CEO Daytona 2022
The first CEO I attended was in 2018, and it quickly cemented itself as one of my all-time favorite tournament series’. The event felt like it ran smoother than others, Jebailyland is one of the coolest side attractions, plus nothing beats the presentation they put on for finals Sunday.
So needless to say, when I heard Melee was back on the menu, AND that CEO 2022 was the first stop on the Panda Cup. I knew I had to show up. My training regimen was a bit lacking, but I felt good about the lessons I learned from my week of tournaments and metafy lessons so I was ready as I could be.
The Plan
Since CEO is in my home state, I usually take a few extra days off work to catch up with friends and family outside of the event. I took off the 23rd-30th and booked my flight for late on the 22nd. BadBones and I would then road trip from Tampa to Daytona on the 23rd and stop at a friend’s place along the way. Friday I would walk around the venue and spend time getting familiar with the setups. Saturday morning my pools would start, I was projected to place 65th, but I always set a goal to screw up the bracket projection a little bit so I was aiming for top 64. Sunday I would wake up early-ish, and walk down the coast listening to music until finals started up.
Now that I’ve laid out the plan, let’s see how things worked in actuality…
CEO Day 0
I finished working at 4:30 on Wednesday, packed up my shit, and caught an Uber to the airport. Once I got through security and sat down at my gate I received a notification that my flight was going to be delayed which would have had me missing my connecting flight. My original flight was already projected to get into Tampa at like 11:58 pm so this immediately became a mess. I had the option to rebook my flight, so I picked something that had me getting into Tampa at 1:30 pm on Thursday…this wasn’t ideal but was still doable…five minutes later my new flight is cancelled and I cannot rebook anything through the app. I talk to a very stressed-out attendant and she managed to find a couple of flights that would get me to Tampa…at 6:45 pm Thursday…This sucks shits…but is still workable. I go home, stream for a bit, then call it a night since my flight is in the morning. I wake up to a notification that my new flight is delayed…by three hours, at this point, my plans have been shot to hell so I start looking for other flights, the only one that is viable is a flight directly into Daytona for $747 which arrive at 1:00 am Friday. Thankfully my friend was willing to stay up and let me into the room. I decided to just crash on the floor since everyone else was already asleep. Pretty rough start.
When writing things down in my journal I summed up my travel experience with three words: “Fuck American Airlines.”
CEO Day 1
Rejuvenated from my night on the floor I woke up early, showered, and headed down to the venue to scoop up my badge. Imadethis, had 10:00 am pools, but before that, he had to head to the airport as American Airlines didn’t send his luggage down here with him…fuck American Airlines…but he got all sorted out. This was imt’s first major since picking up Melee with the release of slippi so I was excited to watch how he did.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch too much of his run as fate would have it a WFL Peach player, Stockholm, came up to me, imt, and Badbones and asked the one non-Samus player of the group if he played Samus since he needed practice in the match up for his pools. So I spent a good chunk of time getting beat down and explaining the match-up to him, which apparently proved fruitful since he won his pools match and made it to top 64.
As for imt, he went 2-2 which is definitely a good showing for his first major tournament…he even got that win over Axe in loser’s bracket.
CEO Day 2
Day 2 10:00 am pools crew! People complain about morning pools, but I fucking love them. Forces me to be on a normal human’s sleep schedule which makes me perform better by default, and if I get my ass kicked I have the whole rest of the day to do whatever the hell I want. Going into the pools, I was 82nd seed, not even projected to make it out of pools, this is nothing new to me. Despite competing since 2006, despite being around for some historical moments of Melee, outside of the few people that met me I’m relatively unknown. Never travelled much, and am really only making a name for myself in my 30s, rather than my teenage years. I expect to be underseeded, but I think CEO marks the beginning of the end of that.
This was my run. The names may not mean much, but the numbers do. Keep in mind, I’m seeded 82nd, I’m not expected to make top 64, instead, I stopped just short of top 16. My opponents were the following:
Hod Strat - Seed 175 Game and Watch - Nothing especially notable about this match. Knew the basics of the game, and was playing a pretty bad character. I believe I 4 stocked them in game 1 and only dropped one stock on game 2
Bardon - Seed 47 Samus - This was probably the most enjoyable match I had in bracket, and outside of the people that 3-0’d me, the hardest one as well. We started on Yoshi’s where I had a pretty convincing win. Game 2 it was a close game on Stadium. For game three they banned Fountain, and I try to avoid playing floaties on Dreamland, just out of preference so I decided to take us to battlefield. I’m thankful that this was the last game of the set because Bardon had my patterns pretty much figured out and was nailing me with charge shot after charge shot, but I was able to convert a little bit better and got a few primo edgeguards to seal the set.
Stone - Seed 18 Fox - This match was on stream starting around 1:38:00, if they ever upload this to youtube, I’ll update the link here. I had plenty of time before this match so I took some time to do some deep breathing exercises and meditation. From game one I immediately had a thought in my head that this was extremely doable, and when I saw Stone start getting flustered when I would hit him with shit I said in my head “Oh this dude is cooked.” I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t have an unforced error in game two I would have walked out of the set 2-0, but 2-1 on stream against 18th seed, and coming out in top 64 on winners side is really nothing to complain about.
Prof - Seed 15 Sheik/Marth - Sheik is always going to be one of my demons, that’s the nature of playing Samus in this game. The games were close, but the combination of him being a better player, in a favorable match-up, where I don’t have access to frozen stadium won out in the end.
Jammy - Seed 46 Falco - This set was a good one. I made a few mistakes in game one which caused me to drop the first game, and Jammy had a whole crew behind him cheering him on. Game 2 I smoked him, and the crowd behind him was still hyping him up, at the end of the second game he turned to them and gave them a signal to chill because he realized it was going to be an uphill battle for him, and it sure was as I just decided I wasn’t going to lose any more games.
Timebones - Seed 35 Marth - This guy came up to me super excited to play, and congratulated me on my run thus far, and said something along the lines of “Oh man, you had like a big upset or something, right?” and I just said, “According to bracket, every match I’ve played has been an upset, so yeah.” I only remember a couple of things from this set. 1) If I stood too close to the edge when he was recovering he would go for ledgehop fsmash 2) He passed a good player check in our first game when he tried to hit me with some shit that one of the community’s best labrats posted on Twitter. Outside of those facts it was just the standard Marth match-up.
SDJ - Seed 11 Jigglypuff - SDJ is extremely good. He has an extremely good understanding of using Puff’s drift to get in and out of range and he creates openings with some very obscure plays that force his opponent to think on the fly. Unfortunately, I was a little too slow on my adaptation, and my run ended there.
17th out of 224 is pretty damn good, and definitely blew my goals for the event out of the water. Panda Cup posted updates on the biggest upsets of the event, and I couldn’t help but chuckle when I found out I was on there 3 separate times.
CEO 2022 didn’t have a ton of killers, but like I said earlier, this was a good stepping stone to show where I stack up against the general community and will hopefully get me some more respectable seeding at future events.
CEO Extras
After I went 3-0 in pools there was a bit of time to kill before top 64, so imt and I headed over to the Red Bull gaming bus and entered the Lethal League Blaze side tournament. I went undefeated in the bracket thanks to the hundreds of hours I have playing the game at a high level…so I guess you can say I’m a CEO champion.
Lastly, the biggest highlight of the event in my mind, is when Badbones, DeAnthrax, and myself walked down to the beach on Monday morning and just talked about the event as a whole. You see, Badbones has been competing for as long as I have been, and is honestly one of the reasons that I picked up Samus, but recently I discovered that he’s always had tournament nerves and it really hinders how he plays in these large scale events. De and I are both people that have struggled with our internal battles, so this was a perfect opportunity to share knowledge.
The three of us just stood in the Atlantic Ocean on Monday morning and talked about what it means to play well, and what steps we as players can take to be mindful and in the moment. I want to believe that all of us walked away with something from that, and honestly, this might be a new ritual I implement at majors because the lesson that I took away from it is this.
You’re never playing on your own. Sure, when I go to the setup my performance is mine, but the lead up to it, the practice I put in, the discussions I’ve had, the plans I built, none of that is done without the help of others. It truly is a Community Effort…Orlando.