I beat you therefore I am a better player. I lost therefore I am worse.
This is a terrible mentality to have. It's short sighted, and anyone who preaches this is hurting their potential to grow as a player.
The logic makes sense at face value. If someone is a better player than someone else, then, all things equal, the better person has a greater
chance of winning.
Where the logic fails is when you assume that the chance to win is automatically bumped to 100%, even when the difference in skill is very small.
In short, the better player doesn't always win. Therefore, just becasue you won, that doesn't automatically mean you're the better player.
Smash isn't so black in white that you can gauge two players respective skill over the course of a single game. People are complex creatures, we have emotions, we feel fatigue, we lose concentration. Our knowledge of the game isn't perfect. The game is months in, and yet we still can't create a perfect tier list.
So it's safe to say, there will be strategies that certain players will not know how to beat.
Take the pikachu spamming thunder example. Imagine you have a solid player with multiple tournament wins under his belt. This player faces a random for glory player who knows little about smash and has never used pikachu in his life. He doesn't know much about the game, but he knows through experience that thunder is a good move, so he decides to spam it.
The tournament player, with all of his knowlege, cannot figure out a way to beat the move, and loses.
So that means the pikachu player was better, right?
Wrong.
The tournament player is objectively better. He has more knowlege of the game, more knowlege of his character, and possesses a much more solid skill set than his opponent.
But he lost. There was a hole in his playstyle, and the pikachu player, knowingly or not, managed to exploit it in just the right way.
Fortunately, holes can be patched, and the stronger a players foundation is, the easier it is to fix these little problems. But the pikachu player on the otherhand has a lot more work cut out for him. The instant his strategy stops working he isn't left with much. His foundation isn't there, and it's likely that he'll lose every game to the exact same player he used to beat unless he gets lucky and that person SD's... twice.
That's a pretty extreme example, but it's extremely common. Lack of matchup knowlege is a problem that even top level players have. If a lesser skilled player manages to abuse that weakness in just the right way, they might be able to squeeze out a win.
Also, keep in mind, this is all assuming the matchup is even. There will be matchups where your opponent's character just happens to counter yours. Meaning that if you're even in skill with your opponent, then you're statistically more likely to lose, and if you're slightly better than your opponent than you're statiscially likely to go even.
And keep in mind, this is assuming both players are fully rested and equally focused. Neither is frustrated or on tilt. Both have all of their attention on smash.
There are way too many factors to consider when judging one player's skill over another. So instead of just saying "I lose therefore I am worse" Look at
why you lost. Sometimes all you might need is to get some sleep. You won't know that if you automatically assume your opponent is better. Worse case scenario, you run the risk of trying to change something about your approach that you were actually doing
right.
So don't asume that one person is better simply based on winning. The person who wins outplayed the other person. The person who lost got outplayed. That is all.
/end rant
