The Mystery Of Chessboxin'

What does tapping someone out feel like? It feels like chess.

When you’re first learning to do jujitsu, you might know how a couple of basic submissions and a sweep, and you’ve got a vague idea of what the best position to be in is, but that’s about it. As strategy goes, it’s about as advanced as knowing that castles go sideways and the horsey pieces can jump over things. Sparring between beginners is a clumsy exchange of positions and the winner’s usually the person who makes the least incredibly stupid mistakes. Maybe a couple of months later, you can spot a glaring error – somebody stretching their arms up in the air while they’re mounted, say – and capitalise on it. While you’re a beginner, this is like seeing someone’s queen undefended or spotting a Fool’s mate – there’s a sudden, dizzying, ‘How could they be so stupid?’ moment, following by a quick, euphoric tap. At this level, you still want to punch the air after every win – aware that on some level it was a fluke – but you don’t, because there’s decorum to observe.
As you get better, though, things change. Tapping out beginners who leave themselves open to an easy kimura is too simple, like playing chess against a stupid ten-year old. You need to find better opponents, ones who know that you never leave one arm inside someone’s guard or lean too far forward in the mount. Against these opponents, you need to find ways to force errors, to make smaller mistakes into bigger ones. Like forking in chess – your knight poised to take two different pieces, your opponent only able to choose which one – you might half-go for an armbar an opponent knowing they’ll yank their elbow free, leaving themselves open to a triangle or an omoplata. It’s at this stage that you start to develop a ‘game.’ Unfortunately, there are people who are much, much better at this game than you, and when you’re playing against them even a tiny, almost unnoticeable mistake means you’re going to lose. Against these Kasparovs of strangulation, even putting one hand on the mat for a second is practically an unrecoverable error.

It's when you realise that other people worry about you this way that you really start to love jiujitsu.