Quintet, submission-only: no points, just finishes

There is a second way to run Quintet, and it strips the sport back to its oldest question: can you finish? In submission-only Quintet there are no points — not as a score, not as a tie-break, not even as a last resort. A takedown is worth nothing. A guard pass is worth nothing. The only currency is the tap.

How a bout is decided

The ladder is shorter here, and just as strict — the first rung that separates the two ends the bout:

• 1. Submission — the finish, the moment it happens.
• 2. Most submission attempts — if nobody is finished, the athlete who genuinely went for more finishes wins.
• 3. The chosen ending — the referee’s call, or both eliminated, decided per tournament.

The referee counts every real attempt as it happens, tapped into the tablet in the moment — not reconstructed from memory afterwards with a place in a national final resting on it. Because the whole result can turn on that count, it is recorded live, in public, as the bout is fought.

Why the points buttons are gone

On the referee’s tablet in a submission-only tournament, the points buttons are not greyed out — they are gone, and the server refuses them if a stale screen ever tries. A hidden button is a suggestion; a refusal is a rule. In this format points do not exist, so there must be no way, anywhere, to award one.

It is the same winner-stays-on team format — five against five, one athlete able to clear a whole squad — judged by the one thing submission-grappling was always about.