The DotBlog: Battle in the Big Apple

Welcome! My name is Matthew “MattDotZeb” Zaborowski. You may know me as a tournament organizer (TO), a streamer, a commentator, or as a competitor. My most recent endeavor has been the most challenging out of anything I have done with nearly a decade spent in the smash community: The Melee Games. It has taken a demanding role in my life, and for good cause! Allow me to introduce you to this project through the DotBlog. I will be utilizing this blog weekly, every Wednesday at 12pm EST, to provide you updates pertaining to The Melee Games.

This week we will recap the finals of Tri-State, begin to include statistics about the crew battles, and review progress in California!

Battle In The Big Apple

Super Nebulous last weekend (9/29/14) held the largest turnout that @HectoHertz’s weekly series has seen, and the highest viewership for www.twitch.tv/FreeSaltines. Players such as Hax, DoH, Lord HDL, The Moon, DJ Nintendo, Swiftbass, and more showed up to fight in this 76 man local tournament. The games were extremely entertaining, and I even got to commentate most of them for the 8 hour period that bracket matches took place for singles and doubles. (Why commentate and not compete? I’m not playing Smash till January 10th! This is a self-imposed restriction.) You can check the matches out here.

But, enough about that! More importantly, we had two Melee Games matches take place there! Columbia University and Cornell University faced off, and the winner fought Rutgers University in the Grand Finals of Tri-State. You can watch both battles here.

Cornell University fought hard and showed that the secluded school from Upstate New York has some serious talent. However, Columbia University, with no surprise to the New York City regulars, put in work to send Cornell packing.

Rutgers University, perceived as the favorite to win the Tri-State bracket, was put at an early deficit when the second player they sent in took zero stocks. The remaining players for Rutgers, IE, Takoyaki, and Swedish Delight, endeavored to claim victory but the last lines of defense for Columbia, Cheezpuff and Fiya, traded stocks efficiently and secured victory for Columbia.

With Columbia and UMass Boston winning their respective brackets, the final battle of The Melee Games will be New York City vs Boston! I’m thrilled to see this rivalry extend into Smash and, personally, I am rooting for the boys from Beantown. Be sure to catch it during the Salty Suite at Apex 2015!

TMG By The Numbers

This is a new part of the DotBlog that I will be including for the next few weeks. This fall a total of 47 crew battles have taken place. Nearly all of them have been reviewed to reveal data about what characters were used, what stages were selected, and how many stocks each player took. (I say “nearly” because two of them did not have recordings.)

In my opinion, the most interesting piece of information that I have gathered thus far is the overall win-rate associated with a crew winning Game 1. Only 7 out of 45 (15.5%) battles were won by the team that lost Game 1. In New England this was 3 out of 18 (16.6%), and in Tri-State this was 4 out of 27 (14.8%). This means that there’s an overall 84.5% win-rate for taking Game 1. Of course, the more information we receive as TMG progresses in the future the more we can refine this.

When it came to Semi-Finals and Grand Finals for either division, winning Game 1 came with a 100% win-rate. Only 1 out of 8 Quarter-Finals were won by the team that lost game 1.

Why is this? One of our readers, UMass Boston’s own Klap$, offers the following suggestion:
“Winning game 1 in a crew battle is almost essential in order to secure victory for many reasons. When a crew wins game 1 they have the counter-pick advantage, some momentum, and a morale boost. On the other hand, the crew that lost game 1 is at a deficit, they’re pressured and they need someone to take out the remaining stocks without losing 1 in order to close this deficit. Playing under pressure is an acquired skill, and I’m sure we’ve all had our number of mishaps when the only thing on your mind is to win. It’s interesting to see that as the bracket progresses, the win rate of the crew that wins game 1 goes up even more.”

Next week I will be reviewing the characters that were used thus far in TMG! Please let me know of any suggestions you have for this section.

California (Week 3)

Last week we had just over 100 sign ups from 30 schools. This week we are up to 211 sign ups from 36 schools. As of now, 20 have qualified: 12 from SoCal, and 8 from NorCal. We have created a map of the colleges and local tournaments to help visualize things a bit easier. Feel free to take a look here.

If you want to sign up, click the image!

Check out the DotBlog every Wednesday at 12pm EST right here on MeleeItOnMe. If you have any suggestions, criticism, or ideas for the blog please feel free to contact me @DotZeb or at www.facebook.com/MattDotZeb.

Feel free to help Support TMG by Liking us on Facebook, Subscribing on YouTube, or Following us on Twitch!

Thanks to Lauren “Ten” Casapao for her help in editing this entry.

Past Entries:
Introduction
3000 Miles
Tri-State Championships