BBO Discussion Forums: gambling your masterpoints! - BBO Discussion Forums

Jump to content

  • 2 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

gambling your masterpoints! an opinion poll

Poll: would you enter this type of event? (26 member(s) have cast votes)

would you enter this type of event?

  1. yes (15 votes [57.69%])

    Percentage of vote: 57.69%

  2. no (11 votes [42.31%])

    Percentage of vote: 42.31%

Vote Guests cannot vote

#1 User is offline   scoob 

  • PipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 344
  • Joined: 2003-February-14
  • Location:calgary, ab (canada)

Posted 2004-October-20, 07:04

Imagine a sub-event at your favourite regional/national/whatever where the masterpoint awards are payed out from a purse of masterpoints collected from entrants, like a poker ante.

Larger awards, less inflation, and a higher level of competition perhaps?

Discuss.
0

#2 User is offline   Chamaco 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,908
  • Joined: 2003-December-02
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Rimini-Bologna (Italy)
  • Interests:Chess, Bridge, Jazz, European Cinema, Motorbiking, Tango dancing

Posted 2004-October-20, 07:11

That would be similar to the chess rating system.

In a chess tourney you can win or lose ELO rating points, acording to the difference between your expected result (calculated on the basis of the respective values of your opps' and your own pre-event ratings) and the actually scored result.
"Bridge is like dance: technique's important but what really matters is not to step on partner's feet !"
0

#3 User is offline   Free 

  • mmm Duvel
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 10,728
  • Joined: 2003-July-30
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Belgium
  • Interests:Duvel, Whisky

Posted 2004-October-20, 08:58

I don't care about such rankings. masterpoints are [ui:] imo.
"It may be rude to leave to go to the bathroom, but it's downright stupid to sit there and piss yourself" - blackshoe
0

#4 User is offline   doofik 

  • PipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 156
  • Joined: 2003-November-18

Posted 2004-October-20, 09:17

I second the motion Free. We've all met players with callousses on their butts, huge number of master points and the ability to play not great. Certainly not commensurate with the number of points. But all that being said, players like to be ranked. Look at the proliferation of ranked sites.

Jola
0

#5 User is offline   Rebound 

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 518
  • Joined: 2004-July-25

Posted 2004-October-20, 09:30

Chamaco has something with the chess rating system. Way better than masterpoints as a method of ranking across a large field. One great thing about such a rating is that, unlike masterpoints, accumulating indefinitely, the higher your chess rating, the harder it is to increase it any further and you can mainly only do it by playing people of higher rating. I think it would work great in an environment like BBO.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - but it might improve my bridge.
0

#6 User is offline   ehhh 

  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 82
  • Joined: 2004-January-09
  • Location:SW Ontario, CA

Posted 2004-October-20, 09:37

Free's (et al) outspoken comment is nothing but an insult and put down to players who for years have remained loyal to the game they love. So what if they have amassed large amounts of masterpoints. These are nothing more than a testimonial of their loyality to the game and their club. Callous comments ought to be tempered with respect!
A promise made is a debt unpaid....R Service
0

#7 User is offline   Free 

  • mmm Duvel
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 10,728
  • Joined: 2003-July-30
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Belgium
  • Interests:Duvel, Whisky

Posted 2004-October-20, 10:10

ehhh, on Oct 20 2004, 04:37 PM, said:

Free's (et al) outspoken comment is nothing but an insult and put down to players who for years have remained loyal to the game they love. So what if they have amassed large amounts of masterpoints. These are nothing more than a testimonial of their loyality to the game and their club. Callous comments ought to be tempered with respect!

If these masterpoints just reflect your loyalty to the game & club, WHY would anyone play for them anyway??? :blink: In a theoretical matter, you could've played for years, earned tons of masterpoints, and lose them all again because you get beaten in such a suggested tourney.

No, masterpoints are a way to RANK people, and as we all know, it's not a great ranking-system. Such tourneys might help a bit, but as I said, I'm not interested in rankings...

I don't know who edited my post, but I give you the opportunity to make yourself known again.
"It may be rude to leave to go to the bathroom, but it's downright stupid to sit there and piss yourself" - blackshoe
0

#8 User is offline   pclayton 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 9,151
  • Joined: 2003-June-11
  • Location:Southern California

Posted 2004-October-20, 10:45

Ok, so what? All the more reason to enter an event against a person with gobs of MPs acquired through attendance; gives us a better chance to win.

Random thoughts about MP's:

Masterpoints = little (but SOME) correlation with skill.

Average MP earned per event = better and easy to calculate.

ELO points like Chess = best, but difficult to calculate. And please suggest how a practical transition can take place.

WBF rankings = interesting idea with rankings that 'erode'.

Masterpoints create some arbitrary milestones, especially for the newer players. If it helps curb a declining population in the league - then fine. Remember the rush you got when you made LM? Even if you are totally jaded about MPs, I'll bet you still felt a feeling of accomplishment.

Oh? You don't have your gold card yet? well, keep practicing, and stop griping about the skill levels of players with MP's :blink:

For me; include more criteria for the different strata that requires a certain # of accumulated blue ribbon quals, or platinum points or whatever. I think the requirement of a national championship for the rank of Grand Life Master (in addition to 10K points) is a GREAT idea; lets extend it to Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond; or make the rankings a Bronze 'star', etc.. .
"Phil" on BBO
0

#9 User is offline   Rebound 

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 518
  • Joined: 2004-July-25

Posted 2004-October-20, 11:01

I believe the suggested rating system could be implemented via software, although that's easy for me to say since I don't have to do any of the programming heh heh. I've seen it used for other types of online game servers, backgammon, for example.

As a starting point, the same could be done as in chess where everyone begins with a set rating. Until play begins to cause the ratings to more accurately reflect the player's ability, the current self-rating system could be maintained.

There is one major drawback to this system. It causes too many players to try to guard thier ratings. BBO goes a long way to preventing this already, however, by penalizing players who drop out of tourneys and so on.

I forsee the need to answer one other question - how to distinguish between club and tournament play for rating purposes. I suppose it could be added as an option to the table/tournament to choose whether play in this case would be rated.

Just some thoughts on the subject....
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - but it might improve my bridge.
0

#10 User is offline   scoob 

  • PipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 344
  • Joined: 2003-February-14
  • Location:calgary, ab (canada)

Posted 2004-October-20, 13:21

Posted Image
0

#11 User is offline   Flame 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,085
  • Joined: 2004-March-26
  • Location:Israel

Posted 2004-October-20, 15:58

Chess rating is definetly better. You can know that from how importent is rating in chess as opposite to bridge.
I guess there could be a conpermise between the two which would be perfect, meaning you wont lose much.
0

#12 User is offline   Free 

  • mmm Duvel
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 10,728
  • Joined: 2003-July-30
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Belgium
  • Interests:Duvel, Whisky

Posted 2004-October-20, 16:23

The biggest difference between chess and bridge is that you play chess alone, while bridge is with a partner (or a team). If one very good player plays with a newbie, the individual ratings won't be correct. That's imo one of the reasons that making a good rating system is VERY difficult for bridge.

I myself don't see an immediate sollution to solve this problem, except with a complicated system, which will probably bring new problems with it, like high ranked players which won't play with low ranked players out of fear to lose too many points.
"It may be rude to leave to go to the bathroom, but it's downright stupid to sit there and piss yourself" - blackshoe
0

#13 User is offline   Chamaco 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,908
  • Joined: 2003-December-02
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Rimini-Bologna (Italy)
  • Interests:Chess, Bridge, Jazz, European Cinema, Motorbiking, Tango dancing

Posted 2004-October-20, 16:39

Free, on Oct 20 2004, 10:23 PM, said:

The biggest difference between chess and bridge is that you play chess alone, while bridge is with a partner (or a team).  If one very good player plays with a newbie, the individual ratings won't be correct.  That's imo one of the reasons that making a good rating system is VERY difficult for bridge.

I myself don't see an immediate sollution to solve this problem, except with a complicated system, which will probably bring new problems with it, like high ranked players which won't play with low ranked players out of fear to lose too many points.

Not so difficult in my opinion.

the rating points won or lost by a pair should be calculated on the basis of Expected "a priori" score- actual score of the pair, not of each single player.

It is said that the value of the pair can be approximated to the rating of the weaker player.

Therefore the expected score of a pair which features an expert and a beginner will be the expected score of a beginner.

Obviously a beginner has a low expected score, which means it is much easier to gain points if you are ranked as beginner pair (e.g. even if you are expert, when paired with a beginner, you'll be considered a beginner pair).

Every player of the pair will be added of subtracted on his personal rating opoints the amount won or lost by the pair in the event.

Therefore, an expert will be able gain potentially more points playing with a beginner than with another expert (since when he plays with an expert, the pair is rated as "expert" -> higher expected a priori score -> you need a much higher percentage to gain points and you actually risk losing points even if you do a good percentage but lower than the a priori expectedpercentage).

This would avoid the problem of good players avoiding pairing weak players for fear of losing masterpoints.

Obviously it is much debatable whether an improved rating system would actually improve the fun or the competitive activities.
"Bridge is like dance: technique's important but what really matters is not to step on partner's feet !"
0

#14 User is offline   luke warm 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,951
  • Joined: 2003-September-07
  • Gender:Male
  • Interests:Bridge, poker, politics

Posted 2004-October-20, 18:05

no, actually the biggest difference between chess and bridge is the almost guaranteed results... if you are a chess expert, say 1950 fide rating or so, you're a pretty damn good player... even so, if you play a grand master (a *true* world class player), you can almost asuredly hang it up...

on a good night, most advanced players at least have a shot at winning a bridge tourney, even with real world class players in the field... the reason might be the rest of the field, but it doesn't matter... play in a chess tourney tho... say 50 players, say 10 master level and 3 grand master... imho the best an expert can hope for is to finish 14th, and that's if he plays very few games against the monsters

the good thing is, it doesn't hurt you so much when you lose against a giant.. after all, you're supposed to
"Paul Krugman is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like." Newt Gingrich (paraphrased)
0

#15 User is offline   Fluffy 

  • World International Master without a clue
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 17,404
  • Joined: 2003-November-13
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:madrid

Posted 2004-October-21, 03:53

maser points is the thing I less care about, but also I don´t care about my points here (they are deleted to 0 each year), would only care about WBF master points, but I don´thave any to enter with :)
0

#16 User is offline   Free 

  • mmm Duvel
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 10,728
  • Joined: 2003-July-30
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Belgium
  • Interests:Duvel, Whisky

Posted 2004-October-21, 04:57

Chamaco, on Oct 20 2004, 11:39 PM, said:

~snip~
the rating points won or lost by a pair should be calculated on the basis of Expected "a priori" score- actual score of the pair, not of each single player.

It is said that the value of the pair can be approximated to the rating of the weaker player.

Therefore the expected score of a pair which features an expert and a beginner will be the expected score of a beginner.
~snip~

I disagree. A pair with an expert and a beginner will score better than a pair with 2 beginners. Despite this fact, you'll have the same "a priori" score...

Stepbridge.nl used (perhaps still uses, but I don't know) a rating system which calculates the level of play into the points people score. It's a very nice and fair system imo:

You had 9 levels of players. If you team up with someone, your "pair"-level will be the sum of both players level. This means 2 level-5 players will be treated equally to a pair with an absolute beginner and a topplayer (9+1).
If you play against some other pair, the scores you get will be calculated according to the difference in level. This means an expert pair playing a beginner pair will not score much, but that beginner pair can win bigtime! If both pairs score a top, it could be possible the beginner pair gets 25% and 125%, while the top pair gets 75% and -25%! When you get flat hands where everybody scores the same, the expert pair would only get about 40-45%...

And here is where the trouble started... High ranked players didn't want to play against lower ranked players, because it was very hard to score many points, and keep their personal level. You got restrictions for games all over the place, like "only level 4-5". This didn't mean experts didn't want to play with beginners against a decent pair, but expert pairs didn't want to play against beginner pairs.
Now, how can you solve this? Not punishing the expert pairs that much perhaps...
"It may be rude to leave to go to the bathroom, but it's downright stupid to sit there and piss yourself" - blackshoe
0

#17 User is offline   jtfanclub 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,937
  • Joined: 2004-June-05

Posted 2004-October-21, 14:07

It seems to me that there is no fair way to rate a pair which is Advanced + beginner. For one thing, a lot of beginners aren't...Maybe they've racked up points in a different system, or just played for money, or something. Maybe they're the best students of the Advanced player. Maybe they throw a bunch of games with random partners to get their rating low and then rack up a bunch of points for the Advanced player when they play together. Who knows?

I don't think any system can accurately rate opposition from widely disparate opponents.
My idea:

The partnership's rating would only change if they were playing against player's within one level...so an Advanced partnership would have their rating change against an Intermediate, Advanced, or Expert opponent. Against a beginner or World Class, they'd get points in the tourney towards finishing, but their rating wouldn't change. This also prevents the considerable danger of two newbies joining a tourney, taking crazy chances, and if they succeed keeping the ID and if they fail pitching it and trying again with new IDs. Too bad for the few Experts they knocked down in the process.

If the partnership has two different ratings (like Advanced + Beginner), the partnership would be considered equal to the HIGHER player. However, the players would be protected...perhaps the ratings award and penalty would be halved or some other fraction for the pair and their opponents. As with all other scales, beating a pair higher than you scores more points than beating a pair lower than you, and Advanced+Beginner would not be considered as strong as Advanced+Advanced.

This assumes a logarithmic scale, such as:

900: Novice
1000: New ID/Beginner
1100: Intermediate
1300: Advanced
1700: Expert
2500: World Class

So gaining or losing the same points as your partner is a much bigger difference to the weaker of the pair.
0

#18 User is offline   Cascade 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Yellows
  • Posts: 6,760
  • Joined: 2003-July-22
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:New Zealand
  • Interests:Juggling, Unicycling

Posted 2004-October-21, 15:14

Chamaco, on Oct 21 2004, 01:11 AM, said:

That would be similar to the chess rating system.

In a chess tourney you can win or lose ELO rating points, acording to the difference between your expected result (calculated on the basis of the respective values of your opps' and your own pre-event ratings) and the actually scored result.

In the past I have implemented this type of system at the local bridge club. We used it for about two or three years and it seemed to work well. Our purpose was not to rank players but to allocate handicaps for handicap events.
Wayne Burrows

I believe that the USA currently hold only the World Championship For People Who Still Bid Like Your Auntie Gladys - dburn
dunno how to play 4 card majors - JLOGIC
True but I know Standard American and what better reason could I have for playing Precision? - Hideous Hog
Bidding is an estimation of probabilities SJ Simon

#19 Guest_Jlall_*

  • Group: Guests

Posted 2004-October-22, 08:20

Here's my take on the masterpoint thing... yes, they are meaningless to expert players. What expert players care about is winning regionals and placing top 5 or 10 in national events. That is what they play for, and that is fine. What would compell new players or players that cant travel to tournaments to play? If it was a rating system and they simply werent that good, they may get discouraged and quit. They may feel bad about themselves. However, having a goal like life master and winning masterpoints is a very good incentive for newer players to play bridge, and progress to the point where they can compete at regional levels or above. The masterpoints arent for the experts, they are for the less capable or newer players. Please remember that these people are the majority in bridge, and should be catered to.
0

#20 User is offline   jdulmage 

  • PipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 191
  • Joined: 2004-January-28

Posted 2004-November-17, 23:43

silliest thing in the world. Let's put our masterpoints on the line so two people can be wired throughout the entire tournament, win the masterpoints and become life masters in one game.

Whoever thought this should be taken around back and shot.

Some of us appreciate winning masterpoints to say they have achieved something. Trophies, awards, masterpoint races. That is, if you have any heart for serious card play.
Visit our website today at http://www.reginabridge.com for information on loads of conventions, our local club, and bridge hands.
0

  • 2 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

1 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users