Month: December 2016

While much has already been said about Capcom Cup 2016’s finals and its winner Du “NuckleDu” Dang from Team Liquid, that’s only half of the Capcom Cup story. The other half involves Du’s final opponent, fellow American Ricki Ortiz from Evil Geniuses, who helped make history by giving Capcom Cup 2016 an unprecedented all-American grand finals set.

In this new interview, Yahoo! Esports’s Zorine Te talks to Ricki Ortiz regarding her performance at Capcom Cup. Specifically, they focused on how she prepared for it, leading her to go from being just a regular top 8 finisher at tournaments, to a strong contender to take Capcom Cup. According to Ricki, the change in her performance comes down to having structured training sessions (with Panda Global’s Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez) for two-and-a-half weeks in preparation for Capcom Cup. Prior to this, having to travel to a lot of tournaments prevented her from getting in any proper practice time.

“I promised myself that for two and a half weeks straight I would practice hardcore with [Filipino Champ] and just focus on practicing completely to get the sharpest I could in the game,” Ricki states. “I wasn’t sure how much I could improve until Capcom Cup, but I knew I had to put my all into it.”

As for having an all-American grand finals at Capcom Cup, Ricki describes it as “monumental.” In addition to this, she states that she feels that this means that America is catching up to Japan. While she won’t say that America is better than Japan, she says that at the top American players can compete with Japan’s best players, and the latter won’t automatically be favored. “It’ll be a fifty-fifty toss up” says Ricki.

In addition to Capcom Cup, Ricki also talks about Street Fighter V’s second season. This includes the possibility of dropping her main character, Chun-Li. According to her, she likes the character and, if she remains competitive, she will definitely be sticking to her.

That said, she’s definitely taking a “wait and see” attitude. Looking to see how Capcom changes the balance and how the tiers stack up. She also wants to see who the new characters are, and she feels that these characters “have to be really cheap” if Capcom is doing a lot of tweaking and buffing.

Finally, she talks about the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, with Street Fighter V possibly taking a back seat to the former when it comes out. Ricki points out that she got her start playing competitively in the Versus series. She plans to get sharp enough in Street Fighter V so that she can then focus on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite when it comes out, putting the former in the back-burner somewhat. This, she says, should allow her to juggle both games.

Of course, that’s just part of what Ricki talks about in the interview. Head on over to Yahoo! Esports to read the rest.

Source: Yahoo! Esports

Photo c/o Yahoo! Esports

While much has already been said about Capcom Cup 2016’s finals and its winner Du “NuckleDu” Dang from Team Liquid, that’s only half of the Capcom Cup story. The other half involves Du’s final opponent, fellow American Ricki Ortiz from Evil Geniuses, who helped make history by giving Capcom Cup 2016 an unprecedented all-American grand finals set.

In this new interview, Yahoo! Esports’s Zorine Te talks to Ricki Ortiz regarding her performance at Capcom Cup. Specifically, they focused on how she prepared for it, leading her to go from being just a regular top 8 finisher at tournaments, to a strong contender to take Capcom Cup. According to Ricki, the change in her performance comes down to having structured training sessions (with Panda Global’s Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez) for two-and-a-half weeks in preparation for Capcom Cup. Prior to this, having to travel to a lot of tournaments prevented her from getting in any proper practice time.

“I promised myself that for two and a half weeks straight I would practice hardcore with [Filipino Champ] and just focus on practicing completely to get the sharpest I could in the game,” Ricki states. “I wasn’t sure how much I could improve until Capcom Cup, but I knew I had to put my all into it.”

As for having an all-American grand finals at Capcom Cup, Ricki describes it as “monumental.” In addition to this, she states that she feels that this means that America is catching up to Japan. While she won’t say that America is better than Japan, she says that at the top American players can compete with Japan’s best players, and the latter won’t automatically be favored. “It’ll be a fifty-fifty toss up” says Ricki.

In addition to Capcom Cup, Ricki also talks about Street Fighter V’s second season. This includes the possibility of dropping her main character, Chun-Li. According to her, she likes the character and, if she remains competitive, she will definitely be sticking to her.

That said, she’s definitely taking a “wait and see” attitude. Looking to see how Capcom changes the balance and how the tiers stack up. She also wants to see who the new characters are, and she feels that these characters “have to be really cheap” if Capcom is doing a lot of tweaking and buffing.

Finally, she talks about the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, with Street Fighter V possibly taking a back seat to the former when it comes out. Ricki points out that she got her start playing competitively in the Versus series. She plans to get sharp enough in Street Fighter V so that she can then focus on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite when it comes out, putting the former in the back-burner somewhat. This, she says, should allow her to juggle both games.

Of course, that’s just part of what Ricki talks about in the interview. Head on over to Yahoo! Esports to read the rest.

Source: Yahoo! Esports

Photo c/o Yahoo! Esports