[ceblair]

It used to be that matchpoint scoring was the only practical way to run a game
in which the same board is played at many tables.

This is, of course, no longer the case in online games. I would guess that there
are many more imp-scored games than matchpoint ones at BBO. Portable computers
and scoring software have made imp scoring possible in many more offline
situations than before. The local club has been using a scoring computer for at
least ten years, although most of their games are still matchpoint.

I confess to a preference for imp scoring, partly because there is a greater chance
of being able to work out what I consider to be the clearly right answer. As I
make my way through middle age, I also welcome the numerous boards on which
my mistakes will not cost very much. However, I realize these are matters of
individual taste.

I think it used to be accepted wisdom that the field in a matchpoint pair game would
be significantly weaker than in a knockout game, or even a swiss team game.
I'm not sure whether this is still the case. In particular, I suspect there is not
much difference between the strength of the typical matchpoint game and the
typical imp PAIR game, although the latter are (I think) still relatively rare offline.
I would be curious as to other's opinions.

[matmat]

I was of the impression that outside ACBL-land imp games were more popular... I am probably wrong.

[skjaeran]

Most tournaments and club games in Norway are match pointed.

Last year there was a large IMP-scored pairs tournament in Kristiansand. But most people rather wanted MP, so the reverted to the traditional scoring method again this year.

Teams are IMP-scored in general, BAM is almost unheard of - we had it on our annual festival a few years ago, but changed to a Patton variation.

[mr1303]

There is hardly a club in the UK (admittedly I have not played North of the border) that does not use match points as its regular format.

[nickf]

matmat, on Jul 20 2008, 01:07 PM, said:

I was of the impression that outside ACBL-land imp games were more popular...  I am probably wrong.

that's certainly the case in my state. We used to have congresses that had Saturday MP and Sunday Teams. Now its predominently Saturday Swiss Pairs.

And the reason? Masterpoints of course.

nickf
sydney

[helene_t]

I think X-IMPs has been gaining terrain at the expense of butler because some consider it better, while butler was easier to score in the pre-computer ages.

As for matchpoints vs IMPs, I suppose IMPs is only moderately more complicated to score manually than matchpoints. So my guess is that if people really preferred IMPs we would see a lot more of butler at clubs.

I suppose it's a matter of taste whether you like the extra challenge of figuring out what the field if doing. I personally prefer matchpoints for two reasons:
- It is simpler to explain to beginners how it works.
- It is statistically more efficient because all boards have approximately the same weight. At IMPs, if your opponents bid a cold grand slam which nobody else bid, it is impossible to earn it back in a short pairs event.

[NickRW]

helene_t, on Jul 20 2008, 06:14 PM, said:

- It is statistically more efficient because all boards have approximately the same weight. At IMPs, if your opponents bid a cold grand slam which nobody else bid, it is impossible to earn it back in a short pairs event.

Yes, this factor, for a 20 odd board club duplicate is quite a problem with IMPs. With MP all boards count equally. With IMPs maybe 2 or 3 big boards colour the whole of the scoring.

In team matches this is of less concern - after all, if you or your team mates screw up a slam or vulnerable game, in principle at least, you have only yourselves to blame. At pairs, a slam the opposite way which is difficult to bid and/or hard to play and it is just your luck that the pair that sits down at your table when this hand arrives knows what they're doing. Now you have quite a mountain to climb for the rest of the evening.

IMP's PR line is that it is closer to real bridge (i.e. rubber) while ameliorating the effect of the big hands. In a limited sense this is true. The trouble is that, for a smallish number of boards, it still leaves a few big hands as the dominant factor.

I sometimes wonder if, for a club duplicate pairs, a modified IMP scale wouldn't be the most ideal solution:

Score Modified IMPs
0 0
10 1
20-30 2
40-60 3
70-110 4
120-190 5
200-320 6
330-530 7 and so on (each point range getting larger according to the famous Fibonacci series)

The advanage of this is
1) Large scores do count for more as with IMPs, but the really big scores are cut by quite a bit.
2) At the bottom end of the scale small scores are proprotionately a little higher and a win by 10 does at least count for something - IMPs has this arguably bizarre oddity that a win by 10 points counts for nothing.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone has ever tried this in real life. It seems to me to be a sensible compromise between MP and IMPs suitable for short events, particularly pairs.

Nick

[helene_t]

You can also play Patton. I kinda like it. But it is quite complicated. A modified IMP scale, maybe something like Nick's proposal, may achieve roughly the same in a simpler way.

[brianshark]

In Ireland, the clubs are entirely MPs for a typical club night. There are occasional (maybe monthly) teams competitions though, but rarely imp pairs. For the national events, the teams competitions are IMPs (never BAM) and the pairs are mostly MPs except the odd imp pairs competition. The master pairs is a very enjoyable live swissed imp pairs format.

I've never played BAM or Patton which is a shame.

[pigpenz]

if matchpoints is becoming obsolete, in part in the USA its because thats the way the ACBL sets up its regionals. Generally club games are matchpoints, sectionals are matchpoints, but regionals and nationals have zillions of flighted KO's.

25 yrs ago the pairs games used to pay over 40 masterpoints when was thelast time you saw that at an acbl regional? Now they are lucky if the pairs contests pay over 20....but people can win over 20 points in the 3rd or 4th bracket of the KO's.

For the ACBL its marketing I assume, thats what the masses want. Is it good for bridge? I think now days what you have is a large group of players who can accumulate 2500 masterpoints at quick rate playing against their peers without having to play against the best competition out there.

Too bad we dont have Barry Crane anymore!

[pigpenz]

after posting the other day went back and looked at recap sheets from Las Vega$ I didnt realize that matchpoint events had gone to 24 boards only at least at the regional level events at the nationals, I just always assumed it was 13 rounds top 12 156 avg.

[nige1]

Arguably, Matchpointed pairs is a completely different game from X-Imp or Butler Pairs; but I think MP is more fun and more skilful.

[pigpenz]

nige1, on Jul 29 2008, 04:22 AM, said:

Arguably, Matchpointed pairs is a completely different game from X-Imp or Butler Pairs; but I think MP is more fun and more skilful.

yes i would gladly welcome back the days when there was only one event per day other than the KO's. The pairs events were the top dog events and were usually 300+ pairs....oh where is Barry when we need him.

[ArtK78]

Over the past year or so, I have played quite a bit with Dave Treadwell. Dave is a spry 95 years young.

Dave often complains about the proliferation of KO events at sectionals and regionals. He says that players today are not learning how to play pair events because they spend all of their time playing team events.

Last summer, Dave and I played in the Jerry Machlin pairs at the Mid Atlantic Regional in Bethesda, Maryland. It was a two-session qualifying and final open pairs, just like most major regional open pair events used to be. Furthermore, the final was played Barometer style. It was a fun event, and the field was very strong for a regional pair game.

There is a lot to what Dave says. Most pair events at regionals are watered down due to the popularity of the KOs. The Saturday Open Pairs used to be one of the premier events of a regional. Now, it is just another pair event.

[pigpenz]

I would tend to agree with all that ART...new players today can cut their teeth without ever having to play against top rated pairs. Before the proliferation of KO events you knew each session when you started out you were going to play against some pretty good seeded pairs. Nowdays, and it may just be a blindspot by me but i dont think so, newer players can hit 2500 rating pretty easy without ever playing against top seeded players....so...sigh....if i wait another 20yrs......flight b strata will be 0-5000.

[mycroft]

My problem is the reverse. I'm a 600 MP player (because most of my travel to tournaments, I get to wear a suit, mostly) who *wants* to play against the best. With the profileration of KOs, I need to find a 8000MP pair to play with to get into the top bracket, or a 4000 MP pair to get into bracket 2. So either I play in bracket 4 against the same people I play at in the club, or I play pairs, and table 3 if I'm lucky has a reasonable pair that got KOd yesterday, or I save up and go to the Nationals and hope the seeding for the Vanderbilt works in my favour.

I miss the open games - in particular, I miss the open qual/final two session games.

[han]

Even though my teammates lied that I was a famous player from the Netherlands and gave me 5000 extra masterpoints, we still had to play knockouts in a fairly low bracket. I didn't enjoy the competition. When we lost in the semi-finals I enjoyed it even less.

The swiss was much more fun but we had to wait so long before the matches were up. Really the Spingold is the most enjoyable event, long matches against good competition. I didn't play in it this year but I hope to do so again next year.

The LM pairs is nice to play in as well. I enjoy playing pairs as I feel I am more resposible for the result, in teams you can lose and there may just be nothing you can do about it. I also like the "us two against the rest" feeling that pairs gives and I don't have that as much in team games. Maybe I would have more of that if I had regular teammates like some do.

[Mbodell]

mycroft, on Jul 31 2008, 09:25 AM, said:

My problem is the reverse. I'm a 600 MP player (because most of my travel to tournaments, I get to wear a suit, mostly) who *wants* to play against the best.

We had the same problem with the KO trying to find our level. We tried a couple of NABC events, and didn't do so well. I played 4 bracketed KO and won brackets 9/10, 19/19, 12/12, and 13/20 all fairly comfortably, even though for some of the matches myself or my team mates weren't playing that well. I like team events and IMP scoring but it would be nice if we could say I know our team is only 1,300 MP but really we play more like 13,000 MP could we try say bracket 6 or 7.

I agree that the Swiss offers more chances to find your level but unfortunately we didn't play as many this time and by the time the final weekend rolled around our team mates had left.

[pigpenz]

there used to be times where there was a swiss qualifying day -2 sessions and you were seeded on how you finished in the qualifying for the KO's.

I was looking at a stratified pairs game at nationals, and I believe Flight A paid down to 20+ places and Flight B second overall was 50% and paid around 8 gold points. Now the question is ...did they learn bridge from that.

I can remember once coming in 7th overall ina pairs event at the nationals, i was trying to win flight A and my partner was trying to get a section top in flight B

[xcurt]

Agree with the comments about KOs, mps and bracketing. When I was starting to play tournaments I could only play on the weekends, and I played a lot online. So I got good without accumulating the mps, basically locking myself out of KOs -- which is the route to even more mps. I'm not interested in going to a tournament to play random 1200 mp players for four sessions, nor am I interested in going to a tournament to play a 17-table Flight A pairs on Saturday. There probably aren't many people in my position though, so there's no pressure for the ACBL to change the status quo.