[TimG]

JanM, on Nov 8 2009, 11:26 AM, said:

barmar, on Nov 7 2009, 11:39 PM, said:

It sounds like they want to shorten the event by a day -- I wonder why?

They want people to finish in time to play in the weekend Swiss? At least, if I have my summer schedule right . The Spingold & mini-Spingolds start on Monday. With 64 teams (or the equivalent), the event takes 6 days (the Spingold of course takes 7 or usually 8). That runs through Saturday and there's nothing to play in on Sunday, except an early start, rushed Regional Swiss, so the people in the finals are likely to go home, not what ACBL wants.

Shortening the event and making it more like a regional bracketed KO in order to get a couple extra tables of entries on the last day of the NABC seems wrong to me.

[JanM]

TimG, on Nov 8 2009, 10:28 AM, said:

JanM, on Nov 8 2009, 11:26 AM, said:

barmar, on Nov 7 2009, 11:39 PM, said:

It sounds like they want to shorten the event by a day -- I wonder why?

They want people to finish in time to play in the weekend Swiss? At least, if I have my summer schedule right . The Spingold & mini-Spingolds start on Monday. With 64 teams (or the equivalent), the event takes 6 days (the Spingold of course takes 7 or usually 8). That runs through Saturday and there's nothing to play in on Sunday, except an early start, rushed Regional Swiss, so the people in the finals are likely to go home, not what ACBL wants.

Shortening the event and making it more like a regional bracketed KO in order to get a couple extra tables of entries on the last day of the NABC seems wrong to me.

I didn't say it was right, just that it was probably the motivation

[Mbodell]

JanM, on Nov 8 2009, 11:05 AM, said:

TimG, on Nov 8 2009, 10:28 AM, said:

JanM, on Nov 8 2009, 11:26 AM, said:

barmar, on Nov 7 2009, 11:39 PM, said:

It sounds like they want to shorten the event by a day -- I wonder why?

They want people to finish in time to play in the weekend Swiss? At least, if I have my summer schedule right . The Spingold & mini-Spingolds start on Monday. With 64 teams (or the equivalent), the event takes 6 days (the Spingold of course takes 7 or usually 8). That runs through Saturday and there's nothing to play in on Sunday, except an early start, rushed Regional Swiss, so the people in the finals are likely to go home, not what ACBL wants.

Shortening the event and making it more like a regional bracketed KO in order to get a couple extra tables of entries on the last day of the NABC seems wrong to me.

I didn't say it was right, just that it was probably the motivation

Except the 0-1500 is already only 5 days, so everyone in that field is ready for the weekend swiss. And the 0-5000 is 6 days, but only 2 teams will play on the Saturday. So we are only talking about 2 teams total. And they can always play the Sunday A/X swiss. And if they don't the ACBL is only missing 2 teams from 2 sessions. And for that lose the minis?

I don't think the motivation can be the running too long. I think the motivation, if it is rational, has to be people not liking the aggressive cut of 4 becomes 1. But the alternative to that (assuming a change from the status quo is needed) is 3 ways on day 2 or else an extra day. If there are enough teams an extra day wouldn't be horrible, although again you'd lose 2 teams from the weekend national swiss. But you'd gain more teams playing longer in the mini-national event instead of regional side events.

[Vampyr]

I have been thinking about the robot tournament thing. Perhaps the ACBL stopping issuing masterpoints for them is the beginning of a rethink of issuing online masterpoints at all.

One can understand the ACBL's attitude at the beginning -- people are playing online, so let's get a piece of the pie. But now, perhaps they are considering the future of bridge in America.

Sure, the online masterpoints bring in some revenue, but the impact on club and tournament attendance can only be negative. ACBL masterpoint are supposed to be a marketing device for them, not for their online competitors. But they have made online play more attractive to those who want to collect ACBL masterpoints.

Could the ACBL have realised that they are not in the business of selling masterpoints, but are instead in the business of promoting bridge in North America? Could they have recognised that online bridge is their competition, not their friend?

[TimG]

I don't think that online bridge eats much into tournament play -- those people who travel to tournaments are still going to travel. It may eat into club play, but I do not think it is as significant as many think. It seems to me that for the most part BBO attracts people that would not be going to the club anyway rather than drawing folks away from club games. For instance, when I try to set up an online game, I often am told that someone can play any night except for one (that one being their weekly club outing).

And, don't forget that ACBL games online generate revenues for ACBL as well as BBO.

[uday]

It is a commonly held misassumption that online games eat into club games, but they don't seem to. At least, they don't seem to have driven down the # of sanctioned tables at clubs.

I don't know about tournaments ( which might mean sectionals, regionals, nationals, STACs, or some grouping of those ) but i expect the same would be true. The ACBL periodically publishes financial reports that itemize table counts at tourneys & clubs, if you're interested.

[JoAnneM]

I am an ACBL club owner/manager and online bridge is my friend and free advertising for bridge. As long as we can get people to the table whether it be the computer monitor or card table we will make converts, and the players will make their choices of where and when to play.

I liken it to when I worked in a large public library outside of D.C. and our head librarian actually stocked comic books. She said all she wanted to do was get people inside the door.....the books would do the rest.

[Vilgan]

I'd love to see Robot tourney's stay (altho without the guarantee of best hand). I didn't know they existed until I read this thread today but it sounds like a great idea.

I really hope removing the 1/3 penalty from online points is defeated. Online points are already crazy easy to acquire in ludicrous amounts.

Not sure how I feel about the Mini Spingold change. It just makes it feel like not an "event" anymore is my gut reaction, but the 4 teams 1 advance did kind of suck. I know the last time I did the mini spin.. our hardest day until the finals (where we lost) was the first day.

[fred]

Vilgan, on Nov 20 2009, 12:18 AM, said:

I really hope removing the 1/3 penalty from online points is defeated. Online points are already crazy easy to acquire in ludicrous amounts.

I don't think your second sentence can be used to justify your first sentence.

I can just as easily say "Gold points are already crazy easy (for me) to acquire in ludicrous amounts (in knockout events at Regionals)". Does that suggest to you that such points should count for only 1/3 of the points I win in club games (which are much harder for me to accumulate in ludicrous amounts)?

Assuming your first sentence is true, I suggest you consider *why* it is true and that you use the ease of winning points in offline clubs as a comparison - online and offline clubs use the same masterpoint formulas.

Then think about whether or not you can still justify treating online club points as being worth only 1/3 the value of offline club points.

Then you might want to reconsider whether your "ludicrously easy" characterization (which has no meaning unless you use a comparison to some standard) is accurate.

Perhaps needless to say, I support this motion. I believe the current state of affairs is grossly unfair to online players, especially those who due to circumstances beyond their control (like health, money, geography, and family) play most or all of their ACBL bridge online.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

I have to disagree with Fred on this one.

Comparing the online ACBL tourneys to clubs:

(1) The online tourneys play less than half as many boards.
(2) The online tourneys play for less than a third as much time.
(3) The online tourneys cost less than a fifth as much (club fees rarely < $5 and can be much more)
(4) Online pairs play a third as many opponents (four rounds of three instead of 13 rounds of 2).
(5) A much lower percentage of online competitors are "established" pairs.
(6) The quality of online directing is often lower, if only because of the directors:tables ratio.

Putting these together, it seems clear to me that online master points should count for a lot less than offline points. There are many ways to accomplish this of course, but I wouldn't support any modification of the current system which effectively increases the weighting of online points.

[fred]

awm, on Nov 20 2009, 03:03 AM, said:

I have to disagree with Fred on this one.

Comparing the online ACBL tourneys to clubs:

(1) The online tourneys play less than half as many boards.
(2) The online tourneys play for less than a third as much time.
(3) The online tourneys cost less than a fifth as much (club fees rarely < $5 and can be much more)
(4) Online pairs play a third as many opponents (four rounds of three instead of 13 rounds of 2).
(5) A much lower percentage of online competitors are "established" pairs.
(6) The quality of online directing is often lower, if only because of the directors:tables ratio.

Putting these together, it seems clear to me that online master points should count for a lot less than offline points. There are many ways to accomplish this of course, but I wouldn't support any modification of the current system which effectively increases the weighting of online points.

I think that none of your points are valid...

(1) We use the same masterpoint formula as clubs. They are welcome to run 12-board events if they want.

(2) Clubs are welcome to run speedball games if they want.

(3) Sorry Adam, but this one is absurd. The implication is that clubs that charge more money should be allowed to issue more points.

(4) See (1) above.

(5) How do you know? Even if you are right, ACBL does not differentiate between the strength of the fields in various clubs in their masterpoint formulas. Even if your argument made sense, I could just as easily say "players in offline clubs never have to face stars from foreign countries" etc.

(6) How do you know? Again, the ACBL masterpoint formulas do not differentiate between quality of TDs at various clubs.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

The idea of masterpoints is primarily to encourage people to play bridge.

If there were a way to obtain large numbers of masterpoints in a much smaller amount of time, for a much smaller amount of money, and with a much lesser degree of bridge skill... don't you think this would destroy the value of masterpoints to ACBL's business plan?

I think the online tourneys provide just such an opportunity. Perhaps we'll hear from others as to what they think of my various points; I would've thought at least the first few are quite clear-cut.

[jdonn]

awm, on Nov 19 2009, 10:28 PM, said:

If there were a way to obtain large numbers of masterpoints in a much smaller amount of time, for a much smaller amount of money, and with a much lesser degree of bridge skill... don't you think this would destroy the value of masterpoints to ACBL's business plan?

There is no doubt it's a different business model than the ACBL has traditionally used, but in my opinion the business model involving BBO is a HUGE improvement for the ACBL.

They run tournaments virtually nonstop, unlike a club that runs no more than 14 a week and almost always less. In fact by my calculations, unscientific though they are, BBO runs about 200 times more ACBL games than a normal club.

Their tournaments have lots of players (like me) who otherwise wouldn't go to the club anyway.

Their tournaments have a TON of players who live in foreign countries and don't even have access to live ACBL bridge clubs.

I mean your point seems to be since the BBO tournaments are a much better alternative for many people (cheaper, faster, etc) that the ACBL shouldn't encourage them so that the worse alternatives might thrive. Since when has removing variety in order to protect a worse alternative ever been good for any business? They have an alternative many people prefer, and for all the people living outside the ACBL it's their only alternative at all.

Edit: Deleted last comment since I think I misunderstood what you meant.

[dcohio]

The only thing I worry about with online play is that there is the possibility (probability?) of collusion. Players on the phone/IM/in the same room would have a huge advantage.

I'm not aware of what measures are in place to detect/deter this, so please give me a link if there are and I'd be happy to read it.

[awm]

Josh may be misunderstanding my point somewhat. I'm not arguing that we should get rid of the online tourneys, or that ACBL should stop awarding points for them altogether.

My suggestion is that it would be bad to have a type of tourney which awards masterpoints in a manner which is very disproportional to other tournaments (either in terms of masterpoints per time, or masterpoints per difficulty, or masterpoints per money). Such a type of tournament will tend to crowd out the other tournament alternatives and devalue masterponts in general.

I believe that as currently structured, the online tournaments are such an event. In fact it seems very clear to me that the online tourneys require dramatically less time/point, money/point and even difficulty/point than other options. Really the first two of these statements are quite clear, especially in comparison to clubs or local tourneys (yes, a really elite level player at a major tournament can get a better time/point tradeoff, but for most of us it's pretty clear). The third one is more debatable and probably depends on your local clubs.

As for the inclusion of foreign players etc, I doubt that these players would become much less interested if the rate at which ACBL points were awarded was reduced slightly. After all, they're probably not really in the business of collecting ACBL points and are just looking for a tourney with a slightly better field or directing than the free tourneys. In fact I think if these tourneys awarded half as many points (and I don't really get why a 12-board tournament should award more than half as many points as a 26-board one) it would not greatly reduce participation. On the other hand, I bet if we doubled the point award for the online tourneys it would seriously impact club and sectional attendance (at least for that portion of the bridge population which cares about masterpoints, which may not include Josh or Fred but does include many players).

While Fred's point that clubs could run 12-board tourneys at 5 minutes per board is true in principle, clubs don't do this. I suspect if a substantial number of clubs did start doing this, the ACBL might want to revisit the rate at which points are awarded for such events... just as I think they should for the online events. Again, I see no sensible reason that a one hour tourney where twelve boards are played should award more than half as many points to the winner as a three-and-a-half hour tourney where twenty-six boards are played.

[barmar]

The ACBL Club Manager's Handbook says that games with 12-17 boards pay 80% of the masterpoints as games with 18 or more boards. I assume the ACBL BBO games follow this formula. So these short games already have their masterpoints deflated.

Although only dropping to 80% seems unfair. Most club games are 24 boards, why should a game with half as many boards pay 80% of the matchpoints? Yes, regular clubs could have 12-board games, but who would go to them? If you're going to go out of your way to go to a club, you want to spend the evening there. Conversely, online players tend not to be willing to devote 2-3 hours to the game, they just want a quick, convenient fix.

In terms of masterpoints/dollar, there certainly is a huge disparity. For the $7 charged by average clubs around here, you can play in 7 online games, paying a total of 560% of the masterpoints. I realize it isn't BBO's fault that their games are so inexpensive -- rent is probably one of the biggest expenses that f2f clubs have, and this doesn't exist online. BBO has datacenter and bandwidth expenses, but these are amortized over so many clubs, and you also have advertising income, that no single club has to charge much to cover it. How can offline clubs possibly compete with this?

[Mbodell]

awm, on Nov 19 2009, 09:10 PM, said:

Josh may be misunderstanding my point somewhat. I'm not arguing that we should get rid of the online tourneys, or that ACBL should stop awarding points for them altogether.

My suggestion is that it would be bad to have a type of tourney which awards masterpoints in a manner which is very disproportional to other tournaments (either in terms of masterpoints per time, or masterpoints per difficulty, or masterpoints per money). Such a type of tournament will tend to crowd out the other tournament alternatives and devalue masterponts in general.

I agree with your general point. I agree that online events as they are currently structure are one such venue. (I earn at least 10x/$ points online than F2F). But I don't think the ACBL has generally done a good job equalizing the MP.

Some clubs have every game be a charity game. Some clubs have tons of tables of bad players while other clubs have few tables of good players. The average skill of my opponents at the club can swing by more than 8% depending on which night I play at my local club. A bad player can hire a good team to win KOs and score lots of points. The MP awards for teams are more generous than for pairs or individuals. Etc.

So while I agree that the ACBL should be thinking about all of this, it is hard to take too seriously the push back against online MP due to an argument that appeals to the purity of non-online MP awards.

Full disclosure around competing with club games: My playing online in MP tournaments occasionally occurs where if BBO didn't exist I'd go to the local club instead. However, this accounts for less than 5% of the times I play online, and most of the time when I play online it is due to geographic differences or time differences that make the local club games an impossibility.

[TimG]

A few points or questions:

• When comparing the length of online games to offline games, it doesn't seem right to me to look at points per board played. Someone should study the predictive qualities of an X board game to that of a 2X board game. Looking at masterpoints as a rating, I expect that 24 boards are not twice as valuable as 12 boards.
  
  
• It is impractical for offline games to run speedballs. There are a lot of things that are done automatically online that cannot be done automatically offline: sorting hands, putting dummy down, scoring boards, moving boards, changing tables, etc. Saying offline clubs could run speedballs if they wanted to is not really true; no way could an offline club run a 1 hour game with 12 boards and 4 rounds and not fall behind hopelessly.
  
  
• There are differences in directing (or how games are run) between online and offline games. In an offline club, I have never seen the play of a board stopped due to time conditions and then a score assigned by the director. In my offline club experience, very rarely is a board not played due to time conditions, in online play (speedballs, anyway) it is not an infrequent occurrence.
  
  
• How important is it that the points won in BBO tourneys are ACBL points? I'm sure there are plenty of people who pay attention to POTM/POTY races and otherwise keep track of their points won. But, I wonder how much tournament business BBO would lose if the hourly tournaments run by BBO did not award ACBL masterpoints but rather a special class of BBO points awarded only in BBO run tournaments.

[hrothgar]

TimG, on Nov 20 2009, 04:09 PM, said:

[*]When comparing the length of online games to offline games, it doesn't seem right to me to look at points per board played. Someone should study the predictive qualities of an X board game to that of a 2X board game. Looking at masterpoints as a rating, I expect that 24 boards are not twice as valuable as 12 boards.

I have long suggested that masterpoint awards should be correlated to the predictive accuracy of a given tournament format.

The more accurate a format is at determining the best player / pair / team, the greater the number of points it should award. Moreover, the way in which points are awarded insaid tournaments shoud be allocated in accordance with predictive accuracy.

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Nov 20 2009, 09:38 AM, said:

TimG, on Nov 20 2009, 04:09 PM, said:

[*]When comparing the length of online games to offline games, it doesn't seem right to me to look at points per board played.  Someone should study the predictive qualities of an X board game to that of a 2X board game.  Looking at masterpoints as a rating, I expect that 24 boards are not twice as valuable as 12 boards.

I have long suggested that masterpoint awards should be correlated to the predictive accuracy of a given tournament format.

The more accurate a format is at determining the best player / pair / team, the greater the number of points it should award. Moreover, the way in which points are awarded in said tournaments shoud be allocated in accordance with predictive accuracy.

They should also have something to do with the strength of the field. Two tournaments with the same degree of predictive accuracy should not award the same number of points if the strength of field is not also equal.