by Omar Rifai

Show Me Your Moves 15, the latest entry in Illinois’ historic Smash tournament series, was held Saturday, August 30 and featured Melee and Project M singles and doubles events. Midwest TO Ripple made some significant improvements over previous SMYM tournaments by securing a better-equipped venue in the Holiday Inn and recruiting the help of Windy City Smash to provide a Twitch stream for the event. A handful of the Midwest’s notable Melee and PM players, including Kels, Darkatma, Vro, Metroid, and Jiano came out to compete against Urbana-Champaign area locals.

SMYM15

Melee singles:

SMYM 15’s Melee bracket featured a tight contest at the top of the bracket between Kels, Darkatma, and Andale. The three veterans so thoroughly dominated the later stages of the tournament that they played five sets between the three of them. The first encounter was between Darkatma and Andale in the top half of winner’s semifinals. Andale pulled off a minor upset by solidly defeating Darkatma 2-0 and punching his ticket to winner’s finals against Kels.

In winner’s finals, Kels and Andale duked it out in a tense five game set. Andale’s strong Puff play earned him wins in games 1 and 3, but he failed to find the same success on Falco and Marth in games 2, 4, and 5. After four relatively close games, Andale seemed to crumble in game 5, where Kels’ consistently excellent Fox play earned him a 3-stock victory to close out the set.

Following his defeat to Kels, Andale found himself in another match against Darkatma, who had just come off wins against Bieber and Deku Scrub in the loser’s bracket. Andale seemed unshaken from his loss against Kels, and took another quick 2-0 lead against Darkatma, just as he had in winner’s semifinals. However, Darkatma finally found his footing and made enough adjustments to take two games back and push Andale to another game 5. Andale once again failed to clutch out the set, and Darkatma took an impressive reverse all-kill set to earn his spot in grand finals.

andaleatma2

In grand finals, Darkatma and Kels finally met in the last match of SMYM 15’s Melee singles event. Coming into their last bout, both players had quite a bit of momentum: Darkatma had just won three games in a row to eliminate Andale, and Kels had yet to drop a single set. As a result, both players came out immediately with strong performances in the first few games, trading 1 stock victories back and forth until Darkatma clutched out a great game 5 to reset the bracket. Darkatma carried his momentum into game 1 where his Sheik took another close game off Kels’s Fox. Not to be outdone, Kels counterpicked Pokemon Stadium and regained his footing with a solid two-stock win. After two more tight victories in the Fox vs. Sheik match-up, Kels edged out Darkatma in the SMYM grand finals 2-3, 3-1 to take the tournament.

Melee singles final top 8 results:

1. Kels
2. Darkatma
3. Andale
4. Dekuscrub
5. Bieber
5. Matt R
7. Sinister
7. KirkQ

Melee doubles final top 8 results:

1. Darkatma/Deku Scrub
2. Matt R/Tom R
3. Vro/Kels
4. Andale/Tomacawk
5. Ripple/Pooch
5. Scythe/Bieber
7. Viperboy/ORLY
7. Faceroll/Oprz

Relive the action on Twitch

See the full bracket on Challonge

Want to see more awesome matches from the Midwest? Check out their Youtube