Agreed; easiest camp rolls for me are with people who know what they’re trying to do (and I can outsmart them with little energy) :)

I find this true in average sparring but not in competition.

I've had over 100 matches against white belts but only 15 against blues and 2 against purples in the GI. Maybe I need a larger sample size still but so far it has been the case.

I have yet to have a really "spazzy" blue belt at least to the extreme of white belts, a couple intense aggressive guys that were just trying to pressure pass with a plan which isn't spazzing. Just an aggressive strategy.

The most spaz I ever see out of blue belts is the opposite in practice going to a new gym and not letting them pass my guard. Once I let them pass my guard and flow back and forth they calm down. lol

They be like

Has a lot to do with comp. experience, not just skill.

There are purples too who don't compete often, and get very nervous, then be way too tense & use too much energy when they finally do it. Naturally they tend to "spaz" with more purpose but still wear themselves out in the first few mins and/or do dumb mistakes. The match duration is also a factor, 7mins for purples, and for those 10min black belt matches one has to be even more smart when to spend energy.

Yea I faced a couple blues that it was their first or 2nd tournament and they panicked a little bit. They didn't really spaz out though...they were more froze like a deer in headlights.

I haven't competed at blue yet because... covid19, but during rolls my main observations are that blue and above actually let go of weak submissions and switch to something else. Where as i had a white belt match where 1/3 of the time was spent with me just waiting for someone to let go of the worlds worst arm in guillotine attempt. You also get a similar stalemate with closed-guard kimura attempts where they can't get the arm behind your back. They are more an annoyance than anything else and slow the match down, i hope to encounter less of them at the next level.

They could also just be catch and releasing while flow rolling. I do that all the time. I catch and release or transition from my A game attack to my B or C to try to improve the rest of my game instead of attacking a submission I already know I can get so theres no need to get the submission to end the roll. I'll even do this against purple belts and by doing so I may end up "losing" the roll by not going for my A game submission that I know I could have finished but instead i will benefit more by working on my B and C game or combination attacks that I am not as good at getting the finish regardless if I win the roll or not and end up losing the submission and giving up dominant position.

Knowing that you've got a submission and then knowing that theres no benefit in finishing it but more benefit in transitioning to the next chain of attacks/submissions down the list and getting better at the next one until you know you have that one and so on and repeat is really way better in sparring to improve your overall game I think.

of course also you do learn when you don't have a good chance at finishing a submission or learn not to hold onto one for to long and end up losing dominant position because you didn't know when to release that attempt and recover for another attack.