[jdulmage]

What is in place to prevent somebody from using another player's ACBL number.

Why this would be bad is because you could just get an Expert or even a group of people to all use the same ACBL number to help you achieve points.

There should be a barrier in place to prevent this from happening.

[hrothgar]

Fred and Uday could very well have implemented some kind of security system. Right now, if BBO bars a player from the site, the server software is able to recognize if that player is using the same PC to create a new user ID. I have no idea how they went about implementing this feature, however, I suspect that this could be modified to protect against the this type of nefarious activity.

With this said and done, I don't see why they should bother...

The sooner that people learn that Masterpoints don't have any kind of value, the happier they will be. Masterpoints are a marketing scam. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Suppose that EvilPlayer1, hires a bunch of experts to collect masterpoints for him.
Does this hurt me in any way shape or form? (The answer is No...)

Suppose that SaltoftheEarth2 hires a pro to partner her, places in a lot more tournaments, and gets a lot of masterpoints. Does this matter to me in any way, shape, or form? Once again, the answer is no.

[jdulmage]

Thanks for your unprofessional and bias reply.

I'll seek my answers with somebody who isn't going to sit there and bleed his gums about how masterpoints are of no value.

To me, they are, I started bridge at 15 and got away and was never given the chance to be involved in the sex, the drugs and the alcohol, not to mention other bad habits that teenagers pick up, I found picking up a hand at the bridge table was more fun than anything else in the world, even hanging with my friends. I am currently 20 and I became a life master at 19 and from going around the world, and grudging it out with pick up partners to earn my gold card. I never once hired a professional and 95% of the time, I was the better player of the partnership. I earned my status, I didn't buy it, and I would thank you not to insult the game in such a manner.

Some of us enjoy trying to rank themselves in the top lists, grab trophies in special events and gain some status. This is the only "sport" where the worst players can play against the best players and this is the only game where anybody of any age can acquire a rank, a meaning in life, a status to call their own. This game encouraged me and now I am a director and I teach bridge to others. But if there were not masterpoints, I don't think I would have played as much, because there would be nothing for me to look back on and say "I did it"

[luis]

jdulmage: I think I agree with you in many things about bridge. I also like bridge as a "sport" and winning, collecting trophies and trying to represent my country are goals that I'd love to achieve.
In my opinion there's a disctinction between the "sports" facet of bridge and the "business" facet of bridge. Masterpoints are "business", the sole fact that they are giving Masterpoints for online play means that Masterpoints have absolutely no value from a sports point of view, as you say anyone can sit at a PC, use a celphone or blackberry or whatever to pass information to his pd and collect a bunch of masterpoints. This makes me think that masterpoints are only colorful mirrors to give to those that want to pay the ACBL to play a tournament.

Just my 2 cents.

[hrothgar]

>To me, they are, I started bridge at 15 and got away and was never
>given the chance to be involved in the sex, the drugs and the alcohol,
>not to mention other bad habits that teenagers pick up

I have some masterpoints.
Trust me when I say that sex, drugs, and alcohol are a LOT more satisfying.

[jdulmage]

at the age of 15, to say that drugs, sex and alcohol are positive things is wrong.

I sure hope you don't have children.

[jdulmage]

luis, on Jul 15 2004, 02:20 PM, said:

jdulmage: I think I agree with you in many things about bridge. I also like bridge as a "sport" and winning, collecting trophies and trying to represent my country are goals that I'd love to achieve.
In my opinion there's a disctinction between the "sports" facet of bridge and the "business" facet of bridge. Masterpoints are "business", the sole fact that they are giving Masterpoints for online play means that Masterpoints have absolutely no value from a sports point of view, as you say anyone can sit at a PC, use a celphone or blackberry or whatever to pass information to his pd and collect a bunch of masterpoints. This makes me think that masterpoints are only colorful mirrors to give to those that want to pay the ACBL to play a tournament.

Just my 2 cents.

That's true, but also these points have no meaning towards life master. You need black, gold, silver and red, these online points are "colorless", therefore you really can't use them towards anything except to build your masterpoint count. With 50 silver, 100 black, 25 red and 25 gold. That's 200 points in just color required, so it's still impossible to use these towards anything except maybe in some races.

[hrothgar]

jdulmage, on Jul 15 2004, 10:38 PM, said:

That's true, but also these points have no meaning towards life master. You need black, gold, silver and red, these online points are "colorless", therefore you really can't use them towards anything except to build your masterpoint count. With 50 silver, 100 black, 25 red and 25 gold. That's 200 points in just color required, so it's still impossible to use these towards anything except maybe in some races.

You do, of course, understand where all the pigmented points came from?

Silver points were deliberately created to boost attendence at ACBL regionals. In an similar fashion, the requirements for black points was instigated because club owners were worried that players were collection too many points in K.O.s at the Nationals...

The entire design of the Masterpoint system is very carefully manipulated to ensure that players are spending their dollars in the correct proportions in the correct establishments...

[hrothgar]

jdulmage, on Jul 15 2004, 10:35 PM, said:

at the age of 15, to say that drugs, sex and alcohol are positive things is wrong.

I sure hope you don't have children.

Actually, I said that they were satisfying, not positive.

With this said and done, I think that a lot of folks, American's in particular, have an extremely unhealthy pre-occupation with sex/drugs/alcohol. To a great extent, this seems to come about through a misguided attempt to completely shield teenagers from a completely "normal" part of life.

I think that the European approach towards alcohol is much more enlighted. I was able to try beer at quite a young age in Germany. While I love the stuff and have occasionally considered brewing as a profession, I didn't sucumb to binge drinking in college.

[the hog]

Does anyone want to swop my masterpoints for drugs, sex and alcohol please?

[uday]

There is no mechanism in place to prevent someone from supplying another players number. I don't have any plans to implement anything to secure this.

[paulhar]

jdulmage, on Jul 15 2004, 02:01 PM, said:

Thanks for your unprofessional and bias reply.

I'll seek my answers with somebody who isn't going to sit there and bleed his gums about how masterpoints are of no value.

Did you hear the true story about the lady who was frantic because she lost her masterpoint slips? (back when they had slips - I show my age ) Her friend suggested she try her safe deposit box and she replied "Yes, that's where they are!"

OK, let's be serious about the value of a masterpoint.


There's a game where people learn the difference between a club and a spade, and how the bidding ladder works, and then play duplicate bridge and win Masterpoints. I am dead serious - it's called Easybridge! (I believe the ! is part of the word.)

No matter how many weak pairs show up at a bracketed knockout, some of them will win points. In our Bridge Plus game (a step above EasyBridge!), we suggested that if they could form 16 teams of 4, one of them would win mucho colored points.

Although they have yet to give points away as a door prize, the 'Continuous Pairs' at a regional which run opposite the serious events are the next best thing. Hey, let's stratify 'em too!

As if that weren't bad enough, they came up with Handicap Games so that everybody could win points. Some clubs handicapped based on previous percentages, so if you played badly enough, eventually your handcap would reach your level of incompetence and you too would win points.

At a recent annual club game (I try to play one of THOSE a year too - the ACBL's masterpoint plan has not infected me), we were told halfway through the game that we were leading Flight B. I said, "There must be some kind of mistake." They said, "No mistake, we cut the field in half based on masterpoints per player, and the median pair has both players over 3000." I asked (with my partner's permission of course) whether we could disqualify ourselves from Flight B (permanently!) Let someone else have those points - apparently they aren't worth that much in barter for sex, drugs, or alcahol!

[1eyedjack]

idulmage

I cannot help predicting that in another 5 years you will have reversed your opinion. Most of us have gone through that phase and come out the other side.

If master points are truly attractive to the young and inexperienced players so that they attract new players to the game at least until they are "hooked" then they have done their job, even if they are made out of iron pyrites, and we should all be grateful for that effect.

Most of the players of any competence and experience however recognise that they are more of a revenue-raising feature than a measure of ability. And these opinions are those of players who have stacks of them to burn.

In principle it should be possible to design a master point system that does measure ability. Chess managed it. It requires that points depreciate over time, and here in the UK there have been introduced a class of depreciating points. For all I know you may have some in the US also.

The ease of obtaining different classes of points differs across national boundaries, and I have to say that the qualification of life master earned in the USA does not generate the respect that it should deserve among those outside the USA whose NCBOs appear to require you to work harder for that status. It cannot be in your interest as a good player for the rank to depreciate in that manner in the eyes of others.

In short, among good experienced players, to varying extents across the world, master points are considered an irrelevance. They are useful for raising funds from those who are fooled as to their true worth, and they may be useful for attracting new players (probably some overlap there). But the seasoned warrior is not fooled.

And it is no good accusing critics of insulting the game. If the criticism is valid then the insult is perpetrated by those who design the system, not those who criticise it. It is hard for any individual's opinion to be so impartial as to be entirely free of bias, but the opinions of experts who have stacks of master points and who value their own as worthless can hardly be accused of self-interest. Hrothgar's opinion is not isolated. It is mainstream.

[Dwayne]

jdulmage, on Jul 15 2004, 02:01 PM, said:

.... I started bridge at 15 and got away and was never given the chance to be involved in the sex, the drugs and the alcohol, not to mention other bad habits that teenagers pick up.

good grief.

At the risk of also sounding unprofessional and bias (sic), I can unequivocally state the most unattractive (in the non-physical sense) 20-something bridge players in my end of the world are exactly those who began playing bridge at 15 and have yet to taste the ... er life experiences that James has so assiduously avoided.

As for the value of masterpoints, don't get the regulars in this forum started. Uday mentions often enough the lack of hard-disk space at his ISP for us to be warned off going down this beaten road.

Dwayne (no... I am not related to Joyce deWitt)

[mikestar]

In large part I agree with the criticisms of the masterpoint system. That it is possible to in essense steal a ranking and allow anyone with sufficiect funds to buy equality with a player who works his ass off to achieve Life Master status is wrong.

Where I must vehemently disagree is with the implicit and explict criticism of this young man's life choices. I am 47 years old and haven't forgotten what it was like to be a teenager, in part because I am still paying the price for some of the wrong choices I made then. And I was a teen in the 1970's--rest assured it has gotten harder, not easier. We had to worry about syphlis and pregnancy. These kids have to worry about AIDS for God's sake! We had pot and heroin--there are designer drugs floating around now that can cause paralysis before you can get the needle out of your arm.

For the record, sex is more satisfying than bridge (drugs and alcohol are not--ask any AA or NA member). It is also infinitely more dangerous. I think a 15 year old who finds something safe to devote himself to while aquiring the necessary maturity to handle rewarding but dangerous life experiences is wise beyond his years.

I hope that when my boys reach their teen years that they will pick up a bridge hand, or sit down at a chess board, or take up . . . instead of trying to get into bed with random females, getting blitzed every weekend, and trying out the new latest and greatest high.

[uday]

It is the archive of hands that sometimes runs out of diskspace, not this discussion board.

There is no value to BBO in this ACBL/MP bashing ( quite the contrary -- every person you turn away from ACBL tourneys damages the ACBL, every person you turn away from our online ACBL tourneys damages BBO ).

[jdulmage]

Thanks all for the kind responses and I apologize in advance if I caused an uproar.

[paulhar]

1eyedjack, on Jul 16 2004, 01:20 AM, said:

It requires that points depreciate over time, and here in the UK there have been introduced a class of depreciating points. For all I know you may have some in the US also.

In fact, due to inflation, they have depreciating points here in the US. They don't take them away, but the effect is the same since they keep getting easier to get.

Look at the Top 500 races. It doesn't seem that long ago that 1000 points easily won the year's competition, now 3000 might not win. I tried to get more information from www.acbl.org but while they make it very easy to find out what's happening this year in lots of different races, I couldn't find what happened in prior years - perhaps they don't want to make this inflation too obvious.

Long before I joined in the Seventies, there was a special 'masterpoint' game where you could win a whole masterpoint! The good players would show up for this game trying to win that one point - wow - whole point. When I was coming up through the ranks, a point was much easier to get (just go to a sectional or regional Swiss Teams and eventually find your level) but the elusive gold points were far more difficult. You had to be first (!) in your section in an unrestricted game, or overall in the same. Which means you had to beat some pretty tough customers. Then came Flight B. I remember a very good friend saying that she would never be a Life Master because she never travelled to tournaments. Then she played in one Flight B event and 26 gold points dropped in her lap.

Now, so I don't have to repeat myself, you can see how points are handed out in my earlier post on this thread. The ACBL has now put themselves in the position of aquiring 'the same number of points as my friend who's a good player' an attainable goal for a newbie. They can't do that without inflating the points, just as governments around the world can't finance their spendthrift ways without inflating their dollars.

Here in the U.S. we don't need depreciating points. We already effectively have them.

Note to jdulmage: Don't be discouraged by the response to your post. Most of my posts get the same response. Eventually you will find people that agree with you. It feels good when it happens. (Six separate posters have said something like 'for once I agree with paulhar.') I'm a strong supporter of many unpopular positions and sometimes the other participants on the board convince me that I'm wrong but usually I just shake my head and ask myself, "What are they thinking?" like you must be thinking now. By the way, where were you when I was taking the entire BBO board alone on the subject 'player's rating'? Judging from your posts, you might have been my lone source of support.

[hrothgar]

uday, on Jul 16 2004, 03:48 PM, said:

There is no value to BBO in this ACBL/MP bashing ( quite the contrary -- every person you turn away from ACBL tourneys damages the ACBL, every person you turn away from our online ACBL tourneys damages BBO ).

Maybe, maybe not...

I strongly believe that the ACBL's business model is broken on a very fundamental level and headed towards a catastrophic failure. With this said and done, the while the business model has many long term problems it is seductively viable in the short run.

My greatest "worry" about online bridge is that some of the less savoury aspects of the ACBL's business model my be able to leap the digital divide... I'd hate to see the online bridge get dragged down when the ACBL passed into the great beyond.

In the long term, I think that BBO and the ACBL would both be best served if the value proposition for the ACBL's pay tournaments was based on tangible dimensions rather than simply selling masterpoints. More specifically, if I am going to pay for tournaments, then I expect:

1. Consistant application of a specific set of well known regulations
2. "Fair" movements that minimize the element of luck
3. Detailed analysis of tournament results
4. Hand analysis would be a nice addition...

[paulhar]

uday, on Jul 16 2004, 07:48 AM, said:

There is no value to BBO in this ACBL/MP bashing ( quite the contrary -- every person you turn away from ACBL tourneys damages the ACBL, every person you turn away from our online ACBL tourneys damages BBO ).

First, let me thank uday for his great contribution to BBO.

But please, give the members of BBO some credit. I'm not saying anything that isn't widely known. You have some pretty smart players playing here and any that don't know the true value of a masterpoint are going to find out.

Far from bashing masterpoints, I think they are the greatest invention of all time to propogate tournament bridge playing - which benefits all of us. The only thing I was questioning was that they had value.

Nor am I bashing the ACBL. They do a fine job of providing tournament bridge to those who want it.

A lot of players here on BBO who know the true value of a masterpoint nevertheless want to play in the ACBL tournaments online since they have come to expect a well run tournament and it's well worth thair dollar to play. The ACBL also does a pretty fair job of winner recognition which further enhances the value of an ACBL-run event.

And despite the negligable value of the masterpoint, we can still guage our success/failure at our annual tournament outing by how many masterpoints we won at THIS year's tournament.