trapping in games
I went to jiujitsu today and got armbarred by a white belt.
This, in itself, is not that interesting -- I'm really not very good, and definitely not very strong, so it is often the case that someone with some skill and some physical attributes will do this to me. What is interesting in how it happened. I was standing up in his guard, with poor posture, hunched over, and my arms extended: a sure-fire recipe for an armbar. I knew everything he was about to do, but then he actually did it -- and I couldn't do anything about it.
Of course, I've done jiujitsu long enough to know that this is dumb. The reason I did this was part laziness and part gamble. Passing anyone's guard is at least a little bit annoying to do properly. Anyone even a little bit good can make guard-passing difficult by simply keeping the guard locked and breaking posture. However, passing guard often happens when the bottom man opens his legs to attack with a submission or sweep, and fails.
Thus there are really two main ways the top man passes. He can use solid fundamentals, open his opponent's guard, and control the opponent's legs in such a way that he is able to get around them. Or he can bait a submission or a sweep, anticipate the opponent's movement, and simply beat him with speed or power. I chose the latter.
The problem with baiting someone is often not that the opponent doesn't take the bait, but that he does. The bait is typically a sacrifice, a creation of an apparent defensive weakness that is in some part an illusion. But to legitimately sell the illusion against an intelligent opponent, the bait must be tempting. Sometimes not only is the bait tempting, it is too much to give away, and weakens the position to the point where the trapper becomes the trapped.
I don't know a lot about many games, but I imagine this type of "an offer too good to turn down" occurs in a variety of games, whether it is offering up a poisoned pawn in chess, or an offside trap in soccer (way to be timely, Terrence!). In poker, you see this in a lot of ways. One might be smooth-calling with the vulnerable nuts (an especially good example of this would be flatting AA/KK preflop in NL hold'em). Or in a heads-up match, a player might repeatedly fold small pots to his opponent, hoping to trap him when he picks up a monster. This last play is extremely dangerous, because that hand may not actually every come, or at least not before the aggressive player has stolen so many pots that the trapper cannot recover.
Setting these "traps" intelligently is often one way of winning a game more quickly or more effortlessly, but perhaps at the expense of the likelihood of winning itself. Ironically (within the context of this post) is that one arena where it may be useful to set many traps is a poker tournament, where early in a tournament you play against a lot of poor players and only have a limited time frame in which to take their chips. But in most games, striving for perfection can never be much of a mistake. At least in jiujitsu, I don't plan on being lazy with my guard-passing any time in the near future.
This, in itself, is not that interesting -- I'm really not very good, and definitely not very strong, so it is often the case that someone with some skill and some physical attributes will do this to me. What is interesting in how it happened. I was standing up in his guard, with poor posture, hunched over, and my arms extended: a sure-fire recipe for an armbar. I knew everything he was about to do, but then he actually did it -- and I couldn't do anything about it.
Of course, I've done jiujitsu long enough to know that this is dumb. The reason I did this was part laziness and part gamble. Passing anyone's guard is at least a little bit annoying to do properly. Anyone even a little bit good can make guard-passing difficult by simply keeping the guard locked and breaking posture. However, passing guard often happens when the bottom man opens his legs to attack with a submission or sweep, and fails.
Thus there are really two main ways the top man passes. He can use solid fundamentals, open his opponent's guard, and control the opponent's legs in such a way that he is able to get around them. Or he can bait a submission or a sweep, anticipate the opponent's movement, and simply beat him with speed or power. I chose the latter.
The problem with baiting someone is often not that the opponent doesn't take the bait, but that he does. The bait is typically a sacrifice, a creation of an apparent defensive weakness that is in some part an illusion. But to legitimately sell the illusion against an intelligent opponent, the bait must be tempting. Sometimes not only is the bait tempting, it is too much to give away, and weakens the position to the point where the trapper becomes the trapped.
I don't know a lot about many games, but I imagine this type of "an offer too good to turn down" occurs in a variety of games, whether it is offering up a poisoned pawn in chess, or an offside trap in soccer (way to be timely, Terrence!). In poker, you see this in a lot of ways. One might be smooth-calling with the vulnerable nuts (an especially good example of this would be flatting AA/KK preflop in NL hold'em). Or in a heads-up match, a player might repeatedly fold small pots to his opponent, hoping to trap him when he picks up a monster. This last play is extremely dangerous, because that hand may not actually every come, or at least not before the aggressive player has stolen so many pots that the trapper cannot recover.
Setting these "traps" intelligently is often one way of winning a game more quickly or more effortlessly, but perhaps at the expense of the likelihood of winning itself. Ironically (within the context of this post) is that one arena where it may be useful to set many traps is a poker tournament, where early in a tournament you play against a lot of poor players and only have a limited time frame in which to take their chips. But in most games, striving for perfection can never be much of a mistake. At least in jiujitsu, I don't plan on being lazy with my guard-passing any time in the near future.