When there’s thousands of dollars on the line at the biggest tournament of the year, players are going to try anything they can to legally get an advantage.
DouyuTV|Xiaohai has come back to Evo 2023 as a finalist for The King of Fighters 15, and he really doesn’t want his opponents to look at his inputs.
Throughout the weekend, Xiaohai has been busting out a large box to cover up his arcade stick, and while we don’t know how effective that’s been, we can’t really argue with results.
It’s not just any cardboard box the former KOF Evo champion is using either, but it’s a Qanba box from his sponsor funnily enough.
We presume that’s probably the box his stick came in, but it’d be funny if he requested Qanba provide him a special one for this specific purpose.
This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen this strategy used to try and prevent opponents from reading inputs, but most players aren’t repping their sponsor while doing it.
It’s not just KOF for Xiaohai either, as the top competitor is still working his way through the massive Street Fighter 6 bracket at Evo too making it to at least 129th place out of over 7,000 players, but he’s still yet to lose a set there too.
None can doubt the strength of Xiaohai’s fighting game prowess, and I guess we can’t doubt his strategies too.