[debrose]

jonottawa, on Dec 24 2009, 12:44 PM, said:

If we're going to bend over backwards to get girls on the junior team, we should also bend over backwards to get boys whose parents aren't expert bridge players on the team, since they're just about as rare.

They may be well on the way, thanks largely to Patty Tucker. The new youngest life master (9) Richard Jeng, and his brother Andrew Jeng (12), apparently have completely non-bridge playing parents. They learned exclusively through the Junior bridge program in Atlanta.

[rogerclee]

debrose, on Dec 24 2009, 07:27 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Dec 24 2009, 12:44 PM, said:

If we're going to bend over backwards to get girls on the junior team, we should also bend over backwards to get boys whose parents aren't expert bridge players on the team, since they're just about as rare.

They may be well on the way, thanks largely to Patty Tucker. The new youngest life master (9) Richard Jeng, and his brother Andrew Jeng (12), apparently have completely non-bridge playing parents. They learned exclusively through the Junior bridge program in Atlanta.

I also have non-bridge playing parents and learned completely from various people who took an interest in me.

[kfay]

Nobody in my family plays cards.

But then again I'm not very good so...

[mtvesuvius]

My dad plays bridge, however never really began playing seriously until I started. His family were always card players though. I learned to play poker when I was 3, Gin and Hearts at 4, and bridge when I was 5.

My mother probably hasn't touched a playing card in over 15 years... She has never been a card player, and her family doesn't play.

I believe that you have to be raised in a card playing environment in order to really become interested in bridge. This doesn't mean the parents have to play bridge. As long as they are involved playing hearts or spades or canasta or whatever else, it's often enough to get the kids interested in playing cards of any kind.

My dad, and his father, and his grandfather (and so on) all used to take trips out to a summer home of an aunt and spent weekends together playing cards/talking etc... Of course this very rarely happens anymore, especially with the kids. Usually at family gatherings, the kids go off and watch TV or play video games etc and don't spend any time playing cards or anything else. Not that I think this is a bad thing, but IMO the future of youth and junior bridge will be in online bridge.

[PeterGill]

Thanks Justin for time well-spent on your long post.

In the 1990s a former youth bridge organizer in Australia wrote an article quite similar to what Adam wrote here. Being gullible I thought he had a valid point, until Justin's post (and worldwide trends) convinced me that it's normal males to outnumber females at youth bridge - it's not something to worry about.

The top placegetters in America's new 2009 Youth NABC (Under 19, about 36 tables) were almost all (over 90%) male, being names like Adam Kaplan and Kevin Rosenberg, so the trend is likely to continue unless Deb and Michael Rosenberg have any daughters.

Young American females to keep an eye out for in the future might be
Asya Ladyzhensky, Amanda Pham and Madeline Power, but there's not many.

Why would America consistently have slightly less females (less than 10%) among their top youth ranks than many other countries (more like 20%)? It could be that other countries have had National Youth Bridge programs (events) for longer than USA, e.g. Australia has its 42nd annual Youth Week in January, Europe had its 22nd Youth Championships (including their 6th Girls Championships) in Romania this year, but America had only its 2nd Youth NABC in 2009. Still, even in the other countries males still far outnumber females, although I think there was a female pair in Israel's silver medal winning team at the 2009 European U21 Championships.

Peter Gill
Australia

[jdonn]

rogerclee, on Dec 24 2009, 10:02 PM, said:

debrose, on Dec 24 2009, 07:27 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Dec 24 2009, 12:44 PM, said:

If we're going to bend over backwards to get girls on the junior team, we should also bend over backwards to get boys whose parents aren't expert bridge players on the team, since they're just about as rare.

They may be well on the way, thanks largely to Patty Tucker. The new youngest life master (9) Richard Jeng, and his brother Andrew Jeng (12), apparently have completely non-bridge playing parents. They learned exclusively through the Junior bridge program in Atlanta.

I also have non-bridge playing parents and learned completely from various people who took an interest in me.

Mine are not experts either. My mother and father are both flight B players who quit playing when they had kids and started again when I started to play.

[jjbrr]

Nor are mine.

[Phil]

Mr Grandfather earned extra money playing train bridge in the 1950's and 60's between Los Altos and San Francisco. My parents consistently won at party bridge - which had more to do with 'party' than 'bridge'.

Neither of them taught me, but they did have copies of Goren's Sports Illustrated Book Of Bridge and Goren's Bridge Complete around the house

[PrecisionL]

Poker was my parents game and mine - won $ for Prom tickets in college several years in a row.

I learned bridge at my first job after college when I was 24 (5 Weeks to Winning Bridge). Was a pinochle player in college and canasta in high school.

Larry

[NickRW]

Well - my 2 cents worth - I think Bridge all over the world - not just the US - needs more young people, more not too old people and more not 60 yet people - and who cares what gender they are.

Nick

[TimG]

TimG, on Dec 21 2009, 02:57 PM, said:

barmar, on Dec 21 2009, 02:49 PM, said:

ACBL needs to come up with the ranking system that they've supposedly been working on for the past several years.

Did you notice that the new President has said that a rating system will be amongst his priorities? Tell him you think that's a great idea when you see him in Newton. I know I plan to.

I spoke with Rich DeMartino and his description of the problem and solution reveals that his idea of a rating system is something within the framework of masterpoints. His objective (in a nutshell) is not to create a whole new rating system, but come up with some basis so that lifetime masterpoint accumulators (those that win ~100 points a year for 25+ years) can "play down" while still keeping up-and-comers who have won regional events on their way to 2500 points out of Flight C. It sounds like the goal is to separate the life-time Flight B (and C) players from those just passing through.

[Vilgan]

TimG, on Jan 11 2010, 12:40 PM, said:

TimG, on Dec 21 2009, 02:57 PM, said:

barmar, on Dec 21 2009, 02:49 PM, said:

ACBL needs to come up with the ranking system that they've supposedly been working on for the past several years.

Did you notice that the new President has said that a rating system will be amongst his priorities? Tell him you think that's a great idea when you see him in Newton. I know I plan to.

I spoke with Rich DeMartino and his description of the problem and solution reveals that his idea of a rating system is something within the framework of masterpoints. His objective (in a nutshell) is not to create a whole new rating system, but come up with some basis so that lifetime masterpoint accumulators (those that win ~100 points a year for 25+ years) can "play down" while still keeping up-and-comers who have won regional events on their way to 2500 points out of Flight C. It sounds like the goal is to separate the life-time Flight B (and C) players from those just passing through.

Seems reasonable, especially if there is a way for true seniors (aka like 75+) who are starting to lose their faculties to drop down as well. I know we have a few around here who were definitely A players in their prime... but not so much now that they are in their 80s.

[awm]

A couple questions that might be worth asking about rating systems:

(1) Is there any adjustment for number of events played? Accumulating a lot of masterpoints per year certainly depends somewhat on skill, but it also depends on frequency of play. I know a number of good players who have full time (non-bridge) jobs and accumulate fewer points per year than much weaker players who are on the "tournament trail" full time (or even those who play at their local club five days a week). However, if you measure something like "winning percentage" or "points per session played" you'll get a better measurement.

(2) On the other hand, I also know a number of bridge pros who are reasonably good players (probably not world class, but pretty good) and frequently play with very weak clients. They accumulate a lot of points per year (because they play a lot of sessions) but measurements like "winning percentage" or "points per session" tend to get dragged down because their partners are so bad.

Of course, perhaps there's an argument that anything is better than the current system. However, I think there's some danger if people aren't allowed to play up (as is the current system most of the time). This would mean that some very good players who just don't play all that regularly any more (and thus have low "recent points" even if they have some accumulated points) will be forced to play down in low brackets. In some cases these players might give up playing regional-level events altogether if they can't get into a reasonable KO bracket.

[TimG]

awm, on Jan 11 2010, 09:53 PM, said:

However, I think there's some danger if people aren't allowed to play up (as is the current system most of the time).

Isn't that only the case in bracketed events? I know there has been some move to bracketing Swisses, but in general aren't non-KO events still primarily flighted or stratified?

It has been my experience that in regionals, except the very large ones, getting into the top bracket of a KO event is not too difficult and when masterpoints do not qualify one for the top bracket, a request will often be honored.

[blackshoe]

I dunno. Seems to me one should always be allowed to "play up". If you're nominally flight C and do well in Flight A you probably deserve your points. And certainly if you want to play MidChart conventions, you have to find (usually higher level) events where those are allowed. It would be a shame, IMO, if someone couldn't play a system he would like to play because of some arbitrary judgement that he's not "good enough".

[Mbodell]

blackshoe, on Jan 11 2010, 08:23 PM, said:

I dunno. Seems to me one should always be allowed to "play up". If you're nominally flight C and do well in Flight A you probably deserve your points. And certainly if you want to play MidChart conventions, you have to find (usually higher level) events where those are allowed. It would be a shame, IMO, if someone couldn't play a system he would like to play because of some arbitrary judgement that he's not "good enough".

While I generally agree, and have only recently myself left the "just passing through" flight C there are obvious exceptions to this. For instance events which require prequalification (GNT/NAP) or certain minimum thresholds (life master pairs, blue ribbon pairs, platinum pairs). So there are obviously some events where people don't want to allow the randoms to "play up". I think it is right to have some of these events. Where to draw the line between "some" and this particular event you want to play is interesting. Also, in bracketed KO a theoretical problem is if you have 20 teams that want to play up in the top bracket but only allow 16 teams per bracket.

[jeffford76]

Mbodell, on Jan 11 2010, 11:55 PM, said:

While I generally agree, and have only recently myself left the "just passing through" flight C there are obvious exceptions to this. For instance events which require prequalification (GNT/NAP) or certain minimum thresholds (life master pairs, blue ribbon pairs, platinum pairs). So there are obviously some events where people don't want to allow the randoms to "play up".

Sure, you have to prequalify for NAP/GNT, but there's no rule preventing anyone from playing in a higher flight at qualification time. Many districts run GNT superflight first so that anyone who wants can play in that and still play in their "real" flight.

[eyhung]

As a working stiff who does not have time to accumulate masterpoints, I have never run into a problem with "playing up", so I don't think it's a problem at all, at least not in the SF Bay Area or NABCs. The ACBL recognizes that the masterpoint system is not a definitive ranking system so they are willing to be accomodating.

And mbodell, nothing prevents you from playing up in GNT or NAP (although you are restricted to one flight for NAP). I myself am planning to play in Flt Open, A, and B in your district this year, so you can do the same. If the ACBL wants to give me three chances to win some money, I figure, why not?

[Vampyr]

eyhung, on Jan 12 2010, 05:54 PM, said:

I have never run into a problem with "playing up"

I thought that this could be a problem with the (inexplicably) hugely popular bracketed knockouts.

[peachy]

Vampyr, on Jan 12 2010, 08:51 PM, said:

eyhung, on Jan 12 2010, 05:54 PM, said:

I have never run into a problem with "playing up"

I thought that this could be a problem with the (inexplicably) hugely popular bracketed knockouts.

Nothing inexplicable there. Bracketed KO's are a surefire way to easy masterpoints for those who want them. And I assure you there are huge numbers of ACBL members who do want them... Now that many of the events have started to have not only one but TWO rounds of three-table roundrobins to begin with in each bracket. I expect part of the reason is to accommodate those masterpoint hunters and the other a business reason: more card fees per event for ACBL.