Shuffling NABC events

[han]

Maybe not, but when there are 6 entries the total number of masterpoints will be higher so when you divide by that you actually get less for winning when there are 6 contestants then when you win with 5 contestants. Clearly that can't be right.

[jdonn]

So we have

 

PP earned / (Total PP available / Total players)

=

(PP earned * Total players) / Total PP available

 

Which accounts for that problem han. Maybe it's simply irrelevant that

 

Total PP available = f(Total players)

 

for each particular event, since that function is not linear which I think would be a desirable quality for the formula we are trying to come up with.

 

Then instead of choosing an artitrary threshhold to meet, perhaps they should simply make it available to X number of players. (Yes, I know this would never fly in reality.) Either "the top X that want to enter can play" or "the top Y are eligible to enter, and the event will simply have whomever of that group chooses to play."

 

Now that I think about it, that last suggestion would only be good with an aging function applied to it, kind of like they do with seeding points in the Spingold. The last 10 years are mulitplied by 1, .9, .8, etc.

[TimG]

Shouldn't you just make it total points available to a single pair? Every pair in the event has the potential to win whatever 1st place is worth. 1st place award does not vary with number of participants.

[jdonn]

Shouldn't you just make it total points available to a single pair?

I don't think so. Maybe the amount of places that get paid should be incorporated though. But now I just don't feel like working it out.

 

Actually that makes sense. Now I like

 

PP earned / ((Total PP available/Total places paid) / Total entrants)

=

(PP earned * Total places paid) / (Total PP available * Total entrants)

=

(PP earned / Total PP available) * (Total places paid / Total entrants)

 

The function in that last form looks very logical to me. It would account for something like this. Take two events with 10 pairs, which use these scales to award platinum points.

Event A: 100, 75, 50, 25

Event B: 70, 50, 20, 10

The way I had it before, a pair coming in 3rd in event A would get the same seeding as a pair coming 2nd in event B, which doesn't seem right. But this way a pair coming 3rd in event A earns (50/250)(4/10) = .08, whereas a pair coming 2nd in event B earns (50/150)(4/10) = .13, which seems right.

 

Hmm but then the problem is you get just .12 for coming second in event A. I guess that's because I picked a bad example by making 2nd worth a higher % of the available PPs in event B than in event A, which probably wouldn't happen in real life events of the exact same size. I think.

[TimG]

Isn't 2nd 75% of 1st, 3rd 75% of 2nd? After that the % goes up, but it follows a set progression regardless of field size (I think).

 

Your event A would be 100, 75, 56.25, 44.44.

Your event B would be 70, 52.5, 39.37, 31.11.

 

Not so sure about this, but isn't "total places paid" simply a percentage of "total entrants" so that (total places paid)/(total entrants) is a constant?

 

Anyway, if you use my method of (masterpoints won)/(masterpoints available to individual), the first four places (in both events would be): 1.00, 0.75, 0.56, 0.44.

 

A quick look at a couple of events from Boston shows that the last place overall would be worth in the neighborhood of 0.07-0.10.

[TimG]

(PP earned / Total PP available) * (Total places paid / Total entrants)

Doesn't this mean that as the event gets bigger and bigger and more PP are available, winning the event (a fixed award) is worth less and less. At least assuming that (Total places paid / Total entrants) is constant or nearly constant.

[cherdano]

Do you really want to make someone ineligible for the Platinum pairs because besides doing well twice with his regular partner, she also entered the LMP twice with a decent advanced partner and made it to day two, but not further?

Coming up with a rating system isn't exactly what you should try to do while posting on BBF from work :)

[jdonn]

Do you really want to make someone ineligible for the Platinum pairs because besides doing well twice with his regular partner, she also entered the LMP twice with a decent advanced partner and made it to day two, but not further?

Coming up with a rating system isn't exactly what you should try to do while posting on BBF from work :)

I admit it was just for sh!ts and giggles.

[jdonn]

(PP earned / Total PP available) * (Total places paid / Total entrants)

Doesn't this mean that as the event gets bigger and bigger and more PP are available, winning the event (a fixed award) is worth less and less. At least assuming that (Total places paid / Total entrants) is constant or nearly constant.

True, but I don't think it should be a fixed award. One day the world will go the way I want it to.

[kenrexford]

it means that a partnership made up of two males under 55 won't have any NABC events to enter those two days.

Come on, is it really that hard to play with a woman for a few hours? :lol:

One year, I played in the Mixed Pairs with a lady who went completely off the deep end, almost getting us thrown out of the event, having multiple 7-minute discussions with the TD's, and threatening to send a bomb in the mail to one pair we played against. We scored up about a 35% in the first set, and then the bomb threat set kicked in.

 

So,

 

As the one and only time I ever played in the National Mixed Pairs ended with me being on a watch list as an associate of a suspected domestic terrorist, I'd say, "Yes," to that question. LOL

[TimG]

it means that a partnership made up of two males under 55 won't have any NABC events to enter those two days.

Come on, is it really that hard to play with a woman for a few hours? :lol:

One year, I played in the Mixed Pairs with a lady who went completely off the deep end, almost getting us thrown out of the event, having multiple 7-minute discussions with the TD's, and threatening to send a bomb in the mail to one pair we played against. We scored up about a 35% in the first set, and then the bomb threat set kicked in.

 

So,

 

As the one and only time I ever played in the National Mixed Pairs ended with me being on a watch list as an associate of a suspected domestic terrorist, I'd say, "Yes," to that question. LOL

Your wife?

[xcurt]

I think the point of platinum pairs is to restrict the field to "people who usually qualify for day two of national events" and not to restrict the field to "people who usually place in the moderately high overalls of national events." Obviously these are different goals; the latter is a stronger (but much smaller) field.

Just for fun I checked my PP holdings. I didn't think I had any since I last played a NABC in 2001. Guess what, I have almost 5 PPs from session awards (and it would be more except that excludes the session awards I got in events where I made the overalls).

 

These are of course theoretical discussions because the ACBL does not seem interested in finding out how good somebody is. For the best players (used here in a very broad sense) it doesn't matter, the restriction that is currrently proposed is trivial for them. For those that struggle to win platinum points the restriction is such that those that enter lots of NABC events will have a much better chance to qualify for the platinum pairs. It seems to me that this is exactly how the ACBL wants it.

 

Exactly.

 

I'll repeat my earlier assertion: The ACBL, having so devalued their existing currency the bridgeo^Hgold masterpoint, is trying to replace it with the new bridgeo^H^Hplatinum masterpoint. However, they are trapped by their need to prevent a revolt of the peasantry^Hrank and file so they aren't really able to devalue it enough.[1] Any number of textbooks on monetary policy will tell you an insufficient devaluation is bad policy, as they need to devalue at least enough to regain central bank^H^HACBL BoD credibility.

 

[1] Just to illustrate this assertion, I'm more than a quarter of the way to a lifetime exemption after only two NABCs (all my other NABCs predate the existence of platinum points). I consider myself a reasonably good player, but when the PPP was proposed I certainly envisioned something a little scarier than a field of clones of me.

[barmar]

I think you do yourself a disservice. If you regularly make it into the overalls in NABC+ events, you're a very good player.

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? This is not intended to be as exclusive as an invitational event like that. My guess is that it will be about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the Blue Ribbon Pairs. As someone else remarked, the initial field will probably look much like the 2nd day of the BRP, and by the 3rd day it will be down to the real cream of the crop.

[stacy]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

[jdonn]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

Sounds a lot like the Cavendish, except not quite as exclusive.

[xcurt]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

Sounds a lot like the Cavendish, except not quite as exclusive.

Or as expensive.

[jdonn]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

Sounds a lot like the Cavendish, except not quite as exclusive.

Or as expensive.

Right, I meant for purposes of watching though.

[xcurt]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

I *would* stop what I was doing to watch the vugraph of the last day of an event like that (and I usually can't watch more than a few hands on vugraph). There's just so much more action at matchpoints than IMPs because every misstep can have a huge cost.

 

Also, the LM pairs in the old days (ie before I was born) had an all-play-all final. If you began with 100 or so pairs, you could get down to 52 (4x13 so play all the pairs sitting the other way and qualify only against players sitting your way) on day 2. Then you could get down to 28 for day 3 and run a complete Howell. This would be an extremely fair event since the only seeding decision that would matter is which pairs sit EW and which sit NS on day 2 -- you would want to balance the strength of the two separate fields. It would be nice if the ACBL BoD even specified that in the CoC -- just like the Reisinger where the fields were always set to 20 and 10 teams for the second and third day (now it seems to be 28 and 14) regardless of the number of entries.

[mycroft]

I wouldn't mind a PRPairs...but I don't think that's the idea.

 

I don't mind 50PP/3 years - frankly, if you get 50PP in one event, you should be there. If you can make it through day 2 of the Vanderbilt/Spingold, you've earned those 12 PP (not so much the 6 for the first day, depending on entries). If you make it to day two of a PP-eligible event twice a year, every year, you're not bad.

 

200PP lifetime? Okay, so I can't remember the last winner of the Spingold/Vanderbilt/Reisinger I'd not want in there. But I don't think that those three/six days should in and of itself be a lifetime auto-entry. I'm pretty certain I could come up with someone who has won a Big-Name National Event (say 140+PP - 6+sessions, effectively) who basically has his or her free pass, who would elicit a "who?" from most of the free passers (haven't tried, don't have anyone actually in mind, but I bet I'm right). I don't think that's right.

 

For an event that's supposed to be more prestigious than the LM/BR Pairs, 200 lifetime is Nothing. Yeah, they probably all belong there, and 80 of them were probably on last year's list, too, but at least 100 players got more than 250 PP *this year*.

 

50 in three years? Well, there will be a number of non-Names, but they'll have put up results. And the "42-eligible"* players who feed the ACBL with their entry fees (but are still a fair bit better than I will ever be, or can hire much better pros, or both)? We can afford to let a few of those in, too, really.

 

* "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" If you don't get this one, I'm not giving it to you :-)

[barmar]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

That's what invitational tournaments are supposed to be.

 

The Platinum Pairs is just a somewhat more exclusive version of the LM Pairs and the Blue Ribbon Pairs. Not so exclusive that it's only recognized names, but few flight B players will be eligible.

[xcurt]

 

What are you expecting, a two-section game containing just national and world champions? 

 

 

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that.

That's what invitational tournaments are supposed to be.

 

The Platinum Pairs is just a somewhat more exclusive version of the LM Pairs and the Blue Ribbon Pairs. Not so exclusive that it's only recognized names, but few flight B players will be eligible.

There's a big difference between an invitational and an open event no matter how tough the qualification standards -- in an open event, anyone who plays well enough to qualify can then play the main event, where if they play well enough, they might win.

 

I suppose it's possible for me to play well enough to scratch in an event like the PPP, I've done it in stretches but never long enough actually win a NABC. On the other hand, there is no danger even if I started playing tournament bridge again tomorrow, even if I somehow played well enough to win a few NABCs, that I would be invited to any of the major invitational events -- they are so small and the goal of the organizers is to create the most interest in their event -- in the case of the Cavendish this probably translates to "maximize the auction pool" -- that you really need to be a well-known full-time player to get a shot at getting invited. The organizers of these events aren't trying to run a major championship like the LMs, BRPs, or World Open Pairs. And I have enough other interesting things to do that I have no interest in playing bridge full time.

 

So my whole point of raising the issue of qualification by placings is that the ACBL can't devalue the standard over time, to the point where the PPP is another BRP/LMP event -- and then we wouldn't have an opening on the NABC calendar for a fourth six-session pair game. And judging by my accumulation of PPs just from session awards, racking up 50 PPP in three years is going to include a fair amount of the folks who regularly do damage in regional events and can play three NABCs per year, so in a few years time, another LMP/BRP is exactly what we will have.

 

Then again, creating another attendance incentive is probably exactly what the ACBL wants -- and, after the table shortfall in Boston -- and needs.

 

Curt

[mycroft]

Just a note - there are 500 people on the "player of the decade (PP since 2000)" list available from the ACBL; the 500th has 441. 458 of them have 500+. I don't think PPs existed much before 2000, so for thought experiment purposes, if we up the lifetime limit to 500, there are *already* almost 125 tables worth. My guess, based on statistics, is that there are at least half again (probably an equal number) that have 200+.

 

That's not the 19 000 LMs, but it is possibly 1000 players, 200 tables given those that don't go to all events that are in, forever, before the first event starts. How many of them would not play in that event even if they were there, I don't know, but let's look at 130 tables of autoentries as a guideline.

 

The Blue Ribbons had 141 tables in Boston, just for comparison.

[han]

The Blue Ribbons had 141 tables in Boston, just for comparison.

 

Out of how many eligible players?

[TimG]

The Blue Ribbons had 141 tables in Boston, just for comparison.

 

Out of how many eligible players?

That's not quite the right question to ask. I think "out of how many eligible players in attendance?" would be better, or "out of how many eligible players who regularly attend NABCs?"

[mycroft]

Oh, I'm sure there are a lot more BR eligible players, but I disagree that that is a useful question (for one thing, there's 100 tables in the BR 0-5000, and possibly a 1500limit one as well).

 

However, only 100 players are eligible lifetime. Think of this. There are at least 5 times as many lifetime-eligible PP players as there are lifetime-eligible BR players. And we haven't even had a Platinum Pairs yet.

 

Yeah, I would be happy with top 100 PP holders autoeligible. Ignoring any PPs won before 2000, that would be 1864.94, according to this page.

 

Yes, yes, I know that the relevance is almost nil, as anybody in the top 100 MP holding has enough BRQs to play the rest of their lives already; whereas there may come a time when #82 (to pull a number out of a hat) has lost his edge or his ability to travel, and hasn't put up the 50PP in the last three years.

 

Add to Tim's question - "how many eligible that want to play with the Big Boys?" - after all, that's why we've created the 0-5K events for all the big events in the last few years. Very popular, they are. I don't have enough vacation time or money to not play as up as I can, so they are, in a way, popular with me, too, as they make my games harder yet.