Montreal Pro Trials: Feb 22nd 2014 Recap

A couple weeks ago, we went to Montreal for the pro trials. For the first time since I can remember, the drive there wasn't horrible.  Last year, it was a nightmare, at one point, we though we weren't g-going to make it,even though we left on Thursday night!

We did hit traffic about 5 minutes into the drive, there was an accident on the highway just outside of hamilton, but nce we got past that, we decided to jump on the 407, since we were getting into rush hour time, and rush hour, on the 401 through Toronto, is not a lot of fun at all.

We stayed at the Universal Hotel, which is right across the road from the venue.  We like to stay here, because it's price is comparable to the mid-town, but has free parking, and is super convenient for walking to the venue.  When the tournament was 2 days it was even better because we could just go back and forth through out the day.

We headed over to the mid-town for weighins around 3pm, ended up parking on the street, and paying 9 bucks, which is cheaper then hotel parking, but still pretty ridiculous for a couple hours of street parking.  The worst part about paying or a couple hours of parking, was that we didn't use most of it, that's because, after we weighed in we attempted to get dinner at the hotel restaurant.

we got sat down pretty quickly, but that was it, we were there for literally 20 minutes and none of the restaurant staff even glanced at us.  It's like they were purposefully avoiding even looking at our table or walking near bye.  It was ridiculous.  we gave up, left, and ate dinner at our own hotel.

Our hotel restaurant was under construction, but they just had all the tables in one of the conference rooms and it was a-ok.  We got there before they were technically open, but they sat us and fed us anyway, which was nice.  The restaurant isn't cheap, but the food is pretty good and the service is decent all the staff we have dealt with in the times we have stayed spoke English well enough, and put up with our weirdness well.

Anyway... back to the event.  The level of jiu jitsu was really high, in the ladies divisions especially.  There were way more ladies then in any of the past Montreal trials.  There were 3 brown/black divisions and a light and heavy purple absolutes.   The two blue belt absolutes were way bigger then in the past as well.

One competitor that stood out to me, in the women's division was Dominyka,  She's from Marcelo Garcia's school and has fantastic jiu jitsu.  She just got her brown belt a couple weeks before worlds last year, and won her division there,  she won her division at the trials this year, AND the absolute.

The men's brown/black divisions were split up for the first time (that I can remember anyway) this year as well.  The brown belts got 2 absolutes and the black belts had a bunch of weight classes.   You can see all the results on the trials website here.

I ended up going home with a silver medal.  I won 1 fight, lost 1.  My first fight went pretty well, I actually worked on some things I've been training and was able to finish the fight with an armbar.  We did have a bit of a situation mid-match though.  We were near the edge and I was working to take her back.  I had a collar grip but it wasn't high, and we ended up mostly out of bounds,  the ref stopped us, and tried to re-start us in the middle, but her coach was having none of it.  The ref ended up giving her 2 penalties for delaying the match before she got back into position.  There beef was that we were "in a submission" and should be stood up and me get 2 points.  But, all I had was 1 collar grip on her back, and it wasn't near a sub.  She got out of that pretty quick and in the transitions I got the armbar.
My second fight was against Yacinta, who is awesome.  I pulled guard, and she smashed through it to half guard.  I almost got a kimura, but I held on to it way to long when it wasn't viable anymore, and it went down hill, quickly, after that.  I ended up in a triangle for about 4 minutes till the end of the match.  Not my best match by any means, but I learned some things to work on from it and my Jiu Jitsu will be better for it.

The tournament started on time, but ended up behind schedule by the end of the day.  We left around 7 and the blue absolute was just getting started.  Generally, the event ran really well.

Weighins and checkin were pretty quick, but strange.  We had to weigh in with our gis, but it was day before weighins.  To me, the only reason to weigh in with a gi on is, because the IBJJF does weighins right before the division, so t gt through it quickly and get the matches running, you have your gi on so you don't have to go change.  It's weird to require a gi when weighing in the day before.   It's not really bad,  just strange.  They weren't even inspecting the gis at weigh ins, that happened at the venue before the matches to.  So you could weigh in with one gi, and compete in another.

This year was the first time they did the event all in one day which made for a really long day.  Especially because there were more kids competing, and a lot more masters then in the past.  They gave out 5 kids trips, which were "to be decided by the organizer".  Personally, I'm not sure kids should be competing for trips at a scale like this, it is a cool opportunity for them but it's a lot of pressure and also puts a lot of financial pressure  on the parents as well.  I don't think there should be masters either.  They can't win a trip and it adds a lot of time to the day.  Either get rid of the divisions, or give the trips!

On the way home, we discovered something horrible  The onRoute service centres on the 401 only have tim hortons open after 9pm on weekends.  During the week they are open much later, but apparently, on weekends, they all shut down at 9, even the convenience stores aren't open.  We ended up stopping in Brockville to grab some pizza hut.   It was a weird pizza hut, that didn't follow the same promos that most of the pizza huts do.  But, it was quick and we pretty much always get pizza after competing.

Te drive home was really uneventful, the guys slept most of the drive, as usual, and there wasn't snow to deal with which was amazing.  We made great time, even with our 2 gas stops and the pizza stop.

There were a bunch of photographers at the event.  One even got a few decent shots of me!   You can see that album here.  It's linked one one of the pics of me, but there are hundreds of pics in the album.  The talented Erin Herle's (who was multi-tasking at the event,  winning the light purple absolute, and taking amazing pics)   album can be found here.  She worked with Martin to take pics for Gracie Mag.

I also took a bunch of pics, but my camera battery was dying, so I didn't get many. You can check them out on facebook if you like.

That's all for now!   See you on the mats!

Grappling Industries: Montreal Sub Only Feb 1st 2014

This was supposed to be the 2nd sub only event of the year for us, but The OJA one in Kitchener got shut down by the snowmagendonpocalyse that was a minor snow storm. It was pretty disapointing for everyone involved, but there was nothing the OJA could do, the venue shut them down. But, this post isn't about that It's about last weekends road trip to Montreal.

It started out like a typical drive to Montreal, so that means horrible traffic from Mississagua to Whitby.  We headed out around 3pm, and got to our hotel at around 10:00pm.  Which isn't actually that bad, we made great time past whitby, and only took 1 gas/food/pee stop.

We stayed at the Novotel near the Mirabel airport. It was only $100+tax per night, and had free parking and wifi.  The parking and wifi are two of the biggest factors when I pick a hotel.  It's great that a hotel is like 75 or 80 per night, but if parking is 15 bucks (or 20 or 25, or even 35) and there is a fee for the wifi, suddenly $100 looks a lot better.  The room was quite nice, the headboards had cool lights built into them, that we didn't discover until we were heading out in the morning. We couldn't hear people in the hall, the beds were comfy, the room was big enough, and the bathroom was quite nice.   The pillows were kind of flat, and there was only 2 on each bed, so that kind of sucked, but if that is the worst thing about a hotel, I'll stay again.  The bathroom doors were weird, and there wa s a gap in them, which meant zero sound proofing. I swear, this is the one thing hotels can't get right.  We DON'T want to hear everything that is going on in the bathroom!

Anyway... We did our ussual morning routine for these events, go weigh in for the very start of weighins, then head to Cora's for breakfast and back to the venue intime to digest, relax, and get ready to fight.  Cora's is a bit pricey, but it's realiable, never very busy, and pretty close to the venue.

The event started with a 20 minute sub only super fight between Gabe Sagman and Steve Shipinkas.  It was a pretty entertaining match and ended in a draw.  Steve did get a penalty, which the reff used to award Gabe the win, but that was changed right away, since it was only 1 penalty, and it was sub-only, ect.  Neither guy dominated enough to be declared the winner so a draw was a fair outcome.

Next up after the super fight was the GI Super Absolute. This was IBJJF ruleset, open belt, open weight, open gender and it was an extra $10 to enter.  I admit, some of the match ups that happened were pretty interesting, but I am not a huge fan of the concept, especially the guys vs girls thing.   I'll be the first to say that women should be allowed to compete in men's divisions if there is no one in theirs, but to hae the potential for a 120lbs white belt women to fight a 250lbs purple belt guy,  It's just asking for injuries.  There were quite a few girls in the nogi version, and none of them made it out of the first round (that I saw). I admire them for giving it a go, but It's not something I will ever do.  Toronto's Sub only coming up in March has the trips as prizes for the super absolutes and I am pretty disapointed about it.

Anyway... The format for the tournament was round robin, where you get 4 (ish) fights, and then there may or may not be tie breakers. A win by sub got you 3 points, decision got you 2 points, and a tie got you 1.  This worked pretty well, but got a bit tricky when you ran into people who didn't show, and people who dropped out to injury. These were treated as decision wins, and got the "winner" 2 points.  I think, down the road, they would be better of re-doing the draws after weighins closed so that no-shows were eliminated and everyone got a fair shot at getting the full 12 points for 4 sub wins.    After the round robin, if there was  a tie, we did tie breaker matches.  If, after the first 5 minutes, there was no clear winner, they fought another 5 minutes, and another 5 after that if there was still no clear winner.  I only had a few of these come up, and almost all of them had subs in the second 5 minutes, or were clear cut after that 5 minutes.  I don't think anyone ended up in the 2nd overtime.

I reffed for the first 1/2 of the morning, while switching off and watching a couple of new(er) referees.  The I competed in my division (blue+ open weight) and went straight back to refereeing till the end of the day.  My second fight was a real eye opener for me.  I fought Ashten, and she is really tough!  It made me see that I really need to tighten up my game and never give an inch. it was a really good match, and I look forward to competing with her again down the road.

As you probably know, grappling industries uses really small mat areas. It's something I've complained about as a competitor and a referee on many occasions.  I know mats are expensive, and they have limited venue space, blah blah blah blah, but it is DANGEROUS to have such small areas, with such limited safety areas between them.  Especially with inexperienced referees who cannot control the fighters they are refereeing.  On Saturday, I saw fighters repeatedly ending up on the mat beside them, and even once, on the mat beside that.  This is ridiculous.  The referees need to be more assertive, and have better positioning,  the fighters need to have better awareness of where they are, and the tournament needs to have bigger areas and/or bigger saftely areas between them.

This issue was highlighted by a situation that happened to me, while refereeing min-afternoon.  I was standing at the edge of my mat area, keeping myself between the fighters I was refereeing, and the mat behind me, focused on those fighters, when, out of the blue I got full on taken out from behind.   Thankfully, my fighters were still standing, were paying attention, and stopped and waited, while the fighters from the mat behind me climbed off me me (while i was pretty much face planted) and I dragged myself up.  I rolled my ankle and got some pretty awesome bruises from the whole ordeal, which isn't to bad, all things considered, but it could have been MUCH worse and should NOT have happened.

On to happier things.  Pura had a pretty great day, we had 4 people competing:  Steve, Jon, Andrew and myself, and took home 6 medals.   Steve won gold in gi and nogi,  Andrew won gold in gi and bronze in nogi, Jon won Bronze in gi (did not compete in nogi) and I won gold in gi (did not compete in nogi).  Steve was on fire, subbing all his opponents handily.  Jon had a bit of a rough day, he'd been sick for over a week and was still quite under the weather, but he still managed to put a guy to sleep.  Andrew dominated his gi division and looked good in his nogi division as well.  His gi final was a tie breaker that he won after overtime by decision.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the gi absolutes for the guys just didn't happen.  My division was already combined, so I didn't have one.  Since there were supposed to be "Season Passes" for the winners of the absolutes, Andrew and Steve were suposed to compete for them.  They both ended up getting a seasons pass, I guess because they were the only ones that followed up about it, or they gave all the winners one, I don't know.  I also earned a seasons pass by winning my division (which was, in reality, an absolute).  Having the season pass will be a nice cost saver for us, since we attend so many competitions and they add up quick.

As the day was winding down, some mats finished way before others,  the mat I ended up refereeing at for most of the afternoon somehow had way way way more matches then the others, so I pawned a few off on 2 other mats.  Then I ended up being done before one of those mats (the other still finished ahead), so I got some of them back.   The guys were giving me "can we go yet" faces for about an hour and a half, so I found one of the other referees who had not started till later in the day, and got him to take over for me.  Thank You for that!  It made me get home at 2am instead of 3 or 4 am!

Yea,  2 am.  We left the venue around 5pm, and it was snowing. Surprise, a snow storm, when we are on a road trip to Montreal.  If we are going to Montreal, between Oct and May, there WILL be a snow storm. It's a fact, it's science, and it cannot be disputed.  The 401 was snow covered and kind of drifty from Montreal to Kingston, where there was a bit of a break, then again from just past Kingston to about Ajax and sporatically on the outskirts of Toronto. Once we hit Toronto proper it was just went so we could make decent time.  In the snow covered bits, we varied between about 60-80km/h.  We saw a bunch of cars in the ditches, and a plow that looked ot be stuck as well, which is kind of hilarious.  I was having flashbacks to last february's nightmare trip TO Montreal, but the good news is, my car handled the snow fine. It stayed out of my air filter, so I am confident we are going to get to the trials without any car trouble this year.

The event Photographer did a really great job taking pictures.  He got a good mix of the mat areas, and got some great shots. You can see the album here on facebook.  As ussual, there are plenty of pictures of me looking stupid while refereeing.  I swear, not a single picture exists of my refereeing where I don't have a stupid look on my face, or am in an awkward position, or am just generally looking stupid or fat or something.  I might have to open up a bounty for event photographers: First one to get a good, flattering, not ugly picture of me refereeing will get a prize.


That's about all I have to say,  overall it was a pretty good event.  It ran surprising quickly considering the format, but I would like to see longer matches, I think it would end up with less draws, but, then we need more mats, more refs, more staff, more space, or we would be there all night.  I'm looking forward to their Toronto Event on March 29th.

Coming up next for me is the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials in Montreal on Feb 22nd.  I'm attempting to cut to the -145lbs weight class, and let me tell you, my body is not a fan.  It's not a fan of middle weight, let alone 145 with a gi on, but I think I will make it.  I SHOULD be able to given what my scale says my body fat is, but who knows, time will tell.   We have a pretty good size crew from Pura heading out for that Trip, so it will be a fun weekend!

Also coming up, just confirmed, announced, registration opened. Is Ascension on March 1st.  This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year.  Omar puts on a great event.  I think I wil just be refereeing though, since Pans is only 2 weeks later, and last time (Ontario Open last year) I competed that close to a major event, it didn't quite work out my way, and thousands of dollars were wasted.  Wasted might be a bit harsh, but I ended up on the sideline for months, wasn't able to compete at worlds, and wasted over a week of vacation time on the trip.

See you on the Mats!

Jiu Jitsu Hair: a How to Guide

This is a topic that comes up pretty regularily in the facebook groups and forums that I frequent.  "My hair is this long, how can I keep it contained for Jiu jitsu", or "My hair always goes in my eye and makes me cry when I roll how do I fix this"?  Ok, that one might be made up, but you get the point right?

A surprising number of these questions come from guys.  Which, I suppose, is understandable.  While it's not super unusual for guys to have hair that is quite long, Most of them don't have a lot of experience when it comes do doing anything other then brushing it, and maybe throwing it in a low elastic to keep it back.  There are lots of ladies asking as well, but they generally have a better idea or starting point at least.  So, this post is for everyone who has medium to long hair!

Your best option will depend on your hair length.  Some techniques work better for shorter hair, and some for longer hair.  How much time and dexterity you have to commit to your hair is also a factor.  I'll do my hair differently depending on how much time I have.  Generally, the longer it takes, the better it will stay contained, so keep that in mind.

For all of these styles,  I generally tie up the hair i'm not focusing on with an elastic, to keep it out of the way so that it doesn't tangle in while I'm trying to tie up, or braid other hair.  It's an extra step, but it's quick, and saves time in the long run.

One thing that is important to remember is that for Jiu Jitsu( and MMA, and judo, and pretty much all combat sports), you aren't allowed to have any medal or hard plastic in your hair (or on your body for that matter) when competing.  So those handy dandy medal flat clips are a nogo for competition. I don't like to use them for training either, because if they popped open then could poke someone in the eye or something.  When it comes to elastics, they can't even have that little medal bit that holds them together that some have.

Jaw Length or Less
Let's start with the shortest length that you really have to worry about it, When your hair is down, it's about jaw length.  Any shorter then this, and it doesn't really get in the way. In theory, these techniques could work for shorter still, but Probably aren't worth the effort.  My hair was this short in mid-2012.  You basically have 2 options.  1.  Braids, 2. pony tails/pig tails/ typing it up.  I will use those three terms to mean the same thing, wrapping an elastic around hair to tie it up.

When hair is this length, you are going to need a bunch of elastics, no matter which way you go.  It's to short to tie all in one place.  I generally went with 4-6 sections, until it got a bit longer, then could get away with 2. When hair is jaw length, or less, you don't have to worry to much about it laying on the mat and getting knelt on,  or getting in the way of your collars, the main problem is it getting in your face.  So we need to take the hair on the top of your head, and tie it back.

If you have a lot of time, braiding is the way to go, french braiding at that.  I made 2 little videos of my braiding my hair.  The first, with no commentary.
The second with a commentary.  These are filmed with my phone, so it was a bit tricky having such a small "mirror" to work with.  If your hair is jaw length or less, you can stop braiding after the french braid is complete, and tie it up securely with an elastic or two.  You don't want to use the big chunky elastics I used in the video though, they will come loose easily, use smaller ones that you can get really tight.

The shorter your hair is, the more of these braids you are going to want to do, and the less hair you are going to want to add with each section, or else it will fall out.

My hair is currently to long to properly demonstrate this technique, but I do have some pictures from the past, sporting the pony tales.  The concept is the same, whether you are go with braids or pony tails.  Split the front 1/4 to 1/3 of your head(from about your ears forward) into 4-6 equal parts and tie them back individually.  The shorter your hair is, the more sections you want.

This picture is kind of far away, but you can see the ponytails sticking up/back a bit and see my hair is nicely out of my face and out of the way. This picture is a much better close up.  This was my 4th fight of the day and you can see, on the right side, it's getting a bit lose and messy.  The good thing is, it's quite easy to repair this style so if it comes out, it won't take long to fix.

Once your hair gets a bit longer, you can use less sections.  Between the transition of the jaw length, to the really annoying length, I tied it in 2 sections to keep it out of my face. It takes less elastics, and less time, but is less secure.

When your hair is jaw length or less, like I mentioned before, the back of your head's hair isn't really an issue, but, you can't do much about it anyway, it's to short to tie into anything sensible, that wouldn't actually get more in the way.


Shoulder Length Hair

Once your hair is shoulder length, you have to start worrying about the back of your head.  That hair will end up on the mat when your on the bottom of side control, mount, or even playing guard, and nothing is worse then trying to bridge, or shrimp, or move your head, and having your own back, or your opponents knee on your hair stopping you!

There are a LOT of ways to deal with this hair, from supper lazy and not that effective, to fairly time consuming and very effective.

1. A basic Pony tail.  Just gather all your hair up in the middle of the back of your head, and tie it up.  This is quick and dirty, and will keep it out of your face, and a bit out of the way.  But, it'll fall out quick, and will still give you a lot of trouble.
   
   
   
2. Take your pony take from option # 1, and fold up the tail and wrap a bunch of elastics around it.  I show the beginning of this in the pony tail video above, but just take that, and add a pile of elastics around it. Only 1 will hold up to the warm up, but as soon as people start touching your head it all comes undone. This is what I do when I am in a rush.  a basic pony tale is not effective at my current hair length, because it still gets under my shoulders.   The down side to this method is, it can get a bit bulky at the back, depending on your hair length/thickness, and then popping your head out of guillotines and bow and arrows and so on can be a bit tricky because your hair will create a hook for their arm to stay on.  
   
   
3. Pony tail and braid. This is a pretty solid option if you have an extra minute or two.  Do a basic pony tail, then braid the hair from there (a regular braid, not a french braid).  You can then wrap the braid up in a kind of bun, and it'll be pretty sturdy.  When I am a little bit less lazy, this is how I do my hair.  Here's a pic from training of the pony tail + braid.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Dual French Pony Tails.  Yea, I just made that term up, because I don't really know how better to describe it. You take the concept of french braiding (adding hair as you go) and apply it to pony tails.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Dual French Braids.  Split your hair in half, and french braid it down to the end.  With #4 and with these french braids, I like to take the ends, and tie them up, just like any other style.  They make less of a bump when they have been braided or pony tailed down to the end, so it's a lot better this way, then a regular pony tale bunned up.
   
   
   This picture, you can see the results of french braids, tied up, after a bunch of matches. It's gotten a bit messy, but it's still pretty well contained.  This picture, I didn't tie the braids up very well, and you can see, if I was on my back, they'd be on the floor, not quite idea.

You see a lot of mma fighters with cornrows in their hair. This is the ULTIMATE safe Jiu jitsu hair style.  Cornrows are basically super tight french braids done with very small bits of hair.  Fun Fact, when I was a kid, my mom used to do my hair in tiny braids.  the top/front would be cornrowed and the back would be all braids.  I'd have somewhere between 50 and 100 braids in my hair.  It was petty bad ass.

This picture of Uriah Faber shows the technique I show with french braiding the top half.  His braids are a lot smaller, and therfore more secure. If I had the time, and arm stamina, I'd do it this way. 

Roxy has rocked some pretty awesome corn rows.  Her stylist got creative and zigged and zagged.  That would be nearly impossible to do yourself, so you are on your own if you need a tutorial on it.  I could do it to your hair, but not my own.

This picture of Miesha and Ronda show the french braids, and a take on the french pony tales.  As you can see Miesha's hair is already coming undone, this is why most of the ladies go for corn rows.  Ronda's hair is pretty excellent, it's a more complicated french pony tail style, where she has multiple starting points that each have hair added, then they all get put together and braided at the back.  

Finally, there are some girls and guys out there that use a swim cap to keep their hair contained.  Some swear by it, but I don't think I could handle it.  My hair get so sweaty and I get so hot training, I can imagine having my entire head encased in rubber/plastic.  But, the option is out there for you if you want to give it a try.

Tournament Draw Systems Part 3 - Round Robin

So, we talked about Single Elimination, and Double Elimination already, the only other system that is really used is Round Robin. 

Round Robin is a weird one,  it's got a million variations, and it makes a big difference how large the division is as to how it works.  The basic premise is that everyone fights everyone, and whoever has the most wins, is gold, and second most is silver, and third most is bronze.  Of course, nothing is ever that simple in the real world.

Generally, if a division is larger then 5, it will get split into "pools",  so you only fight the people in your pool, and then the winners of the pools move on to a single elimination bracket.  Also, generally, the number of pools is kept to an even number, that makes a nice single elimination bracket at the end.  The pools aren't always the same size, so sometimes people will have more fights then others.  

Sometimes, only the top 1 from each pool moves on, and sometimes top 2.  in this case, the #2's fight the #1's from the other pool.

Confused yet?  Let's add another complication.  Sometimes (quite often) there is a tie, in a pool,  in a 5 person pool, two fighters go 3-1, now what?  There are a couple ways to determine the winner:

1. Who won the fight between the two?  That person is #1. (If there is a 3 way tie, this falls apart)
2. It goes to points:  X points for each submission, X points for a win by points, and X points for a win by decision.
1. If those points are tied, it sometimes goes to who score the most points in the matches, or who won their matches the quickest.
2. Generally with those criteria someone comes out ahead, but in case they don't I would think that another fight between them happens, or they go to the first criteria I mentioned, who won the fight between the two of them.

There are many different ways that round robin draws are visualized, There isn't really a right or wrong way, but I think there are varying levels of complication and understandability when it comes to the draws.  

This style takes up the least amount of space, and is easy to calculate, BUT, it is a bit confusing at first.

This might need a bit of explanation.  Each ROW represents that persons matches.  They don't fight themselves, that is why there is that diagonal line of greyed out boxes.  Each fight, in this style of sheet, is represent in 2 boxes, one for each fighter.  As with all my other samples, the match number is in red.  The purple is all things the draw person would fill in.   As you can see, there is a lot more information that has to go into recording round robin,  to handle the times.   Personally, when I am running a mat, I record how they won for all types of sheets, just to be safe, and for the promoters records.  If I am feeling crazy, I'll write the match time down too.  

So, in this case, who gets what place depends on if they are going by option #1, or option #2.  

If we go by option #1 we have a situation,  the each loss to each other,  Fred beat Bob, who beat Same, who beat Fred. If Matt had won against Fred, then we would have had a tie for first/second and a tie for third/fourth.   Let's figure out who wins what medal,  in that revised senario.

Going by option #1.

Bob beat Sam, so Bob get's first, and Sam gets second and based on our revision above, Mat beat Fred, so Mat gets 3rd and Fred gets 4th, leaving poor, winless Joe in 5th.

Going by option #2 (still with the revision of Matt beating Fred).

Bob and Sam both have 3 wins, 2 of which are subs, and one of which are points, so in the round robin scoring, they are tied.  Next we look at how many points they scored in the match that was won by points.  Sam scored 14 points and 4 advantages, while bob scored 4 points and 2 advantages. So,  Sam wins Gold and Bob gets silver.  

Going by option #2(with the original, scoring showed in the image)

Bob and Sam are still tied on the round robin scoring, and Fred, who only has 1 submission, 1 points, and 1 decision, loses that tie breaker and gets third place, Sam still gets gold, and Bob gets silver. 

It's important to note that the round robin scoring (X points for sub, Y points for winning by points and Z points for a decision)  ONLY comes into play when there is a TIE of wins.  You cannot play the numbers,  lose more matches, but end up with more points to get the gold, no matter which way of figuring out ties is being used.

Here is another style of sheet, filled in for the exact same scenario:

In this mode,  the order of fights and who fights who is a bit more clear,  but, calculating the totals is not nearly as handy.  

Fun fact,  technically, the top or first name is supposed to be the blue/colour fighter.  So, if you are ever competing, and see the draws ahead of time, dress appropriately, or get the silly belt ready.  At big tournaments like the IBJJF worlds, for the black belt finals, they REQUIRE you to follow this rule, first fighter MUST wear ROYAL BLUE(not navy, not black, not white).   This isn't a new concept, Judo has done it forever.  At big judo tournaments, you have to wear the right colour gi as well, that is why I had to bring 4 gis to every tournament.  (a spare of each colour, in case of blood).    I personally, as a referee, fan, and competitor, like this policy, it makes keeping the fighters straight so much easier.  I hope it becomes a trend in NOGI to.  maybe have a white based rashguard and a black based rashguard or something.

I mentioned Pools earlier.  Let me illustrate that system for you now.  I got a bit lazy, and just changed the names, and the outcome of fight #10.   In a case like this, each pool could be run on a separate mat, and then the semi and final matches run once the pools are complete. Alternatively, they could be alternated doing 2 matches from pool #1, then two from pool #2 and so on. 

Now, this is all well and good, when you don't promise a number of matches to your competitors, which, the main user of round robin here in Ontario does.  Grappling Industries uses their own wacky version of round robin where you fight 4 people in your division. There isn't pools like in a standard system.  So if you have a division of 20 people, fighter # 1 might fight fighter # 2, 8, 10 and 19, then fighter #2 might fight # 1, 10, 17, and 4,  and so on.  Divisions of 2 you fight the same guy twice, divisions of 3 you fight each guy twice, divisions of 4, you get three fights.  and divisions of 5+ you fight some subset of the fighters in the division.  The table gets a list of matches for the division, which has the fighters names, and a column for the winner and what they won by.  It does work quite nicely for keeping the mat running, but it's difficult to keep track of the points and who's fighting who.

They end up with a LOT of ties,  some of which I think could be avoided using a proper pooling system.   When there are ties at grappling industries events they take all the tied people and have them battle it out in a single elimination bracket. 

This all might change, since they partnered up with Mata Leao to do their draws.  I hope they start using a more standardized system because it can cause a lot of confusion for the fighters, and the table workers using this style.

The other time you see round robin in Ontario is with KIDS divisions at OJA events. They use sheets that look similar to the second example.  For the very young kids, they split the categories into pools small enough so that every kid gets a medal, and for the older kids, they split them up so that the kids get a few fights, and then the pool winners go to a semi final and final single elimination bracket.   I think this is really fair for the kids, because it sucks for everyone to lose 1 fight and be out, and while I am all for kids learning by failing, giving them they opportunity  to compete in more then 1 match is good for them.

So, that wraps up the round robin.  There are probably some complexities that I have missed.  It creates a lot of matches, but It's a system that can create a lot of experience, and is pretty good for fairly assessing the true best competitors. 

  

  

Tournament Draw Systems Explained - Part 2 Double Elimination

Welcome back to this series on tournament draw systems.  Part one introduced the series and talked about the single elimination system.  This is part 2 and we shall talk about Double Elimination.

There are 3 main variations of Double Elimination:

1. Modified Double
2. True Double
3. Double with Repechage.

Modified double is the simplest, true double is a bit more complicated and the repechage is where things get a little crazy.   Most events that use a double elimination system tend to use the modified double elimination, but the Repechage system is what is used at very high level sport events such as the Olympics.  The repechage system itself has a lot of variations, but we will get to that when we get to that.

The basic concept of double elimination is similar to single elimination, where you have rounds, and the winners move down the tree.  The difference is, once you lose, you move down to the losers bracket and have an opportunity to fight for 3rd at the very least, and in some cases, silver, or even a shot at gold.

Let's start with Modified Double Elimination. In this system,  The person who doesn't lose any gets gold, the person who loses in the final gets silver, and the winner of the losers bracket gets bronze.  Sometimes you will have the two people who got to the end of the losers bracket get bronze, but usually, in modified double, there is only 1 bronze.  Confused yet?  Let's look at a picture.  We will start with a simple 8 person division, just like we did for single elimination.

8 person modified double no fight for silver

As you can see, the concept of rounds / quarters / semis/finals gets a little muddled, because of the dual bracket, but once you follow the Ws and Ls it's pretty clear how it all works.   The losers of the first round of the top bracket fill in the first round of the bottom bracket.  The winners of the first round of the bottom bracket move on to the second round of the bottom bracket, where they are joined by the losers of the 2nd round of the top bracket. 

The losers of the 1st round of the bottom bracket have now lost twice, and are out, they place 7th.   The losers of the 2nd round of the bottom bracket have no lost twice as well, and place 5th.  The winners of the 2nd round of the bottom bracket move on to the "final" of the bottom bracket, this is the fight for third place.  The winner gets bronze/third, and the loser gets 4th.   At the top bracket,  the third round is the final, the winner gets gold, the losers gets silver.  

In this example,  the gold medal winner has zero losses, silver has 1 loss, and bronze also has one loss. This is where one sometimes,  the loser of the final, will drop down to the bottom bracket, and fight for silver/bronze.  Like this:

8 person modified double w/ fight for silver

 Here, Alasdair loses in the final, drops down to the bottom bracket, and beats Bruce, to win the silver, and Bruce gets bronze.  

There is one other detail to keep in mind with double elimination.  In the second round of the bottom bracket, the losers switch sides.  L7 goes to the bottom half, while L8 goes to the top. This is so that they don't fight someone they have already fought.  Fighting someone you have already fought becomes unavoidable at the very end in the fight for silver/bronze sometimes. As you can see Alasdair and Bruce fought in the 2nd round of the top bracket, and then they fought again in the last fight of the bottom bracket. 

13 person modified double elimination bracket

As you can see, once you start having divisions with weird numbers, the byes complicate matters, as do the extra rounds, but the concept is still the same.  When you lose at the top, you move down to the bottom, and when you lose in the bottom, you are out,  keep winning, and you can work your way back to medal contention.   Like in the 8 person division, some events may chose to have the loser of the last fight on the top bracket drop down to face the last fight of the bottom bracket for silver, this way gold has 0 losses, silver has 1, and bronze has 2.

True double works almost the same as either of these modified doubles, except that the winner of the bottom bracket gets a chance at the winner of the top bracket.  In this case,  they need to beat the winner of the top bracket TWICE to get the gold, while the winner of the top bracket needs to beat the winner of the bottom bracket just once.  Thus everyone except the Gold medal winner has lost twice, in true DOUBLE elimination style.   This isn't a super common way of running the sheets, but it does happen, and it's kind of interesting to see if the underdog can take the cake. 

There are 3 ways that a true double elimination draw can end.  #1, the winner of the top brackets defeats the winner of the bottom bracket the first time. In this case, it's over, top winner gets gold, bottom winner gets silver.

True double, the shortest ending.

The second option is, the winner of the bottom bracket wins the first fight against the winner of the top bracket, setting them each to 1 loss each. Then the winner of the top bracket wins the 2nd fight, for gold, while the loser gets silver.

True double, top bracket winner still wins

Finally, the winner of the bottom bracket gets the upset, defeating the winner of the bottom bracket twice in a row, and taking gold, while the loser gets silver.

The ultimate upset, true double, with the bottom bracket winner taking the gold

So, this leaves us with the final, most complicated version of double elimination, the repechage.  Like all the others, there are a couple ways that this can work, but the general idea is,  if you lose, then the person that beat you has to win in order or you to get to the losers bracket.  

In they Olympics, for judo, this only applies if you lose to the four athletes in the semi(they split the athletes into 2 pools and do a repechage for each side, this picture shows how it would work with only 1 pool), lose to anyone else, and your out.  It sounds kind of complicated, but once you see it, it's not to bad.  

This system is used when divisions are large(ish), so I will use a 16 person division to illustrate it.  Sometimes, only the people who lose in the quarter finals get a second chance, which makes for a much smaller repechage bracket.   All the times I have seen repechage in action, the winner of the repechage gets bronze, while the finalists get gold/silver respectively.

You see that Matt and Alex are the finalists, so everyone who lost to them, goes into the repechage. The people who lost in the first and second round face each other, then the winner of that faces the person who lost in the third round. Then the two people left in the repechage fight each other for bronze, and the finalists of the top bracket fight for gold/silver.

So that pretty much covers the basics of the double elimination style.  Modified double is probably my favourite of all styles. It's efficient, and slightly more accurate at determining the podium then single elimination can be. I can't say whether I like the version where the final loser gets silver or if there is a fight for silver best, either is good. In theory, true double is the most accurate style, but to have to beat the top guy twice seems inefficient, and takes a long time, especially when you factor in the rest times between matches and whatnot.  

The third and final post in this series will be on the round robin system.  like single and double elimination, there are different ways of doing the draws in a round robin format.  

Tournament Draw Systems Explained - Part 1 (Single Elimination)

The idea for this post came to me this morning, in that half awake / half asleep phase of waking up in the morning.  With more and more tournaments popping up, each with there own little ways of doing things I thought it would be good to do a post on the various draw systems that exist out there.

There are three main draw systems that are are used in competitions (and not just jiu jitsu, all sorts of sports and games use these systems).

1. Single Elimination
2. Double Elimination
3. Round Robin

There are all sorts of variations on these three, and systems that combine them as well.  

Let's start with the simplest system:  Single Elimination.  This is what the IBJJF uses, and so does the OJA (for adults), and many other tournament organizers around the world.  The name says it all, if you lose once, you are out.  There are potentially 2 cases where there is an exception to the "single" part.  

1. If it is a division of 3.  These are done in a weird way.
2. Some tournaments will give 2 bronze medal, and some will have a fight to determine the third place.  This is often referred to as having a fight for "true third".

So, what does a standard single elimination bracket look like?  Let's start with the simplest case possible, an 8 person division.  Here is a sample of a standard, complete 8 person division.  As you can see, there are 7 matches in an 8 person division, with the winner of each match moving along the tree towards the final line. 

In all my sample draws, the red number will indicate the match number,  the blue is for the competitor names,  the green indicates who goes on that line, and the pink represents what that "round" is typically called.  

Sample Standard 8 complete 8 person draw sheet

So, in this case, the quarter finals are the first round, and the first fight is Mike Vs Ahmed and Mike wins.   The second fight is Adam vs Mandie, and Mandie wins. The third fight is Alasdair vs Matt and Alasdair wins, and the fourth fight is Stanlee vs Bruce and Bruce wins. The winners go to the next round and the losers are done.  Technically, if you lose in the quarter finals, you are part of a 4 way tie for 5th, while the winners move on to the semi finals.

In the first fight of the  semis(match number 5),  Mike faces Mandie, and Mandie wins again, moving on to the final.  The second fight of the semis Alasdair faces Bruce and Alasdair wins, moving on to the final.  Now, Mike and Bruce are out, tying for 3rd place.  

The final between Mandie an Alasdair is the 7th match.  Mandie wins, so is 1st, and Alasdair gets 2nd.

Here is a slightly modified case, for the tournaments that have only 1 third place.   As you can see,  there is an extra match.  The fight for 3rd usually happens before the final, so it is now match #7, and the final becomes match #8.   The losers of match #5 and Match #6 fight for third. The winner will be awarded the "true third".

I mentioned earlier that 3 person divisions were a little wacky.  There are 2 ways that a three person division can play out.   

Here is the first way:

It looks almost like a standard 4 person division, except that the fourth competitors place is filled in with the loser of the first match.  This is the way it works always.  The difference in how it plays out is determined by who wins the second match.   In this case,  Adam, who hasn't fought Ahmed yet,  won, so Adam moves on to face Ahmed in the final and Mike gets third place. Then, Adam, who wins the final,  gets first, while Ahmed, who lost the final, gets second place.

So, what happens if Mike wins the second match instead of Adam?  In this case,  the final does not happen, because Ahmed has already beat Mike (in the first match), So, Ahmed gets first, Mike gets second, and Adam gets third.

For single elimination, the more competitors you have, the more rounds there are,  so if there is between 9 and 16, there will be a round of 16 (which will have 8 or less fights in it), If there is between 17 and 32, there will be a round of 32.  For tournaments like the worlds, where there are divisions of 100+ the same system still applies, It is just broken down onto different pages, but the exact same process as a 8 person division is still followed.  There are just a lot more rounds. 

The complex part of single elimination comes when there are divisions sizes that don't end up perfect. The ideal sizes are: 2,4,8,16,32,64, 128, ect.  When a division doesn't have this number, then you end up with "byes" in the first round of matches.  A bye is when some competitors do not have to compete in the first round.  This is done so that the division can be narrowed down to a size that will work out nicely after that first round. 

Here is an example for a division of 13.  I've added a new colour, yellowish green, for Byes.  The byes fill in the blanks for fighters that don't exist.  Different tournaments / draw systems will represent this differently on their sheets, but the end result is the same.  Not everyone has a fight in the round of 16.  

The byes will be as evenly distributed as possible.  We don't put 3 byes at the top of the sheet and none at the bottom, or else the sheet will be lopsided. I do not know the exact formula for where the byes go, just that they are evenly spread out.   In this case, It kind of looks like I have 3 at the bottom, but Matt's bye is in the top half of the bracket while the other two are in the bottom half of the bracket.

Sample 13 person division to illustrate byes

As you can see, Matt, Dave, and Alex do not have to fight anyone in the first round, and automatically advanced to the Quarter Finals. Sometimes this will be represented by their name not appearing in the draw until the 2nd round,  and sometimes it is represented by the line for their first opponent just being blank.  I choose to illustrate it this way, so that you can see how the general structure o the sheet is still the same.

In this case, the people who lose in the "Quarter Finals" are a 4 way tie for 5th, and the guys who lose in the "Round of 16" are tied for 9th.

This is long enough for 1 post,   part 2 will be on double elimination and the various version of that system.  It starts off very similar to single elimination, but gets a little crazy depending on which variation is being used.  It's also my favourite base style.

OJA Provincials Nov 30th 2013 Report

There is so much to talk about for this tournament!  It was my first competition back since the whole shoulder incident back in early may,  we had a really great team turnout, I refereed, I competed, I was in a gymnasium for 14 hours straight.  Good times.

I guess I will talk a little bit about the tournament itself first.  It was held at Brock University, in St. Catherines.  At first, I thought this was a pretty terrible idea, it's I didn't think anyone was going to bother making the trip out there, It's a long ass drive for anyone east of the GTA.  I think the location did affect who turned out, but a huge crew from Ottawa made the trek, which pretty much makes anyone elses excuse for distance invalid.

The distribution of competitors was not the norm, but there was a LOT of them there. I believe the had over 700 registrations (if someone does gi and nogi they count as 2).  There was a LOT of kids, and it seemed like more masters and seniors then a lot of other local events.  Some of the blue belt divisions were pretty sparse, but some of the purples had more then others.  On the ladies side of things, the distribution was even stranger.  There were 4 of us in a single weight class in purple and up.  Tiffany did move up from medium heavy, but still.  4.  in one weight class.  Even 3 would have been something worth mentioning.  The blue belts were also clumped together pretty well.

 The gym was very large, but had very little seating room.  It worked out ok, because there was a lot of room around the competition area to stand, but without bleachers, there wasn't really good place to store your gear and be able to sit to watch the matches.  This venue would be pretty ideal, if they had a way to bring in some bleachers along the one wall.  It was very bright, which was great for photos/videos  and the bathrooms were kept clean, and were very close to the gym which is also very nice.

The parking, in the cheap lot, was $7 for the day, not unreasonable, but it wasn't advertised. There also wasn't signs pointing towards the lot, until you got off the main entry road to the gym and were right on top of it.  I know a bunch of people ended up in the expensive lot, and paid $2.50 an hour to park!  When you are there from 8:30 am till 10:30 pm, that adds a pretty significant expense to the day.

The tournament staff was very friendly, and all the table workers I worked with were good at their jobs.  They kept the kids around, they got the scores right, and were very pleasant to work with.  There is always going to be one or two cases of them pressing the start/stop a bit off, but nothing disastrous happened.  It did seem like they were a few volunteers short, especially towards the end of the day.  Referees were working tables because there was no one else to do it.  I know it is very difficult to staff an event of this scale, especially with volunteers and especially when it goes so late.  Props to the ones who stuck around till the end.  People like you keep the jiu jitsu world going.

The event started almost on time, I want to say about 10 or 15 minutes late.  Which isn't to bad, when you consider how many kids registered for the wrong divisions.  There was a lot of talk on the interwebs about how to keep the kids from holding up the entire day.  There is no perfect solution, but I think that running them on a few mats, instead of taking up the entire morning and early afternoon on them would get things running better.  I also thing that the tournament needs to be 2 days.  A lot of people say that this is to hard for out of towners, but let's be honest, no one who is an out of towner want's to have to be at a tournament for 14 or 15 hours, then drive home that night anyway.

The tournament ended up being about 2 hours behind by mid-afternoon.  It was a multitude of small things piled on top of each other that causes this to happen. Kids not being what they say,  kids going to the bathroom, adults going to the bathroom, having a lot of the referees also compete (guilty as charged, it causes shortages).  Volunteers needing breaks or the bathroom, lunch, watching their kids, ect, ect ect.  None of these things on their own will cause a serious delay, but they add up.  One thing that I think would help a lot, would be queuing up divisions on mats.  It seemed like they didn't start looking for the next division to run on a mat, until the previous one was 100% complete.  This leaves a mat empty for at least 5 minutes, and sometimes much much longer.  You can't go to crazy queuing up divisions and matches, or if you get a serious injury or the like, you end up with even worse delays and one mat running way way later then the others.

I got to referee a division of really great kids,  It was a white belt division, but these kids had some serious skill.  The two that stuck out most were Dash, and Malick.  Dash had more energy than I have ever scene, and his coach did a really amazing job focusing him and his energy throughout his matches.  Malick was cool as a cucumber in his matches, showed great technique, always listened to me and was really kind to the kids he fought.

I refereed some of the nogi blue belt matches at the end of the day,  by this point, we had been working/competing for 12 hours with very little rest/breaks.  I reffed a match with Remy, from one of the ascension schools.  He had some really nice jiu jitsu, and was very polite.  He swept a guy from an ankle lock attempt and I totally missed the points. He very politely asked me about them, and I got out of my haze and awarded them. I could have penalized him, in theory, but that would probably be against the spirit of the rules.  At this point, I realized I was pretty brain dead, and a couple of the remaining referees got together and used the  reff system to finish off the day.  None of us were fresh enough to be doing the job alone anymore.  I got over ruled on a couple calls (when I was a corner). 2 of which were excessive celebration penalties after a win.  They wouldn't have made a difference in any of the matches, but I think that people need to know that they could be penalized for it, and at big events like pans, worlds, ect the referees WILL penalize you for things that may or may not be excessive, if they are feeling negative.  To me, being a bit anal about it locally, will help them keep to the straight and narrow when they get to the big leagues.

Warning: Rant:
This tournament is labeled the "Provincials"  but it is open to people who aren't from Ontario. This is m biggest pet peeve about it.  I know it's just a label, but when you are trying to build the sport into a model that follows other olympic sports, and are trying to make it legit.  Having Americans compete in it, makes the name a sham.  There were some great competitors out, from non-ontario, and it's great that they come to the events we have here, because it gives our guys good matches, but I feel like the tournament called provincials is not the place for that to happen. I have the same issue with the IBJJF "Nationals" and grapplers quest "world championships" and even the IBJJF "worlds" and "Pans".  When I told my co-workers about the tournament they were like "oh yea, so if you win you go to nationals?"  no... "oh, is there qualifiers for it?"  no... "oh, so why is it provincials?"  who knows.

End of rant.

Alright, now that I have that little rant out of the way, let's talk about my first competition back in 7 months.  As you probably know, at the Ontario Open last year, I got kimuraed and my shoulder wasn't to happy about it.  There are some tears in there now, and it took pretty much 6 months of not using it a lot and doing physio ect to get it to a manageable state.  I did have a surgery scheduled for February, but have since canceled it.   I was pretty nervous about competing with it, but it held up fine.

In my weight class, I faced Natalia in the first round.  We fought a long long time ago, when I think I was still a white belt! She arm barred me pretty quick.  She is also coming off some time off, from over training and being burnt out.  It was awesome to see her back on the mats, and having fun.  I won that first fight by kata ha jime, which is like a collar choke from 1/2 having there back.   In the final, I faced my more local (and less one sided) nemisis, Tiffany.  I had a good plan going into the match, and almost executed it, but left my arm in the wrong spot and she took care of that pretty quickly.  I cannot make any mistakes fighting her!   we are now 3 wins for Tiffany, 2 wins for me.  I hope to even that score back up in 2014 :).

In the absolute, which was actually the same 4 competitors, because like I mentioned earlier, we were all together, I drew Caitlin in the first round.  The only time I had competed with Caitlin in the past was at a zombie house back when we were both blue belts.  We had a great round and I had scored 2 armbars on her back then.   I got a good judo throw on her to side control, and managed to maintain that position for a few minutes,  I got knee on belly a few times, but didn't maintain it long enough most of the time to score the points.  I was looking for mount, armbars, chokes, taking the back, but her defense was very good.  I got sloppy on an armbar, and the match spiraled out of control in a hurry.  We ended up with her on my back out of bounds and when we reset in the middle I quickly got the hook out, and scrambled like crazy.   I don't remember what the score ended up being at the end, but it was a little to close for comfort.  I hope she competes a lot in 2014, because it was a really really fun match!

In the purple+ absolute final, I faced Natalia again.  She fought Tiffany in the first round, and won on points.  SO we had both had a full 8 minute length match. 8 was a weird choice for match length. Purple belt matches are 7, and black are 10, not sure where the 8 came from, because we were supposed to be fighting black belt rules.  Or maybe they went down to brown, since brown was the highest in the division.  That actually makes sense.  Anyway,  I don't remember how the match started, but I ended up in side control, and was looking for armbars and knee on belly some more.  I got my hand in deep in her collar and got a paper cutter choke for the win.

The last match of the day was against Tamara, who won the blue belt absolute.  This was the match for the trip.  It was black belt rules, 8 minute match.  I don't remember exactly how it started either, but we ended up coming up, she was trying to get to my back and I was like "Oh hey, black belt rules, let's go for a knee bar".  I admit, it was in the back of my head all day to try to get a leg lock of some kind, I blame Egor the leg lock king.  We ended up with me turtled fishing for the knee for quite some time, not a very exciting bit of jiu jitsu there, but I realized she was sitting to heavy for me to get roll and extension for the knee bar so I grabbed her foot for the toe hold instead.  I rolled through and got the tap.

Going into this tournament, my only real goal was to not get hurt.  coming off of the long layoff, which was just coming off of another layoff from a concussion, I really just wanted to be able to go home in one piece and be able to compete again soon.  The trip was always in the back of my head, but I wasn't going into the day thinking "I am going to win that trip".  That being said, man, am I ever glad I did.  It was an amazing birthday present to myself to earn it.  I was semi-planning on going to pans anyway, but I just spent 1600 bucks on my car, so that plan was a bit up in the air as of the week before the tournament.

So, it was a pretty great day for me,  It was also a pretty good day for my team!  We had a good sized group out, I think about 18 competitors or so, not bad for a club who's 4th year anniversary is coming up! The kids looked great out there. They didn't all win medals, but they showed great jiu jitsu and a great attitude.

One thing that was pretty funny for me to see was some of them being a little to active and not holding a position long enough to get their points.  We always encourage them in the gym to not camp out and to keep moving, but they took it a bit to far and went mount, side, mount, side, mount side, back and forth, for like 1 second each. I guess it's something we will have to clarify a bit with them when the roll.  One thing I saw from a lot of the kids divisions was kids getting to mount and not going anywhere from there.  It's the downside to not having any submissions, but it lead to some pretty frustrated kids, who just got stuck in mount for 3 minutes.  Let's be honest, if all the person in mount is doing is trying to stay there, it's really really really hard to get out.  I feel like stalling could/should still be called from there, if they aren't looking to go to the back control, or something. I don't really know what the solution is to this.

It was great to see Brad out competing again.  He had a pretty long layoff for his tooth situation and ended up taking home the gold medal in his division after a very close final match.  Will be good to have him back on the tournament circuit with the rest of us crazies.

I could write a paragraph about every single team mate who competed, but that would get pretty boring for you guys, so I will just add 1 more thing about all that.  It was great to see Stephen earn a couple silver medals.  He's had a pretty rough go of things, with touch draws, close matches and has been kept off the podium at blue till now.  He avenged a loss from earlier in the year, and showed some pretty slick jiu jitsu through out the day.

Last bit about my teammates competing I swear.  Alasdair and Bruce had a really exciting match.  There was quite the crowd watching them and it was intense!  Alasdair won on points after Bruce evaded and gutted out of all his submission attempts.  I think these two will have a great friendly rivalry going for 2014.

Pura closed it's doors for the day for this tournament, so everyone could come out and support the team.  It was AMAZING to have so many people out cheering, hanging around, and supporting us competitors.  It really helps when you are in a tough match to hear someone cheer for you.  I've been to tournaments completely alone, and it didn't really bother me that much, but after having so much support and seeing the team all together like that, I never want to compete alone again.  By the time my absolute was over, there wasn't a lot of people left, but a few stuck around and it was amazing to be able to share that experience with them.  I totally don't blame, or hate on, or hold it against anyone who didn't stick around, those kids were from there from like 8am, and I didn't finish fighting till at least 8pm.  The fact that so many non-competitors came out to watch, and that so many competitors stayed longer then they needed to was amazing.  So, Thank You ALL for your support at the event, and every day at the club.

Changing gears again...

It was sad to hear/see that someone had stolen all the gold medals and a lot of the silvers.  Word on the street is it was some random kids, but no one will every probably know.  This just highlights the need for more staff at events like this.  The OJA handled the situation though, and will be mailing out the medals to all the people who did not get one.  They had a set for doing the awards and pictures for though, which was nice.

This tournament wraps up the 2013 season in Ontario.  There isn't any more competitions until January.  January and early 2014 is looking pretty busy, with a couple sub onlys, ascension, pro trials and a mysterious tournament from the cbjjf apparently coming to town.  The OJA sub only is going to be in Kitchener, which will be a pretty good change of scenery.  I like that the OJA is moving tournaments around the province, I know the GTA has a pretty good chunk of the competitors in the povince, but contrary to popular belief, Toronto isn't the centre of the universe, and they should be willing to make a short trip out of their bubble for a few events a year.

I think that's about it.  I feel like I am missing some things that I wanted to talk about, but this is pretty long now, So I guess they can wait, or be forgotten or whatever.   I am planning on writing a 2013 recap/ summary/looking back post in the new little while It will probably be combined with a looking forward to 2014 type things.  Highlight the events I am looking forward to, and my goals for the year.

Cheers!  See you on the mats!

Grappling Industries : Pans Edition (Toronto) Oct 26th 2013

Last Weekend was an insanely busy weekend for me.  It started out on Friday evening with a Matthew Good concert at Hamilton place.   Jon loves Matt good, so he goes to see him whenever he is semi-close by.  It was a really good show, even though Matt was a bit sick.

I am pretty sure he was sick last time he was in Hamilton to, so maybe he is just allergic to the city.  We met up with some friends before the show and I ate poutine and cheescake.  "But Patricia", you say, "that's not keto at all".  No, it is not, every once and a while, when my schedule get's crazy, I take a break and eat lots of terrible food.  Last weekend was one of those weekends.  I felt pretty crummy because of it, and every time i do it i swear not to. But then a few months later I'll do it again.  It's a good reminder of why I eat the way I do.

After the show everyone wanted to go out drinking and for another bite to eat (at like 11:30 PM).   I declined and drove Jon's car home because I didn't want to referee on  2 or 3 hours of sleep.  The sacrifices I make for you people, you have no idea haha.   Of course, I still didn't get a great nights sleep because of all the ringing, and Jon not being home till who knows when.  He was the smart one, didn't register or the competition because he knew he'd be in bad shape for it.

Anyway,  the referees were supposed to be there for 8:20am, so we could have a little meeting, get organized and get the show going on time.  Surprise, Surprise, only 2 or 3 of us were there at the expected time, and a couple strolled in only a couple minutes before nine.  It would have been nice to have said meeting, so I could be more informed when people come up and ask me questions about divisions I am not refereeing.  I am not going to name names, or point fingers, but come on guys, if we want to be treated like professionals, let's act like them by being on time and being professional at all times.

I had a very good experience as a referee last weekend.  I wasn't yelled at once!!  It was amazing.   I did have to ask one coach to stop yelling at a fellow referee, but they didn't yell at me, and stopped yelling at the other referee as well.  I also had one or two questions where people were unsure about why advantages were scored they way they were, but they were quite polite about it, and very respectful of my explanations and decisions.  It was really refreshing.  Now, all this could be because I had to leave around 3, and missed most of the nogi, but I like to think it's because the spectators, coaches, and competitors are becoming more respectful and maybe even learning the rules.

One thing, looking back, that happened more then I would like, was me making simple scoring mistakes.  Once I scored 2 for a pass instead of 3,  and once I scored 2 for a  sweep, when it was actually a reversal (fighter A swept straight to mount, maintained for 3, then got reversed, i scored 2,4 then 2 for the other).  BUT,  in both cases,  I realized my error and fixed it well before the match was complete.   Getting the score board right after mistakes like that can be a bit of a challenge, especially when the score keepers are spending more time on their phones then paying attention to the match.  This seemed like a bigger problem on Saturday then it normally is, but I am not sure why.  Some of the regulars were not there, and perhaps the new people were not explained enough about how important paying close attention was.  There were no crisis's because of it, but it was fairly frustrating.

The event started a couple minutes late,  this is not the norm for grappling industries, but I think that, with all the changes to the process of weighing in and whatnot that were made for this event, it is not surprising, and is forgivable.   A lot of people showed up just before weighins closed so they ended up bogging down the weighin line and causing that to go late.   I think a stricter cut-off would help with this, and perhaps having 2 weighin scales, so that the rushes could be handled more efficiently.  Having a "check" scale would alleviate this as well, because then the weighin station wouldn't get bogged down with people who are just checking their weight.

The event ran pretty smoothly once it got going,  There were about 60 gi matches per mat, then about 25 or 30 nogi matches.  Gi was wrapped up, except for absolutes, by about 2pm, and nogi started on several mats at about that time.  It was delayed a bit, on some mats, because the gi absolutes, but that is pretty much unavoidable.   Matches were all wrapped up by 5:15 or so.

The mat areas were back to to small size that Grappling Industries normally has when they have 10 or 14 mat areas.  This did slow the matches down, and made me sad as a referee (and would make me sad as a competitor as well).  In order to have 7 mats in one row, it's pretty much unavoidable though.  People want to be able to see all the mats, but they also want bigger mats.  I really like having at the mats in one line, because it generally means you only have to look out for people coming onto your mat from one or two sides, instead of 3.  While that may seem minor, it means more attention can be paid to the competitors.   It also makes for the best spectator experience because views are not blocked when there is only spectator seating on one side of the gymnasium.   In venues  like the Pyramid in California, this obviously isn't an issue because there is seating on all sides, and it's raised.  But in most gymnasiums, there is only seating on one side.  Hopefully the next event they can come up with a configuration that offers a bit more safety area, while still being spectator and competitor friendly.

I mentioned earlier the changes to the weighins.  Grappling Industries is constantly evolving to best serve the competitors.  The changes they made were made with a lot of input from the community and were, what I think, a really good compromise that serves all sides well.  The old style of allowing night before weighins, and using the standard GI weight classes, when athletes could weighin without their gi on, was creating an environment that allowed much more serious weight cutting and gave advantages to local competitors who could weighin the night before.   Now, they use the NOGI weight classes, still allow you to weighin in whatever you like (just not naked) and have ONLY morning of weigh ins.   I really like this setup.  It pretty much means I will never be able to fight in the smaller womens weight class, but, let's be honest,  I probably don't belong there,  and I think this way pretty much stops everyone who was squeaking into divisions they didn't belong in, no longer able to.  I noticed a few regulars have moved up a weight class with this change, and I think it'll shake things up and make for a better experience for everyone.

I had the pleasure of refereeing quite a few of the women's matches, particularly the two white belt divisions.  One of the greatest things about refereeing the ladies was the camaraderie they all showed to each other.  They all cheered for each other, no matter what team they were from.  They supported each other.  Almost every match ended with a hand helping each other up and a hug.  Not a bro, quick tap on the back hug, a proper hug.  For 5 minutes, they try to beat the crap out of each other, but as soon as the match is over, everyone is friends again.  Even during matches, there was a lot more "sorry"'s then you would ever hear in a guys match.  Though, that might just be because there is generally a lot more hair to be pulled.

Here is one picture that is a great example of how the ladies divisions were.  Both of them smiling and having a good time.  Here is another, smiles all around.    And one last one.  It was amazing to watch and be a small part of.  Mandie won the -136 division, and Maura won the +136 division.   In the absolute final (well, there was only 1 fight for the absolute, since there is only 2 weight classes)  Maura got a great footsweep, but then got a little ahead of herself and Mandie snuck in a tight guillotine for the win and a trip to California.  Yacinta won the blue and up trip, she has won a fair share of the trips that grappling industries has given away,  she has amazing judo and her Jiu Jitsu is catching up quickly!   I am really looking forward to being able to compete with her when I am back.  I think we will have some great matches.

My Teammate Matt won the blue belt trip!   He smashed through his division, then won the absolute in a most impressive fashion.  This is the first trip that he has won, and I do not think it will be the last.  He trains like a monster and even though he is a heavy weight (220ish) He moves and fights like a light weight or feather weight.   I cannot wait to see him compete at Pans in March and al the other tournaments before then to.


Eric Phan from Open Mat won the purple/brown trip.  It's pretty amazing that he, as a tiny, fairly new, purple belt could win the absolute.  He had to beat some very tough guys to get there and he doesn't dick around trying to win on an advantage or two so I really enjoy watching his matches.  I imagine he will be ruining a few peoples days at Pans as well.

Eric Chibuluzo won the white belt trip.  This guy is one scary human being.  He has only been doing jiu jitsu for a few months, but he already competes, and wins matches, in the nogi advanced divisions.  His jiu jitsu is... not beautiful, but he is ridiculously athletic and knows enough to use that athleticism.  He is going to be a serious force to be reckoned with in the years to come as he moves up the ranks.

The Acai Cafe was at the event again, I hope these guys are at every tournament for the rest of time. I freaking love Acai bowls.  I will cheat any diet I am on, for an acai bowl.  They actually ended up selling out on Saturday, so I think that is a good sign that they will continue to come out to tournaments.  I only got 1 bowl on Saturday, I was planning on two, but didn't get a chance to get away to buy a second before I had to leave.  I hope they add peanut butter to their menu soon, then, it would be perfect.

Also on site was the gi hive.  The Gi Hive is a relatively new company, based out of Ontario, that sells great gis and gear, at reasonable prices and with cheap shipping.  If you have ever shopped for gis online, you know that is a tricky balance.   He has a nice variety of gis and the customer service is top notch.  

SO, as I said earlier, I had to leave at 3,  it ended up being more like 3:30, which, when you add the terrible Toronto traffic to, made me have to adjust my plans, and drive a little faster then I would have liked, to London.  My other officiating job of the day was judging fights at the inaugural Provincial Fighting Championships in London last Saturday.  It's important to note, I do not work for PFC,  I work for the Ontario Athletic Commission.   As such, I can't really get into a lot of details about the fights, or talk about my opinions of the results ect ect.   What I can say is this:  It was a great night of fights and I hope PFC will continue to puts cards on.  Not only so that I can have more work as a judge, but so that Ontario MMA fighters have a place to fight.  With the Score no longer putting on cards, It left a pretty big hole in the scene.   So hopefully new organizations like PFC an SCC can put on a couple events a year and give our guys somewhere to fight!

This past weekend marked 1 year since I started refereeing jiu jitsu!  I have worked at 14 events and refereed probably over 1000 matches.  It's been an amazing learning experience and I am glad that I have been able to referee so much this year, since I was unable to compete for such a large part of it.  I have to thank Grappling Industries  for taking the risk of having me as a brand new referee at one of their events, and for continuing to employ me.  I also have to thank the OJA for following their lead and letting me give back to the community at their events as well.   The money I have made from refereeing (and from judging MMA)  all goes straight back into my Jiu Jitsu career so I have to thank everyone for supporting me, by employing me.  

There aren't to may more events left to finish of the 2013 year of Jiu Jitsu.  

The IBJJF Montreal Open is on Nov 16th.  It's fairly expensive, but very well run, and a good opportunity to get some IBJJF points for rankings (which don't actually get you anything but bragging rights) and to test your jiu jitsu against the Montreal scene.

November 23rd is the NoGi Zombie house event at Toronto Nogi.   Zombie House events are a LOT of fun, they are a completely different environment compared to a regular tournament and I would recommend anyone who doesn't have an ego give one a try.   

November 30th is the OJA Provincials in St. Catherines.  This is the tournament I am aiming to make my comeback at.  Training went pretty well last week, until I got sick, but I am feeling better now, so I will be back t the grind on Monday (or maybe tonight for an open mat).  There are some trips to california on the line, and bragging rights as the "Provincial Champion".  Also, the medals are quite nice looking.

Wrapping up the year, Grappling Industries has an event scheduled for Dec 7th in Montreal.  They are giving away season passes to all their events as the grand prizes.  This is a cool concept because it will hopefully get people to travel a bit more and expose the Montreal people to Toronto and vise versa.  This is also the weekend I have set for myself as a deadline for whether I will cancel my shoulder surgery or not.  Sadly, this event has been canceled :(

The OJA has released their tentative schedule for 2014.  It looks a lot like the 2013 schedule.  Hopefully, it stays the way it is.  2013 had quite a few date changes, cancellations and location changes.  Events with *'s by them have the location and date confirmed, and I assume, the venues booked so are very unlikely to change.

SO, This post has gotten pretty long, I guess I'll stop rambling now.  See you on the mats!