[JanM]

jtfanclub, on Aug 14 2008, 08:44 PM, said:

It's the subtraction and then conversion to IMPs that virtually everybody has to look up.

You must know a different set of "virtually everybody" than I do. When I compare or watch others compare, a player announces the pair's score and another player says "win x" or "lose x," with so little time in between the score announcement and the IMP announcement that I have to think fast to add the IMPs to my mental total for the set before the score for the next board is being announced. I'm not very good at either subtracting or IMP'ing and I never get a chance to improve because by the time I've started to subtract someone else has announced the IMP result.

[SoTired]

JanM, on Aug 15 2008, 12:27 AM, said:

jtfanclub, on Aug 14 2008, 08:44 PM, said:

It's the subtraction and then conversion to IMPs that virtually everybody has to look up.

You must know a different set of "virtually everybody" than I do. When I compare or watch others compare, a player announces the pair's score and another player says "win x" or "lose x," with so little time in between the score announcement and the IMP announcement that I have to think fast to add the IMPs to my mental total for the set before the score for the next board is being announced. I'm not very good at either subtracting or IMP'ing and I never get a chance to improve because by the time I've started to subtract someone else has announced the IMP result.

Exactly. Happens to me, too. And I am good at mental math. Or at least I thot I was. Many team game players have the IMPS difference memorized by contract and result. We bid 4H Vul making 5 and opps were in 3H making 4 ... BOOM ... teammates know the IMPS for that without doing any mental math. It seems like I am the only one who has to subtract and look up IMPS.

I was watching a Spingold team compare scores, and the guy I watched did not even look at his own score sheet. He remembered all 12 or 16 results (or whatever) and just scanned his teammates sheet and knew the final IMPS almost immediately while his teammates were still comparing.

True, I know players that have played 20 years and still can't keep score. But even they don't worry. Let someone else keep score. Online, they don't even have to do that.

Look at bowling: A physical sport. Bowling scoring is at least as difficult arithmetic as bridge and until automatic scoring came along, I never heard anyone complain or suggest simplifying that scoring.

So I will repeat that the only radical scoring that is ever likely to happen in our lifetimes is to drop the superfluous final zero.

However, having said that... Get some wine/beer, invite 7 bridge playing friends over, and try out your new scoring with them several times for $x per IMP. Then report back on how they liked/disliked it.

[nige1]

Now that most tournaments can easily be scored by computer, the simplicity of a scoring method seems less important. Here is an more radical scoring suggestion for Multiple Teams and Swiss Teams with duplicated boards. It is designed to:

• Assign equal weight to each board. Hence 7♠= making on 2 finesses is less likely to decide the match.
  
• Take into account all available data. Not just the peculiar results of your match (e.g. 3♣+3 at one table, 7♣-1 in the other). Admittedly, whether all data is equally relevant is a moot point.

The scoring suggestion is a sort of super BAM:

• Score each board as at Match-pointed pairs.
  
• Add the North-South and East-West scores for each team.

[matmat]

cherdano, on Aug 13 2008, 05:28 PM, said:

How about a simpler change: You don't get points for overtricks when you have bid game. Would speed up the game a lot, as declarer's would just claim their 9 top tricks in 3N etc., and might well be a lot more fun to watch for that reason!

Also, 13 is such an awkward number. Why not go down to 10 cards/suit? that way you can count on your fingers!