tooncestdc

Exactly, that is why playing up is an important option for people who dont want to simply collect points. I find it confusing, a C player can earn points in A or B section so other than protecting the 'C' players from the better players I'm not sure what added value it has. (edited) You know, apart from the confusion that seems to be taking place between stratifying and flighting, I'm not sure what's up with the elitist attitude people seem to like to take around here. Stratifying and flighting has more to do with than just the buying of masterpoints. Some people always want to challenge themselves against the best possible people in the game, and that's fine for them. But, I would think that most people enjoy competing when they have a chance to win. It's the same reason why I wouldn't play in the top softball or volleyball division. Getting your ass kicked by people that think on a higher level than you can be instructive, but often isn't much fun. And if I'm playing in a tournament, and have the best result among those with 1000 or less masterpoints (or however they want to rank skill levels) I'm still plenty proud, and I encourage events that recognize that achievement.

I like the addition of stratifying. I think it might be worth an experiment to flight one game a day. Since there are no overall awards, flighting does not have the usual problem of making the fields too small. The problem with the failed Life Master game is that the limited nature meant that it earned less points than the open game. IF you wanted to do a flighted game, I think you would need flights ahead of time. My suggestion for the flights would be something like: 0-300 and BBO ranking of 4 or less 0-1500 and BBO ranking of 7 or less Unlimited For the strats, it may also be better to use the higher of a pair's ACBL ranking or adjusted BBO ranking. (BTW, when the software gets there, I think a team bracketed KO tournament with 6-board rounds would be a big hit.)

Just a thought, but I think that a "prisoner's dilemma"-type system could be use to make peer-rating work. Imagine the following system: Each player is asked to click one of the following: - My partner is better than me - My partner is about equal skill level than me - My partner is worse than me If both people agree to which is the better player, the better player's rating goes up and the lower player's rating goes down (to a degree...if the better player is rated significantly higher, no change). If both think that their partner is the better player or equal players, their skill levels become closer together. If both people think they are better than their opponent, both of their skill levels go down. The idea is to discourage people from trashing their partner as it can come back to bite him... just a sliver of an idea here.

This movement is called a Rainbow movement, and it is the standard movement in all large individual events. Just as in a Mitchell movement, none of the N/S pairs play another N/S pair, in an individual movement, Norths only compete in their section against other Norths, South vs. South, etc. I don't recall the details of how to run a rainbow movement, but I believe they require a prime number of tables to work most smoothly. If each table plays 3 boards a round, the players can rotate around north so that each partnership at the table is played for 1 hand. For more details, see This webpage

One possible U.S.-centric rule that has some merit: What are the largest number of ACBL masterpoints you've won in a single event (lean toward the weaker option if you were the weaker player in the partnership)? 0-1: Beginner 1-3: Beginner/Novice 3-6: Novice/Intermediate 6-10: Intermediate 10-20: Intermediate/Advanced 20-40: Advanced/Expert 40+: Expert/World Class

This video seems like what would happen if the ACBL hired Donald Trump and THe Apprentice to have their two teams create a video in 36 hours to encourage kids to play bridge. Needless to say, this would have been the losing team, and someone's going to get FIRED! --------------- Now for what bridgeiscool.com is doing right! They are promoting a version of the game called "MiniBridge". It's bridge done without the bidding, and it's a really good way to play bridge without the learning curve. How it works: 1) Everyone around the table announces their HCP. The side with more HCP are the declarers. Of that partnership, the player with the fewer points is the dummy and places down his hand. 2) The remaining declarer chooses the trump suit (or NT) and decides whether to play for a part-score (7 tricks) or game (Why not slam? I dunno...). 3) Left of the declarer leads and play and scoring are identical to bridge. ---------------- Now, I think this game is ideal to teach or get people interested in bridge. What I would do is the following: 1) A bridge class should be playing this game at the end from Day 1 2) An attempt should be made to support multi-player MiniBridge for Yahoo games or other places where card games are played. 3) All 1st-year bridge members should be eligible to play in the "MiniBridge National Championship" tournament held at a Summer NABC with local qualifiers. The problem is that I'm sure that once you catch the bug from MiniBridge, you will want to learn and would rather play real bridge, but without a significant number of people playing MiniBridge, the ones learning the game will have noone to play with. ----------------- As for making it any more popular, that's really hard to do. Bridge doesn't translate to TV like Hold'em poker does, nor can a novice compete with a pro on similar footing. Some things just somehow catch on (like Soduku). Trying to force it is pretty hard to do.

Who's to say what is and is not "bridge". Is it not really football when a team goes into a 2-minute drill or throws a Hail Mary in the last few seconds with only a 5% chance of winning? Is it not basketball when a team fouls the other player to get the ball back? Is it not baseball when the manager pulls the infield in in a close game to prevent the run, despit e the fact that it would be foolish to do in the 2nd inning? Is it not hockey when they pull the goalie for a 6th attacker? In all these situations, the play in the final few minutes is dramatically different from play during the start and middle of the game, when the outcome is in doubt. Obviously, in a barometer situation, the last hand will not be good "neutral" bridge, but rather be good "situational" bridge. To not make it barometer is like playing basketball and having the score hidden from you until the buzzer sounds. Granted that the entire game will feel like the 1st quarter, but do people really watch basketball primarily to see what happens over the 1st half when neither team is "reaching"?

Actually, this is exactly what happens in an instant matchpoint game. All the N/S pairs in section A get a 0 to 100 score based on how they did in some other field that played these hands somewhere else, and it's possible that the winning N/S could have a 49% game while the worst E/W has a 51% game. The point is that since rhe "rules of the game" are that you are only competing with the people in your section, I have no problem with the way the games are scored. The result of matchpointing the results with all other section just gives greater credibility to the actual result. Pigpenz, if we scored the event your way, it really wouldn't make a diffence in what pair won what award. All that would happen is that a team who placed with a 48% game would still place at the ed of the event, but their score would be reported as 55%. Noone would be the wiser that the 75% they earned on board #3 really is only worth a 50%, due to the fact that their section-mates screwed up the bidding as a whole. The bad part is that the 1st overall "trophy" would have less meaning, since pair A1-N/S and pair B1N/S might have had the same 12 results, but since they were only scored within section, A1-N/S gets a higher percentage score. I know that the 1st overall doesn't get you any more matchpoints, but I like that I also get the knowledge of how I "really" did, as well as whether I earned masterpoints or not.

I think he is referring to rubber-style bridge where one side already has a partscore. I've never heard of duplicate bridge played rubber-style where one side already has a partscore.

I would suggest for indi tournaments that the rules were clarified by the tournament director at the beginning of the tournament. In the first indi I played in, I was asked for explanations several times for bids that wouldn't be listed on a CC. I think it's silly to have to tell opps what the bid means, but I'd still like to know if an explanation is expected in an indi tourney.

So, I didn't expect this forum to have this much dispute, but I'm glad that it did. So, this what it sounds like is mostly the concensus: 1. In "official" SA-YC, all below-game responses over 1M-2m are forcing. 2. In "official" SA-YC, 2M is the catch-all bid, while 2NT is a game force and balanced (say, 15-18?). 3NT would show 19-21 balanced, I suppose. 3. Many players that also play 15-17 NT and do not play 2/1 GF play 2M, 3m, and/or 2NT as non-forcing bids, and are comfortable with that. That being said, for those people that play system described in #3, what are the descriptions that you use for 2M, 2NT, 3m, 3M, 3NT, 4m, etc? If my partner and I switch to non-forcing bids here, what are we giving up in system strength?

McBruce, I think your idea is a good and simple one. But I was curious about: What about online points makes you say that? Is it the limitation on overall points or what? As far as I can tell, the "online point" requirement are tougher on NLMs who can't move up unless 2/3 of the points at any level are "colored". As far as being past LM, a point is a point, essentially. There certainly doesn't seem to be much of an advantage for a LM to play at a club game over an ACBL online tournament, unless they are trying for a masterpoint race.

After an auction like 1♥-2♣, what's the SA-YC or preferred meaning for the following bids? 2♥ - 2NT - 3♣ - 4♣ - Is responder requided to make a 2nd bid in all cases?

The biggest problem with putting non-members into the top strat is that it pushes top players into the B and C strats, making it harder for true flight B & C players to scratch. Here's a possible solution: Place members and non-members into different sections. I see no reason that requires sections to have the same number of tables. In ACBL-ese, they are just two seperate events run with the same boards. In the "member" section, strats are done with MPs. In the "non-member" section, strats are done with BBO points or not at all. When necessary, we can always move a non-member into the member section as a Strat A pair. Strats can either be done with fixed or varied sizes. But if we vary the sizes based on who has entered, instead of choosing equal-sized strats, it may be in the players' best interests to make the strat sizes so that the most people can scratch. For example: Pairs Place % scratch 2 1 50% 3 1 33% 4 2 50% 5 2 40% 6 2 33% 7 3 42% 8 3 37% 9 4 44% 10 4 40% 11 4 36% 12 5 42% 13 5 38% 14 6 43% 15 6 40% 16 6 38% Therefore, 4, 7, 9, 12, and 14 offer the most MPs/pair while 6, 8, and 11 offer the fewest MPs/pair. 6 is the worst option at 33%, but often is a default strat size when trying to balance the sizes.

I'm not sure if the strata are working as designed. I am Toonces on BBO and play with tsukata. I have 320 MP and she has 40 MP. We are usually being placed in flight A for tournaments or occasionally Flight B. See the 6/12/04 8:00 PM Pairs for an example. If jlall is being placed in C and I am placed in A than either our tournaments had vast differences in non-members in this example or there may be bug in the program. Also, I noticed that with the new system, we are a lot less likely to pay out the maximum number of MPs anymore. For example, in the 6/12 8:00 PM game, we had 68 pairs. We were divided into sections of 12, 11, and 11 tables, and the top payout was 0.96 or 0.88. If we were divided up into 2 17-table sections, the top payout would have been 1.20 and just about as many people would have placed. Is there a reason for keeping the sections and the awards smaller? Does this way actually pay out more overall MPs?