Playing to Win vs. Anything to Win

I am a big fan of Sirlin's Playing to Win article. He's got a lot of things right in it. you can check out the blog here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

I want to take a new stance on this topic and subdivide things a bit. Playing to Win's idea is that no tactic is scrub, if it beats you, it's up to you to overcome it. Many "scrub tactics" are actually well calculated, and should you break it, they have a deeper game then you'd think. That is what Sirlin of hints at in parts of his article. I want to divide the Playing to Win group into 2 catagories. Playing to Win and Doing ANything to Win.

Doing Anything to Win is the most common strategy for competitive online play for Super/Vanilla Street Fighter 4. It can be as simple as exploiting difficult to counter tactics (such as Blanka balls or dhalsim "yoga sniper") to as complex as polished shenanigan tactics. This is the type of stuff Sirlin says is not scrub, and I am with him on this. These people have their specific game down, and even though in tournament play it wouldn't work, they can win some points with it online. These people will do anything to win, even if it includes making their game two-dimensional in the process. This is not in the spirit of Playing to Win.

Playing to win is using every tool, glitch, combo, mixup, shenanigans etc in your characters arsenal (within tournament guidelines) to win. Sometimes it can overlap "Anything to Win" but never coincides with it. If you favor a tactic for extensive amounts of time, you will eventually find yourself in that rut when you most need to back up and change your play style. Playing to Win conflicts with Anything to Win in this spirit. Unfortunately, online you will find yourself fighting opponents that do the same thing over and over, which may, in some cases, force you to do the same thing over and over. But this is usually only a few matches here and there.

By the same token, I come across players that like to "teach me" how to counter something, so they do something over and over again till I am so furious I am yelling at the screen. This private lesson does nothing but aggrivate me (I'm trying to play to win, versus an opponent who is not) and hurt the other persons game in the long term. It's up to me to figure out the way around the tactic, i will do that on my own time not while I'm fighting to win.

Playing to Win is the most fun prospect in gaming I have come across, but only after I started really thinking about it.