doubler

Hi Barmar: Thanks for your response. Perhaps I should have stopped at better stating the problem, rather than delving into the calculating methods to solve it. The problem is that their are many inexperienced players on BBO, which is great, but some of the scores are just plain silly. They are welcome to them, we were all there once, but their silly scores greatly affect the imp scores of more experienced players. This is why I suggested that a Butler-type scoring was more appropriate. Surely you cannot deny that it is a huge advantage to have good cards on BBO, because almost any plus scores well, whereas in real team games you can still do well with a negative score. Maybe with your increasing membership, it is time to split the games into Novice thru-Advanced and Expert thru-higher. I know many players exaggerate their stated skill level but at least it might help. BTW, when selecting a name from the player-request-to-join table, checking the potential player's profile causes that window to pop up annoyingly over the first window. If several players request within a few seconds, the window popups are hard to handle. Thanks again.

All my friends and myself are becoming increasingly frustrated at the "par" calculations on BBO. I am not sure of your method but in serious events, usually 1, 2 or 3 (depending on the number of times a board is played) of both the low scores and high scores are eliminated before par is calculated. This method precludes the silly and extreme results from influencing par, although the participants in such results are still imp'ed against par, but that par is calculated fairly based upon the remaining results. Currently, a player receives plus-imps for almost any plus score even perhaps for bidding 4S when 7S is cold. Under ideal circumstances, one should receive a fair score even when holding poor cards - just like in a real team match or imp pairs.