Gachikun Wins CPT 2023 Singapore

The second Offline Premier tournament in the Capcom Pro Tour 2023 happened in Singapore. A hefty $37,000 prize pool was on the line, but, more importantly, the winner of this competition would qualify for the Capcom Cup X — the World Championship with a $1,000,000 first prize award.

More than 350 participants competed in the CPT 2023: Singapore Offline, many top players from Japan were placed in top 8, but it was Gachikun who won the whole tournament.

The top-8 of the tournament is as follows:

• 1st place — Gachikun — $15,000
• 2nd place — Chris Wong — $7,000
• 3rd place — moke — $5,000
• 4th place — MenaRD — $3,000
• 5th place — Nauman and Kakeru — $2,000 each
• 7th place — HotDog29 and Fujimura — $1,500 each

Capcom Pro Tour Singapore Offline Recap

369 entrants were in line for a spot at Capcom Cup X but only one winner could go home with the spot. By the time top 16 came around, Daigo, Tokido, DCQ, and Xian were already out. Here is a breakdown of how the games went. 

Top 16 Recap

The first match was between Moke, who is the only player in the world with over 2300 MR and on the other side was a former Capcom Cup winner in Gachikun who seems to be back in full power with the release of Rashid who was his main in Street Fighter V and the character that really put him on the map. Before now, he was using Manon, but clearly, the character was not one that could surmount the sort of opposition he was going to be facing. 

Against Gachikun, Moke was confident, but could ultimately not put a dent on the superior pressure game from Gachikun who simply smothered his opponent in the corner and was the eventual winner sending Moke to losers' in the process. The next match saw Nauman defeat Fujimura in the Ken mirror and Chris Wong who was in fine form all day, sent Seo, the last representative of Singapore into losers'.

The final match on the Winners' side of top 16 was a doozie— Kakeru vs MenaRD. 

There is certainly a lot of history between these two players as they played at Evo and Kakeru was the winner then. They would meet again at the Gamers8 Street Fighter 6 Invitational and once again Kakeru was triumphant, 3-2. In a first-to-two, it was sure to be a difficult moment. On one hand, Mena had been terrifying racking up an unprecedented number of perfects. Against Kakeru though, he was facing perhaps the best JP in the world. The match itself was as close as you'd expect. Kakeru plays JP in a really interesting way as he doesn't rely heavily on the zoning tools the character has, and this makes sense as he was a Ryu player before picking up JP in Street Fighter 6. So, Kakeru was challenging Mena in the neutral and was anti-airing every single jump that Mena made. Spamming his light punch with regularity, Kakeru was able to defeat MenaRD for the first game.

Mena adjusted though, and came into the second game in fine form and started to delay his jump ins so thatt Kakeru's anti-airs would whiff and he would punish accordingly and combined with Blanka's insane pressure, Kakeru could not live with it and lost the game. 

Kakeru adjusted too and the final game was a tight affair with Mena getting another perfect. But, in the last round, Kakeru used his level 3 super early, getting the life lead and placing Mena close to burnout. Mena then went for a slide which had been effective against most projectiles. Unfortunately, Kakeru was ready for it and he blocked and punished Mena ending his life and sending him to the lower bracket. 

In the losers' bracket, Vxbao was the first one to go home as he found Go1's Chun li too much to handle and he was joined by Shuto whose Modern Marisa barely troubled HotDog29 and his wild Dee Jay. There was one particular interaction that was jaw dropping; it was a super to super reaction from HotDog29. The strength of Shuto's Modern Marisa is usually down to reactions. Shuto's ability to react immediately to opponents' plans with a super is one of the things that gets him his wins. In the first round of the second game, Shuto was trying to apply pressure and had just hit HotDog29 with a back throw. HotDog29 did a drive rush and immediately Shuto activated Marisa's level 2 super, but just as the crowd was marvelling at Shuto's skills, HotDog29 also activated Dee Jay's level 2 super snuffing out Shuto's option and finishing out the round in grand style.

To finish out the first round of top 16, Kishiri, a player from Japan that many were hearing about for the first time, got into the next round thanks to an impressive victory over ACQUA. Meanwhile, the only other Dee Jay in top 16, Fuudo, got the best of the last Kimberly in the competition, Narikun. With that, it was a slew of really difficult matches. MenaRD ended Go1's run with a very solid, and quick 2-0 win. Once the Blanka pressure was put on Go1's Chun li, he was unable to keep up. Mena's uncanny ability to make players uncomfortable and pile on the damage was instrumental to his win. 

HotDog29 continued with his overly aggressive style to defeat Seo, while Fujimura made top 8 by taking out Kishiri in a really close match. Kishiri would leave the tournament with the distinct honour of being the one to send Daigo home and while he didn't get as far as he would have wanted, he was certainly one of the names that people will now start to look out for in tournaments. The final match of top 16 pitted two 'rivals' against one another. Fuudo and Moke were at a time competing for the title of Mr. 2300 MR. Both were so close when Fuudo defeated Moke in ranked, but did not agree for a second match, one-and-donning him in the process. The two had a sort of grudge match in Street Fighter League Japan when Gyogun faced Detonation FocusMe which Fuudo is a part of for SFL. In that match, Fuudo was again the winner. This time though, Moke got his revenge in perhaps the more important match. The win sent Moke to top 8 and cemented him as one of the favourites. 

Top 8 Recap

If top 16 was a bloodbath, top 8 was something of a massacre. This is a top 8 you would easily see at Evo which has the very best players in the entire world. The first match was between Gachikun and Nauman. Nauman had gone through something of a plateau after breaking into the scene with a very important win at Evo Japan 2020. He had since been a little quiet and didn't place too highly at other tournaments. While he was a regular on SFL Japan, and joined Team Detonation FocusMe, he wasn't being mentioned in the same breath as Kawano, Higuchi, or Yamaguchi. But, in this tournament he was really impressive defeating Pugera, Go1, and Fujimura to earn a place in top 8. Gachikun took the set winning 3-1, but Nauman still had another chhance. 

The next match featured one of the dark horses of the entire competition, Chris Wong, against one of the favourites, Kakeru. Chris Wong is one of the top players in Asia, but isn't a well known as some of the other names. Chris defeated Kakeru, but it was the manner of the win that was so impressive. Chris Wong spaced Kakeru perfectly staying far enough not to be hit by jabs, and close enough to avoid JP's spikes. In this range, he was able to challenge Kakeru's buttons impressively and he landed hit after hit. But, Kakeru is not hailed as one of the top players in the world and a top 6 Evo placer for nothing. He adjusted, but as it turned out, it was not enough and a tense match ended 3-2. 

The losers' side of the bracket was fascinating as on one side, we saw an absolute speedrun as Moke made very quick work of Fujimura defeating him 3-0 to move on. Meanwhile, Mena had a hard time against HotDog29. Initially going with the Luke, HotDog29 found Mena very easy to counter and soon was two games up. Mena then made the very smart choice to switch to Blanka. Once with the green boy, then set went by very quickly as HotDog29 simply had no answers to what Mena was doing and suddenly Mena had tied the set and went on to steamroll his way to victory setting up a match against Nauman which he also won, but with a lot more ease as Nauman couldn't deal with the pressure. This took MenaRD to losers' semi-final. On the other side, Moke was up against Kakeru and this was perhaps the match which showed some weaknesses to Kakeru as he looked lost when dealing with Moke. Moke has the ability to pressure opponents and step back when necessary always waiting for the right moment to strike. Against Kakeru, he picked his moments excellently and was able to snipe out anything Kakeru sought to do. 

Against MenaRD, Moke was equally impressive and Mena again went with Luke to begin with which Moke quickly dispatched. Mena switched to Blanka and got another perfect round and won the game tying up the set. But if you thought Moke wouldn't know how to deal with Blanka, you would be wrong as he immediatly adjusted and was suddenly playing super clean. He was successfully able to ensure that Mena didn't get the pressure he usually thrives on when using Blanka. He also didn't let Mena condition him in the corner and kept going for wakeup DPs which caught Mena on a couple of occasions. He also anti-aired smartly leaving Mena with no real options. With this, he was able to win the match 3-1 to move on to losers' final. 

There Chris Wong was waiting after getting washed in Winners' final against Gachikun. But, if there was anything impressive about Chris Wong in this tournament, it was his resilience which he brought to bear against Moke whom he defeated 3-1 to set up a Grand Final run back against Gachikun. 

In Grand Final, he needed to reset the bracket to stand a chance of winning. He did this with some ease winning 3-0 after some really smart adjustments that left Gachikun gasping for breath. But, Gachikun IS a former Capcom Cup champion and his experience was brought to bear as he returned the favour winning the reset 3-0 to book his place in Capcom Cup X.

Gachikun missed the last Capcom Cup as he didn't win Evo, the offline regional final for World Warrior and the online premiere for his region. But, with this win he is back with his Rashid as menacing as ever. He stated that he won for the sponsors and his wife whose birthday passed recently. Chris Wong was happy with his second spot, but is desparate to make it into Capcom Cup having been second in his online regional premiere against NL and now second again to Gachikun. But he thanked Gachikun and Moke who he said practise with him all the time. 

The next offline tournament is in two weeks in France. There we will get another entrant into the Capcom Cup X.