(6)Alucard vs (13)Captain Falcon vs (22)Rydia 2013

Ulti's Analysis
This was our first photo finish of the contest, depending on how close you thought Tharja winning was. But it goes a bit deeper than that.

Until this match, you know what our last true photo finish in a contest was? Not RBY beating the FF7 dudes, that was a bonus match. It was Ryu upsetting Dante all the way back in 2010 with HOCKEY FACTOR. And even then, one could argue that match wasn't crazy close late because Ryu pulled away to win by 500. So you'd have to go back to Crono/Missingno, which was much closer than the final vote margin but Missingno went berserk late. You could go back to Wesker/Ken, but that match wasn't really in doubt for the last few hours. Meaning our last legit, mash-F5 photo finish was Red's comeback on Ocelot in 2010's third match.

Point being, it was a freaking long time for us in terms of a balls to the wall match where everyone went nuts at the end. Make fun of us all you want, but this is our Superb Owl and we love it.

Alucard and Falcon were close in the stats, but Alucard was the favorite simply because of this being a night match. And for quite awhile, the logic held true. Alucard built up a 500 vote lead in 3 hours, and this match seemed as predictable as all the rest. But then something very, very odd happened. Captain Falcon, for whatever reason, got his "morning vote" a bit early. And by "a bit", it was more like 4 hours early. Starting at 3 am, Falcon started going nuts and whittled that lead down pretty quickly. It was reminiscent of Alucard holding Sora down before getting blown out come the Kingdom Hearts day vote.

But this was just weird, and to this day I have no explanation for it because it defies all the trends we know. I can see Falcon going nuts at 7 am, but 3? Alucard's lead was gone by 9, and from there it seemed obvious that Falcon could cruise to the win. Alucard's day vote is ugly, and Falcon is like any other Nintendo character with it.

Yet somehow, and this is even more inexplicable than Falcon getting his day vote at 3 am, it did not play out that way. Once Falcon tied up the match, his momentum just completely stopped. Alucard stalled for a full hour, including several updates with both characters being less than 10 votes apart, and Falcon was somehow unable to put him away.

From there, Alucard made the slowest of pushes. It only lasted two hours, but this was a 12 hour match and 2 hours was enough to win. He would end up winning by 103 votes, in one of the weirdest first round matches I can remember. It's lame to have no explanation for these trends in a PCA, but I really have no idea what happened. It's probably better that way, because every close match being decided by trends would get really boring. It's part of why we went so long without a nailbiter; we just kind of look at trends from the past and pick out exactly how everything will finish before it happens. Taking things in at face value is kind of lost on us, so a match like this once in awhile is good.

It was also a good example of 12 hour matches being better, but I'd rather early round nailbiters be cut in half than deal with Snake/Isaac/Keen for 24 hours.

I haven't forgotten Rydia by the way, but the big writeup about FF4 continuing to s*** the bed will come during Cecil's match.