These Statistics Show How Skilled You Must Be to Win a Fighting Game Tournament

It’s a fair question that many people that are curious about fighting games have when watching or hearing about a fighting game tournament. “How good do I actually have to be to win one of these things?” Well, through some extensive number crunching LoyalSol has posted the statistics behind the chances of winning a tournament on his blog.

He begins with a case in which every person at a tournament has an equal winning rate except you. As your win rate in fighting games increases, so does your chances at winning a tournament obviously. The real interesting data comes in when he takes tournament participants into account. He states that the typical size of a local tournament is somewhere around 8-32 participants, while a major tournament (such as the recent  NorCal Regionals or the upcoming CEO in Florida) typically has numbers above 128 participants. With these numbers in mind, this chart was created:

It is expected to have your chances of winning decrease as the number of participants increases, but as LoyalSol states, it’s shocking at how large of an effect this has on your chances.

If you notice at 60% for a small local you have a very reasonable chance of winning, but by the time you scale it up to the size of a major a 60% match win rate you will win roughly 1 out of every 20.  This means that even if you are the best player if you are only slightly better you will still lose more majors than you win.  A 60% advantage is not nearly enough to be a consistent winner because odds are you will get randomed out in a bracket that size.   In fact only match win rates of 85% or higher actually translate to winning over half of your tournaments consistently. It actually speaks to the skill level of many of the top players when they are able to consistently win or place at majors. They aren't just slightly better,  they have an enormous edge. 

His data speaks volumes about the skill of highly regarded competitive fighting game players such as Korea’s Infiltration or Japan’s Daigo Umehara. Infiltration’s ability to understand and adapt to his opponents and their characters is unparalleled, which Daigo “The Beast” Umehara has had an extensive legacy of winning tournaments around the world. Seeing how often these men win, or have destroyed their opponents in previous majors, these numbers really nail down just how much better they are than your average player.

Of course, don’t let that stop you from entering your local tournaments! Not every neighborhood has a Justin Wong or Ricky Ortiz in it.

It’ll be interesting keeping these numbers in mind when watching EVO (one of the world’s largest, if not, THE largest fighting game tournaments) this year, considering last year had 3,500 participants competing in six games. Check out this documentary if you want to know what goes into the preparation for the participants of EVO. It’s insane.