Suggestion for score when playing at a table

[jdonn]

It may surprise you, but for some people playing on BBO is serious bridge.

Usually they play among their peers, but they like to have scores to compare their results to.

Something is not 'serious bridge' unless it is serious for everyone playing. If they want to play 'serious bridge' on BBO then they have plenty of options, such as private games or team games, ACBL tourneys, etc. But they shouldn't be trying to change what the main bridge club is.

[helene_t]

What's the big deal about there being high variance in the results?

Well at butler the idea is that it is less robust than XIMPs so you prune outliers to compensate for that.

[NOosAnCE]

So, according to you, OKB uses a way to calculate the score for a set of tables(the extremes), and other way to calculate the score for everybody else?

 

Are you authoritative on this, or can provide documentation?

And there you go again, not answering the question not sticking to the subject, I asked you, if you just want to be a pain, then I prefer not to have your reply here, it is not leading anywhere. The point was that on a flat board you may have a 6 IMP plus or minus (for all 14 pairs that "scored normal") on 50+% of the boards. That would never happen in a serious scoring system, ever. This is the last time I respond to any post or reply from Gerardo.

[NOosAnCE]

That is a good point, Hotshot. You must be a systems person to think about that. Quick fix for that is to have the option available only at tables where the players are all web client players. Or maybe it is easier than that. The option could be available only on the web client results screen. Fred et al make those kinds of decisions. But I regress. Is this really a viable wish list item? Does anyone other than Martin want it?

LOL, you gotta be kidding. I heard complaints about the scores from countless players, else I would not have posted this.

[NOosAnCE]

Alternatively, the system should be fixed so that everyone gets positive imps. That way everyone is a winner!

you are really awesome!

[babalu1997]

For me BBO=bridge.

 

The score is not important, i play to learn.

 

There must be some reason why BBI has thousands logged on where you are lucky ti find 100 tables at rated bridge sites.

 

People cannot afford to sacrifice their rating because they want to try a new system, for example.

 

The effect on the score for 7ntxx might be the same as the novice who mangled a sound contract.

 

So just ignore the score and move on.

 

I really believe that the thousands of users just ignore the score.

[jjbrr]

thanks! happy to help!

[NOosAnCE]

Why do people care so much about their scores online?

 

What's the big deal about there being high variance in the results?

 

What if I made some brilliant psych that tricked my oppoonents into going for a huge number, or I have some awesome relay system that found a cold 7NT with the field in game, or my opponents had an honest misunderstanding when they opened flannery and redoubled, why should my score not count?

 

If online bridge is not "serious bridge" then why should it be scored as though it is?

If you think there are 2 kinds of bridge: serious bridge and non serious bridge, then this club should change the name: Non serious bridge base online, www.nonseriousbriggebase.com

But non serious bridge is a joke, there is only 1 game and it's called bridge. If you like to play a non serious game, there are plenty of kids games you can play on the net, where you don't have to use your brain, and cheating and score don't mean a thing.

[jdonn]

But non serious bridge is a joke, there is only 1 game and it's called bridge.

And in that game all the scores count and none are thrown out. So it looks like you are the one who wants to play some game that isn't bridge.

 

But no matter, I'll just inform the hundreds of thousands of players on bbo who play 'non-serious' bridge just for fun that they should quit immediately because they don't reach the noosance standards of seriousness.

[babalu1997]

this should move to the hijack thread

 

here, we make suggestions, then we listen to the bosses and they answer in earnest, thank them.

 

lest of course, they are a nuisance.

[NOosAnCE]

this should move to the hijack thread

 

here, we make suggestions, then we listen to the bosses and they answer in earnest, thank them.

 

lest of course, they are a nuisance.

You obviously haven't read my original post:

=====================================================

I have been playing here quite some years now, compared to OKB, where I played before, I see advantages and disadvantages. Of course I won't complain about the advantages. I do have some suggestions to improve BBO though. This is not only my opinion but many players with me think alike.

 

I have been complaining about these matters at my table for a long time, and then every now and then a yellow friend encourages me to post it here, but then I always say that I am not the only one here thinking this way and telling BBO about it and it never changed, so what is the point? Well this time I took the time to do it, please do not disappoint me.

=====================================================

You think different, up to you, but there are many out there annoyed by these scores that do not even come here. Here only a few players visit compared to the thousands I played with and against. I listen to the boss. I do not listen to someone ignoring the subject and just repeating himself.

 

If you want to kill this post, I would not be surprised, I knew it was useless before I posted. There have been bookburners throughout history sinds forever.

[Gerardo]

What average? There is no average.

. On OKB they USE (see, I do not use the word AVERAGE) the scores of 52 pairs to make results for everyone else, and the top 2 and bottom 2 are not counted for the calculation of the results of the other 48 pairs, but they are for the 4 extremes, see I didnt use AVERAGE again.

You had two points in the initial post:

[*] The number of boards for comparison, which I didn't touch. I agree, I think I higher number could be better, though Helene comments about first impressions may be relevant.

[*] Why not eliminate top and bottoms, which I explained it is just not applicable to the way scores are calculated.

 

As far as I know, I stuck to this subject.

Also, XIMP vs Butler is completely relevant to this argument, no matter how much you claim otherwise.

 

On the quoted post, You either claim they use Butler, as you claimed in the initial post (then, no matter how much you avoid the WORD average, the CONCEPT average is implied in its process), or they use two different ways (one for extremes, other for the rest), as you claimed later.

 

You claim you know about this, however you were so far unable to provide a coherent answer when called upon it.

 

Agree with you, this is leading nowhere. Also, I'm bored of pointing flaws in your logic, and it is pointless if you are unable to acknowledge them.

 

Interesting how you assumed Luisa was talking about you when she said nuisance.

[barmar]

If players considered BBO to be "serious bridge", they wouldn't be bidding 7NT at random. It's not BBO that's the issue, it's online bridge in general -- people behave differently online than they do in person. They talk differently in forums, they play games differently. It's a well known sociological problem.

 

Regarding your suggestion, I don't see the point. If there's an extreme score, it affects everyone else pretty equally. It changes their absolute scores, but not the relative scores, and that's all that matters. And if there are extremes at both ends, they'll cancel each other out.

 

I played on OKB for many years (I was one of the early players, before it went commercial), and I'm pretty sure they have always used cross-imps, and I don't recall them throwing out the extremes.

 

If you throw out the extremes, the scores won't balance out. You need to include the extremes when you calculate the IMPs for those pairs, but ignore them when calculating the IMPs for everyone else. That doesn't seem right.

 

Comparing with 16 tables doesn't seem so bad. When you play in a club game or most tournaments, there are usually only 11-12 comparisons. The exception is large tournaments with scoring across multiple sections.

[NOosAnCE]

If players considered BBO to be "serious bridge", they wouldn't be bidding 7NT at random. It's not BBO that's the issue, it's online bridge in general -- people behave differently online than they do in person. They talk differently in forums, they play games differently. It's a well known sociological problem.

 

Regarding your suggestion, I don't see the point. If there's an extreme score, it affects everyone else pretty equally. It changes their absolute scores, but not the relative scores, and that's all that matters. And if there are extremes at both ends, they'll cancel each other out.

 

I played on OKB for many years (I was one of the early players, before it went commercial), and I'm pretty sure they have always used cross-imps, and I don't recall them throwing out the extremes.

 

If you throw out the extremes, the scores won't balance out. You need to include the extremes when you calculate the IMPs for those pairs, but ignore them when calculating the IMPs for everyone else. That doesn't seem right.

 

Comparing with 16 tables doesn't seem so bad. When you play in a club game or most tournaments, there are usually only 11-12 comparisons. The exception is large tournaments with scoring across multiple sections.

As I expected, to bring up this subject was completely useless because the people responding other than Fred have no clue, you all did not see what he wrote? Or what I wrote? I am sure you are used to comparing 10 scores at your local club, but for a field this large it is a joke. It can't be changed so I will live with it, but it is not a good scoring method, see Fred's replies. Everybody ignores that OKB uses 52 scores, WHATEVER scoring method they use, and any large tourney uses much more data. You all want to compare BBO with scoring at your local club, thats fine, you just miss the point. I will never ever in my life post something here again, it is a total waste of time, (except Fred's reply that is). All comments are about details which do not matter very much.

[jjbrr]

NOosAnCE, telling a group of people that we have no clue and that you and the admins are the only ones who understand the issue at hand is a great way to continue to get flamed for your proposals. I can say with a great degree of confidence that the other posters in this thread not only have a clue but are also making perfectly legitimate points that you seem too stubborn to acknowledge for whatever reason.

 

But since I enjoy arguing with trolls, I'll give it another go.

 

You seem pretty upset that sometimes you make +400 in your cold game and lose imps because some bozo went for -1700 and screwed up the results. But have you ever gained from such a situation? Moreover, is there any indication that you're more likely to lose imps from the bozos than you are to win imps? The answer is no.

 

So in the short run, you're right. Sometimes the scores are skewed. The good news is the scores of your pick-up game in the MBC were already completely meaningless anyway and therefore it doesn't matter that they're skewed. But for the sake of argument, let's agree that one skewed score is somehow bad.

 

With that said, as we approach the long run, it should be clear to see that the effects of bozos completely evens out and the expected imp advantage to both you and your opponents due to bozos is exactly 0. That's right, the bozo that made you lose imps when you made your cold game will be completely neutralized by the bozo who passes a 2♣ opener when you have a cold grand, thus allowing you to win imps you otherwise didn't deserve.

 

Rest assured you're not getting screwed by the bozos. It'll all even out in the long run.

 

Finally, you keep saying that you're not the only one who wants to see these changes made, and you seem to imply that there are lots of people who agree with you. Could you please provide some rational reasons of why these changes are so important to you? Why do you even let it bother you?

[hanp]

I do think it would be better to drop the extreme scores for comparison purposes.

 

I don't care though, and I don't understand why anybody would care much.

[helene_t]

Deleting the two best scores for EW and the two best for NS would be fine if we with any degree of confidence could say that the most extreme scores are dumpings or balooka results while the middle 12 are not.

 

If that were the case, we would remove two good and two bad scores so XIMP would barely be affected, unlike butler scores who do get substantially affected by such an outlier removal. This is why it is so important to understand the difference between butler and XIMP when discussing these things. But OK, it would be better than nothing.

 

But it is not always the case. Sometimes a balooka auction can give a result within the range of normal results. Sometimes there will be only normal results. In such cases, outlier removal will make the score less meaningful.

 

I am sure outlier removal per saldo makes butler scores more meaningful. I doubt that they would do any good to XIMP scores, though.

[jdonn]

Careful helene, you can't discuss any topic except what noosance brought up or else you are missing the point and have no clue.

[jdonn]

Btw, general business question. If business 1 is getting less and less popular over time, and business 2 is getting more and more popular over time, should business 2 start copying the methods of business 1?

[helene_t]

That is generally how it works in the software industry, isn't it?

 

Anyway, I am sure Fred and Uday are open to the possibility that a few of their choices might turn out to be worse than the choices made by competitors. I mean, it would be rare to see one company be right on everything.

[Gerardo]

Assuming XIMP, taking out the extremes is problematic.

 

How do you calculate the score for said extremes? You have to use a different method.

 

Plus, assuming a result is such an outlier, the fact the IMP scale is logarithmic gives some protection, normal scores won't get much of it (compared to what the other normal scores get out of it, that is.) It needs to compare across the field, though, if you section it then it would be a huge difference.

[uday]

Moving to more comparisons might be a net plus. But the windows version of BBO would likely have a fit if we tried that. It isnt clear to me that the effort needed to make the windows version be able to handle this is worth the payback.

[bid_em_up]

Moving to more comparisons might be a net plus.

I seriously doubt this. What noosance is suggesting sounds nice in theory, but in reality, it is unlikely to make much of a difference.

 

Lets say the number of comparisons is increased by a factor of 10 (160 board comparison). At best, all this will do is give you 10 times the number of "normal" results, and 10 times the number of idiotic random results which essentially leaves you right where you are now, if not worse, since the "normal" result (say +620) on the board will remain constant, but there is no telling what the random results will be. Realistically, given the randomness of levels of play and partnerships on BBO, I would expect that the more boards that are used for comparison that random results would be increased by a larger factor than then number of "normal" results would.

 

I think BBO had the right idea earlier when the Relaxed Bridge club and the "Masters"? club were added in addition to the MBC. If the Masters room had succeeded as the "serious" bridge club, and the boards played in that room only contained results from that room, better/more realistic results might have been obtained. However, we all know how successful that experiment was and I doubt it will be revisited.

 

jmoo.

[hotShot]

We sometimes make BBO-parties, that means 4 of us with our laptops meet somewhere to play on BBO using the "crowd" as "other table".

You use the table result as score.

Whenever the "normal" result is close to zero this works perfectly well.

 

Now I took 3 random results from myhands.

2 Board 1 and Board 3) of then also not without flaws, work fine for that method, as the normal results for EW and NS are close to 0.

Board 2 has an irrational result that will rip the EW and NS scores about 10 IMPS apart for the normal play.

 

Board 1

Normal score, 2/16 missed to bid game.

Board 2

One lunatic 6♥xxN-6 for -3400 distorting the score for everybody else.

 

Board 3

Everybody makes 10 or 11 tricks but, one fails in 4NT 1/16 distorted results.

 

Taking the number up to 160 might not change Board 1 and 3 much, perhaps the number of weak players is about 1/16 bis 2/16.

But my "random" boards have only 1 lunatic score in 3 tries, off cause that is meaningless because of the small sample size and the lack of true randomness, but if we assume this is a trend, the distortion would reduce from about 10 IMPs to 3.3 IMPS.

 

Considering the efforts of abuse and BBO's automatic abuse detection, I would hope that the number of lunatic is smaller.

 

I think a higher number of comparisons would be nice, but it is not vital.

 

Since the focus is now on the flash version, I think it's only a matter of time until the Windows client will be constraining further development of BBO in enough ways to be given up. I assume the at that time only very few people will still be using it.

[helene_t]

Realistically, given the randomness of levels of play and partnerships on BBO, I would expect that the more boards that are used for comparison that random results would be increased by a larger factor than then number of "normal" results would.

huh? If 10% of all scores are idiotic then 10% of 15 comparisons will be idiotic, on average, as will 10% of 159 comparisons.

 

The advantage of larger numbers of comparisons is that it reduces the imbalance between idiotic NS scores and idiotic EW scores. Say if out of 159 comparisons there are appr. 10 idiotically bad scores for EW scores and 10 idiotically bad ones for NS. That would roughly cancel out so your XIMP would be ok. But with only 15 comparisons there could easily be 2 idiotically bad ones for EW and none for NS. Of course it could also be the other way round, but the fluctuations on the difference between EW idiocy and NS idiocy are larger the smaller the number of comparisons.

 

So I think increasing the number of comparisons would probably be a good thing.

 

As I said before, it is not so much the fluctuations of the eventual XIMP you get when it had been played 16 times that bothers me. 16 is a large number. But it means that for every 16 boards you play, on average one of them will have no immediate comparison (giving you 0 IMPs which sometimes is hard to understand until one notices that there is no comparison), one will have only one immediate comparison (which may happen to be an idiotic one, or just an extreme result following from a reasonable but very unlucky decision) etc.