Am I good enough to compete online?

[PO]

Hi All,

I'm just a starter. Just been playing for a month now and would like to now when it is time to give it a go at tournaments. I don't care if lose or win but at least I want to be competitive.

I play offline more often just to practice and I'm able to handle pro 8 at the moment. I played online maybe about 30 matches and having big issues with the return.

Do you have like any sayings like "If you can handle a certain difficulty (maybe master 5 I don't know ), then you have the skills of an intemediate player"? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[pidzi]

Honestly, if you are able to beat "only" Pro 8 its certainly not enough to compete on regular tournaments, and most likely you would even struggle in futures/challengers. When i joined ITST i was already able to win futures and challengers but at the same time i was also able to beat Master 10, few weeks later even bageling him thus moving to Incredible 1, and still i was pretty much struggling against TOP guys, so shortly Pro 8 is simply not efficient enough for online tour. In my opinion unless you are able to beat at least Master 1 you should not join tournaments yet because you could feel like you are destroyed by literally everyone and thus giving up too early, never coming back again.

You also pointed out you struggle on return. and this is probably the main reason why you still cant move to higher cpu difficulty. In order to improve you return game, you want to use "auto-pos" trick which triggers at specific condition, for better picture see this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVP2W0_dHzc , it should give you a good insight about how to use this trick correctly. However along with this trick, its still unnecessary that you are extremely focused on returns and workout on your reflexes, even take a few more steps back from default return position.

Lastly, its good you are training often offline, i did the same during my hey-days and it really worked, but you cant stuck on the same difficulty for very long and should be able to beat specific cpu difficulty in a mere of few weeks and then move on another. Dont even hesitate to turn Previews and aiming zone ON during offline practice it helps as well. Hopefully this was somehow informative and i wish you good luck in imporving.

[PO]

Pidzi,

Thank you for this informative explanation. I'm really thrilled with how real this game feels like and really want to improve at least to a certain point. I'll try to implement your suggestions as much as I can.

Thanks again for your time.

[C4iLL]

Hi man ! We have several top players who reached top level by playing uniquely offline before starting competition, like Clog (final of AO 2013), IsniperXZ (semi final of RG 14, current top 10) and the highly respectable Pidzi who won 2 grand slams
Isniper for instance started to play on tour, disappeared to focus on offline, came back and became top 10.

Personally I think you can compete on challengers tours with Master 8, but I'm less expert than Pidzi in AI stuff as I'm a 100% online guy.
Why not giving a try ? You will loose nothing, and playing humans raises tactical challenges to solve, that are more interesting than what offers the boring AI

[PO]

Hey Man I totally agree with you on the online experience being much more fun and real. The thing is when playing online, I get aced or unreturned serve %60-70 of the time and the rest is pretty bad returns which happens to end with an easy winner from the opponent. This breaks my will as it seems to me like I almost have no chance to break my opponent .

On the other hand, to beat Master 8, I really need some time to do that I guess .

By the way, when you guys say that I need to at least handle Master 1 for instance (what Pidzi sugessted), is it like two bagels or a competitive score would also be fine?

[C4iLL]

Hey Man I totally agree with you on the online experience being much more fun and real. The thing is when playing online, I get aced or unreturned serve %60-70 of the time and the rest is pretty bad returns which happens to end with an easy winner from the opponent. This breaks my will as it seems to me like I almost have no chance to break my opponent .

On the other hand, to beat Master 8, I really need some time to do that I guess .

By the way, when you guys say that I need to at least handle Master 1 for instance (what Pidzi sugessted), is it like two bagels or a competitive score would also be fine?

Ah yeah I read "Master 8" instead of 'Pro" sorry, my mistake ! Indeed, pro is certainly a bit too short for challengers Pidzi is right.

About your service return, we all went through that step. It's the first big thing to figure out to compete. Personally I lost a lot of match 6-0 6-1 at beginning on the tour because of that. Suddenly, one day you realize you start to return fast services at 200+
The video Pidzi showed you may help ! Also, you can watch videos like the final between Richie and Pidzi on a clay m1000 (Ferrer vs Nadal) on youtube, it can give you a lot of insights about "how to reposition yourself", where to position yourself in relation to the baseline, how to moove, how to select your shots...

By the way, you must learn the technique of "counter" (taping a button at the very last minute in defense, instead of charging/holding --> releasing, which is the usual technique) which produces big deep shots. You must also bind specific keys for Top Spin, Short accelerations, lobs and dropshots in the advanced menu of your controller called "Assign keys" (or something like that, at the bottom).

About your last question I can't say, but I know some people in the top 20-30 who play "only" against master 10, nothing more.

[pidzi]

Hey Man I totally agree with you on the online experience being much more fun and real. The thing is when playing online, I get aced or unreturned serve %60-70 of the time and the rest is pretty bad returns which happens to end with an easy winner from the opponent. This breaks my will as it seems to me like I almost have no chance to break my opponent .

On the other hand, to beat Master 8, I really need some time to do that I guess .

By the way, when you guys say that I need to at least handle Master 1 for instance (what Pidzi sugessted), is it like two bagels or a competitive score would also be fine?

Its not necessary that you beat Master 1 or Master 8 with bagel, important is that you can outmatch him in most points and situations and most important to beat him by a break, not in Tiebreak. Me personally, when i wanted to move to another cpu difficulty level, i always played best of 3 format match against cpu and if i beat him in straight sets i moved to another difficulty like for example from Master 5 to Master 7. But as C4iLL said, you have first get into the return stuff, without this you will have a hard time to beat anyone. Now i would recommend you to start practicing with Master 1, even if you feel like he is owerpowering you most of the time, such practising will teach you to find solutions on his game style and eventually as the time passes by you will start winning games and beat him finally at last.

[PO]

To C4iLL,

Thank you very much for these great tips. I've been playing with the assigned keys for each specific shot for some time now and watched that match between them. Actually that match took my interest and made me start playing this game at the first place

But didn't know about that counter shot. I'll try to learn that. Thanks man.

To Pidzi,

Thank you also for the tips. I tried Master 1. It doesn't seem that bad for a start. I think I'll be able to beat him in a short time .

Thanks a lot to both of you again for taking time to try to teach me a couple of things.