New Player Definitions

[uday]

The amiability ratings provides incentive to be nice

 

It is not possible to distinguish between a new member and an old member from a new location with a new name.

 

Isnt this going to cause an issue with any ratings schemes? Anyone with a bad rating will drop back to newbie status and start over with a new name. A system that makes it easy to avoid these people might make it hard for true newbies to gain their footing.

 

Maybe it isnt an issue. You wouldnt be able to trust the neutral/new ratings but you'd be able to trust the bad/good ones.

 

 

How do you see people rating each other? Simply right click and assign a number from 1..100 in either category ?

[Dwingo]

How do you see people rating each other? Simply right click and assign a number from 1..100 in either category ?

Over such a big population, you would expert the Novice-Beginner-Intemediate-Advanced-Expert-Worldclass spectrum to follow the Normal Distribution Bell Curve.

 

With people rating others, it is quite likely that you will see more Novices, as people in general are very harsh in criticising their online partners. One bad play and your partner is likely to take it on you with some bad rating.

 

With novices and beginners also given this right to vote, are they knowledgeable enough to distinguish between Advanced, Expert and WorldClass?

 

Godwin

[Clinch]

We all know that self-ratings suck.  We also know that if you do ratings based on computer-calculated bridge results then people become nasty and the impetus to cheat increases. 

I don't *know* either of these things.

 

Self-ratings, imho, don't suck, but they are meaningless as measures. The motivation of someone who self-designates expert is endlessly debatable, but one clear possibility is that such a player is passing a message - "I do not wish to play with or against novices and/or intermediates". In general, those who designate themselves expert (but are not) tend to forgive their own errors and be scathing about those of partners and opponents. Self-rating does not, for that reason, make for a friendlier game amonst strangers, as one is constantly stumbling over people whose self-judgments differ from one's own.

 

I also question that independent ratings make people want to cheat. I agree that the desire to improve ratings when one hits the ceiling tends to make people believe that others are cheating around them, or to engage in unsavoury strategies such as annihilating poor opponents to improve ratings and self-esteem, but I don't think ratings themselves increase cheating, except in very few cases. If used judiciously, I have found them to be good ways of finding compatible games.

 

Peter (Quite good, although I say so myself).

New York, NY.

[DrTodd13]

The amiability ratings provides incentive to be nice

 

It is not possible to distinguish between a new member and an old member from a new location with a new name.

 

Isnt this going to cause an issue with any ratings schemes? Anyone with a bad rating will drop back to newbie status and start over with a new name. A system that makes it easy to avoid these people might make it hard for true newbies to gain their footing.

 

Along with a person's rating, you need to see how many times they've been rated . If they've only been rated once or twice then you shouldn't take the rating too seriously. I think the hassle of telling all your friends your new ID will make few people switch IDs frequently but you're right, if they are determined then you can't stop this behavior but I don't think it will be a big deal.

 

How do you see people rating each other? Simply right click and assign a number from 1..100 in either category ?

I'm thinking that when you quite playing with (or potentially against) someone that a box would pop up asking if you'd like to rate them. You could right click on their name and change your mind later on but unless you pop the box up I don't know how much participation you'd get in the ratings system.

 

With people rating others, it is quite likely that you will see more Novices, as people in general are very harsh in criticising their online partners. One bad play and your partner is likely to take it on you with some bad rating.

 

With novices and beginners also given this right to vote, are they knowledgeable enough to distinguish between Advanced, Expert and WorldClass?

Under my scheme, if you play a small number of hands with someone and then get pissed off and give them a 1, your rating won't have much weight because you didn't play that many hands with them. At normal tables, I don't think the novice has to rate a worldclass is a problem because I don't think such pairings are very commonplace. In tournaments, you may get this mix of people (assuming you rate opps as well as pd) but in that case the number of boards against any opp is small (see argument above) and a user could always refuse to rate someone if they can't differentiate between adv and wc.

 

I don't *know* either of these things.

 

Self-ratings, imho, don't suck, but they are meaningless as measures. The motivation of someone who self-designates expert is endlessly debatable, but one clear possibility is that such a player is passing a message - "I do not wish to play with or against novices and/or intermediates". In general, those who designate themselves expert (but are not) tend to forgive their own errors and be scathing about those of partners and opponents. Self-rating does not, for that reason, make for a friendlier game amonst strangers, as one is constantly stumbling over people whose self-judgments differ from one's own.

 

I also question that independent ratings make people want to cheat. I agree that the desire to improve ratings when one hits the ceiling tends to make people believe that others are cheating around them, or to engage in unsavoury strategies such as annihilating poor opponents to improve ratings and self-esteem, but I don't think ratings themselves increase cheating, except in very few cases. If used judiciously, I have found them to be good ways of finding compatible games.

 

The prima facie meaning of a rating is as a measure of ability. You admit they are meaningless as a measure so I think that pretty much means they suck. Maybe we should start a poll to see how many thing the self-rating is a self-measure of ability or a statement of desire who they want to play against? I don't see why anyone should choose the latter when that is clearly not its intent. Just because people who self-rate expert tend to share traits does not mean people are self-rating that way because they know they share those traits with other people who self-rate that way.

[tooncestdc]

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.

[Al_U_Card]

Look at the results for the last month. It shows results for enough hands that you can tell a lot about the player. You can even check out some of his pards to see how good they seem to be.

[mikeh]

Good topic, and I am not surprised that there appears to be no consensus.

 

I would like to see an objective rating system if one could be developed that did not come fully-equipped with major drawbacks, but I see little likelihood of that happening.

 

The 'objective' systems I have seen or read about carry huge ethical problems. Cheating is one of them,and probably the worst, but it is not the only problem.

 

As for voting opponents and partners, the problem is that bridge skill is not purely subjective.

 

And looking at results is misleading. When I attemot to assess the strength of an opponent or am kibitizing, it is not the result per board that I look at but the apparent thought process reflected by the bidding and/or the card play. On most hands I have watched between average players, all players, apart from dummy, usually make mistakes in the play, but most of the mistakes either do not matter or cancel out, because the opps give them back.

 

Give me someone like Ritong or Justin or Frances to comment on another player's skill level, and I would have a lot of confidence in that assessment, because my interaction with them, and their discussions about how they think, persuade me that their opinion counts. But give me the opinion of perhaps 80% of the bridge world (I include real life as well as on-line), and I would pay little attention. The harsh reality is that almost all bridge players believe themselves to be better than the rest of the world thinks they are, and very few players are capable of accurately judging the ability of anyone significantly better than themselves. I hasten to add that I fully recognize that this almost certainly applies to me as well.

 

The self rating method on BBO is as good as any, at least until inflationary pressure makes the majority of players WC instead of expert :o

[hotShot]

Look at the results for the last month. It shows results for enough hands that you can tell a lot about the player. You can even check out some of his pards to see how good they seem to be.

I disagree, even at world championships someone has to be last and they will have a bad result shown. The average score of the championship loosers will be worse than that of the winner of the "Totaly incompetent Bridge players turnament".

[hotShot]

Let us for a minute sassume we would have a peer rating system. How will it work for me?

 

Some time ago i met a lady in the MBC. The first board in 4th seat i held 0 HCP but a nice 5card♠ and a void in a minor. She bid 1♠ in second seat over a 1♥ opening. Since it we were white and they red, i bid 4♠ over LHO's 4♥. During the whole game she told me that whatever i play is not bridge ....., she went down one dbled while almost everybody else lost to 4♥ making. The second board was similar, but the tone of her complaints got a little unplesant. After those 2 boards she left, with +12 imp at our side and -12 with opps. She will never play with me again, but both opps invited me privatly to play with them any time.

[DrTodd13]

Let us for a minute sassume we would have a peer rating system. How will it work for me?

 

Some time ago i met a lady in the MBC. The first board in 4th seat i held 0 HCP but a nice 5card♠ and a void in a minor. She bid 1♠ in second seat over a 1♥ opening. Since it we were white and they red, i bid 4♠ over LHO's 4♥. During the whole game she told me that whatever i play is not bridge ....., she went down one dbled while almost everybody else lost to 4♥ making. The second board was similar, but the tone of her complaints got a little unplesant. After those 2 boards she left, with +12 imp at our side and -12 with opps. She will never play with me again, but both opps invited me privatly to play with them any time.

You say you played 5 hands with this lady? Well, let's say the cutoff for a sufficient number of boards to know how good a person is is 50. So, you played 5 hands with her out of a possible 50. Therefore, her opinion would count only 1/10th as much as people who have played 50 hands with you. Moreover, give the opps the ability to rate you as well and you get 2 good ratings and one mediocre one.

 

I think somebody was suggesting that I was suggesting that people look at results in order to rate people. I am suggesting the exact opposite. Results are largely irrelevant. The quality of the field and how lucky you are can both cause a purely "look at results" approach to fail, not to mention what a pure results-based approach does to human psychology. If we just wanted to look at results then we could automate it and not need human input. If the purpose of a rating system is to find people you might like to play with then how other people view you as a partner is all that's important. So, to people that are very passive and like to sit back and not take sacrifices then your style will be unpleasant to them. I admire skepticism and I'm not 100% sure my approach will work but I very much suspect that it is better than what we have now and puts in place several motivations to get people to do the right thing. If people want to rating system to be useful then they'll have to bite the bullet and say, "ok..we played 5 hands and on most of them he was ok and on the other two it wasn't my style so I'll rate him a 4 or 5." If everyone starts handing out 1's and this becomes a problem in that everyone's ratings are tending towards 1 or 2 then a gentle reminder that the system might actually be useful if people tried to do it unemotionally rather than emotionally might be in order. I tend to think that your somewhat regular partners who must like you otherwise they wouldn't keep playing with you will keep your rating somewhere around where it should be because they know you better and their opinions carry more weight due to number of boards played.

[Winstonm]

Good topic, and I am not surprised that there appears to be no consensus.

 

I would like to see an objective rating system if one could be developed that did not come fully-equipped with major drawbacks, but I see little likelihood of that happening.

 

The 'objective' systems I have seen or read about carry huge ethical problems. Cheating is one of them,and probably the worst, but it is not the only problem.

 

As for voting opponents and partners, the problem is that bridge skill is not purely subjective.

 

And looking at results is misleading. When I attemot to assess the strength of an opponent or am kibitizing, it is not the result per board that I look at but the apparent thought process reflected by the bidding and/or the card play. On most hands I have watched between average players, all players, apart from dummy, usually make mistakes in the play, but most of the mistakes either do not matter or cancel out, because the opps give them back.

 

Give me someone like Ritong or Justin or Frances to comment on another player's skill level, and I would have a lot of confidence in that assessment, because my interaction with them, and their discussions about how they think, persuade me that their opinion counts. But give me the opinion of perhaps 80% of the bridge world (I include real life as well as on-line), and I would pay little attention. The harsh reality is that almost all bridge players believe themselves to be better than the rest of the world thinks they are, and very few players are capable of accurately judging the ability of anyone significantly better than themselves. I hasten to add that I fully recognize that this almost certainly applies to me as well.

 

The self rating method on BBO is as good as any, at least until inflationary pressure makes the majority of players WC instead of expert :D

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

[inquiry]

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

omg... and who do you think would be making the decision the who is expert and who is world class, and what criteria would they apply?

 

I could see removing world class, and saving it for those with gold stars, but even among gold stars (no offense guys), most are not world class. So who would decide which golden ones are experts and which are world class. This would be a nightmare.

[fred]

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

omg... and who do you think would be making the decision the who is expert and who is world class, and what criteria would they apply?

 

I could see removing world class, and saving it for those with gold stars, but even among gold stars (no offense guys), most are not world class. So who would decide which golden ones are experts and which are world class. This would be a nightmare.

You speak the truth, Kemosabe.

 

There was a time in which we assigned stars based on my perception of people's skills and/or the recommendation of people I knew and respected.

 

Nightmare is indeed an appropriate description of the result of this policy. We will not go down this road again.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Winstonm]

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

omg... and who do you think would be making the decision the who is expert and who is world class, and what criteria would they apply?

 

I could see removing world class, and saving it for those with gold stars, but even among gold stars (no offense guys), most are not world class. So who would decide which golden ones are experts and which are world class. This would be a nightmare.

Gee, Ben. I thought you would do it. :D

 

Winston

[slothy]

Ahem, Is it possible to adopt the characters in Friends as a means of Ranking players?

 

Fred seemed to quite like the idea with regards to how we visualise our acquaintances/ friends on BBO..i am sure we can come up with a corollary for ranks B). I do have a few suggestions

[Winstonm]

Ahem, Is it possible to adopt the characters in Friends as a means of Ranking players?

 

Fred seemed to quite like the idea with regards to how we visualise our acquaintances/ friends on BBO..i am sure we can come up with a corollary for ranks :rolleyes:. I do have a few suggestions

Or how about rankings based on the characters from "Peanuts"?

[pigpenz]

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

omg... and who do you think would be making the decision the who is expert and who is world class, and what criteria would they apply?

 

I could see removing world class, and saving it for those with gold stars, but even among gold stars (no offense guys), most are not world class. So who would decide which golden ones are experts and which are world class. This would be a nightmare.

You speak the truth, Kemosabe.

 

There was a time in which we assigned stars based on my perception of people's skills and/or the recommendation of people I knew and respected.

 

Nightmare is indeed an appropriate description of the result of this policy. We will not go down this road again.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Fred:

Have you had to take anyones star away for bad play?? :rolleyes:

[hrothgar]

Ahem, Is it possible to adopt the characters in Friends as a means of Ranking players?

 

Fred seemed to quite like the idea with regards to how we visualise our acquaintances/ friends on BBO..i am sure we can come up with a corollary for ranks :rolleyes:. I do have a few suggestions

Or how about rankings based on the characters from "Peanuts"?

I think that this is a great idea...

 

So long as I'm assigned level "Woodstock".

I don't really care where Woodstock is on the scale.

I just want to be a Woodstock

[fred]

This is good thought and accurate and led to a concept - I wonder if it is possible to have "Advanced" as the highest self-rating the software would allow and have expert/WC tag applied by BBO?

 

Winston

omg... and who do you think would be making the decision the who is expert and who is world class, and what criteria would they apply?

 

I could see removing world class, and saving it for those with gold stars, but even among gold stars (no offense guys), most are not world class. So who would decide which golden ones are experts and which are world class. This would be a nightmare.

You speak the truth, Kemosabe.

 

There was a time in which we assigned stars based on my perception of people's skills and/or the recommendation of people I knew and respected.

 

Nightmare is indeed an appropriate description of the result of this policy. We will not go down this road again.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Fred:

Have you had to take anyones star away for bad play?? <_<

We will only take away a star if:

 

1) The star behaves badly. We expect stars to set an example for other members, not only through their bridge but through their conduct as well.

2) The star removes his/her full real name or real country from his/her profile. In most cases we will restore the star if the person in question edits their profile to include accurate information.

3) We learn that the star lied to us about his/her identry and/or tournament record

 

People guilty of 1) or 3) will often get barred from BBO as well.

 

Occasionally we make a mistake and add a star to a person who should not have one. Usually in these cases we let the person keep the star (on the theory that it would be embarassing to lose a star and we do not want to embarass anyone due to a mistake we made).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Sigi_BC84]

Maybe best is self rating on interest level:

 

Friendly Don't Care.

Friendly Kind of Care.

Serious But Friendly

Serious and a Jerk

Jerk and Really Serious

A Serious Jerk.

 

:P

Winston

LOL, this is great, my two thumbs up for this one!

--Sigi

[Sigi_BC84]

Here there are "national championships" (of which I have won none) and other tournaments, of which I have won many... The level of the tournaments depend on location, if there is prize money or only other prizes, and who happens to have time.

Wow this seems like very wierd criteria to base level of tourneys on. Very wierd.

 

Location determines level? Who has time determines level of tourney?

What he is talking about is that tournaments in central locations or metropolitan areas in Germany draw a better competition than events in sparsely populated areas (location).

 

Also, if some of the experts don't have time to play, you will have not as good a competition -- this is essential since there simply ARE not many experts.

 

Similar reasoning applies to prizes (good money attracts better players).

 

Know that unfortunately there are not that many high class bridge tournaments being offered in Germany, especially if you are not willing to drive long distances. Also we certainly do NOT have a market for professionals like in the US (the few existing professionals in Germany teach LOLs on bridge vacation trips).

 

--Sigi

[microcap]

Given the difficulty of the game, I suggest the following ranking system:

 

1) Always Overbid

2) Always underbid

3) Can't defend

4) Can't declare

5) Can't defend or declare

6) Can't count to 13 if you spot me 1 through 11

7) Haven't guessed a queen in a decade

8) All of the above

 

:) :)

[han]

Maybe best is self rating on interest level:

 

Friendly Don't Care.

Friendly Kind of Care.

Serious But Friendly

Serious and a Jerk

Jerk and Really Serious

A Serious Jerk.

 

:)

Winston

Missing some:

 

Serious Kind of Friendly.

Jerk Don't Care.

Jerk Kind of Care.

Think I'm Friendly but people tell me I'm a Jerk.

Think I'm Friendly but nobody talks to me anymore.

[dogsbreath]

Hi

 

I suggest Fred should consider adding two additional rating categories..

 

Inter-Planetary Master and Inter-Galactic Master...

 

This will accommodate both the increasing popularity of BBO and also satisfy those players who advertise for 'World Class or better'

 

Rgds Dog :D

[AceOfHeart]

Honestly , i feel like upgrading my skill level to advanced/expert due to the sudden influx of advanced/expert players that play like 6 year olds. Then i realised i am not in the same league as them :rolleyes:

 

Honestly, i feel that the rules of self ranking should be made more clear . currently it recides in a small document in bbo that i have trouble finding in like half an hour. I would bet 90% of the self proclaimed advanced/experts have no knowledge of that file too.

 

Somehow the intermediate says : " comparable in skill to most members of bbo" but i think the number of intermediates is the lowest %.