World Jiu Jitsu Case Study (2.1) – Points and Submissions

Section 2.1

Section 1 was about how matches started and finished. In section 2 we will look at the details that went into those results. We will discover things like, how these results were achieved, what techniques were used, what role did advantages play in this process, and what is else was important to victory this year?

We will start with the element that plays a role in the outcome of nearly every match, points. One of the most interesting things we discovered in our “Money Jiu Jitsu” study of the 2012 Pan Ams was that close to 80% of matches were won by the competitor who scored points first. This trend continued at the 2012 World Championships with 75% of matches being won by the competitor who scored points first. We won’t make any judgments on why this is the case, but it deserves significant attention, the numbers don’t lie—75% is a strong majority (and it reaffirms what we discovered this year in a more limited capacity at the Pans).

The question then becomes, how did these competitors score first? In this case, guard pullers scored first 46% of the time, players starting on top scored first 36% of the time(via pass or throw), and the other 18% scored first from a double guard pull position. Another interesting component of this is how quickly points were scored. In 34% of matches points were scored in the first minute. In these matches where points were scored within the first minute, 67% of them were in favor of the guard puller. We also found that players who scored with takedown in the first minute of their match won 100% of the time (this happened only 4 times in the entire study; it is a limited sample to prove this is a full-proof plan obviously).

As you can see in the chart above, we continue to see a trend in game-changes as the weight increases among competitors. There appears advantages to the bottom player at the lower weights, and to the top player at heavier weights. Interesting enough, we see a more dominant bottom game in the open division as well.

The other interesting thing about points is how many matches were decided than less than 5 points. Of the 48% of matches decided by points, 67% were decided by less than 5 points.

One particularly interesting part about the 75% majority of ‘first-point-scorers’ winning matches is that only 48% of matches were actually won by points. This would appear to show that scoring first gave competitors a better chance of winning in other fashions as well, but we examined this further to see if it was in fact the case. In 73% of matches won by submission, the person that scored first was the competitor that won. In another 11% of matches won by submission, the submission came from a neutral score, so it leaves us with only 16% of competitors who won by submission doing so after being scored upon first. This does in fact reveal the trend that those who score first are not only more likely to win on points, but are more likely to win by submission as well.

The other interesting thing about points and submissions is that 76% of all submissions came from the player winning on points. Only 4% of submissions occurred in the favor of the player losing on points. The other 20% of submissions occurred from a neutral score.

It’s easy to see why points play such an important role in the definition of the match, but there will be a lot of discussion that pertains to why. This kind of information is vital in determining the rules for future tournaments and for strategies for future competitors. In reality, points should reflect a trend towards a positive result because essentially they are the measurement for the match. Points should point us in the direction of a winner, and that was the case at 2012 World Championships.

The next section will focus on techniques utilized at the 2012 World Championships, and will focus on guard passes and sweeps.

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