In more established esports like League of Legends or Counter Strike: Global Offensive, players have a wealth of resources to help them succeed. Managers assist players with travel logistics, scrimmage schedules and real-life responsibilities. Analysts help players break down past matches, tactical adjustments and opponent tendencies. Coaches help keep a team in check with their day-to-day operations. As prize pools and viewership increase, teams are willing to spend money to find their players' advantages.
Coaches have been a hot topic of discussion in Smash circles. Earlier this year, Team Liquid added Luis "Crunch" Rosias to the team as a dedicated analyst and coach for Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma. Since adding Crunch to the team, Hungrybox has performed noticeably better, winning a multitude of events, including Evolution 2016.
The idea of having a personal coach still has a nebulous feel to it. What exactly goes into preparing a player for a match? Is it similar to what we see in a Team SoloMid or Cloud9 behind-the-scenes video for League of Legends? The coaching space still remains unexplored, but here are some general stories of what goes on between a player and coach.
Learning Styles
Each of the top players learn and discuss the game in their own unique style. Analytical players like Kevin "PPMD" Nanney love theorycrafting situations with their friends. Jason "Mew2king" Zimmerman grinds for hours on tournament weekends against other players who play the same characters as his tougher opponents. Many of the top players are personal friends, so they help each other during the course of an event. Certain players only provide practice in friendly matches while others go more in-depth.
Crunch takes a scientific approach to working with Hungrybox. During the week, Crunch and Hungrybox break down matches and character-specific situations. Long hours are spent on Skype to study the game while making key optimizations, covering options and maximizing punishes.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to work with Joseph "Mango" Marquez at Super Smash Con 2016 and Shine and discovered that Mango's style of learning comes from experimentation and thinking out loud. Give him advice and he will more than likely shut it down, but give him an open-ended question and he will talk very intricately about it.
Mango is the type of person who understands concepts on his own terms. Rather than tell him specifics, give him a new tool and he will explore the practical uses of it. During matches, I noted some of the positives and negatives of his game plan and then reviewed with him afterwards. The discussions weren't heavily analytical, and we focused on the basics as I asked how he felt about certain situations where his opponents took his stocks.
As great of a player Mango is, he becomes noticeably more stubborn if things don't go his way, causing him to recklessly throw away stocks against strong defensive opponents. As silly as it sounds, telling him generic things such as "don't forget to utilize dash-dancing and shine-grab" or "play smart and don't give anything away for free" are more than enough to keep Mango in the right frame of mind.
Other players are much more hands on. Not too long ago, James "Duck" Ma coached Zachary "SFAT" Cordoni in between matches against Hungrybox. More importantly, Duck spent the entire afternoon preparing SFAT for the Jigglypuff matchup in the hotel room, pointing out basic fundamentals to the matchup and walking through unfamiliar situations with SFAT. Much of SFAT's victory in the set can be attributed to Duck's tutoring.
The morale boost
The top players will tell you how much their mental state affects their gameplay. Several of them have thrown sets due to making small mistakes that cause them to lose their composure. Something as small as a person in the crowd heckling can tilt a top-level player. Over the years, the players that have seen the most success are the ones that remain most composed. Although Crunch is a solid player in his own right, his main contribution to Hungrybox has been keeping him in good spirits in stressful situations, frequently reminding him that he is more than capable of winning.
On stage, sometimes players can have tunnel vision and bad habits begin to show through. In the set against Hungrybox, Duck mainly reminded SFAT to not forget what they worked on during the day and to focus on taking low risk moves in the matchup. Although SFAT started the set well, he fell behind and looked for very greedy kills that ended up costing him stocks. But Duck's coaching between matches recalibrated SFAT's game plan to great success.
Mango prefers to go onto the stage on his own, so my main focus is to keep him mentally focused and confident in between matches. This includes finding him the right practice partners and making sure that he has everything he needs, so that he can focus solely on Smash. Hungry? I make sure that he has peanuts and healthy snacks around. Thirsty or tired? I make sure to have spare energy drinks and waters on hand. Our discussions focus on building his confidence for the match. We chat sparingly if he needs to clear his mind. The main part is to keep him focused as his sloppiness usually comes from when he autopilots his movement.
The Overall Benefits
Hungrybox will be quick to tell anyone how beneficial Crunch has been in his overall success. SFAT's victory against Hungrybox at Shine 2016 can largely be attributed to Duck's help. Smash is still largely behind when it comes to maximizing a player's potential and it only makes sense to see coaches play a more vital role in a player's success. Even though mid-set coaching may not be legal at every event, coaches still can play a big role in helping players both in their gameplay and mentality. Team Liquid started the trend of adding dedicated coaches and more teams should follow suit by investing more into their players.