I am going to begin here with short, one paragraph lightning-speed reviews of both GOML and CEO 2026 for this year.
GOML
I’m not going to hold back here: GOML was a shitshow. Awful location (no food options, bleak, ugly), bad venue (inadequate space, not enough setups, very cramped), even before the well-publicized kerfuffle with power on Sunday. I hated it, but I say that with one massive caveat: if they were/are truly bound to this venue, the GOML staff did the best that they possibly could have. At no point did I look around to any of the people working/organizing the event and think that anything was their fault and not the venue’s. They did the best they could with what they had to work with, and everything was run quite well. Unfortunately, what they had to work with was tainted by the setting. I am not someone who believes that every major needs to be in the heart of a major metro area (I love Riptide!), but I would not attend another event in that venue. I would, however, attend another event by the GOML team in a heartbeat.
CEO
CEO was awesome, and it’s a crying shame that it will be back to back with Riptide next year. The new Orlando venue is incredible, and surprisingly reasonably priced. People who have heard me shill Combo Breaker should probably know by now that I enjoy larger FGC events and watching those games too, and I’m very pleased we’re welcome at as similarly big event now that Combo Breaker is no longer running Melee. There was absolutely no drop in quality going from CB to CEO, and in fact it was good enough that it has me reconsidering my “no back to backs” policy and going again next year. Everything ran without a hitch and it was a great event to be at. The only issue here was the best of 5 started a bit later in bracket than it ought to have. The round to get out of pools really should have been bo5, as it was often between 2 top 100 caliber players, and there were no major time concerns that meant it was really necessary to play best of 3 there.
Riptide 2026
EVENT
Riptide 2026, like 2023 and 2025, was one of the best tournaments I have ever had the pleasure of entering. In fact, I dropped almost that exact line verbatim in my 2023 writeup. Moreover, I’d love to tell you that I had fresh new insights for Riptide as an event…but I don’t. Every bit of praise I gushed for it remains as valid today as it was 3 years ago, and there are no new criticisms to levy at the event itself. It was, once again, close to perfect. Indeed, if there are any criticisms to be had of the event, it is that it did relatively little “new”, and mostly just executed on the extremely winning formula it has developed over the years. And I guess…the merch section was a little weak for an event of this size? The reservations about being car-less in Sandusky still apply, but really, “doesn’t reinvent an all-new, all-better Wheel 2.0” is pretty much the totality of the critique I can muster. I don’t mean to be lazy and point new readers to my old writeup, but it really did mostly hit all the points I want to, and I am reasonably satisfied with how it holds up.
One positive I missed from a few years ago that I’d like to draw attention to is the situation with water at Riptide. It’s almost funny that the waterpark tournament is the best one in terms of making sure everyone is able to stay hydrated, but it is the case. Riptide did a better job of providing water stations (beyond the built in water fountains) than any other event I’ve ever been to, and also kept them up better throughout the day than other tournaments. This may seem like a small thing, but I greatly appreciated it, and it showed an attention to detail and a willingness to go above and beyond not commonly seen in the community.
Conversely, a new negative I will point out is that I thought seeding was poor for this event. Seeding is a tough one to talk about because it invariably involves making some claim, whether implicit or explicit, that player X is better than player Y, or that player X is overrated. I don’t relish doing that; many of these players are my friends, and a part of me wishes we could all be first seed. Obviously, that cannot and should not be the case, but I hope it will explain why I am not going to share a bunch of examples here. I thought I was significantly underseeded, but had a weak performance and failed to justify that opinion with my gameplay. Probably the most underseeded was Fknsilver, and he proved my opinion correct with his incredible performance. In general, I thought a number of players in the ~30-75 range were overseeded and received too much benefit of the doubt based on inactivity. I would also note that I heard complaints about seeding pretty frequently throughout the weekend (mostly similar to my own) without prompting, assuring me that it is not just my own ego or a lack of knowledge leading to this take.
As for bracket, it was an interesting one. HGod was all but inevitable here in retrospect, but I do like that Krudo at least made him work for it in grands. In terms of upsets, there were a number, perhaps most notably Llod falling to Ohio’s TheRealThing in what would be equivalent to Winner’s R2 of top 64. This was a thrilling set to watch, with Llod nearly clawing back a reverse 3-0 after being on the back foot most of the set. I thought TRT looked great here, but Llod did admittedly look a bit off, particularly vs Falco, as evidenced by the fact that he also lost to Ginger in loser’s. TRT would also go on to score a victory over Morsecode, again showing extreme proficiency vs the slower floaties that most Falco players struggle with. Another Ohioan, Iceking, also went on a run, beating 100grand and myself to finish 33rd while seeded nearly 100th. Even more impressively (and as mentioned earlier), fknsilver was seeded 104th and ended up in 17th place, scoring wins on Regex and lowercasehero before very narrowly falling to Magi. A strong performance for sure. Higher up in the seeds, Jmook looked like he had made a very strong course correction vs Wizzrobe, handily doubly eliminating a Wizzy that looked to be in rare form in terms of his punish game, which had let him make thrilling comebacks on both Zuppy and Magi. Krudo also further cemented himself as one of the world’s best, showing grit in reverse 3-0ing Morsecode and double elminating Jmook. As for the ever-discussed RapM, it looked like seeding/perceptions have finally settled near his actual skill level, as he did get his seeded 5th place through a string of wins and losses that didn’t particularly surprise anyone. Spark also quietly had an excellent event, battling his way to 5th as a 13th seed through a gauntlet of Ice Climbers and other difficult matchups. As ever, there are more stories in every bracket than I could ever fit in one piece, and this is but a handful of them. Suffice it to say however that every Melee major has both triumphant and tragic heroes, both in top and down into the regions of bracket that the average stream monster never sees.
Personal
I went into this Riptide unsure if I would be able to attend or not up until Friday morning about an hour before I left, as a consequence of massive personal drama and stress. I remember going to bed Wednesday and Thursday night laughing and almost crying in disbelief at just how much had happened since the morning. My dad was sick. My dogs were sick. My grandmother was doing very poorly. I injured my elbow significantly on Monday. Work troubles, etc. Nothing too novel, but a great deal of bad all at once. I know that, in light of all this, I should perhaps be more gentle with myself, but at some point, winners win and losers make excuses.
And so: Another major, another godawful Grab performance. Watching my gameplay, you’d think I didn’t practice this game all the time. That I didn’t boot up Slippi virtually every day. That I don’t actively think about new ways to play interactions, extend my combos, guarantee my edgeguards, and just generally try and become a better melee player. And I wouldn’t blame you! Even the sets I won, like the one on the main stream vs Blandeezy, were embarrassingly sloppy. If this seems a little extra depressive and self-deprecating, then I recommend you cease reading now: it will only get worse, because I only deserve worse. And I’ll be honest: at this point, I don’t know what to do. I played a ton of friendlies this weekend and was generally pretty pleased with my ideas and performance; I need to continue to skew harder against getting CC reversaled vs the very best players, but all in all I am confident in saying that I have improved in a very real way. The only thing I’ve worked on that didn’t really seem to pan out was my techchasing. I’ve practiced it a lot, and yet even in friendlies it just wasn’t there for me. I spent a while playing Joshman and he described my attempts/obvious fear with it as being like a “wounded animal”, which definitely didn’t piss me off. Thing is, though, it only pissed me off because he was correct. I did lack confidence, and I did do a bad job. Other than that, I felt good outside of bracket. However, all those improvements just…vanished when it was time to compete. It would be one thing if I lost to players on incredible runs playing the melee of their lives. I can live with that. After all, you can only control your own performance. But that is not at all what happened. Neither of the players that I lost to played particularly well. I just played very poorly, and found myself humiliated yet again. Nowhere else in life has been like this for me: at work, I’m not the most technically knowledgeable, but I am someone you want in the hot seat. When I was a kid doing quiz bowl/academic team competitions, I was the one who would never freeze under pressure. In grappling competitions, I was the guy who was so nervous that I would be sick to my stomach for weeks before the competition, but come time to perform I was able to lock in and never went home without hardware. I don’t know why Melee is different, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t driving me mad. I care a lot, and I know I’m trying much harder than many of my peers who seem to be able to show up and perform with far greater consistency than me.
Bracket
Vs Twincitiesqueen
My first set was against a Falco called Twincitiesqueen. I don’t think this player was really trying to win, and was mostly just there to vibe and have a good time. I also don’t think I played well this set at all but at the same time it wasn’t a terribly serious affair in general so it didn’t really matter.
Vs Freky
Freky is a veteran MW Puff player/former TO who I was surprised at playing this early, just on name recognition. This one was a little bit weird. Game one was fairly close, but I realized towards the end of it that Freky had mostly given up on trying to beat me in neutral and was just fishing for low percentage rest setups. I then played around the traps and won games 2 and 3 in blowout fashion. I’m not really sure what to say about it, honestly - on one hand, it was almost certainly the best I played all tournament. On the other, I wish Freky had tried more seriously to outplay me, because I think they could have presented a much greater threat if they just believed in their own ability. An odd situation all around.
Vs Nakamaman
Nakamaman is a Marth player that I’ve been to a million tournaments with and even been seeded to play before, but before Riptide I don’t think we had ever exchanged a single word. Weird. Anyway, this is where the “bad gameplay” part of the tournament kicked into high gear for me. I won this set 3-0, but it was altogether extremely sloppy, and was characterized by awkward moments in which both players would freeze and pause in a situation that should have demanded an immediate, fluid response. It happened so frequently that I began to wonder if this was a deliberate part of his style, but I was doing it too so I really cannot say. I played neutral particularly poorly this set, falling into patterns (particularly off of platforms) that I knew were predictable and repetitive even as I did them, almost as if watching myself in a dream. To his credit, Nakamaman did a good job of picking up on them and punishing, but never hit hard enough to fully cash in. I won this set largely on the “strength” of my edgeguards, but in truth I don’t think they were actually very strong. Nakamaman wasn’t hitting the defensive techs that a top level Marth would have, and so my lazy fsmashes to edgeguard worked, but they were not good. Not my finest in the Marth ditto by any stretch of the imagination, but I suppose it got the job done.
Vs Llod
I don’t think anyone expected me to take this set, but I went into it relatively relaxed and confident, and actually opened up a decent lead game one. In truth, I think that was more due to Llod playing a little bit off than anything particularly good I did. I kept my cool at first, but was by no means playing well; I was slow and dropping my execution in this set too. However, an issue that I was dealing with in this set is that the TV had scuffed audio through my headset, and I really should have insisted that we switch to a new one. This tilted me progressively worse and worse as the set on, to the point that I had to check the record on start.gg to remember what stages it was on because I was so far gone mentally. I had the exact same issue vs Phorox at GOML, and handled it the same way there: I grit my teeth and suffered because I didn’t want to be a bother, and ultimately played out-of-body-experience levels of bad. A part of me wonders if this is self sabotage; that a depressive, self-loathing part of me wants to lose or is looking for an preemptive excuse. I suppose I cannot know for sure, but the pain I feel afterward is certainly not that of someone who wants to lose. Last year, I encountered this situation when playing Guessmonster, and handled it correctly (I profusely apologized as we switched TVs after game one but was able to play better instantly), and I need to go back to that. I know that this sounds like I’m taking away from Llod here, but like I said, I don’t think he really played up to his standard, and the real story here was that I absolutely did not demand that he do so. I was all but absent mentally after game one, and legitimately remember less of this set than I do ones I played years ago. This is an embarrassing degree of mental vulnerability that I am ashamed to share, and I make no excuse for it.
Vs Blandeezy
I opened the set on Youtube to review it and make sure my frustrations with the set were valid before writing, and there were literally more than 10 miscues in the first minute of gameplay. I paused with the game clock at 7:08 of game one and am not sure I can continue. Good lord, who is this Marth and why does the answer have to be “Grab”? I haven’t the slightest idea why the gameplay here was so bad. I was nervous, sure, but I’ve had a thousand sets where I was this nervous or worse and put forth far better play. My neutral was was stilted and lacked confidence. My punish routes were often incorrect and always poorly executed. My edgeguards looked straight out of a 2018 VOD. Thank God Blandeezy played horribly too, because that is the only way I was getting the W here.
Vs Iceking
Iceking is a player that I think is quite good, and on paper had an excellent run at Riptide. That said, in terms of gameplay, I think that this was actually a pretty median Iceking set, and just a very poor Grab one. I cannot pull up the VOD and determine whether I am being fair here like I could for the Blandeezy set, but throughout this set the pervasive theme was that I felt like I never required him to do anything, besides edgeguard. I give him full credit in that regard: he did a good job, and I don’t think my recovery was particularly weak; he just executed a well thought out plan and outplayed me when he went for a read. On the rest of it, however, it felt like I just gave him the rope to hang me. Given long enough, I’d give him a CC opener or a reversal off my own neutral win for free, and then get edgeguarded for a kill. My hits had very little consequence and my edgeguards (particularly the offstage ones) were all but nonexistent. I had no confidence to go for the hard things in this MU (tighter juggle sequences, dsmash techchase) and instead replaced them with random, ineffectual guesswork. The strangest thing of all here was that I wasn’t even particularly nervous. I was just bad. I couldn’t summon the requisite intensity and grit to really perform under pressure, and so I lost 3-0.
…And that was Riptide 2026 for me. To say that this has been my worst and hardest year competing would be an understatement. I have, for the first time ever, actually considered quitting, not because I have lost any passion for the game or the community, but because I seem to be regressing despite my best efforts. I have no intentions of hanging it up at this time, but it is difficult to remain heartened and hopeful for future results given my recent record. But for now, a struggler I remain, and you will see me again soon enough.
Special Jiu-Jitsu Aside
If you don’t care about this or think it’s weird to include, please just skip this. However, it keeps popping up at tournaments, so I figured I would address it.
Many people know that I practice a martial art called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). I know that many people know this, because they come up to me at events and talk to me about it. This used to be something that happened only occasionally, but now reliably happens a couple of times almost every major. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I love BJJ and am unashamed of it, but I wanted to take a moment to explain my history with it and why I may seem reluctant to bite on potential conversations.
I started BJJ in fall 2011. I received my black belt in May 2017, before eventually taking a long COVID/injury/career change related break in 2020 through sometime in 2023 before returning to training. For anyone who trains, my lineage was Carlson Gracie team through brown belt before switching gyms after college and training under my current coach who is a Luiz Palhares (Rickson lineage) black belt.
As for why I may seem reticent to really discuss it, there are a number of reasons, which I’ll outline here and try to be as brief as possible.
- Other people are weird about it. A shocking percentage of peoples’ reaction to hearing that you train or are a black belt can go into one of two categories: they either believe you are a magical badass who can kill 50 ninjas with your bare hands (I cannot) or they let you know either subtly or explicitly that they believe martial arts (or just Jiu-Jitsu specifically) aren’t real, don’t work, and that they can kick your ass (they are, they do, and I suppose anything is possible). Both of these reactions are uncomfortable and undesirable, so I tend to avoid them when I can.
- People don’t understand what BJJ is. A lot of people’s understanding of martial arts is heavily influenced by Hollywood films or anime, and it gets old correcting them. BJJ is a grappling sport that almost certainly shares more with a scholastic wrestling room than it does the average person’s concept of a martial art. Correcting this is often more trouble than it is worth.
- Jiu-Jitsu culture is not in a great place currently. I could write a short book on this topic, but suffice it to say that BJJ culture has taken a pretty hard rightward turn politically since I started training. A group that I would have described politically as “surfers with guns” has morphed into something far more troubling. This trend also seems to have enough mainstream awareness that some people who don’t train are aware of it (but don’t seem to be aware that things used to be different). Obviously, in a community as diverse and queer-friendly as Melee, this would be looked at in a negative light, and I don’t want that light to shine on me by association. Especially when I lay awake at night thinking about what caused the shift and how to change it.
- People love to fraud check you, particularly when you don’t fit their mental image of a fighter/grappler/whatever archetype. I know I don’t strut about with an aura of insufferable arrogance while wearing skin tight smedium shirts and a patchwork of gaudy tattoos. That is not an accident. That is by design. But I do wake up in pain every day as a consequence of my art, and I don’t appreciate having my credentials questioned, whether explicitly or implicitly, by some gamer that doesn’t know the difference between a d’arce and an anaconda.
All that being said, I think that I am going to resolve to be more open and forthright about it when people bring it up, and hope I don’t deter anyone’s curiosity with my little list of frustrations.