[kenrexford]

I looked through the ACBL motions for this fall, and I found them humorous. Not sure why, so much, but it just seemed funny.

For one, there's some convoluted calculus proposed for determining how many points people get for such-and-such events. It's rather silly, when you think about it.

Then you have the codified ordinances of the ACBL. Crimes defined, with penalties and probation and the like recommended. Procedure for recidivists and repeat offenders. I was expecting to see something akin to sex offender registration and yellow license plates, as well. The whole thing starts out with the worst offense of all -- stinky shoes. Then, it goes through a list of offenses I see done every round of any normal game, usually many times. I also did not realize that you now can go to jail for asking Bob if he bid the slam also, even if you both just finished the round but someone else is inside languishing over a claimer on a different board.

My favorite part, though, is the new marketing ideas. Make the word "Bridge" more prominent. I can see how this would help things along.

If you are walking down the hall at the hotel and see a sign that says:

American Contract Bridge League

Would you, as a non-member, check it out? Heck no.

But, if it said:

American Contract BRIDGE League?

Of course! That must be fun.

[Phil]

Can you imagine the focus groups to determine this list?

"Ma'am, what attribute of bridge players do you find the most offensive"

Body Odor
Stained Clothing
Dandruff
Parasites in beard

etc..

[jdonn]

They are like the California legislature in my other thread.

[crazy4hoop]

Sorry if this belongs in Josh's other thread but I
can't believe ACBL is considering getting
rid of the robot tourneys.
Everyone I know loves them and does not
want them to go away.

That being said,
how are we supposed to keep these
exciting tournaments sanctioned by the ACBL?

Robot races, robot rewards, and robot duplicates all fit
under the category of fun events.
Losing them would be terrible
even though I guess I understand why ACBL wants
such a feat as becoming life master to be done in a "brick and mortar" setting.

[TimG]

crazy4hoop, on Oct 29 2009, 08:51 PM, said:

Sorry if this belongs in Josh's other thread but I
can't believe ACBL is considering getting
rid of the robot tourneys.
Everyone I know loves them and does not
want them to go away.

That being said,
how are we supposed to keep these
exciting tournaments sanctioned by the ACBL?

Robot races, robot rewards, and robot duplicates all fit
under the category of fun events.
Losing them would be terrible
even though I guess I understand why ACBL wants
such a feat as becoming life master to be done in a "brick and mortar" setting.

They wouldn't be fun without masterpoints?

[fred]

crazy4hoop, on Oct 30 2009, 01:51 AM, said:

Sorry if this belongs in Josh's other thread but I
can't believe ACBL is considering getting
rid of the robot tourneys.
Everyone I know loves them and does not
want them to go away.

That being said,
how are we supposed to keep these
exciting tournaments sanctioned by the ACBL?

Robot races, robot rewards, and robot duplicates all fit
under the category of fun events.
Losing them would be terrible
even though I guess I understand why ACBL wants
such a feat as becoming life master to be done in a "brick and mortar" setting.

I haven't seen Josh's other thread. If it pertains to this topic can someone post a link?

Here is what you can do:

1) E-mail your ACBL Board of Directors representative and tell them how you feel. If you are a "young bridge player" please mention that (we think one of the reasons that ACBL should support these tournaments is because young players really like them).

2) I am making a presentation to the ACBL Board of Directors on November 24 in San Diego. Part of my mission will be to do what I can to make sure this motion is defeated.

One the tools I plan to have at my disposal will be a collection of testimonials from ACBL members who enjoy ACBL-sanctioned Robot Duplicate Tournaments. If you feel inclined to send me such a testimonial, that would be great. I would prefer you do that by e-mail (fred@bridgebase.com), but I suppose it is fine if you would rather post something here.

If you decide to write a testimonial, please include:

- your real name
- your ACBL number
- where you live
- your age
- your best guess at how well you play bridge (club level player, regular tournament player, expert, whatever)
- a statement about why you like ACBL Robot Duplicate Tournaments. It is more than fine to include obvious details like "they are fun" - as far as I can tell many BOD members know very little about these tournaments.
- anything else that you think might help our cause

I am asking for all this personal information so that I can show the BOD that a broad spectrum of ACBL members really like these tournaments.

3) Anyone out there who either became an ACBL member because of online bridge or who would consider becoming an ACBL member because of online bridge, please let me know who you are!

4) Ask your friends who enjoy these tournaments to read this post

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[matmat]

Phil, on Oct 28 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

Can you imagine the focus groups to determine this list?

"Ma'am, what attribute of bridge players do you find the most offensive"

Body Odor
Stained Clothing
Dandruff
Parasites in beard

etc..

shorts, tshirt and cap, obv...

[aguahombre]

matmat, on Oct 29 2009, 10:12 PM, said:

Phil, on Oct 28 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

Can you imagine the focus groups to determine this list?

"Ma'am, what attribute of bridge players do you find the most offensive"

Body Odor
Stained Clothing
Dandruff
Parasites in beard

etc..

shorts, tshirt and cap, obv...

I was raised not to wear a cap or hat indoors, but those kinds of gentile things seem to have gone out the window, and caps are only mildly annoying to me.

Shorts should only be banned when worn by certain people

T shirts are often given out as prizes at tourneys, and prohibiting them from being worn is just wrong.

[Elianna]

matmat, on Oct 29 2009, 07:12 PM, said:

Phil, on Oct 28 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

Can you imagine the focus groups to determine this list?

"Ma'am, what attribute of bridge players do you find the most offensive"

Body Odor
Stained Clothing
Dandruff
Parasites in beard

etc..

shorts, tshirt and cap, obv...

You forgot about flannel shirt, tied around the waist.

[Cyberyeti]

aguahombre, on Oct 29 2009, 10:56 PM, said:

Shorts should only be banned when worn by certain people

T shirts are often given out as prizes at tourneys, and prohibiting them from being worn is just wrong.

I'm just having a wrangle with the EBU where I got told my knee length tailored shorts were unacceptable, although there were no obvious regulations to say so. Apparently they lower the tone of a 4* hotel although a 20 year old tracksuit doesn't.

As to the T-shirt, it depends how many copies of the F-word it has on it ...

[G_R__E_G]

fred, on Oct 29 2009, 09:51 PM, said:

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

It's not often that Fred asks for help, and considering all he does for bridge I'd just like to suggest that we give him our support on this. (I've already sent him my e-mail)

[Phil]

Sometimes we compelled to write a letter that might feel
uncomfortable. However, Fred and company have
provided a great service to bridge
players worldwide and
occasionally need users to write to the ACBL so that the BOD
really considers the actions they are considering instead of
throwing robot doop tournaments under the bus.

Bots, while they raise my
Blood pressure are a necessary evil.
Otherwise, robot doops could not be run.

[hrothgar]

fred, on Oct 30 2009, 05:51 AM, said:

crazy4hoop, on Oct 30 2009, 01:51 AM, said:

Sorry if this belongs in Josh's other thread but I
can't believe ACBL is considering getting
rid of the robot tourneys.
Everyone I know loves them and does not
want them to go away.

That being said,
how are we supposed to keep these
exciting tournaments sanctioned by the ACBL?

Robot races, robot rewards, and robot duplicates all fit
under the category of fun events.
Losing them would be terrible
even though I guess I understand why ACBL wants
such a feat as becoming life master to be done in a "brick and mortar" setting.

I haven't seen Josh's other thread. If it pertains to this topic can someone post a link?

Here is what you can do:

1) E-mail your ACBL Board of Directors representative and tell them how you feel. If you are a "young bridge player" please mention that (we think one of the reasons that ACBL should support these tournaments is because young players really like them).

Any chance that someone could explain why the ACBL is considering removing the sanction for the Robot Race tournaments? My assumption is that there is concern about master point inflation or some such, however, it would be useful to have more information to work with.

From my own perspective, I think that their is ample room to improve the ACBL's master point system. However, I don't think that a blanket ban the Robot Races is either necessary or sufficient in accomplishing this end.

Hypothetically, its entirely possible that the Robot Races might have a distortionary impact on the ACBL's master point system. For examples:

Players competing in the Robot Races might be able to accumate masterpoints significantly faster by playing the Robot Races than playing in more traditional bridge events. This, in turn, would have a significant impact on Master Point inflation.

Players competing in the Robot Races might be able to accumulate master points significantly cheaper that those playing in more traditional bridge events. This, in turn, would have an obvious impact on the ACBL's ability to sell master points.

The Robot Races might exhibit significantly more variance than traditional tournaments. In this case, master point awards would be more of a crap shoot, which, in turn, would further decouple the relationship between "attendence points" and skill.

From my perspective, the key issue is to get the ACBL to explain which of these fronts they are advancing on. If they argue point 1 (speed) or point 2 (impact on revenue) you have an obvious response: Tweak the number of master points awarded to bring this in line with more traditional events.

If the ACBL argues point 3 (variance) you can respond in a couple different ways:

1. It's entirely possible that the Robot Races are more deterministic than normal events.

2. If the ACBL is genuinely interested in reform, then they should do so in a more comprehensive manner.

[fred]

Richard - I thought your post was very good. To answer your question:

Quote

Any chance that someone could explain why the ACBL is considering removing the sanction for the Robot Race tournaments?

We don't know for sure. News of this motion came a suprise to us because of three factors concerning Robot Duplicates that we see as obvious to anyone who cares to look:

1) A lot of ACBL members are enjoying them.

2) They are generating substanial "sanction fees" for the ACBL.

3) These tournaments are growing in popularity meaning more of 1) and 2) in the future.

There are some other factors that one would think the ACBL would see as positive, but are perhaps less obvious:

4) These tournaments are popular among young players. Anything that gets young players to be more inclined to play bridge is good for the game. This should be important to the ACBL (and hopefully it actually is!).

5) These tournaments are popular among new players. I suspect this is because the pressures of playing bridge against humans (rude opponents, critical partners, director calls, etc) are a serious turn off for new players. Getting new players to stick with the game and eventually develop into ACBL members is very important to the League. Hopefully they won't develop into being rude opponents, critical partners, or habitual director-callers at the same time

6) The possibility of cheating through communication with partner via phone or MSN or similar is not present in these tournaments. The possibility of easy cheating is one of the traditional objections that some ACBL officials have had to issuing masterpoints for online bridge. One would think that Robot Duplicates would alleviate some of these fears.

I suspect that several of the members of the ACBL BOD are not aware of these things (or even the basic rules of Robot Duplicates for that matter). Hopefully I will be able to do something about that before they vote on the motion in question

It is definitely the case that there are some misconceptions about Robot Duplicates out there. For example, the text of the motion itself suggests that the robots play very poorly. This is not true. I am certainly not claiming that GIB plays like an expert (yet!), but I do think that GIB's overall effectiveness compares favorably with "an average ACBL club player" or "an average new ACBL Life Master".

I have also heard rumors that Robot Duplicates are not considered by some to be "fair and true games of skill" (and as such are unworthy of masterpoints). Anyone who has played in one of these tournaments knows this is absurd.

Some people seem to think that "any game that includes a robot should not issue ACBL masterpoints". I can't imagine why anyone would think this, but maybe I will find out in San Diego

Besides the "cheating" issue mentioned above, there are some other general issues relating to online bridge that some people (no doubt including some BOD members) object to:

- potential to damage attendence at real life clubs and tournaments
- potential to win masterpoints at too fast a pace for comfort

This post is getting long enough so I will not address these issues here, but FWIW I think I am capable of offering compelling counter-arguments (same goes for the cheating issue).

Of course it is also possible that "political factors" which really have nothing to do with Robot Duplicates specifically are part of what is behind this motion, but I hope that the main driving factor is a lack of knowledge pertaining to Robot Duplicates (and perhaps to online bridge in general).

There is one general aspect of online bridge that should be a big positive as far as ACBL is concerned, but seems to be under-appreciated:

For growing numbers of ACBL members who have loved playing bridge and collecting ACBL masterpoints for many years, it is now the case that playing in clubs or tournaments is not practical or not possible due to circumstances related to things like health, money, geography, and availability. The ability to play online ACBL tournaments is a godsend for these people.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

fred, on Oct 30 2009, 11:54 PM, said:

It is definitely the case that there are some misconceptions about Robot Duplicates out there. For example, the text of the motion itself suggests that the robots play very poorly. This is not true. I am certainly not claiming that GIB plays like an expert (yet!), but I do think that GIB's overall effectiveness compares favorably with "an average ACBL club player" or "an average new ACBL Life Master".

Hi Fred

I agree with you regarding GIBs level of play. As I suggested in my original post, I think that it would be difficult to prove that the RR format has more variance than a more traditional event.

Was (somewhat) surprised by your comment about the text of the motion. The only communicae that I've seen is the following (which doesn't seem to discuss level of play)

Quote

Item 093-36: Robot / Electronic Player Masterpoints
No masterpoints shall be issued in any game in which robots or other electronic players are involved.

[mike777]

http://googlemini.acbl.org/search?q=cache:...ection&oe=UTF-8



1) It does look like the issue is about robots and masterpoints. (093-36)
2) I also noticed a motion to rescind the 1/3 rule of online points.(093-34)

[fred]

hrothgar, on Oct 30 2009, 10:34 PM, said:

fred, on Oct 30 2009, 11:54 PM, said:

It is definitely the case that there are some misconceptions about Robot Duplicates out there. For example, the text of the motion itself suggests that the robots play very poorly. This is not true. I am certainly not claiming that GIB plays like an expert (yet!), but I do think that GIB's overall effectiveness compares favorably with "an average ACBL club player" or "an average new ACBL Life Master".

Hi Fred

I agree with you regarding GIBs level of play. As I suggested in my original post, I think that it would be difficult to prove that the RR format has more variance than a more traditional event.

Was (somewhat) surprised by your comment about the text of the motion. The only communicae that I've seen is the following (which doesn't seem to discuss level of play)

Quote

Item 093-36: Robot / Electronic Player Masterpoints
No masterpoints shall be issued in any game in which robots or other electronic players are involved.

What I saw contained quite a bit more detail (like who submitted the motion, the reasons for the motion, a brief attempt to weigh the costs of accepting the motion...).

I am not sure if it what I saw was intended for public eyes (or for my eyes for that matter) so unless I learn otherwise I am not going to post the full text of the motion here (sorry).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mycroft]

crazy4hoop, on Oct 29 2009, 07:51 PM, said:

Sorry if this belongs in Josh's other thread but I
can't believe ACBL is considering getting
rid of the robot tourneys.
Everyone I know loves them and does not
want them to go away.

That being said,
how are we supposed to keep these
exciting tournaments sanctioned by the ACBL?

Robot races, robot rewards, and robot duplicates all fit
under the category of fun events.
Losing them would be terrible
even though I guess I understand why ACBL wants
such a feat as becoming life master to be done in a "brick and mortar" setting.

Initially I thought the same thing.

However, after some thought I realized that there was
an argument for restricting these things. A
very reasonable complaint would be that masterpoint ratings
essentially should remain "how you've done against people."

Maybe the comment that they're "online points" and therefore
only colourless, limited in scope for LM status ,
not like "real points" against "real people", will help.
Eventually, it's not my decision, and it doesn't matter to me. By the way,
you probably don't want to click all the links - just my attempt to link "appropriately" to the comment. Signed,

?

[awm]

It's probably worth emphasizing that, as in any pairs event, you are competing against the other players sitting in your direction.

If the situation was that a human player was competing against robots, and the human player could earn masterpoints for outperforming relatively weak robot players, then there would certainly be a problem.

But the competition is between human players, who are sitting in the same seat and playing with equally good (or bad) robot partners. This is essentially a pure form of individual tournament, and it does measure the caliber of play of a particular human when compared to the other competing humans. In principle even if GIB played quite poorly, this would still be a fair event because the humans compete against each other.

[bd71]

fred, on Oct 30 2009, 03:54 PM, said:

6) The possibility of cheating through communication with partner via phone or MSN or similar is not present in these tournaments. The possibility of easy cheating is one of the traditional objections that some ACBL officials have had to issuing masterpoints for online bridge. One would think that Robot Duplicates would alleviate some of these fears.

Fred, I almost included a comment similar to this in the message to my district director which I sent you. But as I was thinking about it, I'm not sure it holds water. I doubt that the ACBL board is specifically worried about "cheating through communication with partner via phone or MSN". Rather, they are worried about cheating, period. And cheating in the ACBL robot games would still be relatively easy if you had two accounts and previewed some hands with one account so that you could bid or play defense double dummy with the other account.

Regardless of the cheating threat, I think these tournaments are excellent and should be ACBL-sanctioned, so I want to be sure you have the strongest set of arguments. I fear that this specific argument is relatively easy to rebut, and would be better left out. Instead, recommend you marshal the best empirical evidence you have on why you think cheating, while possible, is minimal in these tournaments.

Best of luck.