ACBL/BBO online tourneys

[uday]

The masterpoint award formula is complicated ( or so it seems to me, anyway )

 

As of early 2008 (IIRC), a new acbl rule permits a limited # of overalls to be awarded in any club game. The max award is 2.50, IIRC, but is 2.00 for us bec. of the smaller # of boards.

 

Our games issue fewer MP than equivalent games in real life clubs, since real-life games usually play 18 or more boards ( at which point you can issue more points ).

 

I'm guessing that most real-life games are far smaller than most online games, and this is what leads to the misperception that online games pay better than real-life games.

[ArtK78]

I have not played in an ACBL pari game on BBO in a while. My recollection is that a section top in the A and B strata is worth 1.20 masterpoints (if there are enough tables in the section). 2nd in a section gets 75% of the 1st place award, 3rd in a section gets 75% of the second place award, etc; provided, however, that the minimum award for any position is no less than the reciprocal of the place multiplied by the award for 1st (i.e., 6th place can get no less than 1/6 of the award for 1st place). I believe that the top 40% of the section gets a masterpoint award, but it might be less than that.

 

In addition, there are awards for overall finish in the ACBL pair games on BBO. 1st overall in the A and B strats gets 2.00 points, second overall gets 1.50 (75% of 1st), 3rd overall gets 1.13 (75% of 2nd), etc.

 

Of course, a pair gets only the greater of their section award or their overall award.

[jjbrr]

The masterpoint award formula is complicated ( or so it seems to me, anyway )

 

As of early 2008 (IIRC), a new acbl rule permits a limited # of overalls to be awarded in any club game. The max award is 2.50, IIRC, but is 2.00 for us bec. of the smaller # of boards.

 

Our games issue fewer MP than equivalent games in real life clubs, since real-life games usually play 18 or more boards ( at which point you can issue more points ).

 

I'm guessing that most real-life games are far smaller than most online games, and this is what leads to the misperception that online games pay better than real-life games.

Thanks. Wasn't aware of the new overall award change. That makes it much clearer.

[Phil]

(Fred said)

 

Do you also think the ACBL should award fewer points for an event at the Wasilla Regional than they would for an identical event at the New York City Regional?

 

Depends what you mean by identical. I'm guessing the NYC regional is bigger than Wasilla, so that will get you more points. Furthermore, masterpoints in the KOs are based on the actual numbers of points for the team, and can vary greatly. So, yes, I would expect the 'quality of field' to be different in NYC, and the masterpoints awarded will vary too.

 

On-line opponents can vary from horrible, to outstanding. In my experience, a random open pairs at a regional, or even a random club game is a better field than an acbl online tournament, especially on the low end. In fairness, part of this has to do with split games in real life, with a side-section for the beginners.

 

  I think the basic point is that the ACBL should allow sites like BBO to run occasional events that are recognized as "more important" than the "normal" games that we run. There are many 1000s of ACBL members who play online bridge (some by choice and some because health issues mean that online bridge is the only form of the game they can play).

 

I think for a lot of these players that can only play online, they don't care about the number of points they get, however, it already feels weird that people are racking up 500-600 points a year online. How would you feel if the Barry Crane Top 500 winner never left their home?

 

Whatever you do, I think the league should clamp down on the significance of online awards.

 

IMO these people deserve the chance to play in "major online events" from time to time. Whether you call such events "Sectionals" or "Regionals" and how exactly the masterpoint scales work for such events is secondary concern.

 

This is a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? 10 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of masterpoints online, and now its being suggested to have major tournaments? Maybe we should have an online NABC?

 

The masterpoint scales should be a primary concern. What differentiates a typical online pairs game from an online regional? The cost? Regionals are still significant because of, a) the frequency, and b ) the higher awards.

I don't buy the arguments regarding cheating either, by the way. For sure "active cheating" is easier in an online environment, but pairs who are determined to actively cheat can easily do so in real life as well. It is also the case that the complete electronic records of all deals played in online bridge tournaments makes it much easier to investigate pairs that might be cheating than it would be in real life (where no such records exist).

 

A lot of the cheating concerns you have in real life are also evident online, mostly quick and slow bids. But I agree in person bridge brings another dimension of sensory inputs you can pick up on.

 

On line cheating compared to cheating in real life is a far cry from being 'easier' than online. Cheating is as easy as IM or a phone call away. Information is easily transferable, whereas in real life it is not.

 

Furthermore, cheating in real life is taken very seriously. While I'm not impugning BBO's or the ACBL efforts regarding online cheating, has there been an instance of a rampant cheating pair that has been barred from the ACBL as a result of online cheating?

[TimG]

10 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of masterpoints online, and now its being suggested to have major tournaments? Maybe we should have an online NABC?

I don't think regionals, and especially sectionals, qualify as "major tournaments".

[fred]

10 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of masterpoints online, and now its being suggested to have major tournaments? Maybe we should have an online NABC?

I don't think regionals, and especially sectionals, qualify as "major tournaments".

It is all relative.

 

If you play almost all your bridge in the Wasilla Bridge Club then the yearly Wasilla Sectional is a "major tournament" and the bi-yearly Regional in nearby (by Alaska standards) Anchorage is a "very major tournament".

 

Similarly, I suspect that many of our ACBL players would consider an occasional BBO ACBL tournament that consisted of (say) 48 boards, awarded (say) 10 masterpoints to the winners whose names would be inscribed on the (say) Tim Goodwin Trophy, to be a "major online tournament".

 

And they would be right - such a tournament would certainly be considerably more "major" than the ACBL tournaments that are part of our normal daily schedule.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[mike777]

Lots of interesting and passion filled posts.

 

I think Phil brought up a key point who thought there would be ACBL online masterpoints ten or twenty years ago.

 

 

Who doubts are lives will be even more digital ten or twenty years from now or sooner. Access to the digital world is becoming cheaper, and part of our daily lives with devices becoming smaller and smaller and much more common.

[JoAnneM]

I think any tournament where a player can earn over 100 masterpoints is a major tournment and certainly many Regionals qualify for that. I don't know you if you mean major according to the 50 or 60 "name" players who only play in the big multi day events at the NABC's or if you mean major according to the thousands of players who flock religiously each year to the same Regionals, which are marked on their calendars as their major tournaments. I sometimes wonder which is the real ACBL, I guess it is a combination of both. I know there are snide comments on this forum occasionally that it isn't real bridge unless you are playing in the first group I mentioned. I am proud to belong to the second group.

[JoAnneM]

Many years ago on an early site I briefly had a partner who wanted me to send my hand on whatever messenger program that was in use at the time.  He was quite a good player but had an ego that wouldn't quit.  I have no idea whatever happened to him.  The point is that since it was online bridge he just thought it was "fun bridge" and didn't matter.

Did you think it mattered?

 

How did you react?

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Well, I immediately stopped playing with him. He was also an abusive partner.

 

Of course it mattered. But then even though I know online bridge is flawed I still play it to win, honestly. That is my character, and I think that is sometimes what comes out in these situations.

[fred]

(Fred said)

 

Do you also think the ACBL should award fewer points for an event at the Wasilla Regional than they would for an identical event at the New York City Regional?

 

Depends what you mean by identical. I'm guessing the NYC regional is bigger than Wasilla, so that will get you more points.

By "identical" I meant "the same" :)

 

The same # of pairs, the same number of sessions, the same flighting/stratifying, etc...

 

In other words, the same everything that has an impact on masterpoints.

 

Someone's guesstimate of the strength of the pairs is not one of these factors.

 

Furthermore, cheating in real life is taken very seriously. While I'm not impugning BBO's or the ACBL efforts regarding online cheating, has there been an instance of a rampant cheating pair that has been barred from the ACBL as a result of online cheating?

 

All I can tell you is that we have barred more than a few people for suspected cheating in our ACBL games and ACBL regulations demand that we send them reports of such cases. I have no idea what ACBL does when they receive these reports. Probably they do whatever it is they do when they receive similar reports from real life clubs.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Many years ago on an early site I briefly had a partner who wanted me to send my hand on whatever messenger program that was in use at the time.  He was quite a good player but had an ego that wouldn't quit.  I have no idea whatever happened to him.   The point is that since it was online bridge he just thought it was "fun bridge" and didn't matter.

Did you think it mattered?

 

How did you react?

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Well, I immediately stopped playing with him. He was also an abusive partner.

 

Of course it mattered. But then even though I know online bridge is flawed I still play it to win, honestly. That is my character, and I think that is sometimes what comes out in these situations.

Good for you (seriously). Hopefully you will never be placed in this position again, but if it does happen again perhaps you should consider reporting the person in question to the people who run the ACBL games on the site in question.

 

A while ago we made the difficult decision to disallow kibitzing in our ACBL games (it was difficult because many of our regular ACBL players like to kibitz when they are not playing). As far as we can tell, this greatly reduced the amount of cheating going on.

 

I believe this is because it was no longer possible for an individual to cheat on his/her own and it takes a certain amount of "bravery" for a person to approach his/her partner and suggest "let's cheat". This is because you don't know how your partner might react.

 

I like to think that most bridge players, like you, would not want to have any part of this and would no longer want to play with the person in question. Therefore the very act of suggesting "let's cheat" entails some risk. It would entail considerably more risk if the potential cheat thought there was a chance that he/she might get reported to the authorities.

 

Perhaps this is a case of "if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[JoAnneM]

If you look at the list posted on the ACBL site for game owners/managers you will see very little activity in recent years for expelling members or even probabtion, other than for bad checks, behavior, etc. The two most recent cases that I know of aren't online players but well known ftf people. So I don't know what ACBL does with them. I do know that the one case I had to deal with in my District ACBL actually added to the punishment that we meted out after a hearing, so they do look at stuff that is sent in.

[TimG]

10 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of masterpoints online, and now its being suggested to have major tournaments? Maybe we should have an online NABC?

I don't think regionals, and especially sectionals, qualify as "major tournaments".

It is all relative.

I meant from an organizational standpoint. The online sectional or regional will not be one of ACBL's major events.

 

It could well be a major BBO event. And, it could be a major event on the calendar of some of the participants. I don't mean to put down anyone who thinks of an online sectional, or local face-to-face event, as a major event to them. I think of the Maine State Championship as a major event in my bridge year, but don't think it comes close to major status as far as ACBL is concerned.

[fred]

I think for a lot of these players that can only play online, they don't care about the number of points they get, however, it already feels weird that people are racking up 500-600 points a year online. How would you feel if the Barry Crane Top 500 winner never left their home?

 

Whatever you do, I think the league should clamp down on the significance of online awards.

I think the point that you (and many other people) are missing is that the people who win this many masterpoints playing online put in a LOT of hours. The fact that they don't have to leave home may seem strange, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they earn the points they win (according to the masterpoint scheme that all clubs are subject to).

 

The most successful real life club players also win a lot of points and I suspect that most of them play could not play any more than 6 hours per day (ie 2 3-hour sessions) even if they wanted to.

 

On BBO it is possible to play to play ACBL-sanctioned tournaments for upwards of 18 hours per day 365 days per year.

 

Of course most people do not have anywhere near that much stamina or dedication, but keep in mind that online and offline clubs are subject to very similar rules regarding masterpoints. If a real life club wanted to run 18 hours worth of 1 hour 12-board speedballs per day, they could certainly do so.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[matmat]

There are a couple of system-level issues that I think would need to be sorted out for a larger/more meaningful tournament.

 

1) a more accessible convention card. perhaps something as simple as a scanned partnership acbl card on a server somewhere

2) an appeals process.

3) is there an official policy to deal with disconnects? could a "ping" feature be added?

 

(i'm sure there are some others that I can't think of atm).

 

From watching some of the play (before kibitzing was banned @ the BBO ACBL games) I felt like there was a lot more random stuff going on online than irl., i.e. people have a little less respect and a little less fear of partner's reaction when not facing them in a live game.

[awm]

I think the point that you (and many other people) are missing is that the people who win this many masterpoints playing online put in a LOT of hours. The fact that they don't have to leave home may seem strange, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they earn the points they win (according to the masterpoint scheme that all clubs are subject to).

While this is true, at some point I performed the following calculations:

 

(1) Playing in online ACBL speedball tourneys, my masterpoints per dollar spent is better than any other bridge playing activity I could undertake.

 

(2) Playing in online ACBL speedball tourneys, my masterpoints per hour is better than I would get in a club game or local sectional, and is only slightly worse than I'd get in a regional or nationals. Factoring in the time requirement for traveling to/from the regional tournament, the online ACBL speedballs are comparable time-wise to regionals.

 

Obviously this exact computation will be different for different people depending on skill level, but it seems like these results will roughly hold except for those elite few who can consistently win bracket one knockouts at strong regionals or place in the very high overalls in national events. Even for those people the "points/dollar" tradeoffs continue to favor the online ACBL games. And for the vast majority of bridge players the ACBL tourneys are substantially more efficient in terms of both masterpoints per money and masterpoints per time than anything else.

[mike777]

Yes, the internet/digital world is recking havoc with many older business models across the spectrum.

 

 

Creative Destructionism can be painful, adapting will be full of fits and starts, errors and successes.

[JoAnneM]

Thanks for the advice, Fred. I was actually an administrator at the site at the time, I just didn't tell the rest of the story.

 

One of the problems with "reporting to management" is that the players don't see instant results. Usually punishments are private between the site and the offender. Players want a letter back saying "We kicked him out". And, like you have said, it often takes many complaints before a pattern is established.

 

Word of mouth works great, especially online. People know that a pair is cheating, they have been reported but they are still in the game, at least if you are warned you are more on guard.

 

Case in point - for at least two years we have known that a pair was cheating, just because they were each terrible players but together they got good results in bidding and defense, with long pauses. Finally, after many complaints, they have not been kicked out but they are not allowed to play together in tournaments. Why won't management just believe the players? This is not at BBO.

[fred]

Case in point - for at least two years we have known that a pair was cheating, just because they were each terrible players but together they got good results in bidding and defense, with long pauses.  Finally, after many complaints, they have not been kicked out but they are not allowed to play together in tournaments.   Why won't management just believe the players?  This is not at BBO.

"Just believing the players" is unfortunately not a good idea because:

 

1) There are players who seemingly cry foul every time one of their opponents finds a successful bid or play that they don't understand. Far more often than not the explanation was that either the person who made the bid or play was a strong player who did something smart or a weak player who did something dumb that just happened to work. In some cases the people who frequently complain about their opponents cheating are reasonable players who don't want to understand - they are simply poor sports who scream "cheater!" whenever they think they have received an undeserved bad result.

 

2) In order to convict a player of cheating, we require an overwhelming amount of evidence. Frequently other players are able to present sufficient evidence for us to realize that we should investigate further, but in practice they never provide us anywhere close to enough evidence that we feel comfortable about "just believing them". Please note that I am not complaining - I would very much prefer that our players not get heavily involved in such investigations on their own.

 

3) The members of our staff who investigate cheating on BBO are professionals. By and large they have much greater experience in this area, much stronger bridge skills, and much better tools and data at their disposal than the "average BBO member". Naturally we feel more comfortable "just believing" these members of our staff (who are almost always right IMO) rather than "the players" (who usually turn out to be wrong).

 

That being said, the case we have been discussing (your partner inviting you to cheat) is rather different from (say) a strange opening lead that happens to work. A single hand proves nothing. But if we are informed that a known potential cheat is looking for a partner in crime, then that raises a very red flag. It is only a matter of time before such a person finds his/her dream partner to cheat with. If we know that such a person is looking for such a partner, we have a much better chance of quickly minimizing the damage to the integrity of our ACBL games that might otherwise be caused.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[waubrey]

In addition to everything else I would think the time constraints of the speedball tournaments would make it harder to cheat.

 

There is no club where I live so getting black points is tough for me. My points are almost all either red, silver or unpigmented. I would NOT want people to stay away from in person sectionals and regionals but it woiuld be nice to have a way to earn pigmented points outside of sectionals and regionals.

 

I have only been asked to cheat once by a partner and she threw a fit when I refused. Needless to say I never played with her again. And although occasionally I get suspicous of opponents when they are slow or have nearly identical profiles I really don't think many people cheat.

 

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

[Elianna]

 

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO.

 

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

[matmat]

 

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO.

 

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

certainly not.

 

I'm kinda wondering whether the right approach isn't "people cheat; so what?"

 

after all, isn't the whole point of playing this game to derive satisfaction from the act of playing?

 

I mean, if there is money on the line, then that's one thing -- but when all that's to play for are masterpoints (or less!) isn't the satisfaction of knowing that you had played well or that you have improved sufficient?

[TimG]

I'm kinda wondering whether the right approach isn't "people cheat; so what?"

 

after all, isn't the whole point of playing this game to derive satisfaction from the act of playing?

 

I mean, if there is money on the line, then that's one thing -- but when all that's to play for are masterpoints (or less!) isn't the satisfaction of knowing that you had played well or that you have improved sufficient?

To some people, the entry fee constitutes "money on the line".

[TimG]

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

That doesn't mean that you can tell when they IM each other, it just means you can tell when they have another application open (and on top).

 

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO. 

 

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

Of course you are not the only one. But, I'd be willing to shut down those other apps during a "serious" tournament.

[matmat]

Of course you are not the only one. But, I'd be willing to shut down those other apps during a "serious" tournament.

I wouldn't. especially while dummy.