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Daut44's Poker Blog

February 28, 2009

Sorry I havent posted in a while. Not all that much has been going on in my life the past couple weeks. I hurt my arm at bjj 2 sundays ago so i took last week off and just started going back to bjj on thursday. I also havent been playing a ton of poker as ive only logged about 25k hands this month and maybe played 30-40 tournaments. just a quick note about poker before i get into other stuff...i havent been doing all that great so far this year. im up about 18-19k in cash games this year, even or up a few thousand in mtt and sngs (got 4th in 100r for 10k, and some other ok scores in 1ks, 200rs and ftops events to keep me slightly up), and made probably 20k in rakeback. i mean overall i am up roughly 40k this year but for the hours i put in (probably 225 in total) i think thats not really all that good. ive been studying my game, watching videos and reading forums a lot lately so hopefully i will see some improvement in results.

anyway what i really want to do is start a jiu jitsu diary in here because i find I forget a lot of stuff and id like to be able to look back and see what we did in depth in previous classes and reread it before each class so i can progress my knowledge much faster. so anyway im just going to post an entry after every bjj class. sorry for everyone out there who really doesnt care about all this stuff, but this is the best place for me to put it.

Day 1:
My judo still sucks donkey balls. Whenever I go for an ochi gari or some other type of sweep i always end up a little off balance with one foot in the air and my opponent either has a foot sweep or a single leg or some other throw available to him. The only throws/sweeps that seem to work for me are the single leg or sort of a sacrifice sweep where i put my foot in my opponents hip, drop to the floor, grab his other leg and kick out the same leg as the hip i have my foot on so he falls over and i can jump into his half guard. Im going to avoid doing other ones that im the scout315 of and just concentrate on stuff im like the brad booth of for now until im a bit better at these two.

On the ground we first went over some half guard stuff from the bottom. I've had a lot of trouble lately when i get pinned to the floor in half guard and he gets his arms around my head. In a tournament this gets an advantage point because its a good position and in a way i kind of lost a fight by allowing him to get his outside arm past my defense and through. If I can keep my body off the floor and sort of keep him parallel to me rather than letting him get more perpendicular to my body i am fine. But once i was put in this position i had a ton of trouble. Heres a picture to give you a better idea of the positions:

The above picture is a bad position. The guy on top has his weight spread well and is balanced so its hard to sweep or reverse him and is close to getting his right leg past his opponents legs and getting to side control. The guy on bottom really needs to try hard to keep the guy on top from getting here by keeping his body more parallel to how you are and not allowing yourself to get flat on the floor. Here's another picture:

So once you are in this position you arent fucked completely yet but its not good. Pretending im the guy on bottom, what I need to do is stretch my left arm up by his head, unhook my feet and bridge my hips upward. What this does is unbalance the guy on top and force him to stretch his left outer leg out to prevent him from getting rolled over. However its important to note that I have to also bring the left arm in front of his face after I stretch it up because if I dont I will give him an arm triangle choke which is lights out for me. this gives me some space to bring my right leg through and recover the guard. If he stops that leg with his left hand then i can underhook with my left arm, grab his belt and go for the back. Of course there are some things he can do to counter but at least there are some possibilities for me from this position.

After the half guard stuff, we worked on an armbar attack from side control position 1. There are 7 positions of side control that you move to by switching your hips based on hip escapes your opponent tries to do. Here is position 1:

Basically I am facing him with my right knee under his right arm (key) and my right arm tucked to his hip. To get the armbar from here, take his extended right arm and place it in my left armpit tight. Then i push my hips forward and swing my left leg around so its on the other side of his head but im still balanced and keeping my weight on him, making sure my chest is heavy on his arm. i use my left arm to grab both his arms, pull my right shin up to his ribs and grab his belt or gi pants with my right leg and sit back. So now i will have my left leg over his neck, my right leg tucked in his ribs, both his arms held by my left arm and my right arm holding him so he cant go back to the floor. then i grab his bottom arm on the wrist with both my hands and either finish with a normal armbar like this:

or i can stay in that position, keep his wrist pointed upwards and just push it against my knee. its a really tight armbar that forces a tap really quickly as it doesnt really give any room for trying to escape. Now the guy on bottom has 2 things he can try to escape. Either he can try to get his right elbow on the ground to begin with which would be great for him and really allow him to do some hip/elbow escapes to get back to half/full guard, or he can turn away from me when i get my left leg over his head. the problem with this 2nd escape is that it kinda gives me his back and I need to lock my right hand which is under his right armpit on my left wrist which is over his shoulder. then i pull him up so hes sitting on the floor and i have a few submissions from here. a gi choke is the first attack and if he blocks that it sets up the rear naked choke nicely.

I will be rereading all of this before my next bjj class which will probably be on tuesday afternoon. Hopefully this allows me to progress faster than the 5 steps forward 4 steps back method i've been taking lately.

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Mar 1, 09 17:11:31

cool, i look forward to updates.

David B

Mar 2, 09 17:38:01

nice, i hope you post updates.

plexiq