. At first I thought it was just that i was better, and overall more skillful than them. But upon asking my friends about whether they consciously thought about their options mid battle or if it was a much more subconscious act, I discovered that they tended to think consciously about their options with a little subconscious action to execute them.

I do not display this trait; I don't think about the game, it just sort of happens as though my conscious self is a spectator watching someone else pull off baits and AT's. I criticize myself when I mess up, and I get better and repeat the mistake less. When I do end up consciously thinking about the match, I always end up doing the stupidest stuff and spamming the same moves constantly.

Now I'm not sure if I'm genuinely better or if i just have an advantage by using my subconscious primarily, so I would like to ask all of you on the smashboards: Do you behave similarly, where you don't think about your options in a given situation and stuff just sort of happens, or do you actively think about and execute your moves/reads/ATs?

 

[VValter]

I try to pay attention to what my opponent is doing cause generally they express habits that I can then exploit if I read them well enough. Zero shows this very well in his gameplay analysis of matches against M2K and also in his For Glory series I believe.

The key though, is doing both at the same time, reacting and reading, then you get the best of both worlds (your friends probably aren't synced in relation to reactions and reads or just plain out don't have as much experience with the game as you).

But don't get me wrong, playing by instinct is pretty fun and can work, it's just riskier against smarter opponents.