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mikeh, on Jan 23 2006, 04:48 PM, said:
Good topic, and I am not surprised that there appears to be no consensus.
I would like to see an objective rating system if one could be developed that did not come fully-equipped with major drawbacks, but I see little likelihood of that happening.
The 'objective' systems I have seen or read about carry huge ethical problems. Cheating is one of them,and probably the worst, but it is not the only problem.
As for voting opponents and partners, the problem is that bridge skill is not purely subjective.
And looking at results is misleading. When I attemot to assess the strength of an opponent or am kibitizing, it is not the result per board that I look at but the apparent thought process reflected by the bidding and/or the card play. On most hands I have watched between average players, all players, apart from dummy, usually make mistakes in the play, but most of the mistakes either do not matter or cancel out, because the opps give them back.
Give me someone like Ritong or Justin or Frances to comment on another player's skill level, and I would have a lot of confidence in that assessment, because my interaction with them, and their discussions about how they think, persuade me that their opinion counts. But give me the opinion of perhaps 80% of the bridge world (I include real life as well as on-line), and I would pay little attention. The harsh reality is that almost all bridge players believe themselves to be better than the rest of the world thinks they are, and very few players are capable of accurately judging the ability of anyone significantly better than themselves. I hasten to add that I fully recognize that this almost certainly applies to me as well.
The self rating method on BBO is as good as any, at least until inflationary pressure makes the majority of players WC instead of expert
I would like to see an objective rating system if one could be developed that did not come fully-equipped with major drawbacks, but I see little likelihood of that happening.
The 'objective' systems I have seen or read about carry huge ethical problems. Cheating is one of them,and probably the worst, but it is not the only problem.
As for voting opponents and partners, the problem is that bridge skill is not purely subjective.
And looking at results is misleading. When I attemot to assess the strength of an opponent or am kibitizing, it is not the result per board that I look at but the apparent thought process reflected by the bidding and/or the card play. On most hands I have watched between average players, all players, apart from dummy, usually make mistakes in the play, but most of the mistakes either do not matter or cancel out, because the opps give them back.
Give me someone like Ritong or Justin or Frances to comment on another player's skill level, and I would have a lot of confidence in that assessment, because my interaction with them, and their discussions about how they think, persuade me that their opinion counts. But give me the opinion of perhaps 80% of the bridge world (I include real life as well as on-line), and I would pay little attention. The harsh reality is that almost all bridge players believe themselves to be better than the rest of the world thinks they are, and very few players are capable of accurately judging the ability of anyone significantly better than themselves. I hasten to add that I fully recognize that this almost certainly applies to me as well.
The self rating method on BBO is as good as any, at least until inflationary pressure makes the majority of players WC instead of expert
This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?
Winston
. I do have a few suggestions
