[fred]

awm, on Nov 20 2009, 05:10 AM, said:

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.

Adam - you have always struck me as being a clear thinker. I am surprised you are having trouble seeing the light here. This is not rocket science.

Suppose BBO started running 26-board games that last 3 hours long, just like clubs. Are you really suggesting that only 1/3 of the club masterpoints should be awarded in such games?

If there is a problem at all, it should be fixed be tweaking the masterpoint forumulas. It should not be fixed by an across the board devaluation of points won online.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

barmar, on Nov 20 2009, 05:10 AM, said:

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.

If I was an offline club manager, this would be my thinking:

My customers can win more masterpoints per unit time by playing 12-board tournaments.

My customers want to win more masterpoints.

Instead of running one 24-board event, I will try running two 12-board events in the same time during some of the sessions at my club.

I will note the reaction, and either cancel the experiment or expand my schedule of sessions with two 12-board events accordingly.

Besides being able to give out more masterpoints, a further advantage of sessions with two 12-board events is that those who want a "quick fix" (as you put it) and who live close enough to my club to make this convenient will not have to spend an entire afternoon or evening playing bridge.

Of course I cannot say for sure that this would actually increase business for an offline club since, to the best of my knowledge, none of the ACBL's 1000s of offline club managers (a group who unfortunately are not by and large known for their innovation) have ever tried an experiment like this.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[TimG]

fred, on Nov 20 2009, 10:15 AM, said:

If I was an offline club manager, this would be my thinking:

My customers can win more masterpoints per unit time by playing 12-board tournaments.

My customers want to win more masterpoints.

Instead of running one 24-board event, I will try running two 12-board events in the same time during some of the sessions at my club.

I will note the reaction, and either cancel the experiment or expand my schedule of sessions with two 12-board events accordingly.

...

Of course I cannot say for sure that this would actually increase business for an offline club since, to the best of my knowledge, none of the ACBL's 1000s of offline club managers (a group who unfortunately are not by and large known for their innovation) have ever tried an experiment like this.

Club managers may not have tried this, but many Units have tried something similar with their sectionals: holding multiple single-session pair games on Saturday rather than the traditional two-session event. Many organizers will tell you that the switch has been good for attendance.

My opinion is that the attendance bump is more about convenience associated with a shorter time commitment than the potential for more masterpoints.

[Vilgan]

I think you were right Fred in that my first post was a bit instantly dismissive, so I thought about why I disagree more in depth. I agree that the masterpoints formula is probably wrong, but then a motion to increase online points should also adjust the formula. For good or evil, the only 12 board games I know of in f2f (at least in our area) have all been super beginner games.... Easy bridge 0-5 games. The 0-5 limited games already have such a huge penalty in masterpoints, that cutting it in half might be a bad thing. I don't know.. but my personal thought is the whole situation is more complex than "ooh lets get rid of the online masterpoint penalty".

My issues with online bridge tourneys being treated equal is that they are not equal. Important differences (imo):

1) Trivial to cheat and find out partner's cards. If my 82 year old grandmother figured out AIM on her own so can anyone. Can't see what opps have on bridgebase (has OKBridge fixed this with kibitzers yet?), but you can certainly ask partner what they have.

2) Quality of directing is less. Not necessarily their fault due to high table / director count, but I think many of us have experienced wtf?!? directing moments online that would have been a lot less likely/frequent in an offline setting.

3) Quality of bridge is less. I think this is only partly because its online.. and also partly because of the low financial investment. As there is little money vested in a match, there is less motivation to be serious. There are also (for many anyway) a lot more distractions available when playing on your computer. I know a variety of people who have sworn off the ACBL online tourneys because it was ruining their game.

4) Somewhat related to point 3, the predictive nature is less. I've had games where I've played well and gotten a 40% and had games where I played meh and still ended up over 70%. While this is nothing new in matchpoints, the randomness is much more dramatic. In the club I am usually within a 10% spread. Online was a 25% spread. That suggests (imo) that the online tourneys are much less predictive and masterpoints should be awarded in smaller amounts as the validity of the award is less accurate.

A lot of these complaints are targeted at speed ball. If online play offered 2 day KOs on the weekend, I think many of these complaints would not apply to them. However, they aren't offered and speedball is the majority of the tables.

[jdonn]

Vilgan, on Nov 20 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

1) Trivial to cheat and find out partner's cards.

2) Quality of directing is less.

3) Quality of bridge is less.

4) Somewhat related to point 3, the predictive nature is less.

1. Not to pick up on a sore topic, but it's trivial in live bridge as well. There is no difference other than the methods.

2. Strongly disagree, the quality of directing in most live bridge clubs is in fact quite awful. Anyway if you think the directing is bad then that is a solvable problem. Work on ways to improve the directing, don't cut off the nose to spite the face.

3. STRONGLY STRONGLY disagree! There are 'stars' in the online tourneys all the time! In fact, almost everyone I know who plays both live and online bridge is on average a much better player than the average live bridge player.

4. That is simply a reflection of there being fewer boards, which is an argument you already dismissed.

Sorry, not to pick on you, but I can't remember a post where I so consistently disagreed with everything that was said.

[fred]

Vilgan, on Nov 20 2009, 03:59 PM, said:

1) Trivial to cheat and find out partner's cards. If my 82 year old grandmother figured out AIM on her own so can anyone. Can't see what opps have on bridgebase (has OKBridge fixed this with kibitzers yet?), but you can certainly ask partner what they have.

True, but I bet your grandmother could figure out a way to cheat effectively in an offline club as well. If a given person wants to cheat and if cheating is possible, they are going to find a way to cheat.

I am not trying to be dismissive of the problem of cheating in bridge (online or offline), but to me it doesn't make any sense to base masterpoint awards partly on ease of cheating in a given form of the game.

Quote

2) Quality of directing is less. Not necessarily their fault due to high table / director count, but I think many of us have experienced wtf?!? directing moments online that would have been a lot less likely/frequent in an offline setting.

I am not sure where you have played your club bridge, but in my experience the quality of directing in offline clubs has a massive range. No doubt I am biased, but in my opinion the quality of our TDs is considerably higher than what you would expect to find in an "average" ACBL club.

We have at least one former ACBL National Director and more than one true expert player (useful to have for judgment rulings) on our ACBL staff. In my experience, there are not very many club-level TDs with these qualifications.

But even if we disagree on this point, the ACBL is not in the business of rating TDs of various clubs and allocating masterpoints accordingly.

Quote

3) Quality of bridge is less. I think this is only partly because its online.. and also partly because of the low financial investment. As there is little money vested in a match, there is less motivation to be serious. There are also (for many anyway) a lot more distractions available when playing on your computer. I know a variety of people who have sworn off the ACBL online tourneys because it was ruining their game.

My answer is almost the same:

- quality of field varies widely from club to club
- IM(biased)O the quality of the field in our ACBL games is higher than that one would expect to find in an "average" ACBL club
- None of this matters since ACBL is not in the business of rating the fields of various clubs and allocating masterpoints accordingly

Quote

4) Somewhat related to point 3, the predictive nature is less. I've had games where I've played well and gotten a 40% and had games where I played meh and still ended up over 70%. While this is nothing new in matchpoints, the randomness is much more dramatic. In the club I am usually within a 10% spread. Online was a 25% spread. That suggests (imo) that the online tourneys are much less predictive and masterpoints should be awarded in smaller amounts as the validity of the award is less accurate.

If this is true and if it is really a consquence of point 3, then see my response to point 3.

It may also be a function of playing smaller numbers of boards in typical online tournaments.

But once again, the ACBL does not get involved in rating the relative predictive nature of games in various clubs in their masterpoint formulas.

Quote

A lot of these complaints are targeted at speed ball. If online play offered 2 day KOs on the weekend, I think many of these complaints would not apply to them. However, they aren't offered and speedball is the majority of the tables.

Sorry if this is getting repetitive, but ACBL masterpoint formulas do not get involved in number of minutes per board.

I am not suggesting that the ACBL's masterpoint formulas are perfect, but FWIW I personally think it would be crazy for these formulas to even attempt to take into account most of factors like those that you suggest (ease of cheating, TD-quality, player-quality, predictive value, and minutes per board).

Even if you disagree, the fact of the matter is that the rules are what the rules are. BBO is considered by ACBL to be a club. We follow the same rules and pay the same sanction fees as any other club. We should not be singled out for special treatment.

None of the factors you mention are necessarily inherent to online bridge. For example, it is entirely possible that the time will come when everyone agrees that the online bridge fields are stronger than offline bridge fields. If and when that time comes, you won't hear us screaming that offline points should be the ones that are devalued - we will continue to understand that the quality of the field does not enter into the equation.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

Reading what Fred has written, I think he's right that there is no inherent reason that online points should be less than offline points. There is a small issue with the "seriousness" of the bridge, but offline club bridge is arguably not "serious" either and in any case the point pigmentation policies continue to require that some points be earned in "serious" tournaments.

I continue to believe that online points are being handed out at ridiculous rates, but the main reason for this is that ACBL's masterpoint policy is awarding too many points for events of less than the usual 24-28 boards. This issue wasn't evident before online play, because very few such events exist in the offline environment (basically just a few "newcomer" games). Now that BBO is running very large numbers of very well-attended twelve-board games, the disproportionate award in terms of masterpoints for such short events is more evident.

So perhaps the solution is to count online points in full, but to consider changing the scaling for events with 12-17 boards to reduce the point awards.

[fred]

awm, on Nov 20 2009, 08:46 PM, said:

I continue to believe that online points are being handed out at ridiculous rates, but the main reason for this is that ACBL's masterpoint policy is awarding too many points for events of less than the usual 24-28 boards.

There is another factor that is also very important:

Some online players spend 12+ hours per day just about every day playing online bridge in ACBL-sanctioned games.

If there are offline clubs where it is possible to play this much bridge, they are few and far between. Even if such clubs exist, for most people it would be a lot less practical to spend 12 hours per day playing bridge at the club than it would be to do so at home.

I hope nobody will argue with the notion that, if all else is equal, it is reasonable to expect that those who put in more hours and play more boards will win more points.

Maybe this consideration will be sufficient to rethink the your use of the word "ridiculous"

If my posts in this thread have given the impression that BBO or I personally am "anti-club", I can assure you that is not the case. We do not see offline clubs as our competition. We have zero desire to hurt offline clubs. While there are some aspects of online bridge that offline clubs cannot practically compete with, the converse is also true. At the end of the day, we should all be trying to achieve the same thing: the more people who are playing bridge, the better for everyone.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[jdonn]

I love a happy ending.

It is a valid point that the masterpoint system itself probably could have some tweaking to give fewer points than it currently does for games with fewer boards. Although there was also a good point earlier that playing twice as many boards is probably a less-than-twice-as-good indicator of skill.

It's nice to end on something where we can all agree. The current masterpoint system is not at all accurate. There's a shocker.

[junyi_zhu]

fred, on Nov 20 2009, 09:07 PM, said:

awm, on Nov 20 2009, 08:46 PM, said:

I continue to believe that online points are being handed out at ridiculous rates, but the main reason for this is that ACBL's masterpoint policy is awarding too many points for events of less than the usual 24-28 boards.

There is another factor that is also very important:

Some online players spend 12+ hours per day just about every day playing online bridge in ACBL-sanctioned games.

If there are offline clubs where it is possible to play this much bridge, they are few and far between. Even if such clubs exist, for most people it would be a lot less practical to spend 12 hours per day playing bridge at the club than it would be to do so at home.

I hope nobody will argue with the notion that, if all else is equal, it is reasonable to expect that those who put in more hours and play more boards will win more points.

Maybe this consideration will be sufficient to rethink the your use of the word "ridiculous"

If my posts in this thread have given the impression that BBO or I personally am "anti-club", I can assure you that is not the case. We do not see offline clubs as our competition. We have zero desire to hurt offline clubs. While there are some aspects of online bridge that offline clubs cannot practically compete with, the converse is also true. At the end of the day, we should all be trying to achieve the same thing: the more people who are playing bridge, the better for everyone.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well, I think that it's rather bad that on-line points have no color. That's a huge discrimination against on line players. Also, the club games are way more expensive than on line games....

[barmar]

I wonder if one of the reasons people tend to have poor opinions of the online games is that they call themselves "tourneys", but they're really more comparable to club games than tournaments. Using that term causes people to compare them to tournaments, for instance when they say that the level of the competition or directing is poor.

IMHO, 12 board games are lousy. The shorter a game is, the more random it is, because one or two bad boards can have a significant impact on your result (especially in the IMP games that I prefer to play in). I play in them because they're the only option for online games. But I know that most online players are not willing to reserve a long time to play. OKbridge used to offer both 12 and 26-board tourneys, and the 26-board games got very poor attendance (this was long before ACBL sanctions for online games, maybe things would be different if these were the only games to offer masterpoints). Their solution was to run "combos": two consecutive 12-board games, and the pairs that played in both would have their scores combined and ranked.

I know there are some world class players in the online games, but I can't recall ever facing a star player when I've played in the pair games. These games are so huge, with so many sections, the chance that any particular player will run into them is pretty low. Conversely, when you're in the lobby waiting for the game to start, you can see people picking up partners at the last minute. My guess is that decent club games have far fewer pickup partnerships than the online games.

[mike777]

This is the first thread that I can remember that suggests that: in general online club games are just as hard as local club games.


I hope this claim will be accurate.


I note that at least one poster suggests that online club games ....hurts his bridge compared to offline bridge clubs.

[fred]

I just had my meeting with the ACBL Board of Directors...

My sense is that it went very well. I tried to keep my actual speech relatively short so that there would be some time left over for questions, but I was not expecting the number or variety of questions I actually received. BOD members were interested in my thoughts on a broad range of issues, some of which were not directly related to online bridge. As far as I can tell, I did not embarass myself or BBO with any of my answers

The ACBL BOD does not exactly have a great reputation, but probably this is based largely on events that took place many years ago. I was quite impressed by the depth of knowledge and obvious consientiousness of the current group of BOD members. I also have plenty experience that suggests that the ACBL has some really excellent people in management including Jay Baum, the current CEO.

It is far from rare to hear people claim that they have no hope for the future of bridge in North America due to the nature of the ACBL, but FWIW I came away from this meeting feeling more hopeful than ever.

As for the matter of our ACBL Robot Duplicate Tournaments, my guess is that they are not in any immediate danger. This is a fairly educated guess, but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to post more at this point in time.

I gave the BOD a printed document that contained (among other things) about 20 pages of testimonials for Robot Duplicates that I received from various BBO members. If there is any doubt left in the minds of some BOD members about the value of these tournaments, I think there is a good chance that reading these testimonials will make a difference.

Thanks very much to the many people who took the trouble to send me these testimonials. My partners and I thought they were really great to read and I suspect the ACBL BOD will agree.

Your help and support has been much appreciated - thanks friends

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[ArtK78]

I find the 12 board ACBL speed games on BBO to be excellent.

For one thing, I cannot afford to spend full evenings of my time going to club games. Besides, in many instances, the players in the local club games consider them to be their fiefdom, and they resent having an "outside expert" invade their game.

For another, there are well known experts playing in the ACBL games on BBO. I have played against Mark Lair on a number of occasions, and some other well known players. Back in the day when I played on the late, great e-bridge, I played against Mike Passell on a few occasions.

A third factor is the cost. Quite frankly, paying upwards of $6 or $7 for a club game is sort of absurd when I can sit down for an hour at my computer and play 12 boards for $1.

Aside from the regular ACBL games on BBO, playing in the robot games is neat. I can play anytime without having to worry about the availability of one of my regular partners or the random adventures of a pickup partnership. The robots seem to be getting better, although there are still some true adventures in bidding.

I have been playing a lot of poker in a free poker league known as World Tavern Poker (check them out at worldtavernpoker.com). Typically, there are two tournaments each evening, starting at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Depending on how far I get in the poker tournament in the early game, I can have anywhere between 30 minutes to over an hour before the start of the second game. So I bring my laptop with me and I play a session of Robot Duplicate between sessions of the poker tournament.

The convenience factor of games on BBO cannot be overstated.

[jdonn]

I procrastinated/forgot to write you something in time, sorry about that. However I will still write something and forward it along to the ACBL.

[hrothgar]

fred, on Nov 24 2009, 10:04 PM, said:

I just had my meeting with the ACBL Board of Directors...

...

Your help and support has been much appreciated - thanks friends

Gratz.

(Though somehow, I had always hoped that if I wrote something that Gates and Buffet would read, it might be a bit more substantive...)

[JoAnneM]

Encouraging news, Fred. I'm glad your meeting went well.

Jo Anne

[mike777]

Any notes on what motions passed or did not pass?

[TimG]

The proposed changes to the NAP failed (no championship flight and no increase in the flight B masterpoint limit).