Ranking yourself

[sceptic]

Hi,

 

I had a thought (a rare thing indeed)

 

a possible way to rank yourself on BBO would be via a quiz

 

Level 1, 2, 3 ( you decide the level the questions are set at, this is just an example of my idea) (that could be used for BBO self ratings) and yes it will have issues, this is just an idea. a polish club expert of that country could devise sensible questions relating to that system etc etc

 

other possible things to consider, is sayc questions, 2/1 questions. acol, polish club etc etc. you could rank yourself expert if you pass level 3 in 3 different systems or something of that nature, it would take a bit of working out, but I am sure someone like Ben, mikeh, Francis( a multitude of people on the forums are capable of doing this) or one of the younger ones jlall etc could pose the questions

 

level 1 question i.e what are the continuations of stayman

 

level 2 question i.e. what card do you return from your partners lead if you play attitude

 

level 3 question i.e. what bid do you make using lebensohl over partners reverse (give a bidding example

 

 

10 questions 3 levels and also you can rank it against each system that anyone plays

 

Whilst I realise that an expert could be only ever playing precision, fill in your profile expert and in notes precision expert only or something like Expert all systems ? intermediate cant answer level two questions yet?

 

if people take the quizzes, then there is a more realistic chance that they will self rate more accuratley (though shoot me down in flames if you disagree with this)

 

perhaps by not being able to answer the questions will make people think, they dont know as much as they think they know, in a nice way that gets them thinking

 

and yes there will always be people that will cheat, but over all Fred could post the questions on the site and attach peoples results to it for thier first attempt

[sceptic]

further thought

 

the questions could even be trialed on here first for others views on if they are really applicable and some questions could be generic ones based on popular conventions

 

 

 

I do appreciate that sometimes there is not a correct definative answer, so maybe there will be more than one answer to a question, I did say there may be issues

 

anyway thats enough thinking for one day back to the beer

[Free]

Here's one for you: if the quiz result is something like "absolute loser", will you put it on your profile? What about the thousands of other people who'll get this rating? Even if you call it novice, or beginner, people will keep lying for their self esteem...

[sceptic]

like I said just an idea, I thought if you excluded the blatent liars, then maybe it could work. just a thought, I had not thought of using absolute loser on the rankings, that slipped my mind :blink:

[rogerclee]

How many threads do we have to make about this topic?

 

OP: Omg, people lie about their ratings on BBO! I will fix it!

Person 2: Yes it is a disgrace!

Person 3: I have this other equally inane idea on how to fix the rating system on BBO.

Person 4: But none of it really matters, because the skill levels of well-known players are known no matter what they mark, and the skill levels of bad players will become apparent quickly anyway. Furthermore, it is a pointless exercise, because skill level in bridge is already tricky enough (how do you rate a partnership?), and because very few people are actually curious about their true skill level (or could look at themselves in the mirror if they knew how bad they truly were).

Everyone: Agreed.

 

This thread can die now.

[sceptic]

a few more probably

 

sobered up now roger, perhaps, you will grow up next and do us all a favour :blink:

 

I actually believe more people than you think care aboutassessing thier skill levels, especially lower down the scale, people like a goal to go for, something you seem to miss with your post

[zasanya]

Rating cant be all that pointless.Otherwise Fred wouldnt have put it in profile.

[sceptic]

the BIL, new players like to know they are improving, how else can they judge that, maybe what we have is not perfect, to the experts like yourself, that think they are god's gift, but I am sure others do not share your opinions quite as much as you think

[DrTodd13]

By continuations of stayman, do you mean opener's responses or responder's responses to opener's response? If the latter, then virtually everyone would be at level 0!

[awm]

If you want a quiz, try the bridge master problems (declarer play) that are for sale on BBO. In addition to measuring your skill level (and possibly improving it) you can give BBO some well deserved income.

 

This is about as close to an objective measure as you're going to get -- bidding has a lot to do with style and agreements and I don't think a truly objective "quiz" is likely there (plus look at all the disagreements amongst the expert panels on these challenge hands, even disagreements about what various calls mean).

[sceptic]

if you take out the real experts from the equation, I still believe that there is a need for a rankings system for peoples satisfaction, as opposed to the popular view of masterpoints for money. I suppose no one has a pefect answer, I just had not seen this banded about , but I agree bridgemaster is a good tool, it has helped me a lot, it will help others

[TimG]

Rating cant be all that pointless.Otherwise Fred wouldnt have put it in profile.

He put flags in the profiles....

 

I was going to mention the Bridge Master problems, but read the whole thread first, so will now just 2nd AWM's idea. It would be a good way from a newer player to get a feel for how they're improving, but I don't see any need to post results.

 

I think almost all quizzes regarding conventions will be basically pointless.

[han]

Also agree with Adam about the bridge master problems. They should certainly suffice for anybody in the bil.

[kenberg]

The ratings sort roughly but I don't think that it is all that difficult to put yourself in a reasonable category if you wish to.

 

I rate myself as advanced. Here are some reasons.

 

When I play with other advanced players they rarely if ever scoff at my self-evaluation. Some tell me what I should have done, sometimes they are even right, but usually they are fine with playing with me.

 

When I am kibbing, rather often players who know me and who rank themselves as intermediates ask my advice on either conventions or matters of judgment.

 

When we get a bad result I can usually identify whether I could have improved the result by a different bid or play and I have some sort of reasonably objective opinion as to whether I should have done so. For example, playing last night in the acbl pair game our last two boards were terrible, both my fault. On the first I took an overly optimistic view. On the next partner screwed up a convention but by dumb luck we landed in a very good contract. I was so rattled from my previous error and the mix up that I screwed the pooch and got us zip instead of a top. We were still above average for the twelve boards.

 

I know squeezes and endplays and all that jazz, but really I see that as fun but of limited use. It's judgment in everyday bidding and play, and general knowledge of what an auction means, and keeping alert during the play, that counts and I'm decent but not great with that. So I am advanced. I am not an expert.

 

Anyone, after they learn a bit, can rank themselves reasonably. Someone who is just starting out should realize that s/he is just starting out. Some live a fantasy life. Mostly it's a harmless indulgence.

[Apollo81]

I know squeezes and endplays and all that jazz, but really I see that as fun but of limited use.

I think that squeezes and endplays come up quite frequently. In fact in the last live game I played (24 boards) there were 2 endplays plus a hand where a defender had to underruff at trick 3.

[Codo]

In fact in the last live game I played (24 boards) there were 2 endplays plus a hand where a defender had to underruff at trick 3.

yes these underruffs in trick three are getting so common, noone cares about them any more....

[kenberg]

I know squeezes and endplays and all that jazz, but really I see that as fun but of limited use.

I think that squeezes and endplays come up quite frequently. In fact in the last live game I played (24 boards) there were 2 endplays plus a hand where a defender had to underruff at trick 3.

I didn't really mean to dis these plays but I think if I looked a forty bad results of mine that were obtained from play, at most five would be because I missed a squeeze or endplay. Quite a few would be because my attention wandered and I failed to draw some very obvious inference.

To put it another way: When I see a player advertise himself as advanced I might think this means that he should be able to run at least the simpler forms of squeezes but what I really feel entitled to expect is that if he is in 3NT in imps and has nine tricks on top he will not go down taking some stupid finesse. That is, he knows to see how many tricks are needed and adjust his play accordingly. You don't always get that with advanced. Sometimes you don't get it with expert.

[fred]

If you really want to know how good you are and track your progress there already various ways that you can come up with a reasonable estimate:

 

- Go to myhands on a regular basis and check out your average IMP and MP scores.

 

- Play regularly in tournaments and pay attention to how well you do.

 

- Test your declarer play with Bridge Master (thanks to all of those who mentioned this).

 

- Play with better players and ask them for feedback. I think you will find that it you are polite and if you actually listen to their advice, that if may be easier to get games with these players than you might think. I suspect this is especially true if you are a regular contributor to Forums. There are a lot of strong players who spend a lot of time on Forums and I think it is very likely that most of these people would be willing to play on occasion with a "lesser player" who also happens to be active in this closely-knit subset of the BBO community.

 

- If you have trouble find good players to partner you and if you can afford it, you can always hire a teacher to evaluate your game.

 

And now for something completely different...

 

If you really want to know how good other players on BBO are I am afraid that's just too bad, because it is obvious that a substantial majority of BBO members do not want you to know this about them. If they did then they would put appropriate skill levels in their own user profiles and the self-rating system would work OK. The fact that most BBO members fail to do this is either because:

 

1) They are delusional about their own levels of ability

 

or

 

2) They are intentionally deceptive about their own levels of ability

 

Clearly the category 2 people do not want you to know how well (or badly) they play - that is why they are being deceptive. The category 1 people don't even want to know for themselves how well (or badly) they play so I think it is safe to bet that they don't want you to know this either.

 

As long as it is the case that most of our members do not want our other members to know how well (or badly) they play, we are certainly not going to force this down their throats.

 

So aside from the "social argument" against any form of automated rating system and aside from my belief that an official test to rate players as Sceptic proposed could never work (impossible to create a sensible test, impossible to prevent cheating on the test, impossible to force people to take the test, and most people would not want others to see their results on such a test), there is a strong "bottom line argument" against any type of official rating system:

 

Most people don't want to know how well they really play and/or do not want other people to know how well they really play.

 

And, as I said above, if you want to know how well you play, there are ways you can find out.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[matmat]

i register as matmat. all of a sudden bbo tries to quiz me. my computer dies! (actually, i unplugged it).

i now register as matmat2. bbo tries to quiz me. i fail the quiz, i get some answers right and figure out other ones. I repeat this with matmat3, matmat4, matmat5, etc. until i see the questions repeat a lot

 

i log in as matmat. bbo quizzes me. i now know all the questions and all the answers. I AM WORLD CLASS!

[Lobowolf]

i register as matmat. all of a sudden bbo tries to quiz me. my computer dies! (actually, i unplugged it).

i now register as matmat2. bbo tries to quiz me. i fail the quiz, i get some answers right and figure out other ones. I repeat this with matmat3, matmat4, matmat5, etc. until i see the questions repeat a lot

 

i log in as matmat. bbo quizzes me. i now know all the questions and all the answers. I AM WORLD CLASS!

But we'd know that "JohnSmith2" is better than "BobJones147."

[jdonn]

I AM WORLD CLASS!

But I thought you are matmat.

[awm]

It may be worth noting that there are two ways to check the skill level of other players on BBO without going to the trouble of watching them play a large number of boards. There is no accurate rating scheme for bridge, but these might help:

 

1. You can enter their name into myhands. There is really nothing on myhands that prevents you from looking at other players' imp scores. Of course imp scores depend a lot on who your partner is and who you play against but if someone randomly sits down at your table you can bet that they do a fair amount of randomly sitting down at tables and their imp scores will reflect playing with a pickup partner against the "bbo field."

 

2. You can get a copy of bridgebrowser, which computes the okbridge-style "lehman ratings" for each player. Again, there are issues with lehman ratings, but it's probably better than nothing for this purpose.

[TimG]

aside from my belief that an official test to rate players as Sceptic proposed could never work (impossible to create a sensible test,)

I don't know how long this practice lasted, but the one year I participated in the Junior Trials/Camp, each junior had to take a bridge aptitude test before attending and was matched for the event with someone who scored similarly on the test. (Regular partnerships could and did play together, I assume irrespective of test scores.)

 

Brian Platnick, I believe, was the only person to achieve a perfect score on the test.

[fred]

Rating cant be all that pointless.Otherwise Fred wouldnt have put it in profile.

Only if you believe in "Intelligent Design" :)

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[kenberg]

Ratings serve (or fail to serve) various purposes. One of the more important, to me anyway, is to try to get a table set up where everyone has appropriate skill. Here is a recent example:

I had set up a table, I had a regular partner opposite me, I had it set so that permission was needed to sit. A player appeared w/o a partner and I put him in a seat on my right. Now this gets tricky. I would like to be able to pass permission for seating the next player to the new opponent. As far as I know I can't. Another player arrived, said he was advanced, I seated him, and let us say his self-rating was optimistic. I sent a private message to my rho saying "I can ask him to leave if you like" but he said that no, he would. Both left and we got new opps, but as I say it's tricky.

 

 

I never liked the Lehman ratings on OK. Mine were in the sixties, decent in that rating system, but I found myself becoming protective of my ratings and not playing with people I enjoyed if I thought that it might hurt my ratings. (The ratings really were not accurate but it was tough to completely ignore them.) I like the current system, flaws and all. I think that rather than discuss how to replace it with a new system it would be more profitable to discuss how to work around some of the problems.

 

For starters, since I see Fred is reading this, is it possible to shift the permission as I describe above: I am S, I have my N, I have seated someone E, I would like to shift permission to E to seat or not seat a prospective W.