When he’s not clutching rounds and claiming titles on the Tekken World Tour, Tekken champion Bae “Knee” Jae-min is usually streaming his online matches. He’s even taken to educating his audience, dispensing tips and tricks to help fans improve their game.
One of his uploaded videos from 2021 gives some insight into how you can predict your opponents’ moves, rather than just rely on your own moves and combos.
To “read” his opponent, Knee looks at how players react to certain situations under pressure. He carefully watches things like how they block, punish, and reestablish neutral ground.
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Knee teaches the basics of reading your opponent in Tekken
“What’s his favorite move and what’s his habit?” he said. “With that, there are two types of reactions: punishment or sidestep.”
Demonstrating by using Dragunov against Marduk, Knee only took one round to see that his opponent kept attempting to block lows and break the pressure of Dragunov’s Blizzard Hammer (b1+2).
As the game goes on, Knee continues analyzing the Marduk player’s tendencies, such as his pressure tactics and his preference for punches rather than grapples. Once Knee notices that this player’s go-to move is Marduk’s stomach kick (df3, 1), his Dragunov easily sidesteps and lands a guaranteed full combo.
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After a few rounds, the opponent started to add low kicks to his heavy rotation of moves. The Tekken champ then worked around it by backdashing, which created space and gave him the possibility of punishing a whiffed low.
Even with such detailed narration, fans and viewers felt that Knee’s quickfire calls were too good to be true.
“[There’s] no bribery,” joked the Tekken pro. “I just know by reading what moves he chooses.”
Watch the master in action for yourself:
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