[jsbach2]

'm not sure how this works, but here it goes. bbo is an excellent site. with many good features. however the method available for rating a players skill level leaves much to be desired. i am interested in ideas and concrete suggestions about a method that would provide a more realistic expert, advanced, etc. rating system. i hope other members have the same concern, and perhaps with all of us putting our heads together, we can come up with an answer. your thoughts....

[jjbrr]

http://forums.bridge...showtopic=35525

[hrothgar]

jsbach2, on Jul 23 2010, 09:01 PM, said:

'm not sure how this works, but here it goes. bbo is an excellent site. with many good features. however the method available for rating a players skill level leaves much to be desired. i am interested in ideas and concrete suggestions about a method that would provide a more realistic expert, advanced, etc. rating system. i hope other members have the same concern, and perhaps with all of us putting our heads together, we can come up with an answer. your thoughts....

What if we killed everyone but Fred and then rated him as "the best"?

[inquiry]

I don't think BBO is going to get a rating system.

If you are interested in a bridge rating system, here is the method used on another bridge site, the rating is called a Lehman's. This description of how to calculate the value is by a college professor.

http://math.bu.edu/p.../leh1/leh1.html

If you read that and understand it, you are way better at math than me, but here is what Stephen Pickett, who spent a lot of time playing around with millions and millions of Bridge Base hands has to say about it, and some of the tweeks he recommends (he has others as well)...

First: in the equation:

      r'{N} := X{n}(r{N}+r{S}+r{E}+r{W})(r{N}/(r{N}+r{S})

The value of X{n} is a constant. Mr. Pickett suggest a value of "8" is ideal

Another thing he suggest, results known to be unfair (were a very highly rated player plays a very lowly player) to ingore those results in calculations. This is what use to be called bunny-bashing on another website

He also had suggestions about the time issue and number of hands played in a week and the effect that has on the ratings.

Stephen's program, bridgebrowser, uses both classical lehman's calcuations as described in the article I quoted above by Professor Glickman, and a version he came up with the tweeks i mentioned above and a few others.

[inquiry]

I probably should have included this link about lehman's as well

easier explaination of lehman

[Hanoi5]

Did you just say bridgebrowser has a lehman of bbo players?

[gwnn]

make a natural logarithm of the IQ's of people.

blame the faulty results on people with non-positive IQ's and kill them off.

repeat.

[inquiry]

Hanoi5, on Jul 23 2010, 01:42 PM, said:

Did you just say bridgebrowser has a lehman of bbo players?

Yes.

It has a calcuted MP and Imp lehman on everyone, plus a modified lehman, which you can modify further changing a number of parameters that factor into the equation.

However, since homebase club went silent (actually a year or two after that), the data for bridgebrowser has not been updated (there are some highly specific hands getting in, but not "many"). That is,the only hands in it that you played would be from before October 2009.

[Hanoi5]

What is homebase club and why did it go silent?

[junyi_zhu]

inquiry, on Jul 23 2010, 06:33 PM, said:

I don't think BBO is going to get a rating system.

If you are interested in a bridge rating system, here is the method used on another bridge site, the rating is called a Lehman's. This description of how to calculate the value is by a college professor.

http://math.bu.edu/p.../leh1/leh1.html

If you read that and understand it, you are way better at math than me, but here is what Stephen Pickett, who spent a lot of time playing around with millions and millions of Bridge Base hands has to say about it, and some of the tweeks he recommends (he has others as well)...

First: in the equation:

      r'{N} := X{n}(r{N}+r{S}+r{E}+r{W})(r{N}/(r{N}+r{S})

The value of X{n} is a constant. Mr. Pickett suggest a value of "8" is ideal

Another thing he suggest, results known to be unfair (were a very highly rated player plays a very lowly player) to ingore those results in calculations. This is what use to be called bunny-bashing on another website

He also had suggestions about the time issue and number of hands played in a week and the effect that has on the ratings.

Stephen's program, bridgebrowser, uses both classical lehman's calcuations as described in the article I quoted above by Professor Glickman, and a version he came up with the tweeks i mentioned above and a few others.

I really don't think it makes a lot of sense to rate individual's bridge skill since it's a partnership game. So a simple rating system like what those chess players have should be good enough to evaluate bridge partnership strength. If you really want to evaluate individual strength, you can use the results of gib tournaments I guess, which shows your strength partnering with gib.

[inquiry]

There is a simplified rating skeme out there, used I think on a dutch or australian bridge web site. No heavy math needed.

This system uses a rating system from 1 to 9. Everyone starts on level 1.

After 20 hands have been played, if you are something like +54% your rating goes up to the next highest level. This happens after 20 boards at each level. Down side if you are below something like +47% you go down level (level 1 you can't go below).

You can only play with and against people on your own level.

I don't think BBO will go to that either, but a room like the relaxed room, but called rating room might allow people to play with "like-leveled" competiion. Problem being the upper levels might never get populated with enough people to play...

[inquiry]

Hanoi5, on Jul 23 2010, 01:57 PM, said:

What is homebase club and why did it go silent?

Homebase was (is) an organization like sky club, bbo italia, bbo land, etc that could run tournaments on bridge base online and charge money. The key feature of homebase was it gave you free access to an online version of bridgebrowser. To gain access, all you had to do was play in one tournament. I forget the details, but I think it was something like you got 3 months access from the last time you played in a tournament.

There was also a nice webpage showing the hands you played that allowed you to easily review all hands of all players. Everything was hyperlinked with deep finessee makeable contracts given. While reviewing your results, you could click other players names and see what they did. You could have that automatically emailed to you as a pdf as well. Usually the web data and the email arrived within 3 minutes of finishing the event (everyone finishing not just you.). An example web result would be this My result from one tourney

At least once a day, the web posting also included hand analysis by someone. These were sometimes very good, sometimes sort of funny wrong.

In addition, you won BBO rating points just like in other tournaments. IT even had 50 cent events...

It went silent because people didn't want free access to bridgebrowser and/or wanted to win money in the other tournaments, and/or it was too much work to direct tournaments for 2 to 3 tables for the amount of money generated, or a combination of those things.

[Fluffy]

hrothgar, on Jul 23 2010, 06:09 PM, said:

jsbach2, on Jul 23 2010, 09:01 PM, said:

'm not sure how this works, but here it goes.  bbo is an excellent site.  with many good features.  however the method available for rating a players skill level leaves much to be desired.  i am interested in ideas and concrete suggestions about a method that would provide a more realistic expert, advanced, etc. rating system.  i hope other members have the same concern, and perhaps with all of us putting our heads together, we can come up with an answer.  your thoughts....

What if we killed everyone but Fred and then rated him as "the best"?

sounds like a good idea, but if I pay some ammount could you please leave me alive and call me "second best"?

[ggwhiz]

A lie detector would at least group the true experts with the psychopaths. Same thing really.

[matmat]

Fluffy, on Jul 23 2010, 03:45 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Jul 23 2010, 06:09 PM, said:

jsbach2, on Jul 23 2010, 09:01 PM, said:

'm not sure how this works, but here it goes.  bbo is an excellent site.  with many good features.  however the method available for rating a players skill level leaves much to be desired.  i am interested in ideas and concrete suggestions about a method that would provide a more realistic expert, advanced, etc. rating system.  i hope other members have the same concern, and perhaps with all of us putting our heads together, we can come up with an answer.  your thoughts....

What if we killed everyone but Fred and then rated him as "the best"?

sounds like a good idea, but if I pay some ammount could you please leave me alive and call me "second best"?

if you let me live, i promise i won't mind if you call the the worst player ever.

[jjbrr]

pass the koolaid imo

[Little Kid]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but how about this regarding BBO ratings:

Compare the results of players with tables where similar skill levels are displayed (or maybe average the table's level). If people keep getting good results, maybe they should increase their rating to compare with stronger tables. If they keep getting bad results they can reduce it to get roughly average. I assume nobody wants to keep getting minus IMPs just so they can put expert in their profile. It seems like a fair way to assess skill level yourself without having all the issues of blaming partners for poor skill levels you get assigned by a formula. Also you can just put Private if you don't want to bias comparison. It definitely isn't perfect but I would imagine people might end up putting up more realistic skill levels. Now everyone just puts "Expert" so that they don't get rejected from every table they try to join (while they are often intermediate at best). I don't even know if it is possible to implement this or how much it would slow down the rate at which tables get compared though? Any thoughts?

[pirate22]

A very good question-but with no possible outcome.unfortuneately.
one of the biggest problems,is the individual countries ratings {self regulated}
just quoting without prejudice is a Turkish expert compared to an Italian expert
it is as wide as the Atlantic/Pacific Oceans.
another feature is the individual's ego.when faced with the decision,what is my level----to ensure attracting like, persons, up goes the level of the assesment.
Reference my own particular assesment "Advanced" on a good day im World Class,
on a bad day im a Novice,sometimes on a medicore day im "Intermediate"
I find on the site{BBO} most experts are Rubbish.
Perhaps the WBF could throw some light on this subject.
The Masterpoint scheme is a non starter.its a money making concern,and an EGO inflator.
There is no Coordination world wide................... regards

[Free]

Fluffy, on Jul 23 2010, 09:45 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Jul 23 2010, 06:09 PM, said:

jsbach2, on Jul 23 2010, 09:01 PM, said:

'm not sure how this works, but here it goes.  bbo is an excellent site.  with many good features.  however the method available for rating a players skill level leaves much to be desired.  i am interested in ideas and concrete suggestions about a method that would provide a more realistic expert, advanced, etc. rating system.  i hope other members have the same concern, and perhaps with all of us putting our heads together, we can come up with an answer.  your thoughts....

What if we killed everyone but Fred and then rated him as "the best"?

sounds like a good idea, but if I pay some ammount could you please leave me alive and call me "second best"?

At least let Richard and me survive as well, so we can still play and MOSCITO doesn't vanish

[jjbrr]

lol@discussing this topic itt.