the-fight: the neighbour reads the wind-up, and never spends a guard on an empty tempo
Three defects the played logs turned up, all of which let a one-button lunge win.
- The read was being lost to frame sampling. It gated on the opponent's
phaseTime crossing a reaction threshold on some frame, and a 0.30 s wind-up
seen at 10 fps offers two samples - so at reaction 0.24 s the answer to a
lunge could not fire at all. The eye now latches onto a wind-up when it
appears, rolls the read once, and answers when it has had its time. The
threshold is 0.20 - 0.11 * skill, shorter than every tell it is meant to
beat; the difficulty lives in whether the read is taken, not in whether it
was physically possible.
- A guard was being thrown at a man who could not attack. Raising the panel
during an opponent's recovery spends its window on an empty tempo, and the
attack that follows meets nothing - which is exactly the losing line the log
kept showing, 'lunge vs parry/recover -> touch'. The guard is now offered
only when there is something it could turn aside, and against a proven
attacker the neighbour holds its measure at the edge of his reach and waits
for the wind-up rather than committing into his recovery.
- idleFor counted a man in the middle of a commitment as idle, so the courtesy
meant for a passive opponent was firing at one who was attacking. Only a
fencer standing at guard with nothing thrown is offering nothing.