Indian Wells BNP Paribas Open

[VMoe86]

First Masters 1000 of the season has started, draw has been released:

http://www.intertopspintour.net/content/draws/Draw-IndianWellsBNPParibasOpen-3468.htm

Another possible match-up of AlexJasmins vs. Florian in R32. My draw looks good on paper, but I have to bring very good performances -- these up and coming players like Lokius, Vincetheprince and tdbchess are not to be underestimated and I have to start practicing more again if I want to achieve more than QF/SF.

[Florian]

Florian vs Woowhat 4-1* 15-40 tbc his connex was jumpy we'll finish later.

[tigerofintegrity]

R32 - tigerofintegrity (Almagro) def. eliomelma (Murray) 6-3, 6-2

I came into this match feeling quite relaxed and in good form but I definitely didn't expect this outcome. Elio is a great fighter and great rallier and it was a shame he couldn't play up to his potential tonight. Problems with lag for him saw him play far more aggressively than he normally would play and those two coupled together resulted in a whole flurry of unforced errors on his part. He ended the match with twice as many errors as winners (16/31) which is highly uncharacteristic of him, showing you how much trouble he had tonight.

There were moments when he played well, usually down break points. He served very well on those, getting good first serves in on most of them and limited me to just 3/11 but he wasn't serving as well during the other times in the match. On my side, I played a clean, patient match and given the random lag patches, I thought I played very sensibly. I played steady and only took on chances when I had the opportunity and mixed my play up well too, coming to the net at times.

Overall I'm happy with the win but I wish we could have played in better conditions and had a far more enjoyable match. I hope Elio can get back to form soon if he has the time to practice cos he's one of the nicest guys on tour and it's always great playing and chatting with him.

[eliomelma]

Thanks mate, as i told you, now you are a good player and you will reach many good results in the rest of the season. You deserved the match and play great tennis with hitting shots on the lines always!

[C4iLL]

I was sure tiger would do a surprise in a tournament soon, I told him that after a set recently !
Anyway, It's a pity for Elio, 31 faults maybe lack of practice ? Or a style more suited to clay as well

[AlexJasmins]

Floriann Def AlexJasmins- 7-6(7) 6-3

LOL congrats...Not my best match at all... 42 errors, mishits, serving at 5-4 for the set and doing a lot of errors, the tiebreak same, 2nd set wasting breakpoints with mishits and errors just no comments deffo.... Congrats u played good and deserved to win...GL

Watch the .dmo speaks by itself...

[Florian]

R2 Florian (djoko) def. alex (murray) 7-6(7) 6-3 Great match in terms of drama, connex was fine but turtles were more frequent in the 2nd set especially when we had to play longer rallies.

He broke me early and i was suffocating from many of his deep mishits killing my attack tactic, eventually he did couple mistakes while serving for the set and i came back, and in the tb i had several mini breaks but at 5-3* i think, while court was wide open i missed a volley by a mm (thanks to the great slow autopos...) and he came back, even had a sp on his serve but missed it and after a tensed rally i eventually took the 1st set.
He was visibly pissed off and lost his serve with a love game, i had trouble holding the next one and that was crucial because i was again able to break him for a *3-0 lead, and then he started doing what he does best : pushing and spinning. And that tactic paid off because my player was much more tired than before, at 15-15 we played a 38 shot rally which i should have given up early not to lose so much stamina, and he broke back. I feared that i would have to play the rest of the set/match with very low stamina but hopefully i ve been able to hold another crucial service game at *3-2 with 2 or 3 bps to save mostly because i tried to finish points at the net and had no feel at all there, then i managed to hold my stamina at some decent level even if he pushed more often than in the 1st set, and we held until he served to stay in the match. There i lead 15-40 and he saved his 2nd match point with a body-shot-mishit which turned out to be a net cord winner. Surprisingly it didn't piss me off and kept pressure on until that 3rd match point who was the good one if i remember well.

Anyway thrilling match, he must be disappointed after a nice start, he defended very well all match long and because of the way this game is built, defense very often turns the point around once you produce the mishit you're obviously waiting for, and then taking profit from the fact the opponent can't see it coming right into your feet ( ). For that matter you guys can watch the .dmo at 1-3 in the 1st set, and more crazy defence towards the middle of 2nd set. Unbelievable flaws destroying the pleasure of the gameplay.

gl next time

[Clog]

All I'll remember from this match is Alex's fair reaction we can read behind the stats on the pictures =p

[C4iLL]

Alex has anyway established a new record on the TE tour : 30 victories in a row (without counting the WO). Previous record was Kyuuji, 19 victories.

Other records :
TS4 PS3 = 30 victories from Sh0case
TS4 Xbox = 40 victories from Hola Itz Mike
TS3 Xbox = 38 victories from Norberto
TS3 PS3 = ?

[Clog]

Sure. Alex is a great player. I gotta to admit I was a little sceptical but I've changed my mind since the AO finals. To me, he's not just a basic defender, he's able to adapt his game to his opponent. Congrats for this record.

Anyway, I'm happy for Florian, even if he thinks my style is a poor one (I know he does). We all knew he was able to beat Alex, actually to beat anyone on this tour, but the only thing that prevented him from doing so was the fact he lost too much energy into complaining about the game, and especially about how people like Alex play with it. Now that he seems to have started to accept the game's imperfections, I think that he'll finally rise as he's always wanted to. At least, this is the way I see it.

[Florian]

Thanks Clog for the kind words. I haven't changed you know, i'm still complaining more than ever and that 1st set mishit fest and guess fest and 2nd set moonball fest at times didn't make me change my opinion, but i felt i could hit the ball a tiny bit better towards the end of 1st set, and his ues helped me keeping focused.

I'm just wrong about hoping that TE will be almost as realistic as real tennis one day, and i know that's what keeps me frustrated because i'm definitely a tennis-addict, and i wish that my experience would help to prevail against players using flaws (even if i shouldn't complain much as i played the counter profile in MG which was obviously quite flawed compared to punchers and PBs) rather than "clever" game plans. So yes i think guessing, being able to defend from the furthest point of the court, and using mishits as a tactic to turn points around, is pretty lame in the idea i have of having fun playing tennis.

Some people use one of those flaws, and others use them all at the same time ^^

[djarvik]

Alex has anyway established a new record on the TE tour : 30 victories in a row (without counting the WO). Previous record was Kyuuji, 19 victories.

Other records :
TS4 PS3 = 30 victories from Sh0case
TS4 Xbox = 40 victories from Hola Itz Mike
TS3 Xbox = 38 victories from Norberto
TS3 PS3 = ?

viewtopic.php?f=1008&t=13722

[inseedious]

vramvrim(almagro) def. inseedious(federer) 3-6 6-0 6-1.
He had connection problems during the last days, so we planned to play today as his connections was good again.
In the first set we had a few connection problems but it was playable, I won 6-3 but it was a big fight, I just hold all my services and cought the few opportunities he gave to me.
In the second set, it started to be unplayable. We had an average 50-60 ping during all the match, which is very good, but there were turtles and packet losses during every point. We tried to play the 3rd set re-hosting with 150 auto delay, but the lag peaks were over 500-700ms. After the lag, there was no match. I enjoyed the fight between two good players, but I am totally frustrated about gaming conditions and defense balancing. Since the end of the first set, it seemed that the points were won by the player who hit the longest mishit. Unfortunately, I had to adapt to this defensive playstyle to win the first set.

Summary: with playable conditions: 6-3; with lag: 0-6 1-6 ======> we need a better lag rulement, because lag can obviously create unbalancing, it's not like wind in real tennis. Every player has its own way of reacting to lag and packet loss, mostly not connected to his skill but to his hardware/connection and his gamestyle. It seems that almost every match is won by the player who hits more long mishits and who reacts better to laggy situations.

If I was good at managing laggy situations, then I would play CoD instead of TE right now. I chose TE because it's a realistic game.
Nothing against vramvrim, who also proposed to play the 3rd set at another time, but I refused as I didn't have the time and because I was just sick of continuously hosting the same match hoping for better conditions.
Also look at the draws of the current tourneys: they have an insane amount of no match, WO and coin toss situations. It's a shame compared to the last year.

[C4iLL]

Yeah curently there are more WO than before, it's maybe due to the balances issues, but it can also be due to increasing number of new players who don't schedule well their matches.

[VMoe86]

VMoe86 (Federer) defeats Vincetheprince (del Potro) 6-2, 6-4

First Masters 1000 match of the season for me against one of the up and coming players on the tour (eliminating tdbchess in the round before). From hearsay I knew he was a bit more of a defensively oriented player, so I was prepared for longer rallies (yes, also against del Potro). I knew the key to the match would be how well I'd return del Potro's serve and this I managed really well: I broke him two times in the first set, taking his time away and moving him around (also attacking 2nd serves). I have not much regrets about that set, a couple of desyncs here and there were unpleasant (I mainly remember those when I had a chance to hit a FH to the open court, but then he was defending nicely with del Potro and it was not a guranteed point). Especially the low stamina after a desync is annoying.

In the 2nd set they were less frequent, maybe only one or two times. I had a chance for an immediate break in 2nd set, but in Federer style I managed to not take them. However, in his next game I broke for 2-1 and since I felt comfortable on serve I maybe unconsciously did not play my best on the next break points I had to get a 2nd break. In the final game he put up some nice resistance, getting to 30-30, but I did not choke there and served it out.





Good match, Vince! As I told you in chat: You move well defensively, just your attacks need to improve -- gotta play quicker here and there. I think you will have a good clay season.

A bit off topic, but it has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread: The term "mishit". To clarify the misusage of this term, here an explanation of what is actually happening there.

People here like to talk about "Deep Mishits". In fact, those deep shots are typically not mishits, i.e. they are not wrongly hit shots, they are the result of how TE is designed -- TE is designed around chance. You hit a counter perfectly with the sweetspot then there is a certain chance where this shot can land within the aiming zone. Same as you can serve 90% First Serves in with some characters when you variate a bit with b1 and b1+b2 serves you can also have a high amount of deep counters if you variate enough between b1 or b1+down. Those who get quicker to the ball and charge longer for a shot will hit less of those right on the baseline, since the upper edge of the aiming zone is within the court. Hitting these shots is a lottery, which is why you can see players spamming b1 or b1+down until they hit the jackpot. On exact probabilities only manutoo can give answers.

So, calling this a mishit is not the correct term and implies the opponent likes to hit "wrongly". This is a core feature of TE's gameplay, nothing regarding that will be changed for TE 2013 to my knowledge (but for a future TE 2014/15 it is possible). So, instead of annoying manutoo (and the whole community) with the same things over and over again which won't be changed in a quick update: Deal with it. And if I see this term used for those deep shots in future posts I will gladly delete them, because it only irritates other users.