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What's Your Edge

Daut44's Poker Blog

March 05, 2009

I was planning on going to bjj on tuesday, thursday and saturday this week. On tuesday i slept in til about 1245 so i missed the first class. The night class was the MMA no holds barred class and i didnt want to go this week because there are a few guys fighting this saturday so i figured it would be best if they just sparred with each other and the instructors and i'd kind of be in the way. anyway i got a chance to go tonight and it was packed so i had plenty of people to roll with.

During the instruction time we spent about 45 minutes on gi chokes from the guard, the bane of mr benefields existence. It started off with just breaking the guy on top's posture and hands allowing the bottom player to get on the inside. Basically if you are on the bottom, there are 2 places your opponent will put his hands. Either he will hold your lapel or hold your belt/hips. Putting his hands in other places like either the mat or extended toward one of your arms is really bad for him as it sets up kimuras, armbars, triangles and sweeps.

So basically if his hands are up on your lapel, do a sort of rip move underneath them and get both hands on the inside. If his hands are down by your hips, do a swim move and push them away, then use your legs to pull him up towards you to get into the same position as the rip move gets you. from here there are a few options. One of my favorite is to wrap my left arm around his right arm, pinning it beneath me/to the mat and grab the opposite collar. From here i can open my guard and go for an omaplata, armbar or sweep and have a lot of control on the position. But during this class we just worked on grabbing the back of the collar with an underhand grip, keeping that elbow closed and close to our body, and then working in the second hand. We learned 3 variations of chokes, the 3rd of which ill just completely ignore as it was a little more advanced and i didnt feel too comfortable with it.

1. The first is the standard cross underhand gi choke. Here is the grip you are going for, notice how deep into the collar you ahve to get your hands:

After the first hand is in, allow some space to get the second hand into the collar and finish the choke. This is very basic and we have practiced this a lot in class. If the guy lets you get the 2nd hand in, you can either finish the choke if he doesnt defend, or sweep him to mount if he does stop it with his hands.

2. The second is to grab the left side of his collar (or the right and just reverse the hand positions) with both hands having the right hand on bottom but still deep into the collar and the left hand on top. from here put your left foot in his hip and bring your right leg up his back sort of like going for an armbar and slide your thumb along his gi until it gets to the other side but this time grab the collar with an overhand grip. now pull your right arm towards you

After we went over all the chokes we rolled a bunch. We got into groups of 3 with people around our size and we did a little round robin in our groups with 3 minute periods of rolling. First i rolled with vinny who is a 4 stripe white belt that i probably have about 25-30 pounds on. Basically you start out with 0 stripes and as you progress and get better the instructors award you a stripe every so often, usually a few months. You get 4 stripes and then the following promotion is to the next belt. So vinny is one of the more advanced white belts but i have a little bit of size on him. We started on our knees and i pushed him back so i was in his half butterfly guard. he scissor sweeped me and got me on my back but i got to full guard. from there we spent a few minutes just jockeying for position, him trying to pass, me trying to get either a gi choke we practiced during class or an armbar. nobody advanced and after 3 minutes our instructor jason blew a whistle to stop.

i took a 3 minute break while vinny rolled with a newly appointed blue belt mark who was about his size. after a few minutes they stopped and i rolled with mark. pretty much the same exact result that happened with vinny. i was on top, got swept, retained guard, he couldnt pass. however i did do a little bit better job attacking. i managed to swim under his arms and get a hold of his left arm as i wrote about above. i had a lot of trouble doing anything though and this position just ended up a stalemate. i probably should have gone more for a sweep instead of trying to get an omaplata on him as im not all that flexible and he had pretty good control over my right arm/leg preventing me from turning too much. eventually i got tired, he got out and passed right as the whistle blew. at this point i was pretty exhausted but now i had to roll one last round with vinny.

basically i just got steamrolled that last round. i started on top, got swept, but this time my legs were pretty tired so i didnt have much defense against his pass. he got to side control, tried to get to mount with knee on belly on my right side but i tried something i learned from a purple belt casey where i put my right hand backwards on his knee, kept my left elbow close to my side, bridged up and then grabbed his leg and got to my knees. he tried to catch me in a guillotine from here but i got out and ended up inside his guard. from there i got swept again, got passed, avoided a few armbar attempts by keeping my elbows on the ground, but eventually got gi choked right as the whistle blew.

After that round jason paired us up with someone new to roll for 5 more minutes before the end of class. He put me with casey, the girl who showed me the knee on belly escape, who just got her purple belt and is just straight nasty. At the brazilian jiu jitsu world championships (mundials) last year she won her blue belt division. so basically for her weight she is one of the best female blue/purple belts in the world. she basically just whooped my ass for about 5 straight minutes. her leverage was so much better than the other people i rolled with. i just couldnt really do anything if she wasnt in my guard. after i got tapped a couple times i managed to get her in my guard and we stayed there for a while before the end of class. im glad i have a really good guard at this stage of my bjj career but i still have to work a lot on avoiding the sweeps from top position, and regaining my guard once someone is in my side control or mount.

I stayed a little after class, took about a 15 minute rest then rolled a 7 minute round with a 3 stripe named matt who is about my size. We started on our knees and i pulled guard cause i always just get run over in that position and people end up in side control on me. he tried to pass for a bit but i kept repositioning my body so my legs were parallel to his body. i managed to get him to put his hands on the mat and i went for a kimura/sweep but he defended it pretty well. he got an arm under my leg and tried to pass but was a little slow with it and i pulled him in and got one leg over his arm, moved his arm over to the other side and finished the triangle. that made me pretty happy as usually when i get someone in a triangle i either lose the position or i just topple them over and get into side control.

We restarted on our knees but this time i fell into his guard. he tried to attack with a few armbars/sweeps, but i kept my elbows in close and wouldnt let him get his legs past them. both of us were getting pretty tired and eventually when one of his armbar attempts failed i passed to half guard. ive spent a ton of time on the bottom here so i know what works and it wasnt long before i got to mount. my mount submissions are just a total epic fail, so i spent about 45 seconds futily going for an arm triangle and a gi choke. the 7 minute round ended, and if i had known it was close to being over i probably would have attempted an armbar. i just hate going for an armbar from mount with any amount of time remaining cause i have seriously missed about 18 out of the 20 armbars from mount i have tried, but i like to try them every so often as i have been getting slowly better with them and eventually i will be a master of it.

anyway i was pretty happy with todays class. i managed to finish a triangle, rolled about 8 and a half minutes with a good white belt and a blue belt before getting tapped and learned a few new tricks. im not sure when ill get a chance to go in next, but probably the monday 6:00 beginner class because i have some shit to do this saturday and wont make it in.

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Mar 20, 09 12:25:17

Fellow BJJ-er

Great job! It's cool to see a poker pro taking up my other hobby.

theJoblessWobbly

Mar 27, 09 22:07:06

heh

Wish I was as good at poker as I am at BJJ/Judo. Should trade services lol

pherrot