Two sets of laws, two sets of rankings

[sceptic]

Why do the bridge organisations, not have two sets of rules

 

one set for social bridge, an easy to follow set of rules banning pshyches etc for clubs to follow ( to try and encourage people into the game and maintain the social aspect of the game) Pshyches do piss a lot of people off

 

and one set for serious competitions that the competitive player would require ( they can make the rules as complicated as they like then )(intention here, is to keep the ponts awarded seperate, so to differenciate the different type of player(if that is workable))

 

I do not believe what I percieve to be a majoriy opinion here that masterpoints and rankings are a bad thing to aspire towards, some people consider them an achievement and are proud of them

 

You could have the exsistng master points schemes and then you could have a secondry ranking system based on the competitive play and only ranked by success in tournaments, even if you did well and stopped competitive playing, you could keep the ranking as it is something you had achieved and would be a decent judgement of your ability(that last statment may seem dumb to some of you, bwtf)

[the hog]

"Why do the bridge organisations, not have two sets of rules"

 

Wayne, for the same reason that tennis, say, doesn't have 2 sets of rules.

Psyches only piss off players who have not been properly educated in the rules, imo.

[sceptic]

I disagree with that Ron, only because some people treat this game as quite a social thing and the limited exposure to club play indicates to me that pshyches are extremely compilcated to understand

 

I understand your view, but I am not talking about expert level players or even advanced players, to overcome a pshyche you need to be very good and not everyone has the time to learn how to play what is on effect a game nor does everyone have the judgement to overcome them, what at the end of the day is a poker bid

 

I maybe should not have mentioned pshyches as I did not want this to become a discussion about pshyches

 

the point is about two sets of laws and rankins etc

[helene_t]

Sorry Wayne but this is a very bad idea (although preferable to the one you posted in the Water Cooler).

 

Social players don't know the rules, if they were to formulate their desired rules they would not be consistent with themselves let alone with their peers, but above all they would not want the rules to be enforced since it's rude to call the TD.

 

If anything, the rules should be more relaxed at social events. In practice, abuse of UI, bids/plays out of turn, failure to alert or to fill in CC, sometimes even revokes are left unpenalized at social events. Surely psyches are allowed at social events. People usually don't care about misbids that got fielded so I suppose they would be more tolerant towards fielded psyches than would players/TDs at more serious levels.

 

OK, some people don't like psyches, just like they don't like conventions, preempts and penalty doubles, but that doesn't mean they would want to, much less be able to, formulate and enforce formal rules against them.

[BillHiggin]

There are social bridge clubs already. Since they are not sanctioned so they play according to the rules as they like them. Once a club becomes sanctioned, they need to observe the real rules. If they play by some watered down version at the club level, then they will not be ready for the bigger tournaments. We already see this with regard to things like UI from tempo (inexperienced players think they are being accused of cheating).

[JanM]

I remember Peter Pender suggesting the same thing 20 or 30 years ago, in the context of playing in a Regional where someone had become upset (AFAIR) by a complaint about tempo. Since then, at least in ACBLand, we have moved a little toward different fields, even if they all supposedly have the same rules. We now have so many stratified and stratiflighted and bracketed and I don't know what else events that the 'social" players never have to play against the "experts" who want to play by stricter rules. And of course the GCC, badly written and much maligned as it is, is also an attempt to simplify things for the "social" player.

 

As for points, well, we do have a different set of points for the really serious. They're called seeding points or Positioning Points or Platinum Points. You get them for high finishes in "serious" events - seeding points, which are used to seed the Vanderbilt and Spingold, are awarded for placings in those events and the Reisinger. Positioning Points, which are used to award byes in our Trials and also are part of the seeding point formula for the Trials, are also awarded for high V/S/R finishes. Platinum points are awarded for NABC+ events (do not ask me how that's defined, but it's something like NABC events that are unrestricted by masterpoint holding).

 

Although the "serious" points have changed, they've actually been around for a long time. I remember when I won my first NABC title (Women's Pairs, back before there was an Open opposite), it happened to be the last event of the tournament, and in the airport the next day I bumped into Barry Crane, who asked me who had won the Women's, making me grin joyfully when I said we had, and then asked how many qualification points for the World Women's Pairs it had paid, which I knew. When I got home I commented to my husband that it seemed strange Barry had asked about qualification points and not Masterpoints, and Lew said "he knew what mattered to you." And he was right - I had no idea how many Masterpoints I'd won.

[Guest Jlall]

When I got home I commented to my husband that it seemed strange Barry had asked about qualification points and not Masterpoints, and Lew said "he knew what mattered to you." And he was right - I had no idea how many Masterpoints I'd won.

Great story Jan!

[TimG]

And of course the GCC, badly written and much maligned as it is, is also an attempt to simplify things for the "social" player.

Trouble is, the GCC is used for many, many events. If GCC events are for social players, then something like 90% of regional events in New England are for social players. But, don't tell that to the players who are winning those events.

[barmar]

A few years ago the ACBL investigated sanctioning clubs to "Relaxed Rules Bridge". Here's what the CEO report said when they discontinued the project (from http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/about...CEOReport.pdf):

 

1.05 Develop club sanction that does not require strict adherence to Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge.   

Work on this was discontinued at the end of 2005. There has been an ongoing discussion of this item dating back to 2003, before the strategic plan was drafted. An initial meeting was held in Long Beach, July 2003.

 

In Spring 2005, this project was shared by Granell, Blaiss, Robertson, and Beye with consultation with Jerry Fleming. Later in 2005, two models were suggested with input from the Laws Commission. Random samplings from clubs indicated three details: 1) There was no general agreement from club to club on relaxed rules. 2) Some clubs did not wish to deviate from the “Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge”. 3) Clubs in general do not want to be told by ACBL how to satisfy their customers. Any relaxed rules would have to be approved by the Laws Commission. Other points that were made by some clubs were that they post their own rules (not always according to the Laws), some players demand strict adherence to the Laws, and the problem of players making a transition from club games with relaxed rules to tournaments. The two models are still in our files, but management can see no upside to having “formal” relaxed rules.

 

Most Easybridge! games and novice/beginner games have been crafted to fit the comfort and needs of the players. In looking at a 15-year history of club tables, 2006 had the highest total and 2005 was the second highest.