"Opening Game" sabre strategy

[2Sirius]

I've been getting excellent advice from this forum on a number of topics, so I thought I'd try for a strategy guide.

I'm having a problem with the opening exchange of a bout with sabreurs who are very aggressive. We both end up halfway between the on guard lines with simultaneous touches most of the time. This gets fairly boring, as well as eventually tiring with no points scored.

Here's what I've tried:
1. beat attack on opponent's blade. I've found this to be risky. If they're fast, they disengage and hit you before you recover. I've also found that several judges will call my beat a parry riposte for my opponent.

2. advance aggressively then check back just as you enter the opponent's distance. They fall short and you can strike at the arm. This works well until they figure out what you're doing - between once and several times depending on how experienced your opponent is.

3. advance slowly, then retreat quickly when they begin their attack to give you distance for a parry/riposte. This works pretty well, but the timing is very difficult for me so far. I still get suckered with double feints on this one.

Any other ideas?

[Duelist]

By "opening" do you mean just the period when distance is being closed?

[2Sirius]

Sorry my terminology is so sloppy. I have in mind the time when distance is being closed immediately after the director says "fence!". Also, I narrowed it somewhat to opponents who never retreat during that time - they advance rapidly and aggressively. I was not including the time after the first exchange (assuming a hit is not scored).

[AndrewH]

Don't try and match his aggressiveness. When the bout starts, take a nice slow step forward. This buys you extra time to watch your opponent. By slowing yourself down, you can watch him begin his action and respond to it appropriatly. Step out of distance and riposte, establish a line, or if he waits too, go after him.

[Sabresque]

Those are all good things to do, but one thing to keep those a--hugr-number-of-simulataniouses-in-a-row things from happening is during that "simultanious" try and get your arms out faster than theirs (aka, hit them in preperation). This will usually stop simultaneouses from happening over and over an over.

Was anyone there for JOs two years ago, where those two girls did like over 40 simultaneouses in a row? There was this HUGE group of refs that congregated around and started counting. It was funny, but I felt sorry for the fencers. It went to time twice after they started keeping track and then like RIGHT before the 9 minute mark one won 15-14. It was crazy.

[Rolls]

I'm not a saber fencer, but here's something I will do in foil. It's a 4 part strategy, basically 4 points in a row.

1st point) Advance lunge as fast as possible after the command fence - will result in you getting the point or a simeltaneous touch (hopefully)

2nd point) Do the same thing, kind of. This time only act like you're going for the simetaneous touch. After the advance, don't lunge, parry ripost. Should be fast. They'll try to speed up their attack trying to get their attack off first but only will fall even more prey to your parry ripost..

3rd point) Not sure if this one will work in sabre. They expect you to parry ripost after the advance. So, they disengage on their advance lunge. Instead of parrying, hold your on guard, they disengage into a closed line and you can hit them after they run into your weapon.

4th point) advance then get the touch real quick and get out of the way. Basically, after getting hit 3 times their still coming in but somewhat mor cautiously.

I've had it work in foil, a lot. Usually, you might not make it all the way but the first 3 are pretty easy. hopefully, this will help give you some ideas for sabre. The first two should work at least.

Rolls.

[Craig]

I've got a list of tactics for approaching simul actions in one of my notebooks from the college team. I'll find it and post.

You can also use the tactical wheel with the understanding that, by going for the simul attack, they are stuck in 1st intention offense. Use other tactics to counter 1st intention attacks and you can open up the bout.

Refer back to the half-retreat thread as some of those tactics have been posted to that thread.

Craig

[AaronK]

Since I mostly coach saber, here is a simple list of ideas you can do in the middle of the strip for an "opening" move:
1. Make a Simultaneous (after all, your opponent is giving you all kids of infromation about thier fencing, and as long as no one is scoring...you're not risking too much).
2. If you are going to "distance parry" then you should make a false-simultaneous attack (same as simultaneous but do it a little faster and only 1/2 to 3/4 the distance). You must finish this before your opponent lunges so you will be ready to pull distance and then "riposte".
3. Really slow start- really fast acceleration simultaneous. This is one way to win a tempo.
4. Many actions that use the same footwork as a distance parry but the hand actually does something:
A. False simultaneous - parry-riposte (with the blade)...basically a counter-time vs. a simultaneous attack
B. False (early) parry - parry-riposte. The same as above, but you are opening a particular line with the false parry instead of letting the opponent chose what to do.
C. False simultanous - stop hit & run away. (if you do this to the top of the arm, it's what a lot of saber fencers call a "sky hook", my old coach called it a "Polish" but it's the same thing).
D. False simultaneous - attack in tempo. This is like above but instead of getting away from the attack you hit in preparation of the opponent and move forward. (The opponent sees your "false simultaneous" and assumes you will do something running away, so they hold their attack back a tempo or so.)
5. Lastly, you can do something to momentarily stop the opponent...such as take a point in line, then remove it and attack if they stop their simultaneous.

Pretty much everything in the thread about the 1/2 retreat-advance-lunge applies (all the same ideas), but the footwork is different.
Aaron K