Online vs. Offline: Hungrybox
Everybody just intuitively knows that Hungrybox is a different player offline vs. online. What else could explain the return to normalcy from the once three-time world No. 1? This dropoff, as well as Hungrybox’s foray into the world of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate content and Twitch streaming, has been one of the biggest storylines of the last two years.
But should we treat these two results as distinct outcomes? Or does Hungrybox’s rollback resume give us any idea of how well he’ll perform at the next supermajor? Put simply, how different are Hungrybox’s offline results from his online results? In today’s column, we’re examining the numbers between online Hungrybox and offline Hungrybox.
My Hypothesis
Before heading into my research, I made a prediction. My guess was that Hungrybox’s offline results would be noticeably more steady against everyone outside the Top 10, but that his results against the top tier of play would remain just as negative as they were on LAN. This was entirely based on what I remembered from Hungrybox’s offline performances, as well as his stray list of losses online.
— Melee Stats (@MeleeStatsPod) November 15, 2020
To put it bluntly, I expected Hungrybox’s offline resume to be, more or less, Top 10 and on the bottom half. I also predicted that his online resume would be solidly outside of Top 10, but not too far away.
Methodology
Hungrybox has few offline events, and a ton of online events. For the sake of simplifying the process and saving myself a ton of time, I decided to compare all nine LAN tournaments that Hungrybox has attended since Smash Summit 11 to only the nine biggest online events that he’s entered. Adding more online data would make it unclear as to whether any heavily volatile outliers were attributable to online differences, or simply by virtue of Hungrybox’s attendance and the natural variance that comes with attending more tournaments and giving the field more chances.
After looking into Hungrybox’s results, I jotted down every single notable opponent he’s played. By no means was this ‘scientific’ – in some ways it might be unfair to strong players who I just didn’t count as significant enough opponents for Hungrybox. Regardless; I really just wanted to trust my own gut here, so I sorted each of these notable players into four broad tiers. The tiers are as follows:
- Tier 1 = People capable of winning supermajors or able to be seeded in the top eight.
- Tier 2 = People who could make Top 8-12 at a supermajor or be invited into Smash Summit from competing.
- Tier 3 = People who you could see in Top 32 of a supermajor.
- Tier 4 = everyone else who is “good” or has wins on players ranked in the top three tiers.
Hungrybox’s Offline Resume
| Tourney Name | Notable Wins | Notable Losses |
| Smash Summit 11 | moky KoDoRiN 2saint aMSa iBDW |
Mango Wizzrobe Zain Mango |
| Riptide | BZimm Eggy Zamu Ben Wizzrobe SFAT |
iBDW Plup |
| SWT: NA East Melee Regional Finals | lloD n0ne Ginger Magi |
Polish Zain iBDW |
| Mainstage 2021 | KoDoRiN KoDoRiN S2J SDJ Smashdaddy Kevbot |
Wizzrobe Wizzrobe |
| Smash Summit 12 | Pipsqueak Swift Ginger Free Palestine |
iBDW aMSa Leffen |
| SWT Championships | Ka-Master Nicki Fiction Magi Sock |
Wizzrobe Polish |
| Pre-Genesis Guildhouse | Spark Spark Eggy |
|
| Genesis 8 | Ralph Ben Polish Mango lloD |
n0ne iBDW |
| Pound 2022 | SFAT Fiction KoDoRiN Juicebox aMSa |
Zain Zain |
Hungrybox’s Online Resume (Abridged)
| Tourney Name | Notable Wins | Notable Losses |
| Galint Melee Open: Summer Edition | Chem Rishi ALP Aklo bobby big ballz Swift n0ne n0ne |
Swift |
| Galint Melee Open: Fall Edition | Aklo Aklo n0ne Soonsay Jflex Lotfy Joey Donuts |
Aklo |
| GIGASCHWAB | Younger 404Cray Zain’s Fox Aklo KJH Eddy Mexico Swift Swift |
Swift |
| LACS 4 | DannyPhantom Kata Maples Faceroll iBDW |
Zain moky |
| East Coast Fridays 193 | Preeminent Mekk Bab Activated KJH bobby big ballz bobby big ballz |
bobby big ballz |
| ECRC East Coast Fridays Qualifier | NoFluxes Mekk JSalt Jflex Aklo |
Aklo Aklo |
| East Coast Fridays 200 | Bbatts Mekk Ginger |
lloD Aklo |
| East Coast Fridays 201 | Salt Salt Dawson mvlvchi |
|
| East Coast Fridays 202 | Slowking Ben bobby big ballz bobby big ballz |
Hungrybox’s Offline Win Rates Per Tier
| Tier 1 Wins | Tier 1 Losses | Tier 1 Win Rate |
| 5 | 17 | 22.7% |
| Tier 2 Wins | Tier 2 Losses | Tier 2 Win Rate |
| 18 | 3 | 85.7% |
| Tier 3 Wins | Tier 3 Losses | Tier 3 Win Rate |
| 8 | 0 | 100.0% |
| Tier 4 Wins | Tier 4 Losses | Tier 4 Win Rate |
| 11 | 0 | 100.0% |
Hungrybox’s Online (Abridged) Win Rates Per Tier
| Tier 1 Wins | Tier 1 Losses | Tier 1 Win Rate |
| 1 | 1 | 50.0% |
| Tier 2 Wins | Tier 2 Losses | Tier 2 Win Rate |
| 9 | 6 | 60.0% |
| Tier 3 Wins | Tier 3 Losses | Tier 3 Win Rate |
| 21 | 3 | 87.5% |
| Tier 4 Wins | Tier 4 Losses | Tier 4 Win Rate |
| 19 | 0 | 100.0% |
TL;DR
- Outside of iBDW, Hungrybox has not played anyone else in Tier 1 consistently (discounting Zain’s secondaries, which counted as Tier 3 sets).
- Hungrybox sees a significant improvement vs. the Tier 2 players offline vs. online.
- Hungrybox is fairly dominant against the Tier 3 players in both formats, albeit slightly more convincingly offline in fewer sets.
- Hungrybox doesn’t lose to Tier 4 players or the field in either format at the biggest tournaments.
Additional Considerations/Complications
- Hungrybox has other stray losses outside of the ones counted in this article (Krudo, Chem, additional sets vs. moky and lloD, SluG, Ben, etc).
- Strictly within the nine online events I included here, Hungrybox has only one loss to lloD.
- Hungrybox is overall at 0-5 vs. moky online, yet only has one loss counted within his abridged online resume here.
- Hungrybox has not played Aklo offline, and Aklo is responsible for 4 of his 10 online losses counted in these nine online tournaments.
- The one time Hungrybox played Swift offline, he solidly beat him; other than that, the two went back and forth online (3-2, Hungrybox’s favor).
- I don’t know how predictive some of Hungrybox’s 2021 results are for his 2022 chances.
- If we counted online results on their own from Smash Summit 11 to now; Hungrybox could be relatively “Tier 1” by virtue of Tier 1 peers not entering those tournaments.
- There’s no way for me to tell whether any online dropoff in Hungrybox’s win-rates is attributable to natural volatility that comes with entering more tournaments or whether his competitive ability is uniquely impacted by the inherent differences in the format.
- In other words, do Leffen, Plup, Mango, iBDW, or Zain have these losses vs. Tier 2 or below if they enter online tournaments every single week the way Hungrybox does?
Conclusions (and the Bigger Picture)
In spite of the limitations of this ‘research,’ I still maintain that Hungrybox’s results are slightly better offline, though my guess is that it’s probably not as much as people think. The volume of data we have on Hungrybox’s showings at the largest online tournaments still point to him, more or less, being Top 10. I’m curious about if Aklo or moky could continue being thorns in his side at LAN tournaments, but my guess is that the supermajor environment of competing in front of a crowd is probably a bit different than playing at home. Hungrybox’s recent offline showings against lloD make me think higher of his chances against his online demons, though it’s probably closer to a coin flip vs. Aklo and moky.
I briefly hinted at this in the Additional Considerations/Complications column, but I’m wondering about the value of consistently taking on and defeating the field, and how important that ability is to win a major today vs. the past. Before the pandemic, your chances of winning a major basically depended on if you could beat Hungrybox, or if you had good enough chances against everyone else and could dodge him. Broadly speaking, all the top tier players were good enough vs. the rest of the competition to where any differences between them were overweighed by their matchup spreads among each other. Sure, you had to occasionally worry when Mango or Axe ran into a top Ice Climbers, or if Zain ran into S2J, but as long as they could beat each other or Hungrybox, you mostly didn’t have to worry about them making it far.
I know we’re only two offline majors, one online major, and several rollback into 2022, but that doesn’t seem like the case any more, or not as much as it used to be. Smashers have just seen the 2021 No. 1 get rocked by a non-Top 100 player at the biggest event of the year and then flame out at 13th place the next major. One of the other three people considered within his tier has looked amazing for most of the year, yet has also dropped sets to people like Jmook, SluG, Salt, KoDoRiN, and TheSWOOPER. My Genesis 8 pick dropped a set to aCID, one which I proudly called an outlier, before he lost to Jmook and Ginger at the tournament I thought he’d win. Leffen, until lately, was stuck in a continent he’s had downloaded for half the decade, and aMSa, in spite of just having his best major showing ever, still not a surefire bet against people like n0ne or Polish. We don’t have any 2022 information on Wizzrobe as far as his tournament chances are concerned.
Everybody – myself included – loves to make fun of Hungrybox for losing to players on stream and sulking or popping off for content. Did we ever consider that, maybe, the field is just good? In an era where getting to winners side of top eight itself is more of a challenge than it’s ever been, did taking the occasional L online in countless events actually save Hungrybox a lot of heartbreak? For that reason alone, his ability to compete “within” the top tier of play may not matter as much as it did in the past, as even the best players in the world are more upset-prone than they’ve ever been. Well, except for Zain. Apparently, he hasn’t lost his touch.