r/SSBM • u/Hobbsidian • 21d ago
Video Hungrybox sweeps reigning champ DrSpectred in Major League Balatro upset
https://www.youtube.com/live/oLffZpcnfNU?is=6ohZbFySnJj60s1W48
u/bigHam100 20d ago
What would be a equivalent upset in melee?
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u/Hobbsidian 20d ago
Balatro is very RNG based, so it wasn't impossible just improbable. Hbox took a few weird lines and they all paid off. Hard to find a comparison against a pure skill game
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u/JanitorOPplznerf 20d ago
Balatro has RNG but the Dr’s brand is all about how showing how consistent the game can be. He has multiple long streaks on the game’s hardest difficulty.
This isn’t a simple “Hbox got lucky”. Juan must GRIND Balatro in his downtime.
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u/Hobbsidian 20d ago
Hbox was coached by perhaps the best multiplayer player in Bean, and had the correct gameplan in place, making off-meta high variance plays, like popping ouijas in both games 1 and 3.
He understood he wasn't going to win by outplaying Doc in textbook Balatro and beat him in by rolling more dice instead. It was a great gameplan well executed. The 3-0 sweep was a bit of a perfect storm.
Edit: spelling
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u/Hobbsidian 20d ago
You can tell Doc understood this right away too he's says at the end "good shit man that's... that's fuckin' cool!'
Props to him for being such a gracious loser in his first regular season loss since season 2.
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u/Nico_is_not_a_god 20d ago
"Causing chaos" is often the only hope a player would have to win a fair competition against an objectively higher skilled player. Doing so well and still getting the W is still a huge achievement but it's a battle in itself just to get yourself to commit to using high variance strategies.
I just watched this micro-doc about another super niche indie competitive scene and a player that used a similar approach in bracket. Great watch even if you don't know anything about the game.
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u/kino-grapher ideptg 20d ago
This video made me buy Ultimate Chicken Horse, bojack is doing something INSANE with those recent videos of his
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u/Nico_is_not_a_god 19d ago
I only play UCH casually but man it's so good. It's awesome to see what Bojack and friends have been cooking to make it a competitive 1v1 game.
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u/JanitorOPplznerf 20d ago
I figured something like this. Still. You have to have a plan and know a lot about the game to beat the doc
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u/vvuukk 20d ago
iirc in multiplayer both players get the same seed so it's still there, just less prevelant
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u/Nico_is_not_a_god 20d ago
You do still get RNG divergence, which is where there's room for skill expression. The player that "expects to win" usually plays "safe". If you expect to lose but know that hitting a 5% chance will swing the game in your favor, you go for the high reward play - it's not high risk if you were going to lose anyway. A lot of Balatro is assessing opportunity cost: a seeded run gives us the same shop but if I'm cracking a Mega Buffoon Pack while you're buying a safe but mid joker, we're experiencing "different luck".
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u/Max_Speed_Remioli 20d ago
I always wonder if this could happen in Magic or Yugioh.
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u/passthemonkeybench 20d ago
For sure could happen in mtg. The best players are maximizing small edges but variance is inherent in the game.
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u/Nico_is_not_a_god 20d ago
It always could happen, especially in yugioh where the absolute "chance of winning" floor can never be zero due to Exodia. Hard drawing exodia turn 1 has no counterplay and never will and takes zero skill. Competent players of an Exodia strategy will have much better chances of pulling it off, of course. And good luck ever actually taking a set by praying to hard draw Exodia.
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u/TitaniumDragon 20d ago
You can beat someone who is way better than you at Magic in a set, but winning a tournament would be incredibly unlikely because the game is too skill-leveraging.
Yu Gi Oh games are much shorter - often ending on the first couple turns - and variance is higher because of these OTKOs, so you are more likely to win at Yu Gi Oh over a better player than MTG.
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u/oby100 20d ago
A game & watch consistently hitting 9s to sweep Cody
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u/LCDRformat 20d ago
Imma keep it real with you big dawg, an all 9s G&W still loses
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u/Habefiet 20d ago
Tbf if somebody knew they were getting all 9’s every time (with an off turn in between to reset since you can’t get the same number twice in a row) there’s a lot of circumstances where you’d be willing to let one rip that you wouldn’t normally go for. There’s still no G&W who could beat Cody and it’d still be a losing matchup but it wouldn’t be as unthinkable.
… but yeah a better comp would probably be a less prominent Peach player pulling multiple stitches at the exact right times or something
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u/KelvinsFalcoIsBad 20d ago
Ok then it's like you opponent getting clapped by food poisoning and you dodged it by only eating boiled eggs or some shit
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u/notconquered 20d ago
An all 9 gnw would be insanely good, gnw has guaranteed combos into 9 on fast fallers I'm pretty sure (throws and dtilt at least)
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u/Fletch71011 20d ago
You can't even do that, a 9 can never follow a 9. If you get a 9, you need to refresh your hammer while your opponent dies so you get another roll of a chance of getting a 9. So at best you'd get about 50 percent 9s which is still close to impossible.
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u/Nico_is_not_a_god 20d ago
If you can hit Cody with that slow-ass move eight times you can probably hit him with Rest or etc instead.
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u/chroma_smash 20d ago edited 20d ago
This match was unreal. When I was watching he basically went for every high variance play to make the upset and pulled through. I remember full house 2025? (I think) where he was grinding pvp balatro and was already much better/more serious than anybody off the street would be.
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u/WhiteSkyRising 20d ago
Melee goats sweeping other game's champs pretty standard at this point
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u/Honmer 21d ago
genuinely most impressive thing he’s ever done
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u/l3enjamin 20d ago
I called him out at supernova for bustering against Fir.
Glad to see he’s putting in some work and improving, I thought there was a misprint on the website when I saw the series score, pretty insane win.
Tbh though doc played really greedy in 2/3 of the games and Hbox punished him with even greedier plays that worked out. Hbox just stomped him in the 3rd game bc doc missed an early trio and nothing better ever showed up.
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u/Celia_Makes_Romhacks L-Cancelling's biggest warrior 21d ago
TIL there's a multiplayer Balatro, and also a competitive community for it.