I play with Lily. She is one of the best characters in the game. She has the best side-step, which is very important for evading your opponent's moves. She also has strong cartwheel-like moves that cover great range and also leap over your opponents lows.

• Guarding, which seems obvious. Knowing when to guard low and successfully blocking an opponent's combo will allow you to quickly punish them.
• Side-step. When your opponent charges you or starts a string, you can easily avoid their moves and then punish them for attacking.
• Know a few combos. Once you successfully block or side-step you will want to follow it up with a good combo. Some combos in the game can take up to half of your opponent's life! This will give you a big advantage.

• Practice, practice, practice. This resulted in staying up all night, but with endless cups of coffee, it wasn't too bad. It would also make it seem as if I exhausted myself, giving my opponent the feeling that he has the advantage and feel more comfortable in letting his guard down.
• The Justin Wong factor. Reaching out to the strongest fighting game player in the house not only gave me some of the best tips in training, it also put my opponent on notice.
• Showing my opponent my composure on stage. I have had a lot of experience playing in front of cameras and on stage, and showing confidence and being focused will make your opponent nervous.

Fighting games have always been built around traditional arcade cabinets, and having a stick with the same hardware as you would find in cabinet is a huge advantage. The buttons are more responsive, the hand position is more natural than what you would have on a controller, and doing moves like "quarter circle forward" is a lot easier for me to pull off with a joystick rather then a D-pad.