So in an attempt to make my open guard harder to pass, I've been trying to study up on it and trying to do both guard passing and open guard. The former to study what my opponent might be doing, and the latter to try and study what actually prevents the guard to be passed. I've had little result on my own. I've begin by examining my open guard game. Usually against white belts or newly minted blue belts I find that my open guard is usually pretty good. Some reasons are a.) they aren't very mobile and don't try to smash/go around and b.) I usually have really strong grips on their sleeve and collar so I can control the distance, aka push them at their hips while pulling on their sleeve to really make them stretched out. So far though I've been having a lot of trouble with people who are better at breaking my grips, and my answer is usually to fall into butter fly as a way to delay them passing. Of course my butterfly guard isn't THAT great yet. So really this is still delaying the inevitable. Also with people who are more mobile they tend to smash one side and pass around me. I've found that most times I try to go for an underhook so that I can prepare myself for half guard or at worst make it a terrible side control position for them. I looked up some concepts for open guard, and I seem to be lacking a few basic principles. Seems that I have space/distance down okay, and grip game (aka grip them, don't let them grip you) I seem to have pretty well. But one thing I need to start thinking about is actively aligning myself so that my feet are towards them. In other words if they are getting around me, I should make space and try to face them square on again. Another thing I think I need to learn better is head control, to manage their head so that if they DO start passing well that I push their head off to the side when they are starting to get side control.