[Bermy]

I have been playing BBO robot masterpoint tourneys for a few years now. I like the idea of earning masterpoints as at least it shows some of my actual bridge achievements, rather than show a self ranking system where everybody who can count to 13 think they are experts.

However, what is the value of such masterpoints? For years I have played in robot tourneys trying to accumulate the crumbs of points given out at these tourneys. If the tourneys has less than 14 players One gets as little as .42 of a masterpoint for winning and even less for 2nd and 3rd. A score of over 60% usually gets you about .3 of a masterpoint.

If the tourney contains 15-30 players then the winner gets .6 of a masterpoint with less going to the other finishers. Usually a score of over 60% will get you less than .3 of a masterpoint. Each tourney costs 25c and I estimate that any player averaging about 60% (approx my level) will need 4 to 6 games to earn 1 single masterpoint.

If the tourney contains over 30 players the tourneys is split and 2 players are awarded .6 of a masterpoint with the remainder of players picking up the rest of the scraps.

Suddenly we have daylong tourneys. Now a 60% plus score earns you over 5 masterpoints and a 70% plus score can earn you more than 10 full masterpoints (2000% more for playing almost the same way?), The logic being that if I can score 60% against 16 players I'm likely to have a similar score against 1000+ players. Now suddenly Im earning nearly 200 masterpoints a month for only 2 games and 50 cents a day.

What is the point of playing all these other tourneys and instant tourneys where we all have to pay and play for scraps?

[johnu]

BBO masterpoints are worth a lot less than ACBL masterpoints, and some people think ACBL masterpoints are worthless. The only time they would be worth anything is if you won enough of them to place in one of BBO's cash reward promotions and even then, you would probably spend a lot more on entry fees than you would get in return for a high finish in the promotional event.

I think BBO should immediately increase the masterpoint awards by 10x. Then everybody can win 10 times as many points as before.

[steve2005]

"I like the idea of earning masterpoints as at least it shows some of my actual bridge achievements"
I see nothing wrong with accumulating mp on bbo if that's your thing.
but make no mistake just because you have a high number beside your name doesn't means your any better than before.

while people with more mp may be better it could just also mean they play a lot or other reasons.

[barmar]

I've moved this thread to General BBO Discussion, since it's specifically about BBO, not bridge in general.

[barmar]

The logic of higher awards for bigger tournaments is simply that it's harder to make it near the top. In a small tourney you can easily come in first sometimes with a 60% game. But in a tourney with thousands of players, you generally need to be in the high 70's to make the top of the leaderboard. Winning a huge tournament is a bigger achievement than winning a small one, so it makes sense to give a bigger award.

I think the formula we use just came out of some guesswork. If a daylong tourney had only 15 players, it would pay out the same as a robot duplicate. The additional players increase the top award using a sliding scale.

[el mister]

Bermy, on 2017-July-30, 03:36, said:

Suddenly we have daylong tourneys. Now a 60% plus score earns you over 5 masterpoints and a 70% plus score can earn you more than 10 full masterpoints (2000% more for playing almost the same way?), The logic being that if I can score 60% against 16 players I'm likely to have a similar score against 1000+ players. Now suddenly Im earning nearly 200 masterpoints a month for only 2 games and 50 cents a day.

What is the point of playing all these other tourneys and instant tourneys where we all have to pay and play for scraps?

Are you really playing almost the same way? 8 board robot game against 1000+ seems like you really need to push the boat out to get a good score, not really the format for solid, straight down the line bridge. I don't play the daylongs often, though - well done if you're posting 60% on the reg as that seems like it would be tough to do in that game, even for good players.

[barmar]

el mister, on 2017-July-31, 14:21, said:

Are you really playing almost the same way? 8 board robot game against 1000+ seems like you really need to push the boat out to get a good score, not really the format for solid, straight down the line bridge. I don't play the daylongs often, though - well done if you're posting 60% on the reg as that seems like it would be tough to do in that game, even for good players.

Did you read the interview with the winner of the NABC Online Individual? He said he mostly played normal bridge.

[Bermy]

What Im saying is that last month alone I earned over 150 masterpoints playing these daylongs, far more than the 20-25 per month I was averaging before. I get better reward for my money when I finish well. Suddenly it appears as if nobody wants to play regular robot tourneys anymore as the rewards there are insufficient. I now have a lot of trouble finding tournaments with over 15 players anymore, the minimum we need for a full score of a measly 0.6 or less. Playing with less players is even less rewarding.

[barmar]

We're looking into adjusting the rewards for the daylongs. But It's hard to justify reducing them too much -- beating 2,000 players is a much bigger accomplishment than beating 15-30.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2017-August-22, 14:11, said:

We're looking into adjusting the rewards for the daylongs. But It's hard to justify reducing them too much -- beating 2,000 players is a much bigger accomplishment than beating 15-30.

You could increase the masterpoints for the regular tournaments by 3+X or something like that. Then you could win something like 2 masterpoints for a win which is must more satisfying than only winning .6

If you thought that the daylong tournaments should get more masterpoints, double or triple the points for those too. BBO can buy a super jumbo ink reservoir for printing those extra masterpoints on the 3-D Masterpoint Printer so it won't cost very much

[barmar]

johnu, on 2017-August-23, 12:19, said:

You could increase the masterpoints for the regular tournaments by 3+X or something like that. Then you could win something like 2 masterpoints for a win which is must more satisfying than only winning .6

Regular tournaments use the ACBL formula -- keeping track of BBO points and ACBL points separately seems unnecessarily confusing.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2017-August-23, 12:59, said:

Regular tournaments use the ACBL formula -- keeping track of BBO points and ACBL points separately seems unnecessarily confusing.

For BBO total points, you could multiply the ACBL points by 2x or 3x for BBO purposes, or just leave ACBL points as they are and let BBO points accrue at a higher rate. I was suggesting a solution, but doing nothing is ok for me.