There is a concept I have been toying with for a little while that I think might be helpful for some students. Plus/Minus. In hockey Plus/Minus is used to generally quantify a players indirect impact on the teams performance. It is a number which helps to understand if they are good or bad for the team in a more general way than simply if they themselves score a goal. It is a simple concept, if a player is on the ice and a goal is scored by their team they get a +1. If they are on the ice and a goal is allowed by the team they get a -1. As a result you can say player X doesn’t score that many goals on his own, but he’s at +45 this season, so he’s good for the team. Or in short, when he is on the ice, more good things happen then bad.
So how does this apply to grappling? I realised that it can be useful to think of positions as players and try to keep a rough idea of their own Plus/Minus stat. To try to get an idea of their indirect effect on the outcome your rolls.
The position that made this concept clearest to me was North/South. A little while ago I realised that I tend to win the rolls in which at some point I am in top North/South. This stood out because I almost never actually finish a fight from North/South. I move to mount and finish with an armbar, I take the back and finish with a bow and arrow, whatever. The point is North/South for me doesn’t score any goals, but it has a very high Plus/Minus. If I win north south at some point in the roll, I tend to win the roll as a whole. If the player is on the ice good things happen.
This may seem obvious, because North/South is a dominant position, so of course good things happen but I think there is more to it to explore. The truth is in grappling you likely have more tools in your kit than you can actually plan to use. You need to establish what your game plan is and attempt to implement it. In a way you are like the coach deciding which players play on the same line and how much ice time they should get. Plus/Minus can be useful in making those choices. For the geeky grapplers out there, this would be the same as deck building. You need to decide what you want your deck to do, and put in cards that work for that style. There are lots of times during a match when you will be faced with several seemingly equal choices. I am proposing choosing between them based on a rough idea of Plus/Minus. For example if I win side control, I have a lot of options. Attack a submission right away, move to mount, move to leg drag, or move to North/South. More often than not, I move to North/South. When faced with seemingly equal options, I make the choice that I know means I am more likely to win the fight, even if can’t directly see how yet.
Let’s look at it another way. Let’s say you have been experimenting with Butterfly guard and you're trying to decide if you want to make it a bigger part of your game. You are probably not directly winning or losing matches from butterfly. Maybe you have a good loop choke or maybe you are weak to guillotines, but really, more often than not the fight will end somewhere else. So one way of evaluating the usefulness of the position is this, for the next few weeks try to keep a vague idea of the score in your head. This becomes more useful at higher levels where specific weaknesses become harder to nail down than at lower levels where a position may suffer from a lack of experience with it. I don’t feel like my RDLR is particularly a problem for me, it’s not great but it’s not bad, but I know it’s Plus/Minus is poor so I am attempting to make different choices. It still shows up from time to time, but I try not to hang out there. I do better in the kinds of rolls which don’t find me playing much RDLR. Butterfly might be the same for you, maybe try half butterfly for a while instead. Switch up your lines, dip into your sideboard.
Leg drag is another good example of this for me. During a lot of passes I will have the choice to pass straight to side control or stop in leg drag. I try to stop in leg drag because it has a high Plus/Minus for me. Side control is arguably the better, more threatening position, and I will usually end up there, but I find that I win more of the matches in which I stop in leg drag before I advance.
What are the positions for you that have a high or a low Plus/Minus. Back? Mount? Believe it or not, conventional mount doesn’t score that well for me. At the end of the roll ask yourself where you were and how it worked out. Can you find ways to work that position in more often or should you maybe try to make a different choice next time? What about variations? Conventional mount doesn’t score well for me but S-mount on the other hand scores very high.
Keep in mind I am not advocating for avoiding problems rather than fixing them, if you know what you are doing wrong, drill it, get it right, then re-score the position. Instead I am arguing for widening your lens a little, trying to see the bigger picture so you can spot trends and set your lines or build your deck accordingly.
