I travel to Combo Breaker every year and enter a whole bunch of games. This year I was able to up my travel budget for both CB and Frosty Faustings. Some of them are games I consider myself decent at, some of them are games I just hop in casually for fun. And then there's the Mystery Bracket, where every round is something you've probably never heard of and the goal is to figure out what's happening before your opponent does - it's the highlight every year. Back in 2022, I even TO'd and commentated the side tournament for Puyo Puyo Champions, and I got roped into filling in on commentary for Panel de Pon.
In a double elimination bracket, 25% of players will go 0-2. If this is your first time entering, you should expect to be one of them. And you shouldn't let that stop you from going to have a good time! Majors are basically conventions that happen to have brackets at them, and that bracket will only be a small fraction of your time all weekend. Get as many casual sets in as you can before/after bracket, check out the arcade room, buy some trinkets with your favorite characters on them from the artist alley, watch finals, go out to dinner with rivals you'd only ever spoken to online before and finally get to meet in person. Oh, and come to the mahjong tables where you'll find me promoting this strangely unexpected venn diagram intersection.
And that's just what majors are like. If you have any kind of local FGC, go to your locals! Don't just sit at home playing ranked, get out of the house and meet people!
holy shit that was a hell of a fever dream
I think I'm gonna need to rewatch this five more times to understand anything