At the very highest levels of play, Street Fighter boils down to a complicated guessing game. This guessing game is often likened to rock, scissors, paper, because each of your many options will win in some situations but lose in others. That analogy, though flawed, may still be useful in illustrating why a solid understanding of risk vs. reward is so important to winning at Street Fighter.
Let's pretend that a new game just came out, which we'll call RSP 2.0. In RSP 2.0, you play classic Rock, Scissors, Paper, but there's a catch: each "game" consists of 100 throws. And you get different numbers of points depending on what throw you win with. The breakdown looks like this:
Win with Rock - 10 points
Win with Paper - 5 points
Win with Scissors - 1 point
Obviously, each throw is no longer equally good, since they are worth different amounts of points. My question to you is: if the three throws are no longer equal, then...
"Which of the three throws is now the best?"
Take a few minutes to think about it. Seriously. Then come back once you have the answer.
...
So, did you pick paper?
