[bluecalm]

Quote

For a recent Xmas party session I got the computer to deal some wild and interesting hands - and I rejected the first batch of hands as one seat had very few cards.

I think it's only ok for small club tournaments where nobody cares and you still probably should tell people that this tournament is going to be "wild".
Setting computer to deal "wild" hands is unfair. Rejecting bashes of hands is also unfair (because it makes some hands more likely to occur than others). I know some td's in poland do that I think we need more education about randomness and fairness. If you change setting from "completely random" to "somewhat random" like you did you are hurting some players and their methods and you are rewarding superstitious types who think:
"N can't have all the cards", "This tournament has wild hands" who based their play on those assumptions.

[hrothgar]

Fluffy, on Jan 18 2010, 09:06 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Jan 18 2010, 05:29 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Jan 18 2010, 08:18 PM, said:

But ok, I made my points and nobody agrees, so I am probably wrong.

Word to the wise: Starting your argument with a fairly obvious lie is a bad way to convince people of anything...

I don't understand this, nor the thing about a white queen either, if you could elaborate

The odds that you could play a session of any reasonable length where you averaged 14+ HCPs and your partner averages 12+ HCPs are fairly small.

The White Queen is a character from Alice in Wonderland who famously believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

[peachy]

jdonn, on Jan 18 2010, 11:08 AM, said:

Come on Fluffy this suggestion is silly. Randomness is part of the game that is both necessary and desirable.

plus specifically explained in Law to be not bridge. Cooking the deals no matter how well-intended, is not lawful.

Holiday fun fun and goulashes can be fun but those are not "real" bridge. Tournaments are rea, they award masterpoints or whatever, and the hands at a tournament must conform to the laws.

[Jboling]

I agree with Fluffy, I suggested something similar in a domestic discussion some time ago. My argument was that competitions would me more fair if all players would have about the same number of points to play around with. Especially in short tournaments the average number of points for a certain pair can vary a lot, and a pair with a low average on the hcp will obviously have less impact on its results. My interpretation of limiting the average is that is a sort of quality control of the set of the deal, one just discard the obviously unfair sets, with the aim of getting fairer results and more pleasant experiences at the bridge table.

The main counterargument in the domestic discussion was that hard contriants on the average hcp could enable people to estimate partners hand strength in the later deals. I countersuggested that the constraints should be random and thus unknown, and possibly even soft (that is just reducing the likelihood for averages lying outside the constraints). And I also tried to show that keeping track of ones average would be very rarely of any use, especially if one intruduced some randomness in the constraints as well.

PS. During the domestic discussion I estimated the standard deviation for hcp for pair in a 26 deal competition, it was about 0.91. So in 95% of the cases the average should stay between 18.2 and 21.8, in a 26 deal tournament. Two sigmas was my first suggestion as constraints, but I think that could be slightly too narrow constraints. Due to that people could then with a reasonable frequency use the constraints for some information about partners strength in the last deals. With some information I mean that maybe 1/20 of the sets one can on the last five deals know that our sides expected average hcp is about 19 and not 20. It was much more unlikely that one could judge on the last deal that the other side has 30+ points, but it was possible. So introducing constraints is somewhat problematic, but I think it could be done, using random and unknown limits. And it would for sure increase fairness, on average at least...

[jdonn]

"Fair" is having the same chance at a good hand when I pick up my cards as my opponents do. Having it predetermined that I will have a good hand because my other hands were bad is not "fair". Bridge hands are indepedent events.

It may be a goal of bridge to remove randomness of final results, but not randomness of hands.

[Jlall]

LOL

[peachy]

Jari, on Jan 18 2010, 06:25 PM, said:

I agree with Fluffy, I suggested something similar in a domestic discussion some time ago. My argument was that competitions would me more fair if all players would have about the same number of points to play around with. Especially in short tournaments the average number of points for a certain pair can vary a lot, and a pair with a low average on the hcp will obviously have less impact on its results. My interpretation of limiting the average is that is a sort of quality control of the set of the deal, one just discard the obviously unfair sets, with the aim of getting fairer results and more pleasant experiences at the bridge table.

The main counterargument in the domestic discussion was that hard contriants on the average hcp could enable people to estimate partners hand strength in the later deals. I countersuggested that the constraints should be random and thus unknown, and possibly even soft (that is just reducing the likelihood for averages lying outside the constraints). And I also tried to show that keeping track of ones average would be very rarely of any use, especially if one intruduced some randomness in the constraints as well.

PS. During the domestic discussion I estimated the standard deviation for hcp for pair in a 26 deal competition, it was about 0.91. So in 95% of the cases the average should stay between 18.2 and 21.8, in a 26 deal tournament. Two sigmas was my first suggestion as constraints, but I think that could be slightly too narrow constraints. Due to that people could then with a reasonable frequency use the constraints for some information about partners strength in the last deals. With some information I mean that maybe 1/20 of the sets one can on the last five deals know that our sides expected average hcp is about 19 and not 20. It was much more unlikely that one could judge on the last deal that the other side has 30+ points, but it was possible. So introducing constraints is somewhat problematic, but I think it could be done, using random and unknown limits. And it would for sure increase fairness, on average at least...

Disagree with any attempt to manipulate the hands. Besides, it is against the rules of the game wherethe rules say the hands are to be random. But as said in another response here, cooked deals are fine in a private game were no masterpoints are awarded.

[Fluffy]

sorry to be #@%& peachy, but there is a outside world from the US, masterpoints only exist in the US.

I dunno the laws, and have no clue if the laws you are referring to are ACBL ones or WBF ones. I still don't care, on our local clubs we do a ton of things against the rules and we don't complain.

People seem to think that getting advantage of the prior strenght you've got is fairly easy, and I think it is almost impossible, specially if you don't play the full set of hands.

A risk I am willing to pay on an evening in the local to avoid people getting upset having no bid on most hands. If 90% of the time it won't change anything, but the 10% extra it makes it more fair and enjoyable to everyone, it looks like a good thing to me.

[bluecalm]

Quote

LOL

QFT. Please stop this topic. Anything bu truly random hands is ridiculous.
People are building their methods and bridge judgment based on the assumption that deals are random. If you change it it will pay off to have skewed judgement in direction you skew the deals.
People who are like : "well i got my share of 3NT's now, gotta be careful" will benefit while sane players who think : "it doesnt matter that I wont 5 games so far, gotta play normally" will lose.

[jdonn]

Fluffy, on Jan 18 2010, 08:08 PM, said:

sorry to be #@%& peachy, but there is a outside world from the US, masterpoints only exist in the US.

Um, so you will be returning your 130 masterpoints to the World Bridge Federation then?
Fluffy!

[peachy]

Fluffy, on Jan 18 2010, 08:08 PM, said:

sorry to be #@%& peachy, but there is a outside world from the US, masterpoints only exist in the US.

I dunno the laws, and have no clue if the laws you are referring to are ACBL ones or WBF ones. I still don't care, on our local clubs we do a ton of things against the rules and we don't complain.

People seem to think that getting advantage of the prior strenght you've got is fairly easy, and I think it is almost impossible, specially if you don't play the full set of hands.

A risk I am willing to pay on an evening in the local to avoid people getting upset having no bid on most hands. If 90% of the time it won't change anything, but the 10% extra it makes it more fair and enjoyable to everyone, it looks like a good thing to me.

Masterpoints exist in most if not all national organizations and also the WBF. I said nothing about ACBL and did not intend my comments that way.

What is this? http://www.aebridge.com/aebdynamic/dyncont...asp?submenu=314

Respect for the game requires that the rules of the game are followed; unless it is a private function for whatever purpose, in which case manipulating the deals is fine, but that is a no-no in real bridge. The Laws are the same everywhere (with one or too optional rules to choose among them). The are not ACBL or any country-specific.

[xcurt]

It happens. My personal record for atrocious holding over 24 boards is about 7.2 HCP. If you don't like it don't play pairs.

Howie Weinstein once told me "you're dealt one in four pair games." That's probably about right.

[Jlall]

xcurt, on Jan 18 2010, 10:49 PM, said:

It happens. My personal record for atrocious holding over 24 boards is about 7.2 HCP. If you don't like it don't play pairs.

Howie Weinstein once told me "you're dealt one in four pair games." That's probably about right.

Hmm... seems like he must have been talking about national pair games, or maybe about regionals when pairs were the premier event.

[Jboling]

Let me give you a counterexample, let us say all the deals in a tournament are distributed 40 points to N-S and 0 points to E-W. It is extremely unlikely, but it is possible. Would it be a fair and nice tournament, especially for the pairs that would sit E-W all the time? No, and the results would probably be close to 50% to everybody, and if a director would note this in advance he would redeal the hands without further thought. I asked directors about this, and yes they do look through the deals before the tournaments, and occasionally redeal the deals. So we actually have some kind of quality control of the deals already. And it could be automated, and it could be done so that nobody would notice the difference, except that the freak sets of deals would disappear, but nobody would miss those. For instance such that 99% of the deals have expected hcp for any pair is 20.0, and with the limits 0 and 40. And in the 1% of the deals where we have bias, one could do it such that in most cases this information would be uncertain to the players.

Yet another way of rephrasing it, the set of deals used in a tournament could be viewed as a test of bridge skill. The test should aim at testing all the players skill, and the more high cards you have the more your skill will be put to a test. Thus if a player gets significantly less points in a tournament, the players skill will have a smaller impact on his/her result. Bridge players are here the customers that buy these bridge skill tests called tournamanents, and they would deserve tests that are as fair as possible.

And yet another argument (I'll stop after this one), I am quite convinced that hand dealt deals are much more biased (towards balanced distributions) than deals that would go through a well designed hcp-limit test. And the bias from hand dealing concerns more or less every deal, but still we agree to play hand dealt deals.

[jdonn]

Jari, on Jan 19 2010, 03:28 AM, said:

I asked directors about this, and yes they do look through the deals before the tournaments, and occasionally redeal the deals.

What? Where do you live? That's awful if it's true, I've never heard of such a thing happening.

[Fluffy]

I can believe anything from directors lol.

[hanp]

Jari, on Jan 19 2010, 03:28 AM, said:

Let me give you a counterexample, let us say all the deals in a tournament are distributed 40 points to N-S and 0 points to E-W.

Roughly how likely do you think it is that this happens in the lifetime of planet earth, say?

[mich-b]

I understand Fluffy's point and his frustration, but I think his "solution" is very poor.
The better "solution" is simply for bridge tournaments to consist of more hands.
I think that in order to be considered "at least somewhat serious" a tournament needs to include around 70-80 hands for MP and more for IMPs.

Anything less than that , including the very popular around here lately "one session of 30 boards" tournaments , may be fun, and give some estimate of performance, but IMO the results should not be taken too seriously.

[Jboling]

jdonn, on Jan 19 2010, 04:03 AM, said:

Jari, on Jan 19 2010, 03:28 AM, said:

I asked directors about this, and yes they do look through the deals before the tournaments, and occasionally redeal the deals.

What? Where do you live? That's awful if it's true, I've never heard of such a thing happening.

I think it had more to do with that people complain about computer generated hands that are too freakish (becouse they are used with balanced hand dealt ones), and earlier days when there actually were problems with computer generated deals. So my statement might not be accurate for todays situation. But still I'm not revealing where I'm from, I can tell that it's outside US, so Josh doesn't have to start mistrusting his TDs . But do you really think that any TD with a instict for self-preservation would let through a set of deals with the 40-0 hcp-distribution on all deals? Of course not, the TD would (at least) be accused of manipulation of the deals, if he/she wouldn't manipulate the deals by redealing them! Of course the likelihood for such a set of deals is extremely small, I haven't even seen a single deal with all the points on one side.

[hrothgar]

Jari, on Jan 19 2010, 04:39 PM, said:

But  still I'm not revealing where I'm from, I can tell that it's outside US, so Josh doesn't have to start mistrusting his TDs  .

Could it be... Finland?

(If I met someone named "Jari", that would be my first guess...)