paulhar

If your spade holding were weakened to QJ10xx, you would lead the queen and hope to get in twice with your ♥K and ♦A to take three spades, a heart, and a diamond. So why not lead an honor here? Leading low unnecessarily gives up a trick when the declaring side has all of A,Q,9, and gives up the contract when you were going to set it simply by taking three spades by promotion in addition to your ♥K and ♦A (assuming neither declarer or dummy has 4; against 1NT-3NT, dummy probably hasn't got 4 spades because he didn't bid Stayman.) As to the choice between the jack and the king, which is more likely, that your partner has the ♠Ace or that dummy has a singleton Queen? Since some of dummy's 3NT bid could come from a long suit, your partner could easily have the ace of spades. If your opponents don't know Stayman, or if dummy implied four spades, a lot more can be said for a low spade lead (see EarlPurple's post.) If dummy has four spades, setting up the suit by leading an honor is a pipe dream. However, he claims that a low spade lead works a lot better if partner has a doubleton honor. Perhaps, but with you having all the entries, you can still recover after the lead of the jack, especially if your heart king wins a trick. Also, it was noted that even if declarer has AQ9, partner could get in to lead a spade through. Having won the 9, and holding the AQ of spades, any competent declarer will try to play the hand to keep your partner off lead. Yes, sometimes it isn't possible, but with you holding 11 HCP and declarer not wanting your partner on lead, the chances are pretty remote of getting a lead through declarer's AQ. IMHO, best to give the devil his due and hope to take five tricks the easy way.

Since this seems obvious but nobody pointed it out, I will. Which is better? Whichever is on your partner's profile! There's really little to choose between the two - the most important thing is that you don't have a misunderstanding. If you've played normal Blackwood for years and are just trying RKCB, then 0314 probably seems more natural to you (you'll hold 0 or 1 often and will make the same answer you always did.) If your partner is used to 1430, and you can handle it, by all means, play it his way. To avoid an accident, you might just put RKCB in your profile and if, at a new table, your partner's profile doesn't specify either 0314 or 1430 then you can quickly edit your profile so that it shows one of them! If you are a true beginner/intermediate, then there are IMHO much more important things to worry about than the technical advantages in playing 0314 or 1430. You've gained at least 95% of the advantage of the convention when you count the king of trumps as an ace, and as long as you and partner don't have a misunderstanding, you won't give any of that 95% back. By the way, another thing that needs to be mentioned in any discussion of RKCB: If you have three key cards and partner signs off, assume he didn't have any and pass. On the auction, 1D-1S-4S, partner might have a hand such as ♠QJ10954 ♥K2 ♦5 ♣KQ54 where all he needs from you is four key cards to make a slam, and three will not do. If you had held AKxx/Axx/Axxx/Ax, you have a grand, and it's easy for him to bid. However, when you hold AKxx/AQx/KQJx/xx, a fine 4S bid, don't assume that because you have three key cards rather than zero, you should move on. This isn't true with four key cards. If partner can't make a slam off only one key card, he has no business using Blackwood (of any kind.) So, if partner signs off after you showed 1 or 4, and you have 4, by all means, go ahead and bid a slam.

IMHO, the purpose of a claim is to speed up play. One of my friends, an excellent player, doesn't consider online bridge 'real bridge' because of the unnecessary pauses that occur simply because people aren't paying attention, are looking at another website when it's their turn, etc. thus causing routine hands to take 20 percent longer to play. Shouldn't we encourage claiming (of course, not frivolous claims) whenver (1) it is correct, (2) it is clear to the players at the table, and (3) the declarer says enough to make his intent obvious? (In cases like Axx opposite KQx in notrump, I think saying NOTHING is enough. In a higher level game, merely having enough tricks to take the rest is enough, assuming you have already displayed enough competence to unblock when necessary.) Andreas would bristle at some of my claims. On a hand that is going to be positively boring for all, I'll say in the claim chat 'Please refuse if the diamond king is offside' and claim the tricks for making (say) 10 tricks with the diamond finesse. In my experience, nobody has ever complained and the opponents happily concede when the diamond king is onside. If they refuse, I assume it's offside and claim 9 tricks. So far, nobody has ever gained an extra trick by refusing the claim when the card was onside. If it ever happens, I'll know enough to leave a table where an opponent uses such a sharp practice to gain a trick. I think most people are quite happy to not have to play out a boring hand. If I notice that the acceptance/rejection is taking a long time, I'll specify what tricks I am taking in the normal chat, and in what order I intend to take them if it matters. Against strong opposition, I have even claimed on a double squeeze simply by pointing out the threats and who I think is guarding which threats, since defending even this hand is going to be boring to them if there is nothing they can do about being squeezed. Of course, I couldn't say all that in the little chat with the claim, so I have to say it in the normal chat. If I've had an aberation and am wrong about the threats, I happily concede the trick (assuming that I wouldn't have gotten it anyway with my line - with any ambiguity going to the opponents.) Clearly it has to be a situation where I don't have to guess the ending - it just wouldn't make sense to claim there (especially with my cards showing, the opponents can conspire to discard quite deceptively!) Playing out such a hand might take 5-10 minutes as the opponents are trying to defend assuming that I don't have the cards to make the squeeze work. Simply pointing out that I have the hand to make the squeeze work saves that time and gets another hand dealt which gives them their turn to squeeze me! Much better for them. I would never do this unless I thought the opponents were capable of seeing the line of play. Otherwise I run the risk of initimidating a newer player into conceding a claim he doesn't understand, and that's just plain wrong. They shouldn't concede but they might not want to look inferior. Unless I actually know the player from having played with/against them before, I won't assume anything about a player unless his chat or his own explanations of claims indicate a high level of bridge competence. Of course, I can always ask in the chat if I should claim my squeeze or play it out. One could point out that having ones profile marked Expert or World Class should be sufficient - but we all know better. I'll assume that a self proclaimed Expert knows how to finesse but nothing more until I see evidence that he knows more. I do not intend to bully someone into conceding a claim they don't understand even if they have the impudence to call themselves an Expert (in theory, someone who has had success in national events - that leaves me out!) By the way, do you think it would cause anybody to change their profile self-rating if a lot of people did claim based on plays that a national contender should be aware of? :rolleyes: You can be sure that if the opponents could play my cards on a claim, I would (1) not claim without all tops, (2) play about half as many hands, and (3) scurry back to the Microsoft Gaming Zone where I'm allowed to claim! I'm well aware that people can abuse the claim feature in this fashion, claiming all the tricks when they need a 3-2 break, and then finessing for a jack when refused! Once again, I think they should mention 'refuse if no 3-2 break' and concede the trick if it's not there, or play a couple of rounds first. In my experience, most players that claim on a 3-2 break just don't know any better - and I've never actually had anybody play for 4-1 after being refused. they just end up losing the trick.

I know for a fact that this happens. In one case it was obvious that it was an imposter rather than the real expert playing drunk because the impersonated expert has some rather unusual views on bidding that he feels quite strongly about, and these views were not shared by the person playing with that name. Please remember that when you suspect an expert to be playing like a beginner. Any of them (the real world class players, not their impersonaters) would trounce any of us mere mortals in a long match. Even the best have their lapses - yes, even an expert would go down in a contract that you would make. Perhaps maybe he actually played a higher percentage line that you don't see - but your line would have worked this time?

You've seen in my past posts what I was trying to avoid by having ratings that nobody can see. Now I have encountered a new unpleasent occurrence twice in two days that non-visual ratings would have prevented. Because the open slots in a game go so fast, one doesn't have time to examine the profiles of all three players at the table - if you are lucky to find an empty seat opposite a partner whose profile you like, you must jump at it. So, I did. Turns out that my opponents were marked 'intermediate' which is supposed to mean 'average player on BBO' but in reality, means 'average player in an under 300 game'. We play about five hands, and one of my opponents who was down 31 IMPs said something like "I've had enough of this! I didn't come here to lose 31 IMPs!" and promptly left. Today I found a friend available when I logged on and he asked that I find a couple of opponents. I clicked on a table which had two advanced players as opponents. Again, almost like clockwork, 5 boards later, they were grumbling about 'enough of this' (like it was my fault!) and left. Now, as unpleasant as this was for us (my 'friend' didn't seem too happy about the whole affair), I'm sure it was more unpleasant for them - and they showed their displeasure, which is what made it more unpleasant for us. We would have avoided both these pairs (and they both would have avoided us and been a lot happier) had we been able to put a minumum rating on the table. No doubt, there was probably another pair that would have loved a tough game - I just didn't happen to find them. Lest the sceptic call me arrogant again, let me just say that I am not intending to brag. (I know it sounds that way, but how else could I have made that point?) I make many too many errors to be a top player and being rated isn't going to boost my ego - I'm all too painfully aware that I'll never be one of the top 10,000 players in the world. But I would like to avoid the players that are so outclassed that they're going to leave in a huff after a few boards. Don't tell me to only play against World Class players, most of them won't allow me at their table, presumably because they don't know me, because as far as I know, I haven't ever played with or against any of them. I actually don't mind being outclassed that miserably - I'm bound to learn a lot when I am. However, I also feel that I have no right to inflict myself on a table where they want world class play, because I'm not going to be able to deliver the goods.

Ah, the solution is simple. People can rate themselves as 'I really don't fully understand these convetions, and I don't want anybody to comment on my use of them, but I want to play them anyway'. How many people would partner this person? Nobody would ever admit that anyway - since everybody assumes that they know the convention. And they're telling the truth - they know everything they have heard about the convention. Are they playing it right? Not likely. If I agree to play 'multi', I'm probably not playing it right either, but I'll happily admit that. Most people are just not aware that there's a lot more to a convention than they know about it. Take transfers. We don't like to teach transfers to newer players because they get the taste of it and they think they know how to play them, whereas they are quite in the dark in many special situations (like what if the opponents overcall?) We were discussing this philosophy with a couple of students who totally agreed, but of course, they had totally discussed transfers and they knew the ins and outs of transfers and had been playing it for some time so there was no problem. I decided to test this theory, giving one of them a 1NT opening and the other one[hv=s=s65hk98762d74cj105]133|100|[/hv] and let them bid it. I threw in a 2D overcall expecting the responder to bid hearts and the other to take it as a transfer, or for the responder to double (stolen bid - arrgh!) and the other to correctly (in theory) pass, or some other disaster to befall them, but the heart hand stated 'Transfers are off over interference' negating all chance for a misunderstanding. Then she said "so I have to pass." If she weren't playing transfers, she would have competed to 2 hearts! But merely playing the convention has clouded her normal thinking. A couple more examples pointed out that it was obvious that they needed a lot more discussion about transfers (one of the two was ready to give them up but that was not my intention.) So, it is quite practical to assume that your partner is not going to understand some infrequent nuance of a convention and to avoid these if at all possible, unless trying to form a very regular partnership with this partner. A real expert would have a somewhat higher probability of being OK? How on earth would you know? Judging from the response I got when proposing ratings that NOBODY ELSE CAN SEE - the probability of knowing somebody is an expert by seeing their rating on this site and having the players happy about it is approxmently the same as the probability of seeing complete peace and harmony in the Middle East in our lifetime.

I saw some posts suggesting that pairs get ratings; that you should have a different rating with each partner. OK, so I have 600 ratings, almost all based on 1 to 3 boards played in an individual! (An aside: individuals are better slapstick comedy than any you would go pay to see. Keep your eyes on the chat for maximum comic effect.) Unfortunately, these ratings are pretty meaningless, as are any ratings of others that are derived from them. I would think that most people's playing profile looks a lot like that - BBO encouranges people to click into rooms and play with whomever for a few hands, and under this rating system, that would be just one more meaningless rating that will play a factor in determining other pairs' ratings. A pair probably shouldn't be rated until they have played at least 20 deals with each other, and even then problems arise because their opponents on some of those deals won't have played the requisite boards. You could 'fake' their opposing pair's rating by combining their totally hidden from all individual ratings, which would make it a lot easier for pairs to play twenty meaningful boards. Also, there comes the problem mentioned earlier that a pair would have had to play some cross-section of BBO; i.e. if pair A and pair B are all new to BBO and play 20 boards against each other, they could both be awesome pairs or both be beginners so any numerical rating assinged to them would be meaningless. (Individual ratings would suffer the same defect.) I would not be at all surprised if over half the pairs I play against have not played 20 boards with each other - usually they just clicked into my table. I know for a fact that there are not that many people on BBO that I have played 20 boards with. Pairs ratings work if you play a lot with the same people and can find other pairs that play together a lot, and those pairs also play against other pairs besides you. In the BBO environment, at least as I see it, there would be too few pairs with meaningful ratings to matter. But the whole point is moot - because it has been pointed out on many occasions that 'Ratings are evil!' or 'Ratings make people evil!' or perhaps it's the love of a high rating that is the root of all evil!

OK, looks like I was just plain WRONG! Apparently my experiences with a rated site were most unusual - in the poll, only one other vote for equal manners between rated and unrated sites/tables and that was 'everybody is rude!'. About 90% of you stated that your experience showed that rated tables increased boorishness and/or unethical behavior. (The undisclosed agreements argument was something I hadn't thought of.) And if that's really true, I don't want ratings either. By the way, I feel like I understand the Step rating system also, and agree with Helene's assessment of its merits :D I did a simulation once and wondered what would happen using the Step system without a top level of 9. After many hands, everybody's ratings went up, and eventually even the most pathetic players would levatate from their '1' rating, being pulled up by the massive ratings earned by others. The skew came from the fact that 3% above average raised your rating but 5% below lowered it, so there's an automatic upward bias for attendance. The same was true for IMPs but I don't remember what the exact IMP totals needed for advancement/demotion were.

Hi Robert! I didn't see an E-mail for you - it appears you've worked on the problem so I'd like to discuss it with you. I'll start with this post. The discussion of bridge ratings may be moot as far as BBO is concerned, based on the early results of the poll. However, I think it's an interesting exercise in and of itself. So, here goes... The date: June 2160. Bridge is a professional sport. The finals are between the heavily favored New York BridgeYanks (boo!) and the underdog upstart Florida Marlintrumps (yay!) Both are 4-man teams. The oddsmakers in Vegas are gleeful as they have set the odds well to get equal money bet on both sides. They have made the Yanks a prohibitive 180 IMP favorite in the 120 board final. The happy Marlin bettors are rooting for a flattish set of boards so that their teams lose by less than 180. But in any event, the smart money doesn't see any advantage to either side, figuring that 1.5 IMPs per board is a reasonable expectation. How was that figure derived? Simply by comapring the ratings! Yeah, it's not that simple. Or is it? The Yanks' pair A, based on results earned in the past based on common opponents, is, let's say 0.6 IMPs better than Marlin pair C, and 1.1 IMPs better than Marlin's pair D. The Yank's pair B, based on results in the past based on common opponents, is, let's say 0.4 IMPs better than Marlin pair C, and 0.9 IMPs better than Marlin pair D. Another way of saying this, is that if Pair A were to play neutral pair E in a cross-IMP event, they would expect to do 0.6 IMPs per board better due to ability than pair C would. (Logically, in the above example, they would also do 0.2 IMPs per board better than their teammates, but that's irrelavent.) OK, so if A (N/S) plays against C and D (N/S) plays against B, then you COULD say that A has a 1.1 IMP advantage per board against their counterparts playing the same direction (D), and B has an 0.4 IMP advantage per board vs their E/W counterparts ©. So, the team has a 1.5 IMP advantage per board. Surely this won't be true on every board, a flat board will probably be 0 IMPS, whereas a touch-and-go game might be a larger advantage to the stronger Yanks. But the EXPECTED advantage is 1.5 IMPs per board. Or, alternatively, you could talk about A's 0.9 IMP advantage at THEIR TABLE and B's 0.6 IMP advantage AT THEIR TABLE and come up with the same result. When pairs C and D switch places, the advantages are the same, but the numbers in the above explanation would just switch around. If these pairs were rated, and the Marlins beat the spread (lost by less than 180), their rating should improve a little, while the Yanks' should decline. If the Yanks win by more than 180 for the match, then their ratings would go up and they should be even more favored next time. Just as the oddsmakers can handicap a match between the BridgeYanks and the Marlintrumps, certainly there must be some number that you can put on an expectation in a team match consisting of any two pairs against any other two pairs. Going one step further, isn't crossIMPS just an average of 15 team matches - all 15 being your pair against your table opponents, each of them with one E/W pair as teammates (if you're N/S) and them having a N/S pair as teammates. Each of those 15 mini-matches has an expectation of IMPs advantage to you (possibly negative.) With any kind of decent ratings, this expected advantage would come from taking your advantage over each of your N/S counterparts and taking each of your opponent's E/W counterparts' advantage over your opponents to come up with an expected IMP advantage for that mini-team. (Yeah, I know your teammates are changing every hand! That's immaterial, they're recalculated each time. Computers are fast!) So, you have an expected IMP gain/loss on this board based largely on the difference between your rating and your direct opponents' rating, which will count 15 times, but also on the other competitors you're being teamed up with and against. Beat that expected gain/loss, and your rating goes up some tiny amount. Underperform expectation, and it goes down. Does it work on every single hand? Of course not! Sometimes you get lucky and are a little bit overrated for a while. But being overrated is transitory, it makes your expectation higher than it should be, and thus less likely to meet, so your rating should revert back to its correct level. Underrated players should correct for the same reason; their lowered expectations should be easy to beat. On average, nobody should be underrated or overrated for long.

Here is the poll as promised.

Reply to brothgar: (1) Do people understand the USCF rating system? They still happily play and 'believe' the ratings which appear to go up when they play well and go down when they play badly. (2) Is it that hard really? Four people come to a table with ratings that approximately reflect how well they play. The N/S pair's two ratings are added together, as are the E/W pair's ratings, and the difference taken. This difference can predict the expected number of IMP's or matchpoints that should be won per board by the stronger pair. (In a 2-table team game, you must total the whole team.) On each board, the pair that exceeds their expected result gains rating points derived by some tiny percentage of the excess, while the other pair loses the same. (Examples can be given.) Is this really so hard to understand? Of course, some adjustments might have to be made to counteract the deflation of ratings due to players improving, and perhaps for regular partnerships, but these are minor indeed and need not be explained to make things work. Reply to sceptic: Count me as a 'learner'! Everytime I play is a learning experience. Do I want to prove to others how 'good' I am? Not at all - I know how bad I am! Besides, what I'm proposing, with hidden ratings, the showoffs can't even haughtily show their ratings. (I would even support ratings that not even the user can see - but is allowed to start a table defined by his unseen rating, such as 10 below me to 10 above me.) The reason I'm supporting ratings (an unpopular view, it seems) is that when I play, what it is I'd like to learn to play better bridge against competent players, rather than (1) how to take advantage of players that probably would be happier playing with players at their own level, or (2) how to avoid the unpleasantness that goes with a various string of partners coming in and playing with a weak opponent for a hand and leaving, sometimes with a caustic comment about the player's choice of level. Reply to badderzboy: As pointed out in an earlier post, someone shouldn't leave a table with a bad partner simply to avoid having their rating demolished, because the partner probably also comes with a bad rating, which means bad results are expected, and anything acheived higher than expectation will increase your rating. It might teach people to be nice to their bad partners - as they will play better that way. Can you imagine - a way to boost your rating is to go play with bad players, and make them feel good about themselves so they play above their normal game? As for the snobbish behavior toward people with bad ratings or people new to BBO - how in heck would they know? Your rating is known only to you (or perhaps not even that.) Actually, I'd like to propose a poll. Please do not answer if you don't have experience playing on rated sites. If a predominate number of replies state that badderzboy is right about ratings promoting bad manners, then I'll admit that all my writing about ratings was a big mistake. Of course, the poll will have a huge bias against my position since I think I would get a lot more support if I polled the entire online bridge playing community rather than BBO members, some of which seemed to have left other (perhaps rated) sites in a huff because they found people unfriendly. Frankly, my online experience is: BBO, the MSN Gaming Zone, and Stepbridge (the only rated one of the three), and found the Stepbridge players to be the friendliest of the bunch. I have encountered a higher percentage of rude players here and on the Zone. Most of the rudeness was not directed at me (happily admitting my errors usually deflects rudeness), but it is unpleasant just the same. Anyway - the poll is as follows: In your experience, do the players on rated sites have worse manners than those on non-rated sites? I look forward to seeing the results and will happily report the findings no matter what they are.

Responding to HotShot's thoughtful post: "Online bridge has a very high potential for abuse". Normal bridge doesn't? It's the nature of the game. I've heard anecdotes about people sitting at table 8 N-S in a tournament so that they could see table 7's from two different sections! And having a minimum rating requirement on a table negates the need for someone to send a screenshot of their rating. There are lots of ways to cheat at any sport or game if one is so inclined. Frankly, I don't see any good reason why one would want to cheat - what's the thrill of winning if cheating was required? I'll admit that this is not a universal opinion and there are those who cheat. Why would they be any more likely to cheat to achieve a rating that nobody else can see? The only reason that comes to mind is that they want to be allowed to play at a table that they don't belong at due to their bridge skills. So, they cheat, they become overrated, join a good table, and it becomes obvious to all that they don't belong there. They get ostracized, which is their due for cheating. While I have thought about the problem of two strong players not necessarily making a strong pair, it would seem pretty onerous to keep track of details necessary to rate pairs, since everybody could potentially have thousands of partnerships from regular to 'click in and play a hand'. There could be a higher expectation given to a pair who has played more deals together. I'll be the first to admit that it would be quite difficult for an online service to determine that my wife and I have played thousands of deals as partners when we've played only a handful online. This is a tough problem - there is proably some partial solution but I can see that this might be the bane of accurate bridge ratings. About the strongest five pairs and the weakest five pairs: Let's look at a chess tournament. My friend and I enter a tournament (on the Swiss System) and I lose the first two games and play patsies and win the next three. My friend wins the first three, with the competition getting tougher each time, but then he is far overmatched in the last two games playing against masters and loses the last two. We have identical 3-2 scores and thus place similarly but when the USCF rating is computed, my friend gets a much higher rating that I do, having scored that 3-2 record against much tougher competition. Each game is taken into account - his expected chance of winning, and the rating of his opponent. Bridge players seem to keep making the mistake of equating 'rating' with 'masterpoints'. They aren't even close. Even forgetting that masterpoints are an attendance award, you could win a club game in East Podunck where the strongest player learned bridge last year and is teaching the rest of the town what she knows, or you could play at a same sized game in a strong field. Winning either will give you the same number of masterpoints. And of course, there's events restricted by things having nothing to do with bridge ability. Others mention ATP rankings, also moderately an attendance award. However, somebody does as well by beating some schlepp who beat Andy Roddick as by beating Andy Roddick. With a chesslike rating structure, that wouldn't be true. Your rating is based on your actual opponents and whether you beat the expected results based on your rating and your opponent's rating. The same should be true for tournaments and rated tables. It would be conceivable to win the tournament and lose rating points - if you and partner were highly rated and happened to draw five novice pairs as opponents and didn't trounce them as badly as expected by the difference in rating. The other poor pair who played the five strongest pairs in the field would have their ratings adjusted based on how they did compared to how they would be expected to do versus those five strong pairs. Forget the masterpoint mentality! Ratings should be entirely based on expected results against your current opponents. (A really awesome rating system would also take into account the ratings of the N/S pairs you competed against as opposed to the E/W pairs that they competed against - but that would probably only significantly matter in a team game with one other team. When the board is played 16 times, this effect is negligable.) The current tournament format may be unfair as to determining who wins the tournament, but shouldn't be unfair in calculating ratings. A cool way of fixing the unfair tournament format would to pair each round (trivial for a computer) using the Swiss system - pairing the leading pair against #2, #3 vs #4, etc. Also good because eventually you play pairs at your own level. The downside to Swiss parings: With the current pairings, anybody can win. Everybody knows that and the top players who care can go find 8 of themselves and play a team game and eschew the tournament. But it might be good for online bridge that anybody can win. So, while it's not FAIR, it might be best. Does anybody really care that they can be beaten by inferior pairs? Judging by the number of entries in the Total Points tourneys, not many do care. These tournaments are a lark - they're pure entertainment - and there's nothing wrong with that. But they can be rated a lot more fairly than you give credit. I would assume that most of the rated deals would occur in the Main Bridge Club rather than in the tournaments. With all the great minds we have playing on/contributing to BBO, I have no doubt that the logistics of a fair rating system could be worked out. If there is a strong consensus that it would increase cheating and boorish behavior, I'd be quite willing to jump to the other side and figure out some other way to avoid the problems I've mentioned on earlier posts. I just can't see how cheating would be increased to attain a rating that only the user can see. Are there really masochists out there who want to play at a table where they're not wanted when they can just as easliy find a table where they would be welcome? Maybe it's just me - but I'd like to play at a table where the other three participants are happy that I'm there. By the way, if anyone wants to devise fair ratings and/or fair movements, I've done a fair amount of work on both and I'd be happy to share ideas. paulhar@juno.com

I can see I've stirred up a hornet's nest here! I'd like to respond to some of the recent postings. First, let me pose a question: The following wouldn't affect me because I couldn't be that rude, but is it better to have a table with a minimum rating, or to not have any ratings and willy-nilly boot any players not deemed by the host to be competent to play at that table? (I've seen tables listed in a way that suggests that this might have happened!) In response to the statement, 'can one not trust his friends'? the answer is clearly NO, since I have a friend from real life who plays a wretched game but I would play with because I like him/her. Someone who marked me as a friend is going to be sorely disappointed to play with this person. In response to the statements, 'nobody would want to play against strong players', and 'and experienced partnership could wait for an hour for a game', I noticed that 'mycult' stated that he likes a game where he's the weakest player. So do I. I'm sure we're not the only two. I don't really care about my own personal rating as much as I care that the people that join my table aren't going to be such that their partners are going to want to leave after one hand. Alternatively, if people are scared, they could start an unrated table with a minimum rating, so that their opponents wouldn't lose points. Besides, if they're that strong, they have a high rating and lower-rated people shouln't lose rating points to them if they play as expected by their own rating! If people don't understand that, they could be educated. An article simple enough to be understand by the non-math minded could be posted about ratings in the articles under 'explore bridge'. Do people read those things? I don't know, but I have. The news window could point them in the right direction the first few days of ratings implementation. In response to the 'kibitzer bots' to check people's ratings, can't you get an idea of someone's rating by simply playing a few hands with/against them? And really, why should anyone care if someone wants to go to all that work to do that? I could care less if anybody knows my rating. I suggested not being able to see other's ratings to elminate people looking down on lower-rated players. Besides, I would rather have someone spend their time on kibitzer bots than on writing a virus to bring down Bridge Base (seems like the same kind of mentality) One common complaint is that nobody wants to play with an overrated partner or against underrated opponents. If you can't see the ratings, how can you tell? You assume someone's rating is commensurate with the way they play. Bunny bashing? I hope that the initial ratings tutorial will explain why that won't work. Firstly, the 'bunnies' will have low ratings if they're truly bad players, so your expected results are pretty good. You have to exceed these excellent results to gain rating points. OK, lets say you CAN exceed these great results. You are now overrated. Being overrated is transitory. As soon as you play in the general pool of players your extra rating points will flow back into the system and your rating will revert to the mean (i.e. YOUR expected rating based on your skill.) If bunny-hopping works, you will have to ALWAYS do it just to MAINTAIN (note, I did not say INCREASE, beacause you can't) your current over-rating! Does an experienced partnership really want to do this all the time just to be overrated when nobody can see the ratings?? Of course, this assumes that you can increase your rating by bunny-hopping, and I'm not convinced that you can. Of course, there is one way to increase your rating - and that is to learn the game! Play more seriously. Read books. Discuss bidding with your favorite partners. The Bridge Base store offers many fine products to help you toward that goal. Pay more attention when you're playing. Not only will it help you, but your future online partners will be happier too. Speaking of serious games - don't you think that ratings will make for more play where people aren't constantly leaving to stir dinner, check their stock quotes, and do whatever else they do which needlessly slows down the game? If people care at all about their rating, wouldn't they play at a rated table when they wanted to focus on bridge? I have a friend who rarely plays online bridge, calling it 'not real bridge' because people frequently don't play an obvious card for several seconds, and it's because they're not at the table. He claims that marking it a 'fast table' dosen't get the desired result because he does not mind if someone takes a long time with a real problem, just like in a real game. Its those unexplainable slowdowns that irk him. "And frankly", he says, "in self defense, I do something else while playing online bridge. I wouldn't do this if everybody else didn't." Don't you think these avoidable delays would be cut down in a rated game? In response to "similar to ATP rankings in tennis" - of course not! The ATP ranking is almost as flawed as a ranking system as the ACBL masterpoint system! I'd be happy to point the reasons if anybody asks but that's off-topic. If Lehman ratings work like chess ratings, and I think they do, they would be so far superior to anything that ATP or the ACBL does. Don't get me started on ladders. I think somebody suggested self-rating your partners and opponents after playing with them. NNNNOOOO!!!! (1) A good American player with little online experience is going to give a fine European player thumbs down for (a) leading low from a doubleton, which must be common practice in some coutnries, (;) passing a free bid in a new suit, which is commonly non-forcing, etc. (2) If you don't like someone, you can log on with many different user names and give them a black mark from each one. (3) If you really want to play with somebody, you give them a black marks so that others WON'T want to play with them. If I thought awhile, I could come up with many more reasons, but do I really need more? Once again, the people who think that strong players won't partner weaker partners need to be educated about the rating system. The weak partner has a low rating because he is weak. The expectation, therefore, of the partnership of those two players, is not anywhere near the expectation for a partnership of two strong players. Of course, the results won't be that good. But they're expected to be not that good! If you don't do even more poorly than the bad expectation, then your rating won't go down. Sure, it won't go up either. If you expect it to go up when you play, you need to be educated again. Your rating should only go up when you exceed your own expectation, which, unless you're constantly improving, will only happen about half the time. The other half, it will go down. Yes, there may be more rudeness by the players that don't understand ratings. In response to the player who said 'my partner just booted three boards, I'd better leave.', if this is your partner's expectation, then his rating is just gawdawful and you're not losing points by staying. On the other hand, if your parnter isn't such a bad player but has just made the worst play of the century, you can be sure he feels a lot worse about it than you do and he's going to dig in and make sure it doesn't happen again. (Provided he's not spending energy deflecting your caustic comments.) Ah, yes! Maybe ratings will DECREASE rudeness! Yes, you're rude, your partner plays worse for it, and YOUR RATING DECREASES and you can't play at tables you should be entitled to play at. Or, my goodness, no - I have to be NICE to my partner to maintain my rating?? No, that can't be possible...., no not just possible but obvious! Certainly, that will be in the tutorial on ratings... Oh, the flip side, somebody asks? I can be rude to my opponents and get a better rating for it? Won't work. Unless you enjoy people leaving your table and waiting ten minutes for someone else to fill in. Perhaps eventually the BBO administrators will catch up to you and boot you from the site. Maybe when you come in with your new username, you'll realize it doesn't work and play nice. However, I've found that most of the venom is directed at partners. Hardly anybody has ever said anything rude to me as an opponent (except once when I forgot to say BRB and I deserved it!) and usually I only say things to an opponent which might be considered bad by some when he maligns his partner (usually incorrectly) and then usually in private as I don't want to make him look bad to the whole table. Those of you that oppose ratings can perhaps help me out. I don't play often enough on BBO to establish set games, but would like to come on and play at a competent table. (I think this might be common among the membership of BBO.) I have clicked many people as friends, but when I log on, those that are on are usually already playing. When I try to click onto a table that looks like it might be competent, I am rejected since according to the BBO guidelines, I am Advanced, not having won any national titles and only a few regional ones, and they are looking only for Experts and World Class players. I presume that at a lot of these tables, I might be the best player at the table (judging from what I see from most people that click themselves as Expert) but cannot bring myself to call myself an Expert. At the tables where I am not rejected, the play is often deplorable (mostly by opponents), which people clicking in and out after almost every hand because they can't stand their partners. If I start a table, the people that click into the table haven't bothered to read the comments. I might say "2/1 partner" and get someone playing the Polish Club. Yeah, I know the solution - I need to learn the Polish Club! There are probably a lot of other people that feel the same way. I would be nice to be able to log on, play a dozen hands or so with the same congenial partner and opponents, all of which can make 3NT with nine top tricks and can trump a loser in dummy if need be. Given the lack of ability to put a minimum rating on a table, I don't see a good solution. Is online bridge not right for me? Paul Harrington (paulhar@juno.com)

After reading the comments on ratings, I would like to put my two cents in. A while back, I remember reading somewhere that the BB administrators would have implemented ratings if they thought that the only reason people would want them was to check their own improvement, but they were afraid that players would be more concerned about other players' ratings. My solution is simple: simply do not display other people's ratings! There is no incentive to cheat if nobody can see your rating but you. There have been mentions that setting minimum ratings on tables is bad news. I heartily disagree. Let me digress by stating what happens almost every time I play on Bridge Base. I start at a congenial table, but one of the players (almost always an opponent) must leave. A new player, usually an expert according to profile, clicks on, and within a couple of hands, it becomes obvious to all, and especially to his partner, that bridge as we know it is no longer being played. Then we go through a succession of players, each filling the seat opposite that player for 1 or 2 hands, realizing that they just can't take it, and leaving, usually sending a private message to myself and my partner with the reason. A minimum rating for a table (which IMHO should be forced to be moderately lower than the table setter's rating - it's hardly fair to only accept players better than yourself) would stop that nonsense. Coming to such a table, there would be an expectation on the level of bridge being played, and we would avoid having a constant string of opponents leaving upset. Since everybody knows their own rating, they would know in advance whether they would be auto-rejected from joining the table. If I was to play with one of my favorite partners with a low rating, I would have no problem setting the minimum to his/her level. People complain that pros wouldn't play with their clients because it would lower their rating. Nonsense! The client presumably has a low rating (I'm assuming chess-type ratings which go down if you don't achieve your expected performance with the given opponents and partner), so the expectation of the pair is low to begin with. If the pro gets reasonable results with this client, he will have a high ranking to show for it. Of course, you could always play at an unrated table if you didn't buy that argument. Nevermind the argument that people would always want to play for 'points' - you're not playing for points, and your rating is as likely to decrease as it is to increase, unless you're rapidly improving! So a lot of people might want to play at an unrated table, perhaps if they are tired and don't think they're bringing their best game to the table. I don't understand the people that say that ratings are based on how long you've played. Master points might be, but chesslike ratings that are based on expected performace are only based on how long you've played to the extent that (1) you improve by playing longer, and (2) playing longer implies playing whth some prior partners again and knowing their style. However, I woud presume the the actual skill of the player is much more a factor than the two stated above. I would be quite happy to see ratings that only the player can see for the reasons cited above - and would be happy to hear from anybody who can tell me what would be wrong with such a system. Feel free to contact me at paulhar@juno.com. Thank you for a fine program - Paul Harrington