How do you adapt quickly?

[Twinkles]

So for players I've played countless times, I know their habits, I **** them badly.

Then someone new shows up. They could be worse than the people I play, but I don't know their habits so I don't do as well as I think I should.

How would you quickly adapt to a play-style you've never seen before? What habits or nuances do you try to pick up on immediately?

 

[Pi]

i think this is where the difference between natural skill and learned ability is apparent
i see some players are able to almost subconsciously adapt to new situations/habits
or they are just good as a whole at seeing and acting accordingly due to a number of variables
i think those fall under the category of natural skill

if you are not one of those people, or even if you are, one way to assuredly adapt quickly to a lot of tricks/playstyles is to gain experience against them

if your friends roll when you put them near the edge, and you punish it all the time, even if ur fighting mango and you put him near the edge and he rolls you will punish it

so assuming your fighting mango and you put him near the edge, and he shields wavedashes out and shines you, when this happens to you enough you will find a counter to it, and you'll be able to pull it out of your big book of counters in the future for if any other fox does that

basically if you struggle w/ adapting on the fly, you just need to cause those tricks/gimmicks to happen more so you can practice against them

if you play someone new, and you get wrecked by spot dodges, and your friends never spot dodge

try to make them spot dodge, spam grabs or something, get them to spot dodge then counter it

also i think you can train yourself to adapt quickly by consciously causing situations that you need to adapt to to occur

basically like the example i gave, if you focus some time on adapting, it becomes a part of your playstyle, more the more you focus on it

 

[Cleod]

Usually i don't have a difficulty adapting, if someone new shows up and turns out to be a pro he might get the upper hand at first but after that i learn his patterns and start to combo him. Really all it takes is focus and noticing his playing style, every player got their own moves yah know?

 

[Levingy]

So for players I've played countless times, I know their habits, I **** them badly.

Then someone new shows up. They could be worse than the people I play, but I don't know their habits so I don't do as well as I think I should.

Remember, that they also don't know your habits yet. So I would suggest to try to be as unpredictable as possible. Keep moving around without it being predictable and try to be in good positions mainly. Also, when you don't know your opponents habits yet, you should play more safe than usually. What I mean is, you should do moves that has less lag, space them well and don't go into situations where risk/reward ratio is too high. Beware doing high-lag moves like Marth's F-smash and stuff too much if it's not 100% sure to hit. But what ever you do, remember to not make it a bad habit to yourself in the game because the opponent is trying to figure you out.

While you're doing what i described earlier, you should (obviously) in the same time try to figure and pay attention to your opponents habits as much as you can, and react to them.

 

[Jeapie]

As you said yourself, you need to learn this persons habits from knowing absolutely nothing.

Best 3 things to pick up right from the start TO ME are :

1: DI habits.
2: Shield habits ( shieldgrab, roll, jump, upsmash, upb etc )
3: Roll habits

1 You get good kills by knowing his DI routine
2: Note to self, if you have to keep pressureing, space well or wait for the roll.
3: The game mostly after your opponent got himself in a hard situation.

Edit: Im so badd on smashboards, I cant even quote right! -_-

 

[Cleod]

Edit: Im so badd on smashboards, I cant even quote right! -_-

Just click the quote button next to someone's post

 

[Zodiac]

I think you just have to play new players enough to where you get used to adapting quickly, whenever I play new people consecutively for a couple days I get in the habit of adapting quicker.

 

[Twinkles]

These are some good posts

Jeapie's catches my eye in particular
But Pi & Zodiac are right, I probably need more experience with playing new people before
I can really start adapting well