Right, i forgot some stuff like Peacock's shadow drops are actually RNG based.
I am not talking about that.. at all.
You are lucky when something happens
by chance (ie you had no say in what was going to happen - no [conscious] influence over the outcome), which then produces a favorable result.
You can't influence which numbers are drawn in a lottery, and there is no way to predict which numbers are going to be drawn, so if the numbers you chose happen to win, that was luck.
- If a guy is 99% consistent with his execution, you play one game against him, he hits you and then drops his combo = Luck.
There was nothing you did or could have done to cause this behavior; it is "entirely random" whether he has his 1 combo drop out of 100 games against you, in the next game against someone else, or next week.
^ That is the most basic example and it applies to just about everything about execution.
If my opponent expects me to upback so they cLK, but I lowblock and call DP assist (which means they're gonna lose a character), but I input LK~MP for my assist call, get a normal by accident and eat a happy birthday - that's not something my opponent influenced, that doesn't mean they are super skillful, nothing.
They read me completely wrong but got a hit anyway; they got lucky.
That point ties into a further note: Anything that you didn't explicitly expect to happen but "just works out" is essentially luck.
I'm Beowulf vs Peacock, just knocked her down, am up close. The last time this happened I did jumpforward airthrow and caught her out of upback, so I presume this time she is gonna block on the ground. Whether crouch or standblock I don't know, so instead of cLK/Hop jLP, I just go for Command Throw.
Bam, I CH her out of an M.Bang attempt. That she would do this didn't even enter my mind; if she was Bella and Dynamo'd I would now be getting rocked. The only reason I landed my hit is because Peacock's Reversal happens to also lose to Command Throw - but that wasn't a conscious thought on my part.
Other example: There is a thing in my Fortune combo which I often drop (jHP-Axekick restand, followed up by sHK; I do the Axekick too late so it doesn't come out in time and I just land). However - If I do drop my combo there, I recover very quickly (the Axekick just whiffs and I land, which cancels the recovery frames right as the opponent exits hitstun).
Now, if the opponent say does a DP as they recover, I will be stuck in my next attack - the sHK which I'm pressing to continue my combo (it would normally combo out of the Axekick, but Axekick whiffed and I can't react to that, so I just pushed my next button); Read: I will get hit.
If however, they do a Super as their reversal instead, the superflash will eat my sHK input - and they have some Undizzy gathered up, so I can just move my stick to downback and block their super (as Supers are postflash-blockable now - if the user has some Ud accumulated).
This wasn't me doing some great read into reversal bait, that was me fucking up my inputs and getting triple lucky - 1) That Mike made supers postflash blockable when Ud is collected, 2) That my drop at precisely this point allows me to guard Supers, 3) That the opponent decided to reversal with a Super rather than something else.
0% of what went on there was intended, and I'm landing a full CH punish on the opponent because all the stars aligned in my favour.
Similar things occur not just during mixups, but constantly in neutral game and elsewhere - you "just do things", and then something happens which you didn't expect at all.
I played a set against Fizz a few days ago where I did Fortune sMP in neutral cus I fumbled some inputs, and he happened to call Brass, and my sMP happened to beat it.
That was no "I'm gonna sMP now in case he calls Brass, cus then I'm gonna win" kind of read, that was no "Oh I see Brass coming in, quick sMP cus I know that beats it" kinda reaction, that was "Oh shit sMP, I didn't want this, oh no Brass punches me now.. oh wait I won lol" .. I got lucky and that's that.
Lastly, many people in SG (and fighters in general) aren't thinking at all but just autopilot some shit, and while in something like an FT10 you would learn their tendencies and punish them for it, in something like a BO1 scenario (most notably Quick Match), this often isn't really possible.
If I hit some online frog with 3 lows in a row, I will now have to magically figure out whether he is 80% doorknob and will, utterly unfazed, continue to religiously hold upback - or whether he is just 45% doorknob and figures the occasional low block wouldn't be too awful.
If I give them the benefit of the doubt, go high this time, and the complete retard who hasn't even noticed that I hit him with 3 lows -but who just always upbacks whenever the opponent is comboing them- now gets out of my mixup, they got lucky that I suspected them to be not utter dogshit - there was no "read" involved on their side.
NOTE, because some people WILL attempt to read this wrong:
Your execution faults are your fault. Nobody else's! It's not unlucky to drop your combo (unless you happen to have a lagspike right then, but that's outside factors), you just suck.
To a degree you could of course always whine around (If one drops 1/100 combos, it would be nice if those 1% happened in games against vastly inferior players when one wins anyway, rather than in a tourney grand finals last game when your kill combo drop gets you lvl3d and makes you end on 2nd place), but in the end - if you have 99% execution, work on getting up to 99.9999%; that's all.
BUT your opponent also doesn't have anything to do with them (unless you are bonus nervous because you are fighting against someone with a murder face, but we'll ignore that), so when it happens, they got lucky. They didn't influence this outcome, they did nothing to make it more likely, it just happened and they got into a favorable position due to it.