A anecdote about adaptability from David Sirlin's book "Playing to Win"

_Playing to Win_, which, according to the author, is the competitive gamer's bible is available for [free online](http://www.sirlin.net/ptw). I was reading through it when I encountered a neat anecdote about adaptability in the chapter concerning what makes the best player. > Here is an anecdote about Adaptability. The “B3” tournament was a landmark in fighting game history. It marked the first meeting between virtually undefeated players John Choi and Alex Valle in the game Street Fighter Alpha 2. Each easily cut through the field, eventually to face each other in the finals. At this time, Alex Valle unleashed a new technique never seen before, something he had saved until this moment. I should note that “saving your good stuff” backfires 99 times out of 100, but this is one of those storybook situations almost too extreme to be true. Valle’s technique, which an untrained eye would probably not even notice, went on to become the single most powerful technique in the game, it changed the way the game was played, and it was immediately named “the Valle CC” after the man himself. The point is, this was no ordinary trick, but the most powerful, game-changing tactic the game would ever know. > > How did Choi fare in such unfamiliar waters? Many players would have lost the entire set without even realizing what Valle was doing. Choi may not have fully grasped what was going on, but he knew the rules were suddenly very different. Choi ultimately lost that match, but to leave it at that is an injustice. He changed his gameplay, got caught fewer and fewer times by the new trick, and even managed to do it back to Valle! Valle dominated several rounds, but his grasp slipped more and more as the games went on. The crowd was in utter awe that Choi could possibly even hang in there against such odds, much less slowly shift the momentum in his favor. The match went the full count of possible games: all the way to the last bit of health of both players in the 3rd and final round of the 14th and final game. By a razor’s edge, Choi lost. Yet even today, that match is cited as the most amazing display of Adaptability in fighting games. Planning would have been of little use to Choi in that match, yet Adaptability is seen by nearly all as a rare and distinguishing factor of the most elite players.