[helene_t]

I have yet to meet someone in real life who takes master points seriously. Sure, whenever someone gets his Club Master title he receives an applaud. But I have never heard anyone discussing master points, nor have I ever seen a letter to the editor addressing master points. My guess is that if you poll 100 players in some open house event, most would have no idea that the event awarded master points, and only a couple would know how many master points were awarded.

If they mattered to people, people would be complaining all the time over the unfairness of the master points formulas, just like the players at bridge sites with rating schemes complain about the unfairness of the rating system.

[Codo]

helene_t, on Feb 4 2008, 11:18 PM, said:

I have yet to meet someone in real life who takes master points seriously. Sure, whenever someone gets his Club Master title he receives an applaud. But I have never heard anyone discussing master points, nor have I ever seen a letter to the editor addressing master points. My guess is that if you poll 100 players in some open house event, most would have no idea that the event awarded master points, and only a couple would know how many master points were awarded.

If they mattered to people, people would be complaining all the time over the unfairness of the master points formulas, just like the players at bridge sites with rating schemes complain about the unfairness of the rating system.

I strongly disagree.

It is true that you seldom meet people who will tell you how serious they are about Masterpoints. But many players are defenitly serious about them.

They hire pros in America to earn them.
They book bridge holidays to earn them.
They pay for them.
They care.
Some even committed some crimes to get more.

They are just intelligent enough not to complain about the system, because they started to get their first points in 1950 and have a reasonable amount. They enjoy the advantages of the current system.

The people who complaint about the unfairness are normally younger and don´t play as often as the typical lol.

[kenberg]

Myself, I don't put much stock in masterpoints but it's an old argument and I don't much care how it turns out. BUT this slowball stuff sounds great, especially the psychology of it. I rarely have actual time problems for a hand or round as a whole but every once in a while I do actually wish to think a bit. This often produces simulated snores and other rude responses. A tourney where everyone agrees that some thinking is acceptable is a great innovation. These tourneys are where? Or are you just using "slowball" in the sense of "not speedball"?

[mike777]

"But I have never heard anyone discussing master points"


Helene in the one and only tourney I have gone to in years I heard lots of people talking about masterpoints. I even heard them talking about them in the Bathroom.

I see people list their ACBL MP total or MP ranking in their online profiles. People care and that is ok. People care about MP races and that is ok. Fun is fun and if someone can make a buck out of it, cool

I often heard comments such as I only need 3.2 more masterpoints to become LM.

Ken I meant slowball to be 12 bds in a 90 minute tourney and speedball to mean 12 bds in 60 minute tourney.

[Jacki]

kenberg, on Feb 4 2008, 05:15 PM, said:

Myself, I don't put much stock in masterpoints but it's an old argument and I don't much care how it turns out. BUT this slowball stuff sounds great, especially the psychology of it. I rarely have actual time problems for a hand or round as a whole but every once in a while I do actually wish to think a bit. This often produces simulated snores and other rude responses. A tourney where everyone agrees that some thinking is acceptable is a great innovation. These tourneys are where? Or are you just using "slowball" in the sense of "not speedball"?

These longer, slower (but not by much) games are held every two hours daily starting at 9am and ending at 2am the following morning.

Come see us!

Jacki

[awm]

Masterpoints are really pretty simple. I think it boils down to:

(1) People enjoy many activities more if they have goals to accomplish. This includes bridge.

(2) Generally people want to feel like they are making progress towards their goals, even if only at a slow pace. People making "negative" progress are more inclined to quit. This makes masterpoints a better idea than some sort of more accurate rating, since given the age of bridge players many of them probably are getting "worse" over time on an absolute scale.

(3) For those people who are really good bridge players, or aspire to be really good bridge players, a natural goal is to actually win important events. This is why good players typically count something like national championships or seeding points or platinum points rather than generally counting masterpoints. However, for a large majority of bridge players winning something like this is not a realistic goal.

[tbr]

If that was the case why go to the extra effort to win a regional knockout to get 25 gold points to become a Life Master in the ACBL? Why bother having the various forms of the McKenney masterpoint race both in the League and 25 districts and all of the self-contained units?
As an alternate, there is the American Bridge Association and its corresponding William A. Friend masterpoint race. There seems to be less pressure in ABA competition but the game is still the same.

[skjaeran]

mike777, on Feb 4 2008, 11:35 PM, said:

Ken I meant slowball to be 12 bds in a 90 minute tourney and speedball to mean 12 bds in 60 minute tourney.

12 boards in 90 minutes is normal (for most) playing tempo IRL.

IRL speedball as I've learnt it is at a speed of 3 boards pr 10 minutes.

12 boards in 60 minutes is slower than I normally play IRL. How you can call this speedball online is beyond me.

[Cascade]

skaeran, on Feb 6 2008, 06:44 AM, said:

mike777, on Feb 4 2008, 11:35 PM, said:

Ken I meant slowball to be 12 bds in a 90 minute tourney and speedball to mean 12 bds in 60 minute tourney.

12 boards in 90 minutes is normal (for most) playing tempo IRL.

IRL speedball as I've learnt it is at a speed of 3 boards pr 10 minutes.

12 boards in 60 minutes is slower than I normally play IRL. How you can call this speedball online is beyond me.

I wasn't aware that there was any official definition of speedball.

For me it just conjures up the idea of something faster than normal bridge and is designed as a fun event.

The only face to face speedball that I have played was a little faster than the ACBL speedball games on BBO. Essentially we played two 24-26 board sessions in the time normally allocated for one session.

[glen]

Jacki, on Feb 4 2008, 06:16 PM, said:

These longer, slower (but not by much) games are held every two hours daily starting at 9am and ending at 2am the following morning.

I still believe it is better to start these on the half hour

[A2003]

officeglen, on Feb 5 2008, 05:27 PM, said:

Jacki, on Feb 4 2008, 06:16 PM, said:

These longer, slower (but not by much) games are held every two hours daily starting at 9am and ending at 2am the following morning.

I still believe it is better to start these on the half hour

I like it. Why wait one hour for the next tournament? Also this will give some break to do something. Some of the tournaments are canceled due to same time start.

[PassedOut]

Codo, on Feb 4 2008, 10:07 AM, said:

It is true that you seldom meet people who will tell you how serious they are about Masterpoints. But many players are defenitly serious about them.
...
Some even committed some crimes to get more.

Roland, I know that some players get really serious about masterpoints, but I've never heard of anyone committing crimes to get more. That looks like a bit of a stretch...

[msnmrk]

helene_t, on Feb 4 2008, 09:18 AM, said:

I have yet to meet someone in real life who takes master points seriously. Sure, whenever someone gets his Club Master title he receives an applaud. But I have never heard anyone discussing master points, nor have I ever seen a letter to the editor addressing master points. My guess is that if you poll 100 players in some open house event, most would have no idea that the event awarded master points, and only a couple would know how many master points were awarded.

If they mattered to people, people would be complaining all the time over the unfairness of the master points formulas, just like the players at bridge sites with rating schemes complain about the unfairness of the rating system.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine about masterpoints which was neither published nor answered.

Here's my issue. Online MP's are not given full value toward achievement of the various platueaus. Only one third of the total point requirement for each level may be composed of points earned online.

However, when one enters a live tournament at any level, ALL points, whether earned online or in live games, are counted equally, often pushing a player into a higher bracket.

Online points are either "worth" full value or they're not. ACBL is playing it both ways, neither being in favor of the player.

[runewell]

Let the masterpoint inflation continue! (Although for as large as the games get on BBO I think it's justified)

Effective January 1, 2008
The Swiss match awards are increased to .015/board at club-rated events and .02/board at club championship-rated events.
Section awards will still be limited to 1.50 for an open rating point game.
Overall awards are allowed for all games of 16 or more tables.
The maximum allowable overall award at an open club rating point game, or an Internet club game is increased to 2.50 at 0.10 per table. The maximum for invitational and lower games is increased by the same percentage.

[jchiu]

tbr, on Feb 5 2008, 05:24 PM, said:

If that was the case why go to the extra effort to win a regional knockout to get 25 gold points to ....

Correction. As of January 1, 2008, regional knockouts award 65 gold points for first place.

[cherdano]

helene_t, on Feb 4 2008, 08:18 AM, said:

I have yet to meet someone in real life who takes master points seriously. Sure, whenever someone gets his Club Master title he receives an applaud. But I have never heard anyone discussing master points, nor have I ever seen a letter to the editor addressing master points. My guess is that if you poll 100 players in some open house event, most would have no idea that the event awarded master points, and only a couple would know how many master points were awarded.

If they mattered to people, people would be complaining all the time over the unfairness of the master points formulas, just like the players at bridge sites with rating schemes complain about the unfairness of the rating system.

In the ACBL bulletin I am sure I have seen several letters to the editor on masterpoints, even though I certainly skip those as fast as I can.
Apparently the popularity of KO's in the ACBL increased by a huge amount after the ACBL decided to award them more masterpoints.

There is much more reason to complain about rating systems since
1. your rating can go down, and
2. other players (who are, like almost every bridge player, considerable weaker than you) might have a higher rating than you, and you can't just blame it on them having been sitting around at the bridge table for much longer than you.

[Gerben42]

Quote

Roland, I know that some players get really serious about masterpoints, but I've never heard of anyone committing crimes to get more. That looks like a bit of a stretch...

In a German club an (ex-)president created extra MP for himself from tournaments he didn't play in. The reason? If he had MP from tournaments he had an alibi for his wife, while in fact he was seeing his lover rather than playing bridge.

[blackshoe]

Gerben42, on Feb 26 2008, 03:19 AM, said:

Quote

Roland, I know that some players get really serious about masterpoints, but I've never heard of anyone committing crimes to get more. That looks like a bit of a stretch...

In a German club an (ex-)president created extra MP for himself from tournaments he didn't play in. The reason? If he had MP from tournaments he had an alibi for his wife, while in fact he was seeing his lover rather than playing bridge.

Nice one, Gerben!

Actually, though, he didn't commit a crime (fraud, in this case) to get more matchpoints, he did it to conceal another crime (adultery).

[TimG]

cherdano, on Feb 26 2008, 12:17 AM, said:

Apparently the popularity of KO's in the ACBL increased by a huge amount after the ACBL decided to award them more masterpoints.

I'm not sure that is quite correct. When KO events became too big and created scheduling uncertainty, bracketing was devised to fix the problem*. A lot of masterpoints are awarded in a bracketed KO. KOs became even more popular.

It's not just that a lot of masterpoints are given out, but how they are distributed. The players with fewer total masterpoints are put in lower brackets and have a much better chance of winning masterpoints than they would if the event were open. If 200 MP were awarded for first place in an open KO, that wouldn't attract nearly as many players as a bracketed KO that awarded 75 in bracket I, 50 in bracket II, 35 in bracket III, 25 in bracket III and 15 in Bracket IV.

* Back about 1990, I played in a Flight B KOs that started on Friday night. Because the field was so big, the event would have taken 6 sessions to complete. There were only 5 sessions available, so the Flight B event was randomly split into two events in order to accommodate all the entries. I'm not sure whether it was after a single such event or two such events that New England started bracketing KOs. Scheduling is easier on organizers when the KO will last a known number of sessions, and also more appealing to many of those who enter the event.