lmhk

In my mind none of the social issues you stated are real problems. 1. blaming partners: If the partners know each other, they need to work it out themselves. The point of competitive gaming is people will care about their rating, and will have to learn how to communicate with each other to improve. Arguments are always going to happen in competitive games. Communication is part of the game. If the partners don't know each other, they should follow site rules on competitive play, such as only being allowed to give constructive criticism rather than saying things like "you suck" or "idiot". Of course, site regulators would be needed to maintain a good environment, and players who are toxic should be penalized by either getting chat banned or banned from competitive play completely. 2. leaving mid-hand: This can be prevented by simply penalizing players who do so. 3. selecting partners: I assume if someone plays in my suggested competitive section as an individual, they should be matched up by the system with a player of a similar rating and cannot choose their partner. 4. fear of ruining rating: Just go play casual. My idea is that the site would be divided into a casual and a competitive section. 5. Cheating/accusing: Cheating might be hard to prevent but at the end of the day, the rating does not give you any actual benefit such as a monetary payment, so there really isn't huge incentive to cheat. (If someone wanted to cheat against me, I couldn't care less. Congratulations on the high rating.) 6.Conspiracy theories: It's just a lot of talk. 7. New accounts: In gaming, I believe the term is "smurfing": if people do this, then surely they will run over their opponents and their rating would increase drastically and quickly, resulting in them matching up with higher rated players soon enough. All in all I think there are too many people being overly worried about the various problems that may arise over such a system, but the fact is the community is soft. A lot of people say "wdp" even though their partner played their hand horrendously and only got lucky. Some people cannot accept any helpful advice/constructive criticism. BBO is almost strictly a bridge club for people to relax and never improve. However, I believe there are still some people who want to play against serious opponents, want to learn, and want to get better by making mistakes, communicating, discussing and accepting advice from others. As stated before, even if such a system were to be implemented, there would still be a casual section for casual bridge lovers, so really no harm done to the former player group.

I am not trying to find out what my rating is, I am merely suggesting that having a rating system could make the game a lot more fun and competitive. There are ranking systems out there in the gaming industry that are also team-based. Everyone would still get an individual rating. The idea is, if you are a good player, in the long run, given random partners, you would yield winning results and move up and vice versa. I think it is definitely plausible and more fun for everyone if they can get matched up with players of similar skill-levels.

This is similar to ranking systems in team-based games. Personally I had some experience gaming and I understand the frustration there would be if you feel your partner is bringing you down. It is the same as losing a basketball game because of bad teammates, even if you are the best player on the team. However, similar to other games that need teammates, I believe in the long run, good players will have an increase in rating and lesser players the opposite. Or there could be partnership ratings as well as individual ratings. As for the poor behaviour, I assume there would be some terms to agree to before participating in the rating system. I believe there is a way around this if they really wanted to do it, and personally I think it would make bridge so much more fun and competitive.

I enjoy playing bridge as much as the next person. Much more, I enjoy playing competitive bridge. I know there are tournaments and masterpoints and even BBO prime on the site now. Instead of these platforms, how about creating an ELO system where each player is rated? I don't know how the programming would work, but rating systems exist in many games, including chess, GO, sports, esports and board games. From my experience in playing other games, having a rating system maximizes the competitiveness and fun. I also think it might be an interesting way to popularize the game (especially among younger people) and increase traffic. Currently, the only rating on BBO is a self-assessment of skill level, which by the way, is highly inaccurate (extremely incompetent "advanced" players all over the site). Of course, you can still divide the site into two sections - casual and competitive, and those who merely want to relax and play some evening bridge without having to worry about others judging your rating could just stay in the casual section.