Is matchpoints becoming obsolete?

[ceblair]

It used to be that matchpoint scoring was the only practical way to run a game

in which the same board is played at many tables.

 

This is, of course, no longer the case in online games. I would guess that there

are many more imp-scored games than matchpoint ones at BBO. Portable computers

and scoring software have made imp scoring possible in many more offline

situations than before. The local club has been using a scoring computer for at

least ten years, although most of their games are still matchpoint.

 

I confess to a preference for imp scoring, partly because there is a greater chance

of being able to work out what I consider to be the clearly right answer. As I

make my way through middle age, I also welcome the numerous boards on which

my mistakes will not cost very much. However, I realize these are matters of

individual taste.

 

I think it used to be accepted wisdom that the field in a matchpoint pair game would

be significantly weaker than in a knockout game, or even a swiss team game.

I'm not sure whether this is still the case. In particular, I suspect there is not

much difference between the strength of the typical matchpoint game and the

typical imp PAIR game, although the latter are (I think) still relatively rare offline.

I would be curious as to other's opinions.

[matmat]

I was of the impression that outside ACBL-land imp games were more popular... I am probably wrong.

[skjaeran]

Most tournaments and club games in Norway are match pointed.

 

Last year there was a large IMP-scored pairs tournament in Kristiansand. But most people rather wanted MP, so the reverted to the traditional scoring method again this year.

 

Teams are IMP-scored in general, BAM is almost unheard of - we had it on our annual festival a few years ago, but changed to a Patton variation.

[mr1303]

There is hardly a club in the UK (admittedly I have not played North of the border) that does not use match points as its regular format.

[nickf]

I was of the impression that outside ACBL-land imp games were more popular...  I am probably wrong.

that's certainly the case in my state. We used to have congresses that had Saturday MP and Sunday Teams. Now its predominently Saturday Swiss Pairs.

 

And the reason? Masterpoints of course.

 

nickf

sydney

[helene_t]

I think X-IMPs has been gaining terrain at the expense of butler because some consider it better, while butler was easier to score in the pre-computer ages.

 

As for matchpoints vs IMPs, I suppose IMPs is only moderately more complicated to score manually than matchpoints. So my guess is that if people really preferred IMPs we would see a lot more of butler at clubs.

 

I suppose it's a matter of taste whether you like the extra challenge of figuring out what the field if doing. I personally prefer matchpoints for two reasons:

- It is simpler to explain to beginners how it works.

- It is statistically more efficient because all boards have approximately the same weight. At IMPs, if your opponents bid a cold grand slam which nobody else bid, it is impossible to earn it back in a short pairs event.

[NickRW]

- It is statistically more efficient because all boards have approximately the same weight. At IMPs, if your opponents bid a cold grand slam which nobody else bid, it is impossible to earn it back in a short pairs event.

Yes, this factor, for a 20 odd board club duplicate is quite a problem with IMPs. With MP all boards count equally. With IMPs maybe 2 or 3 big boards colour the whole of the scoring.

 

In team matches this is of less concern - after all, if you or your team mates screw up a slam or vulnerable game, in principle at least, you have only yourselves to blame. At pairs, a slam the opposite way which is difficult to bid and/or hard to play and it is just your luck that the pair that sits down at your table when this hand arrives knows what they're doing. Now you have quite a mountain to climb for the rest of the evening.

 

IMP's PR line is that it is closer to real bridge (i.e. rubber) while ameliorating the effect of the big hands. In a limited sense this is true. The trouble is that, for a smallish number of boards, it still leaves a few big hands as the dominant factor.

 

I sometimes wonder if, for a club duplicate pairs, a modified IMP scale wouldn't be the most ideal solution:

 

Score Modified IMPs

0 0

10 1

20-30 2

40-60 3

70-110 4

120-190 5

200-320 6

330-530 7 and so on (each point range getting larger according to the famous Fibonacci series)

 

The advanage of this is

1) Large scores do count for more as with IMPs, but the really big scores are cut by quite a bit.

2) At the bottom end of the scale small scores are proprotionately a little higher and a win by 10 does at least count for something - IMPs has this arguably bizarre oddity that a win by 10 points counts for nothing.

 

Anyway, I don't know if anyone has ever tried this in real life. It seems to me to be a sensible compromise between MP and IMPs suitable for short events, particularly pairs.

 

Nick

[helene_t]

You can also play Patton. I kinda like it. But it is quite complicated. A modified IMP scale, maybe something like Nick's proposal, may achieve roughly the same in a simpler way.

[brianshark]

In Ireland, the clubs are entirely MPs for a typical club night. There are occasional (maybe monthly) teams competitions though, but rarely imp pairs. For the national events, the teams competitions are IMPs (never BAM) and the pairs are mostly MPs except the odd imp pairs competition. The master pairs is a very enjoyable live swissed imp pairs format.

 

I've never played BAM or Patton which is a shame.

[pigpenz]

if matchpoints is becoming obsolete, in part in the USA its because thats the way the ACBL sets up its regionals. Generally club games are matchpoints, sectionals are matchpoints, but regionals and nationals have zillions of flighted KO's.

 

25 yrs ago the pairs games used to pay over 40 masterpoints when was thelast time you saw that at an acbl regional? Now they are lucky if the pairs contests pay over 20....but people can win over 20 points in the 3rd or 4th bracket of the KO's.

 

For the ACBL its marketing I assume, thats what the masses want. Is it good for bridge? I think now days what you have is a large group of players who can accumulate 2500 masterpoints at quick rate playing against their peers without having to play against the best competition out there.

 

Too bad we dont have Barry Crane anymore!

[pigpenz]

after posting the other day went back and looked at recap sheets from Las Vega$ I didnt realize that matchpoint events had gone to 24 boards only at least at the regional level events at the nationals, I just always assumed it was 13 rounds top 12 156 avg.

[nige1]

Arguably, Matchpointed pairs is a completely different game from X-Imp or Butler Pairs; but I think MP is more fun and more skilful.

[pigpenz]

Arguably, Matchpointed pairs is a completely different game from X-Imp or Butler Pairs; but I think MP is more fun and more skilful.

yes i would gladly welcome back the days when there was only one event per day other than the KO's. The pairs events were the top dog events and were usually 300+ pairs....oh where is Barry when we need him.

[ArtK78]

Over the past year or so, I have played quite a bit with Dave Treadwell. Dave is a spry 95 years young.

 

Dave often complains about the proliferation of KO events at sectionals and regionals. He says that players today are not learning how to play pair events because they spend all of their time playing team events.

 

Last summer, Dave and I played in the Jerry Machlin pairs at the Mid Atlantic Regional in Bethesda, Maryland. It was a two-session qualifying and final open pairs, just like most major regional open pair events used to be. Furthermore, the final was played Barometer style. It was a fun event, and the field was very strong for a regional pair game.

 

There is a lot to what Dave says. Most pair events at regionals are watered down due to the popularity of the KOs. The Saturday Open Pairs used to be one of the premier events of a regional. Now, it is just another pair event.

[pigpenz]

I would tend to agree with all that ART...new players today can cut their teeth without ever having to play against top rated pairs. Before the proliferation of KO events you knew each session when you started out you were going to play against some pretty good seeded pairs. Nowdays, and it may just be a blindspot by me but i dont think so, newer players can hit 2500 rating pretty easy without ever playing against top seeded players....so...sigh....if i wait another 20yrs......flight b strata will be 0-5000.

[mycroft]

My problem is the reverse. I'm a 600 MP player (because most of my travel to tournaments, I get to wear a suit, mostly) who *wants* to play against the best. With the profileration of KOs, I need to find a 8000MP pair to play with to get into the top bracket, or a 4000 MP pair to get into bracket 2. So either I play in bracket 4 against the same people I play at in the club, or I play pairs, and table 3 if I'm lucky has a reasonable pair that got KOd yesterday, or I save up and go to the Nationals and hope the seeding for the Vanderbilt works in my favour.

 

I miss the open games - in particular, I miss the open qual/final two session games.

[han]

Even though my teammates lied that I was a famous player from the Netherlands and gave me 5000 extra masterpoints, we still had to play knockouts in a fairly low bracket. I didn't enjoy the competition. When we lost in the semi-finals I enjoyed it even less. :)

 

The swiss was much more fun but we had to wait so long before the matches were up. Really the Spingold is the most enjoyable event, long matches against good competition. I didn't play in it this year but I hope to do so again next year.

 

The LM pairs is nice to play in as well. I enjoy playing pairs as I feel I am more resposible for the result, in teams you can lose and there may just be nothing you can do about it. I also like the "us two against the rest" feeling that pairs gives and I don't have that as much in team games. Maybe I would have more of that if I had regular teammates like some do.

[Mbodell]

My problem is the reverse. I'm a 600 MP player (because most of my travel to tournaments, I get to wear a suit, mostly) who *wants* to play against the best.

We had the same problem with the KO trying to find our level. We tried a couple of NABC events, and didn't do so well. I played 4 bracketed KO and won brackets 9/10, 19/19, 12/12, and 13/20 all fairly comfortably, even though for some of the matches myself or my team mates weren't playing that well. I like team events and IMP scoring but it would be nice if we could say I know our team is only 1,300 MP but really we play more like 13,000 MP could we try say bracket 6 or 7.

 

I agree that the Swiss offers more chances to find your level but unfortunately we didn't play as many this time and by the time the final weekend rolled around our team mates had left.

[pigpenz]

there used to be times where there was a swiss qualifying day -2 sessions and you were seeded on how you finished in the qualifying for the KO's.

 

I was looking at a stratified pairs game at nationals, and I believe Flight A paid down to 20+ places and Flight B second overall was 50% and paid around 8 gold points. Now the question is ...did they learn bridge from that.

 

I can remember once coming in 7th overall ina pairs event at the nationals, i was trying to win flight A and my partner was trying to get a section top in flight B :( :)

[xcurt]

Agree with the comments about KOs, mps and bracketing. When I was starting to play tournaments I could only play on the weekends, and I played a lot online. So I got good without accumulating the mps, basically locking myself out of KOs -- which is the route to even more mps. I'm not interested in going to a tournament to play random 1200 mp players for four sessions, nor am I interested in going to a tournament to play a 17-table Flight A pairs on Saturday. There probably aren't many people in my position though, so there's no pressure for the ACBL to change the status quo.

[Vilgan]

My problem is the reverse.  I'm a 600 MP player (because most of my travel to tournaments, I get to wear a suit, mostly) who *wants* to play against the best.

We had the same problem with the KO trying to find our level. We tried a couple of NABC events, and didn't do so well. I played 4 bracketed KO and won brackets 9/10, 19/19, 12/12, and 13/20 all fairly comfortably, even though for some of the matches myself or my team mates weren't playing that well. I like team events and IMP scoring but it would be nice if we could say I know our team is only 1,300 MP but really we play more like 13,000 MP could we try say bracket 6 or 7.

 

I agree that the Swiss offers more chances to find your level but unfortunately we didn't play as many this time and by the time the final weekend rolled around our team mates had left.

One tactic that worked for us in the past was just to inflate your actual matchpoints. Add an extra 1 in front of your masterpoint total or something and you'll get to play against better players :) Its something that in theory you are not supposed to do but a lot of people do and the directors don't really care. Inflating totals to play up is no big deal whereas deflating totals to play down is a MAJOR no no.

 

As for the KO vs matchpoint thing.. I think its sort of a progression. When I played in my first KO in the Dallas NABC, I was way excited to win 11 gold points for making it to the semis. Even last year I was still playing mostly KO events because it was cool to get all those "points". Once you start worrying about national events though, matchpoints is the next logical step (imo). Its a lot easier to place in a national pairs event than it is to make it to day 3 of the Vanderbilt/Spingold. Soooooo I'll work on my matchpoint game. Another reason I see some people play matchpoints is they acquired more masterpoints than their skill level can accommodate. So rather than playing bracket 1 and losing constantly they switch over to matchpoints where sometimes they win stuff and sometimes they don't.

 

I think it will always be the case that newer players all flock to KOs though. At least until pair rewards are increased to be a bit more comparable to KOs.

 

Eric

[paulg]

Matchpoints dominate the clubs in Scotland. However, unlike my experiences in England, many of the clubs will use aggregate scoring for at least one or two club competitions. At my local club, I reckon 20% of the evenings are scored using aggregate.

 

Paul

[NickRW]

Matchpoints dominate the clubs in Scotland. However, unlike my experiences in England, many of the clubs will use aggregate scoring for at least one or two club competitions. At my local club, I reckon 20% of the evenings are scored using aggregate.

 

Paul

Yup. Don't know how far south you travel into Sassenach land, but I'm south of London and it is pretty much solid matchpoints here - I think about 3 team events during the year - and one of them is the random teams in the Christmas week. Given the prevalence of computer scoring these days it is perhaps surprising that people don't experiment with other forms of scoring at least once in a while.

 

Nick

 

P.S. Edit - I don't want to lose MP - it is a very good form of competition.

[NickRW]

One tactic that worked for us in the past was just to inflate your actual matchpoints. Add an extra 1 in front of your masterpoint total or something and you'll get to play against better players :rolleyes: Its something that in theory you are not supposed to do but a lot of people do and the directors don't really care. Inflating totals to play up is no big deal whereas deflating totals to play down is a MAJOR no no.

Yeah - I can see why that would be of course. But there are

 

a) older people who perhaps were good players but whose skills are not what they were - perhaps they'd be better off if allowed to slip back down the rankings and

 

b] there are folks who just play lots and accumulate more points than their actual skills would really suggest.

 

Without a better ranking system these sorts of things will be something of a problem. That, or just have open competition and qualifying rounds where necessary.

 

Nick

[Vilgan]

One tactic that worked for us in the past was just to inflate your actual matchpoints. Add an extra 1 in front of your masterpoint total or something and you'll get to play against better players :rolleyes: Its something that in theory you are not supposed to do but a lot of people do and the directors don't really care. Inflating totals to play up is no big deal whereas deflating totals to play down is a MAJOR no no.

Yeah - I can see why that would be of course. But there are

 

a) older people who perhaps were good players but whose skills are not what they were - perhaps they'd be better off if allowed to slip back down the rankings and

 

b] there are folks who just play lots and accumulate more points than their actual skills would really suggest.

 

Without a better ranking system these sorts of things will be something of a problem. That, or just have open competition and qualifying rounds where necessary.

 

Nick

I don't think anyone ever argues that the ranking system in the ACBL is absurd. The problem is getting anyone up at the top to actually DO something about it. The current system is good for revenue stream and messing with that in any fashion seems to be taboo.

 

Hell, I just finished 13th in the Fast Pairs in Vegas and picked up 25 platinum that week. However, at many regionals I am still considered a "C" player if I play a pair event. Is that absurd? Yes. Are they ever going to do anything about it? Probably not.

 

The people who drop down in ability as they age but are not dropped into a lower strat I think are the ones who lose out the most. There is one guy in our unit with over 10000 masterpoints who was a hell of a player once, but can barely even play now. Every KO he enters he is automatically put in bracket 1 and gets crushed even though he definitely does not belong there anymore.