Chapter I. Laying Plans
The Art of War contains five constant factors, but the Art of Digital War contains only four:
1) Heaven: The conditions of play, including casual or tournament, online or offline, best of three, first to ten, etc.
2) Earth: This encompasses footsies, defense, spacing, combos, punishes, reflexes, and the technical mastery of the game.
3) Commander: The knowledge of yourself, of your enemy, and of the game, including frame data, combos, punishes, player habits, stage sizes, matchups, etc. This also includes the ability and willingness to grow, and to devote time into practicing and experimenting.
4) Method and Discipline: The proper management of resources, including stamina bars, special meter, etc. This also includes the ability to not overextend oneself.
Therefore, when seeking to determine the conditions of your fight, you must consider:
1) Which of the two players has the most ability?
2) Which player has an advantage from Heaven and Earth (more tournament experience, less input lag on their monitor, a better controller, "player 1 advantage", etc).
3) Which player is more disciplined?
4) Which character is stronger, or which character has the matchup advantage?
5) Which player has more experience with this specific matchup?
Sun Tzu says, "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."
In fighting game terms, this pertains to the neutral game and to footsies. By crossing in and out of your opponent's maximum range, you are trying to deceive them into thinking you are within striking range so that you might bait out and punish their attack.
When Jax feints a Ground Pound to make his opponent jump, only to cancel it into an anti-air Gotcha Grab, this is deception.
When you purposefully whiff an attack to provoke a response from your enemy, this is deception.
Sun Tzu says, "If [your opponent] is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him."
This means that while you and your opponent are in the neutral game, don't focus solely on finding an opening for attack, because your opponent is doing the same thing; instead you must be aware of such openings while keeping in mind what openings your opponent is planning to exploit, as well as what openings they might want you to see. Don't forget that they will be trying to deceive you with feints, whiffs, and spacing as well.
The second part of this means that you need to be aware when your opponent is at any kind of advantage, whether it be a range advantage, frame advantage, or mix-up advantage. When your opponent is at such advantage, you want to avoid playing their game. You want to stay out of their comfort zone until such a time as the fight it back to a more neutral state. Sometimes this means moving in close to nullify their zoning. Sometimes this means moving out of range of their 50/50 opener or their plus-frame attack. This is highly matchup specific, and thus falls under the constant factor of Commander (knowledge of frame data, spacing, and matchups).
Sun Tzu says, "If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him."
This means that you need to be aware of your opponent's state of mind. You can use irritating tactics, such as careful zoning or quick safe attacks, to frustrate your opponent, increasing their odds of getting impatient and making a mistake.
Sun Tzu says, "If [your opponent] is taking ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them."
If you can tell your opponent is getting overwhelmed and trying to reset the fight to a neutral situation, do everything you can to prevent this. Once you have the momentum and advantage, don't let up until such a time as it becomes dangerous to maintain your pressure (such as after a negative-advantage move).
You want to keep your opponent as uncomfortable as possible. "United forces" could be interpreted as "low-pressure neutral situation". Your opponent has no worries and is looking for an opening to attack you. What you want is to put them into a position where they are not thinking about attacking you, rather they are thinking about getting back to their safety zone. When Cyrax throws a bomb under his opponent's feet, the opponent is forced to take action. When an opponent is waking up while Jax raises his hand for a Ground Pound, they have to make a split-second decision whether they want to jump, tech-roll, or counter-attack. Just having an opponent in range of your attack can be enough to "separate their forces" if they don't have an attack that can properly threaten you.
Sun Tzu says, "Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."
When your opponent is in whiff recovery or block-disadvantage, that is your time to strike. As long as your combo-starter is quick enough to punish such mistakes, this is where the majority of your big damage is going to come from.
This also means abusing moves that your opponent can't easily counter. If your opponent is a big slow character that can't easily escape rushdown pressure, overwhelm them with rushdown attacks. If your opponent has low mobility, assault them with full-screen projectiles. If your opponent has no good wake-up options, abuse them on wake-up. Essentially, learn your opponents' weaknesses and exploit them.
This also applies to overhead/low/throw mixups. You want to train your opponent to expect one type of attack (such as using constant sweeps to get them blocking low) before eventually striking with an overhead attack.
Finally, this applies to setups and player knowledge. If your opponent is unfamiliar with a specific setup, such as Wonder Woman's OTG pressure, then you are free to abuse such a setup until your opponent learns how to properly deal with it.
Sun Tzu says, "Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculations at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose."
This means that before every fight you must have a strategy or game plan, and the more knowledge you have about your opponent, their character, your character, the stage, etc, the better your can formulate your strategy. You don't want to enter a match thinking "I've gotta beat this guy!". You want to enter the match thinking "Ok, this is Perfect Legend playing Kung Lao. I know from studying his tournament matches that he's going to try to do A, B, and C, so I need to keep him in this range and pressure him with A, B, and C. If he puts me in situation A, I need to react this way. If I put in him situation B, I can expect him to react this way."
There are a finite number of conditions that may occur in any given matchup, and the more prepared you are to deal with those conditions, the more likely you are to achieve victory.
@Pig Of The Hut's extensive journals are a perfect example of this principle, as they include not only combos, frame data, optimal punishes, and other game information, but also notes on players and their habits. Because of this, Pig of the Hut is able to make exponentially more pre-match calculations than the average fighting game player.