riverwalk3

The thing is that what matters is how you compare to everyone else, so by definition half of the people are better at bidding/playing and half the people are better at defending, even if a majority of the people suffer from a psychological disadvantage on defnese. Although your theory on defense is especially pertinent on the TP reward tournaments, where it is frustrating to see the other side in game.

I've learned bridge mainly from Richard Pavlicek, and generally a rebid of 4NT by someone who has previously bid notrump naturally is discouraging. Eg 2N 3H 3S 4C 4N would be natural and discouraging slam. However, what about an auction like 1S 2D 3D 4C? Say responder has a hand like S A H QJx D KQT98 C Axxx so the 4C control bid makes sense. 5C will probably not be a good score.

That reminds me of my total points daylong rewards tournaments for the past few days. I haven't cashed in 5 days and I realize at the end of my -2500 point or so sessions that my opponents had an average of 22.5 HCP or so per hand. I agree that IMPs isn't necessarily more forgiving but bidding becomes more important. Also, one defensive allowing the opponent's game to make can be 12 IMPs.

I have noticed from the hand records that I'm averaging about 58% in every other Daylong Tournament (BBO MP 1 to 4 as well as ACBL), as well as ACBL/BBO Robot Duplicate. In all the Robot Duplicate IMP or Daylong IMP tournaments I average about 1.6 IMPs per hand (and often get over 2 IMPs per hand when lucky). However, I'm averaging only about 50% in Zenith Daylong Tournaments. This makes me wonder if the Zenith field is abnormally strong. The other explanation is that I'm just better with best hand (which is the case for the other daylong tournaments and Duplicate boards). This is because I have a huge edge in bidding (especially slam bidding), and the edge disappears when you have a weak hand (since everyone else with your hand passes throughout). Furthermore, I'm weaker at defense, and since I'm defending far more often with weak hands, this becomes problematic when I don't always have the best hand. Here is my recent results for example: I'm consistently like this.

Having a potential slam with a minor fit is very tricky in matchpoints, because when exploring for slam you often have to commit to bypassing 3NT (which generally scores higher than 5 of a minor). I wonder if there are any situations where it's more prudent to give up nonjump Blackwood with a minor fit (which might be useless anyway - eg if you have 1 keycard partner will respond above 5 of your minor so you are forced to bid slam anyway) and instead have 4NT as a discouraging natural bid (whereas in IMPs 4NT would retain its traditional blackwood meaning).If you go down in slam off 2 Aces, odds are that it wasn't a big loss over 5 of a minor (as 5 of a minor would've been a poor result anyway). Usually I avoid playing 5 of a minor in matchpoints unless distribution is extreme and/or there is an unstopped suit (and even then, often I play 7 card major fits instead). In IMPs there isn't a huge concern in reaching 5 of a minor, so this would not apply here. Note that making 4NT also beats 5 of a minor making 6.

The point is that it's supposed to fit the spirit of matchpoints. You are supposed to risk going down in game to make an overtrick if you have a 60% chance of success, for example. Likewise, if 5S has a 60% chance of making in an uncompetitive auction, you should bid 5S instead of 4S. IMPs would remain unaffected as a 1 point difference is nullified.

This happened in an ACBL 18 board daylong tournament yesterday, where I managed to score 60% for 1.5 masterpoints. One of the deals (my only clean top board) was where I bid 7NT off an ace: I for some reason thought hearts were keycard after asking and thus thought we had all 5 keycards, and being matchpoints wanted to bid notrump. West failed to find a club lead, then with everything breaking luckily I had 12 tricks. West let go of his diamond stopper early, and at the end East decided to hold to his club ace so my diamond 3 was good at the end. [hv=pc=n&s=sa864hakqt42dk32c&w=sq3hj87djt7cqt432&n=skj75h6da8ckj8765&e=st92h953dq9654ca9&d=e&v=0&b=14&a=p1hp2cp2sp3sp4cp4dp4np5hp5np6cp7nppdppp&p=d7dad9d2s5s2sas3s4sqskstsjs9s6c2s7h3s8dthah7h6h5hkh8c5h9hqhjc6d5htc3c7d6h4c4c8c9h2ctcjd4dkdjd8dqd3cqck]399|300[/hv]

You don't get N/2 points for finishing second. In a very large tournament, first might get 30 masterpoints and second would get around 29.

The point is that the total number of masterpoints awarded should scale linearly in the number of players (so the average number of masterpoints awarded per player is the same no matter the event size). I'm getting a vast majority of my masterpoints from daylongs with the current formula. Scoring 30th place in the Zenith daylong gets you 14 masterpoints, far more than you can in way smaller tournaments even if you get first.

That probably is especially bad in express tournaments, when you have to deal with random partners and opponents. Oftentimes you don't have that much control over the outcome, as your opponents matter much more. Robot tournaments are probably the least bad in this regard. But even in Robot tournaments (where variance of the opponents are eliminated), luck will always be rewarded in the short run. If you take a line that's 50% to make and an expert takes a line that's 65% to make, but there is a chance that you make and the expert doesn't and that chance happens, then you get rewarded. The scoring idea was to increase the fun of matchpoints. Matchpoints deviates from the spirit of the game anyway (where every little overtrick counts a lot), so I might as increase the fun by making people bid the contract exactly. If you want sound bridge, play total points or IMPs.

Imagine a scoring system where one got +1 point for each level that they bid, assuming the contract is made (making their score not a multiple of 10 in that case). Thus, if NS bid 4H nonvulnerable and made exactly, they get 424 points. If they make 5 instead, they get 454 points. If they bid 5H and make 5, they get 455 points. I wonder how matchpoints would look like with this scoring system.

For daylong tournaments the top reward does not cap out at 15 tables. It seems indefinite.

I don't know the exact formula for BBO points, but: In BBO points the reward for Daylong tournaments is really high due to the number of participants. The winner gets nearly 30 points for example, and the points seems to decrease linearly rather than exponentially. The average number of points rewarded per participant was 1.39 in the last Zenith tournament that I played from a spreadsheet calculation. My best performance on a Zenith daylong tournament was about 30th place, which got me over 14 BBO points. On the other hand, a Robot Rebate tournament might only have 3 participants, in which the winner only gets 0.18 masterpoints (or about 0.06 average). Both cost $1 and the Zenith has a higher percentage of cash-out (generally 1/3 of the players get 55% from my experience, so the Rebate tournament has a payout ratio of 0.5 while the Zenith tournament has a payout ratio of 0.8). ACBL seems to segment, so your score is only compared against 15 or so other players. Usually the winner doesn't get more than a reasonable number of masterpoints (such as 1.5).

It seems like the masterpoint formula rewards events with more players. A fair formula would have total masterpoints awarded increase linearly with the number of players, but it seems to increase quadratically. The current formula means that if you get each place with equal probability, you gain more masterpoints per tournament on average in larger tournaments. In a fair formula, if you score each place with equal probability, you get the same amount of masterpoints per tournament no matter the tournament size. This means that you can spend a lot of money on a tournament, but if only a few players show up, you won't get much bang for your buck no matter how well you do. On the other hand, the daylong tournaments give insane amount of points and are relatively cheap due to the number of players that play them.

Title says it all. It seems like the field is very strong (way stronger than those in the free daylong tournaments - where I can average around 60%), so generally I'm below average (let alone 55%). I guess this is to be expected, as making a profit should normatively be very hard.