scoob Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Imagine a sub-event at your favourite regional/national/whatever where the masterpoint awards are payed out from a purse of masterpoints collected from entrants, like a poker ante. Larger awards, less inflation, and a higher level of competition perhaps? Discuss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chamaco Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 That would be similar to the chess rating system. In a chess tourney you can win or lose ELO rating points, acording to the difference between your expected result (calculated on the basis of the respective values of your opps' and your own pre-event ratings) and the actually scored result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 I don't care about such rankings. masterpoints are [ui:] imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doofik Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 I second the motion Free. We've all met players with callousses on their butts, huge number of master points and the ability to play not great. Certainly not commensurate with the number of points. But all that being said, players like to be ranked. Look at the proliferation of ranked sites. Jola Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rebound Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Chamaco has something with the chess rating system. Way better than masterpoints as a method of ranking across a large field. One great thing about such a rating is that, unlike masterpoints, accumulating indefinitely, the higher your chess rating, the harder it is to increase it any further and you can mainly only do it by playing people of higher rating. I think it would work great in an environment like BBO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ehhh Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Free's (et al) outspoken comment is nothing but an insult and put down to players who for years have remained loyal to the game they love. So what if they have amassed large amounts of masterpoints. These are nothing more than a testimonial of their loyality to the game and their club. Callous comments ought to be tempered with respect! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Free's (et al) outspoken comment is nothing but an insult and put down to players who for years have remained loyal to the game they love. So what if they have amassed large amounts of masterpoints. These are nothing more than a testimonial of their loyality to the game and their club. Callous comments ought to be tempered with respect! If these masterpoints just reflect your loyalty to the game & club, WHY would anyone play for them anyway??? :blink: In a theoretical matter, you could've played for years, earned tons of masterpoints, and lose them all again because you get beaten in such a suggested tourney. No, masterpoints are a way to RANK people, and as we all know, it's not a great ranking-system. Such tourneys might help a bit, but as I said, I'm not interested in rankings... I don't know who edited my post, but I give you the opportunity to make yourself known again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pclayton Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Ok, so what? All the more reason to enter an event against a person with gobs of MPs acquired through attendance; gives us a better chance to win. Random thoughts about MP's: Masterpoints = little (but SOME) correlation with skill. Average MP earned per event = better and easy to calculate. ELO points like Chess = best, but difficult to calculate. And please suggest how a practical transition can take place. WBF rankings = interesting idea with rankings that 'erode'. Masterpoints create some arbitrary milestones, especially for the newer players. If it helps curb a declining population in the league - then fine. Remember the rush you got when you made LM? Even if you are totally jaded about MPs, I'll bet you still felt a feeling of accomplishment. Oh? You don't have your gold card yet? well, keep practicing, and stop griping about the skill levels of players with MP's :blink: For me; include more criteria for the different strata that requires a certain # of accumulated blue ribbon quals, or platinum points or whatever. I think the requirement of a national championship for the rank of Grand Life Master (in addition to 10K points) is a GREAT idea; lets extend it to Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond; or make the rankings a Bronze 'star', etc.. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rebound Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 I believe the suggested rating system could be implemented via software, although that's easy for me to say since I don't have to do any of the programming heh heh. I've seen it used for other types of online game servers, backgammon, for example. As a starting point, the same could be done as in chess where everyone begins with a set rating. Until play begins to cause the ratings to more accurately reflect the player's ability, the current self-rating system could be maintained. There is one major drawback to this system. It causes too many players to try to guard thier ratings. BBO goes a long way to preventing this already, however, by penalizing players who drop out of tourneys and so on. I forsee the need to answer one other question - how to distinguish between club and tournament play for rating purposes. I suppose it could be added as an option to the table/tournament to choose whether play in this case would be rated. Just some thoughts on the subject.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoob Posted October 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 http://img53.exs.cx/img53/6565/derailed.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flame Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Chess rating is definetly better. You can know that from how importent is rating in chess as opposite to bridge. I guess there could be a conpermise between the two which would be perfect, meaning you wont lose much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 The biggest difference between chess and bridge is that you play chess alone, while bridge is with a partner (or a team). If one very good player plays with a newbie, the individual ratings won't be correct. That's imo one of the reasons that making a good rating system is VERY difficult for bridge. I myself don't see an immediate sollution to solve this problem, except with a complicated system, which will probably bring new problems with it, like high ranked players which won't play with low ranked players out of fear to lose too many points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chamaco Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 The biggest difference between chess and bridge is that you play chess alone, while bridge is with a partner (or a team). If one very good player plays with a newbie, the individual ratings won't be correct. That's imo one of the reasons that making a good rating system is VERY difficult for bridge. I myself don't see an immediate sollution to solve this problem, except with a complicated system, which will probably bring new problems with it, like high ranked players which won't play with low ranked players out of fear to lose too many points. Not so difficult in my opinion. the rating points won or lost by a pair should be calculated on the basis of Expected "a priori" score- actual score of the pair, not of each single player. It is said that the value of the pair can be approximated to the rating of the weaker player. Therefore the expected score of a pair which features an expert and a beginner will be the expected score of a beginner. Obviously a beginner has a low expected score, which means it is much easier to gain points if you are ranked as beginner pair (e.g. even if you are expert, when paired with a beginner, you'll be considered a beginner pair). Every player of the pair will be added of subtracted on his personal rating opoints the amount won or lost by the pair in the event. Therefore, an expert will be able gain potentially more points playing with a beginner than with another expert (since when he plays with an expert, the pair is rated as "expert" -> higher expected a priori score -> you need a much higher percentage to gain points and you actually risk losing points even if you do a good percentage but lower than the a priori expectedpercentage). This would avoid the problem of good players avoiding pairing weak players for fear of losing masterpoints. Obviously it is much debatable whether an improved rating system would actually improve the fun or the competitive activities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luke warm Posted October 21, 2004 Report Share Posted October 21, 2004 no, actually the biggest difference between chess and bridge is the almost guaranteed results... if you are a chess expert, say 1950 fide rating or so, you're a pretty damn good player... even so, if you play a grand master (a *true* world class player), you can almost asuredly hang it up... on a good night, most advanced players at least have a shot at winning a bridge tourney, even with real world class players in the field... the reason might be the rest of the field, but it doesn't matter... play in a chess tourney tho... say 50 players, say 10 master level and 3 grand master... imho the best an expert can hope for is to finish 14th, and that's if he plays very few games against the monsters the good thing is, it doesn't hurt you so much when you lose against a giant.. after all, you're supposed to Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fluffy Posted October 21, 2004 Report Share Posted October 21, 2004 maser points is the thing I less care about, but also I don´t care about my points here (they are deleted to 0 each year), would only care about WBF master points, but I don´thave any to enter with :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted October 21, 2004 Report Share Posted October 21, 2004 ~snip~the rating points won or lost by a pair should be calculated on the basis of Expected "a priori" score- actual score of the pair, not of each single player. It is said that the value of the pair can be approximated to the rating of the weaker player. Therefore the expected score of a pair which features an expert and a beginner will be the expected score of a beginner.~snip~ I disagree. A pair with an expert and a beginner will score better than a pair with 2 beginners. Despite this fact, you'll have the same "a priori" score... Stepbridge.nl used (perhaps still uses, but I don't know) a rating system which calculates the level of play into the points people score. It's a very nice and fair system imo: You had 9 levels of players. If you team up with someone, your "pair"-level will be the sum of both players level. This means 2 level-5 players will be treated equally to a pair with an absolute beginner and a topplayer (9+1).If you play against some other pair, the scores you get will be calculated according to the difference in level. This means an expert pair playing a beginner pair will not score much, but that beginner pair can win bigtime! If both pairs score a top, it could be possible the beginner pair gets 25% and 125%, while the top pair gets 75% and -25%! When you get flat hands where everybody scores the same, the expert pair would only get about 40-45%... And here is where the trouble started... High ranked players didn't want to play against lower ranked players, because it was very hard to score many points, and keep their personal level. You got restrictions for games all over the place, like "only level 4-5". This didn't mean experts didn't want to play with beginners against a decent pair, but expert pairs didn't want to play against beginner pairs.Now, how can you solve this? Not punishing the expert pairs that much perhaps... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtfanclub Posted October 21, 2004 Report Share Posted October 21, 2004 It seems to me that there is no fair way to rate a pair which is Advanced + beginner. For one thing, a lot of beginners aren't...Maybe they've racked up points in a different system, or just played for money, or something. Maybe they're the best students of the Advanced player. Maybe they throw a bunch of games with random partners to get their rating low and then rack up a bunch of points for the Advanced player when they play together. Who knows? I don't think any system can accurately rate opposition from widely disparate opponents.My idea: The partnership's rating would only change if they were playing against player's within one level...so an Advanced partnership would have their rating change against an Intermediate, Advanced, or Expert opponent. Against a beginner or World Class, they'd get points in the tourney towards finishing, but their rating wouldn't change. This also prevents the considerable danger of two newbies joining a tourney, taking crazy chances, and if they succeed keeping the ID and if they fail pitching it and trying again with new IDs. Too bad for the few Experts they knocked down in the process. If the partnership has two different ratings (like Advanced + Beginner), the partnership would be considered equal to the HIGHER player. However, the players would be protected...perhaps the ratings award and penalty would be halved or some other fraction for the pair and their opponents. As with all other scales, beating a pair higher than you scores more points than beating a pair lower than you, and Advanced+Beginner would not be considered as strong as Advanced+Advanced. This assumes a logarithmic scale, such as: 900: Novice1000: New ID/Beginner1100: Intermediate1300: Advanced1700: Expert2500: World Class So gaining or losing the same points as your partner is a much bigger difference to the weaker of the pair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cascade Posted October 21, 2004 Report Share Posted October 21, 2004 That would be similar to the chess rating system. In a chess tourney you can win or lose ELO rating points, acording to the difference between your expected result (calculated on the basis of the respective values of your opps' and your own pre-event ratings) and the actually scored result. In the past I have implemented this type of system at the local bridge club. We used it for about two or three years and it seemed to work well. Our purpose was not to rank players but to allocate handicaps for handicap events. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jlall Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 Here's my take on the masterpoint thing... yes, they are meaningless to expert players. What expert players care about is winning regionals and placing top 5 or 10 in national events. That is what they play for, and that is fine. What would compell new players or players that cant travel to tournaments to play? If it was a rating system and they simply werent that good, they may get discouraged and quit. They may feel bad about themselves. However, having a goal like life master and winning masterpoints is a very good incentive for newer players to play bridge, and progress to the point where they can compete at regional levels or above. The masterpoints arent for the experts, they are for the less capable or newer players. Please remember that these people are the majority in bridge, and should be catered to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdulmage Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 silliest thing in the world. Let's put our masterpoints on the line so two people can be wired throughout the entire tournament, win the masterpoints and become life masters in one game. Whoever thought this should be taken around back and shot. Some of us appreciate winning masterpoints to say they have achieved something. Trophies, awards, masterpoint races. That is, if you have any heart for serious card play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdulmage Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 Here's my take on the masterpoint thing... yes, they are meaningless to expert players. What expert players care about is winning regionals and placing top 5 or 10 in national events. That is what they play for, and that is fine. What would compell new players or players that cant travel to tournaments to play? If it was a rating system and they simply werent that good, they may get discouraged and quit. They may feel bad about themselves. However, having a goal like life master and winning masterpoints is a very good incentive for newer players to play bridge, and progress to the point where they can compete at regional levels or above. The masterpoints arent for the experts, they are for the less capable or newer players. Please remember that these people are the majority in bridge, and should be catered to. LMFAO. That's the most outright silliest comment I have seen on this forum in a long time. Masterpoints are *NOT* for experts? Some of us enjoy getting awarded masterpoints, winning trophies and races and so forth. I can honestly tell you I would not travel around and play in tournaments and pay *THAT* much money if nothing was awarded out of it. The idea of saying "I've achieved something" is really good for the health. I'm only 20 years old, got my life masters when I was 19. Now I teach others how to play and compete professionally whenever I can. So what you are saying is because I enjoy masterpoints and like to think of them as "achievements", especially in tournament play, that I am automatically NOT an expert? Your comment is a generalization and frankly, a stereotype. Get your facts straight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricK Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 When you enter a tournament you want to win. And when you win (or place highly) you get Masterpoints. So in that sense we all want to win Masterpoints. But what is meaningless is one's total number of Masterpoints. I know plenty of players who play at least three times a week at various clubs, and go to weekend tournaments as well. Some of them are good players but many of them aren't. But even the bad players have bucketloads of masterpoints. Much more than certain excellent players who don't play nearly as often. Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jlall Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 yes, i would say if you honestly think that masterpoints are your achievement and not winning then you are most probably not a real expert. I have never heard of you and would appreciate any credentials you can offer to show that you are an expert? and what is meant by your comment of your age? is that supposed to impress me? I am 18, and made LM when i was 12. Big whoop. In general all of the top junior players are well known in especially amongst juniors, we are a small group. So this would make me even more sceptical that you are an expert. I would like u to ask any of the top pros that you know (i assume you know some since you also play professionally) if they care anything about masterpoints. I guarantee you 100 % they will say no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 When you enter a tournament you want to win. And when you win (or place highly) you get Masterpoints. So in that sense we all want to win Masterpoints. This conclusion you make out of the previous 2 sentences is completely unlogic, total rubish in fact! "We want to win" - ok, but why? We want to win because of the honour, the fun, the prices,... "If we win (or place highly) we get Masterpoints" - true, but it's just some bonus we didn't ask for "So in that sense we all want to win Masterpoints" - NO, we want to win for the reasons I mentioned above. The second statement doesn't change anything to what we want, or why we want to win. Consider this example (it's similar): If you want to win a car, and you get 1$ pocketmoney as a bonus, do you want to win that 1$? :D No, you want to win that car, that dollar doesn't interest you! You won't cry when you don't get your dollar, you might cry because you didn't win the car. Ok, some people want to win because of the Masterpoints, but I think it's a small group :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EarlPurple Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 The downside of having ratings (such as the Lehmann ratings at okbridge) is that it takes time to build one up, and newcomer will find it impossible to get a decent game. When this happens they will simply leave. Chess works better because after playing 10 or so games against players way below my standard and winning them all easily, I should have moved up to a high enough rating to get some games against players who can beat me. I don't think it works the same way though with bridge if you are going to play with pick-up partners. Fine, if a regular partnership has to work their way up the ladder a bit (though should only be for a very short period of time). But having individual good players refusing to play with partners of a lower rating is not good for the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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