When I first started playing in Melee tournaments, I never knew why the blind pick was established. I figured that two players would keep switching characters until one person said F it.

As time passed, I learned.

Here's a sports example of the blind pick being put to use.

Apparently unsure of how the rules handle such an oddity, the umpires didn't stop the cat-and-mouse game until Venditte walked toward the plate and said something while pointing at Henriquez.

Umpires and both managers huddled and the umps decided the batter and pitcher can both change sides one time per at-bat, and that the batter must declare first.

The ruling favored the pitcher, since he gets to declare last.

About seven minutes after he first stepped in, Henriquez struck out on four pitches as a righty against a right-handed Venditte and slammed his bat in frustration. Staten Island won, 7-2.

There are some reports that say that in this rare instance, the pitcher must first declare what arm he is throwing with. Then, the batter can go to whichever side he chooses.

I have seen an ambidextrous pitcher before, when I was covering local sports in my hometown area. In high school sports in my hometown area, left handers and switch hitters are very rare, so that pitcher was going mostly right handed.

It had to be sometime last year where I asked HugS, a great Smash player, how he was so successful with Samus in Melee tournaments. He said it was because of his success in controlling the field during play.

Once he told me that, it changed the way I looked at his match. I watched his matches waiting for that moment where it was obvious he controlled the field. Once he gained that control, he was unbeatable. Out of the hundreds of players I've watched, he was the only player who I would watch just to find those moments where he was in total control.

In a feature entry on All is Brawl, HugS explains how to go about controlling the situation. You can read his full entry right here.

I control the pace of the match up. When you play me, I do my best to make sure that you play by my rules.
Now, this seems very common sense right? But there's reasons why people don't notice such things. The ability to control a match is sometimes disguised as other things. For example, when you approach a ROB with an attack, he side steps and dsmashes you. So next, you walk up slowly, shield, wait for the sidestep, and grab.
-Later on, you try walking up, shielding, waiting for 2 sidesteps, then you grab.
-Then another time you walk up slowly, shield, let him dsmash you, then grab.
Sooner or later he's going to figure out that he needs to roll away instead of fighting your strategy.

Now, most people would see the previous example as a display of mindgames, trickery, or even more accurately, an adaptive response from either of the players in different parts of the example. However, behind an adaptive disguise is a player's way of controlling a match up. Yes, he's adapted to the situation, but more importantly, he's forced his opponent to do what he wants. See, It's not so much about pulling a technique off every time. Your opponent will come up with ways to get around your strategies, BUT that's the whole point! You are making them change their style to deal with YOUR strategy. You're in control.

With Brawl being the design that it is, where one-hit knockouts are almost nonexistent, this has to be very important. Players are still going to be trying to find the liposuction version of winning -- the quick fix -- but learning how to control the field of play could be a more important tactic to learn.

The first two rounds of the "Counter-Strike Source" competition were shown on the big screens in the arena. This was moments after Fatal1ty described the stage, which is de_season.

To paraphrase Fatal1ty, he said a sniper could have a field day because of the open area. But then they show the action on the big screens! And if we can see it, I'm definitely sure the 10 Counter-Strike players could see it.

The future rounds were blocked off, in part because the FIFA 08 contest began.

One round, I can understand. But two?

Hopefully this was just a mistake by the television director.

= = =

I mentioned how the four general managers on Monday had went to the console game while the Counter-Strike competition was taking place.

Tonight is a little different. Kat Hunter (S.F.) is on the FIFA stage with Stermy in his FIFA 08 contest. Meanwhile, Dave "Moto" Geffon (N.Y.) has stayed with the Counter-Strike players, going on occasion to see how Wizakor is doing.

This is going to be a tough situation for the general managers, and it will be interesting to see how all six of them handle this predicament. There's no right answer to this.

Update: Moto is with Wizakor for the second half of the FIFA contest.

Two days later, I still can't come to a conclusion as to whether the Championship Gaming Series' match schedule is ideal.

As it occurred Monday, here's how it went: The first three games were Dead or Alive 4, Forza Motorsport 2 and FIFA 08. The order of those games were random (which is fine, they've done that before).

Here's where the debate begins.

The fourth game is Counter-Strike Source. They play a round, then another, and then a third. And then all of a sudden ... "We're going to come back to that later, right now, we're going to have our next match."

There's still 15 rounds to be played (remember, they play all 18 regardless of score), and the fifth game -- Dead or Alive 4 -- begins. So now, attention is divided between Counter-Strike and the fifth game.

And I'm thinking ... "What?"

During the opening moments of the Dallas vs. San Francisco contest, my eyeballs went back and forth trying to watch both events. That was, until Phoenix went up 3-0 and then pulled off history.

The same situation happened during the Carolina vs. Chicago matchup.

Two events going on at the same time. It is pretty obvious (at least to me) that this was done for television purposes. I don't know how it turned out on television, but live, it was kind of weird.

= = =

Before I continue, I'll tell you what ReDeYe, an excellent shoutcaster, mentioned to viewers on The C.G.S forums.

1. Why?

Well, its pretty simple really, this is a TELEVISED league and the TV side of things is very important. We arent just talking about going out to a few thousand hard core fans here, either, but millions of viewers around the world. With that in mind and taking in to account what works (historically for TV), a 90 minute show is universally agreed (amongst TV people) to be the optimum show time for CGS matches. As it was, last year they would typically last closer to 100 minutes or longer.

Thus, the show needed to be shorter and frankly with FIFA at 4 minutes a half, Forza lasting only a few minutes and DOA averaging 9 minutes, it doesnt take rocket scientist to work out the only place they could save time would be in CSS which averages at 34 minutes per show.

2. Alternatives

Here is the reality. If they wanted to, they could have just said, lets do 6 rounds a half and that will save us the time. Instead they came to people like me and the GM's for advice on what to do. It wasnt a case of "shall we do this" because obviously we would all have just said "no". The fact is, this had to happen, it was just "how". This, everyone agreed, was the best compromise and allowed the rounds to stay as they are without compromising CS:S rules further.

3. SRCTV

I specifically asked for sourceTV if they were going to do this as the biggest affected people would be you guys, the hardcore fans of CS:S and therefore you have an opportunity to watch the entire match AND in the way you prefer. CGS realises that the way they show it wont appeal to the hardcore, which brings me on to my final point.

= = =

I think I've made it known that I'm still learning Counter-Strike. And to this point, I still can't break it down to the meta-game. All I know is "plant bomb, stop terrorists, don't get shot, defuse bomb if it's planted."

However, does the decision to not show 6 of 18 rounds make sense? As ReDeYe put it, sure. The hardcore fan can go on SourceTV and watch it. If I really wanted to make an effort to learn Counter-Strike, I'd go on SourceTV.

And I'll take another example. Let's say the C.G.S all of a sudden had 10-lap Forza matches (which would be awesome, because I love racing games), there's no way they could show 10 laps without the crowd dozing off during Lap 6. But if there was a racing channel where the hardcore fan could continue to watch while a second match took place, I'd be the first person to log onto that racing channel.

I realized that while I'm typing this, I'm kind of reaching my answer. We're talking about five or six rounds of Counter-Strike not shown on television, which isn't the majority of the match. If you're a Counter-Strike fan, you have two options: learn the game being shown (likely Dead or Alive 4), or go on SourceTV.

= = =

There's one other thing I have to wonder about the game split. All four general managers went to the "Dead or Alive 4" contest. Was there any worry about how the Counter-Strike match was playing out? I'll be curious to find out tonight if the GMs do the same tonight.