jillybean Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 If you are really concerned about inflated self ratings, some clues to help blow their cover; 1) look at their profile and beware of people who simultaneously have "expert" and "stayman" on it (a surprising number of them!) or/and 2) if you really care a lot, look up their hand stats. The last can still be misleading as unless they play in tourneys it's hard to know if they are just among the best of the bunnies, as it were. Or you can consider if it's really all that important in the larger scheme of things. Is there an "exclude bunny" option for BBO tournaments now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antrax Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 It's interesting that nobody here mentions or seems to object to the people who UNDERrate their level, people who certainly qualify as expert and instead modestly announce "novice". Maybe the bushwhacked bunnies don't post in the forums.I haven't seen any instances of "eeking" (deliberately playing against much weaker players and wrecking them) on BBO, so probably this isn't an issue. BTW, since I find this discussion quite interesting, I'll chip in:a) I completely agree with Zel that "intermediate" is wide too broad a range. Having more ratings in this category might alleviate some of the inflation. Or maybe just changing to some objective stat like "have been playing for X years" though it might do people like JLOGIC injustice :) b) I like the idea of free self-rating because it takes away much of the incentive for trying to game the system to show a high rating on your profile. If you want it to say "World Class", you click on that, and that kind of makes the whole thing pointless, as most people who play on BBO quickly learn that the field means very little.All sorts of quizzes are fine if they're tools to help people determine their self-rating, but in the end I think it's best of you define your own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLOGIC Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Yeah most of you probably don't remember OKB with the lehman ratings...there was a huge bunny bashing issue with that + a cheating issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zelandakh Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 How strong should the combined hands be to bid games or slams. Regardless of the system details, the purpose is to exchange information about shape and strength, and then use this information to set the contract.Under which evaluation method? If I say 52 (Zar) points am I wrong? How about 5 HTs - after all that is the evaluation system I learnt first so it is the default beginner standard, right? I could also be pedantic here and say I need 10 trumps and a shortage or 11 trumps irrespective of other evaluation criteria. Certainly when I am raising 1♠ to 4♠ my first thought is not "am I strong enough?". And even if you insist on HCPs, most Novices know this answer - or do you make a distinction between 26 (Novice/Beginner); 25 (Intermediate); 24 (A/E); 23 (Meckwell)? And even if you only play one system regularly, familiarity with other systems is necessary to be a better player. You often have to play against people playing other systems, and understanding them will improve your game.Yes it will. But plenty of players reach Advanced status only understanding one system. In many clubs only one system is played unless there happens to be a visiting pair. How many pairs do you think play SAYC in European countries? Heck, you could probably win your country's trials for international events without ever having to play against SAYC in many places! Presumably your quiz will also ask the SAYC players about Precision asking bids for the same reasons. Or is it only necessary to familiarise yourself with other systems if you play a different system from the average LOL in America? Competitive bidding is an area where there's much less systemic variation than in basic approach, although there's lots of stylistic variation -- it would probably be unfair to ask whether a hand with 8 HCP is appropriate for an overcall, but it would certainly be reasonable to ask about an 11 HCP hand with a decent suit that can overcall on the 1 level.This is true but there is nonetheless variation. Raptor, ELC, style of 2-suited overcalls, et all have knock-on effects to other areas of the defensive structure. Some players also like to play canape overcalls when allowed; obviously this makes a massive difference! An 11 hcp hand with a decent suit will probably be a simple overcall for the majority but could easily be a jump overcall, double, 1NT bid or 2-suiter for some people, depending on the exact hand and agreeemnts in place. The simple point here is that any quiz that is devised has to cater to all players and not only to those from a particular country or skill level. And it has to do this while being both an improvement over the current system and without putting players off. I would suggest that these design goals are actually impossible and therefore that it is better to better tailor the existing system of self-rating to the requirements of BBO players and use resources to improve the software in other areas instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordontd Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 English Acol is also a system where players sit down without discussion.Not if they want to play the same as their partner. If they did, they wouldn't know what partner would open with a balanced hand out of 1NT opening range, for a start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zelandakh Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Not if they want to play the same as their partner. If they did, they wouldn't know what partner would open with a balanced hand out of 1NT opening range, for a start.Then they should read the EBU system file then! Somewhat perversely the writer chose to put the relevant section on what to open with a 15+ 4432 hand under "Unbalanced" but it is nonetheless there. I agree that the majority of Acol players are probably not aware of this but equally most do not care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Yeah most of you probably don't remember OKB with the lehman ratings...there was a huge bunny bashing issue with that + a cheating issue.Interesting. A good rating system should allow for that. Basically, the lager the rating difference, the less is gained when the stronger player wins. At some sufficiently large difference, the rating gain should fall to zero. Conversely, the higher rated player should incur a larger loss for losing as the rating difference increases. Thus creating a situation where there is little to gain but much lose (rating wise) from bunny bashing. The best rating system I know of is on the KGS Go server. It includes this element. Of course Go is quite different from bridge in that (a) it is an individual game and (b) it is easily handicapped to get the winning chances near 50/50. Bridge is much more complicated to rate, but still I think there are some things to learn there. Notably, aging of results, and rating over a set of results, rather than incrementally with each result. edit: looked up Lehman ratings, it seems they include these factors. Seems a pretty good system in principle, how well does it work in practice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulg Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 edit: looked up Lehman ratings, it seems they include these factors. Seems a pretty good system in principle, how well does it work in practice?The problem I had on OKB was not the ratings but the personal behaviour that that ratings gave rise to. People were more interested in protecting their ratings than playing bridge, so this led to bootings whenever you made an error and, if your rating fell below 50, no-one above 50 would play with you. Now I must admit that I only ever play with friends on BBO nowadays. But I have a very wide circle of friends ranging in ability from world-class internationalists to local club players who I happily play with and no-one is worrying about their rating. It makes for a much more pleasant environment to my mind. I guess the Main Bridge Club still resembles the Wild West, but it is possible to find enjoyable games. I think ratings would make it more difficult. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnasher Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 The main problems with Lehman ratings are:- Many people are too lazy try to understand how they work..- The same people are, nevertheless, quite happy to misdescribe and criticise the system- Bad players don't like being told that they're bad.- Some players become very protective of their ratings.- There is inflation of Lehman ratings over time, because low-rated players are more likely to give up their account.- The inflation is exacerbated by OKBridge's policy of allowing players to reset their ratings to average. Naturally, the people who reset their ratings were nearly all low-rated (although some public-spirited individuals did try to reduce the Lehman-supply by repeatedly building up a high rating then having it reset). Lehman ratings are still a good way of getting a rough idea of how good an unknown player is. It doesn't matter that people who play in closed groups will have incorrect ratings - such players won't be looking for a game with strangers anyway. I kept my OKBridge account going for years, because it was much easier to find competent strangers to practise against on OKBridge than on BBO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wayne_LV Posted February 8, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 And in conclusion ....... Forget about it. There are only 3 real solutions to this problem: 1. Find a regular partner and develop your own agreements and only play online with that partner on BBO (or some other site of your choice) in for pay tournements. This way you have a partner you know and nobody can refuse to let you play at their "Holy" table. 2. Play with whoever sits across from you and try to act civil and not treat a casual game as if the World Championship of the Bridge Playing Universe was at stake. This means don't jump table everytime something happens that does not meet with your egotistical approval. 3. Give up online Bridge and play online poker where you have no partner and all the mistakes are your own. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtK78 Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 3. Give up online Bridge and play online poker where you have no partner and all the mistakes are your own. Ha ha! The mistakes are not all one's own. Unfortunately, in poker, sometimes mistakes win. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wayne_LV Posted February 8, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Ha ha! The mistakes are not all one's own. Unfortunately, in poker, sometimes mistakes win. Yeppers, and mistakes, all too often, win in bridge as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BunnyGo Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Is there an "exclude bunny" option for BBO tournaments now? Damn it Jilly! You can't exclude me! I'll exclude you! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vampyr Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 1. Find a regular partner and develop your own agreements and only play online with that partner on BBO (or some other site of your choice) in for pay tournements. Doesn't BBO have free tournaments too? Do the stronger players tend to play in the pay tournaments? I don't play on BBO so I don't have any experience with this, but I have sometimes wondered why people pay to play in tournaments when free ones are also offered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Doesn't BBO have free tournaments too? Do the stronger players tend to play in the pay tournaments? I don't play on BBO so I don't have any experience with this, but I have sometimes wondered why people pay to play in tournaments when free ones are also offered.I think the expectation is that you'll get more "serious" bridge in the pay tourneys -- people won't enter them frivolously and bid randomly. They also often have a higher quality directing staff; the ACBL tourneys have certified ACBL directors, for what that's worth. The pay tourneys also give out masterpoints, and some of them have cash prizes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vampyr Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 The pay tourneys also give out masterpoints, and some of them have cash prizes. I find it surprising that cash prizes are offered for a form of the game in which it is so easy to cheat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BunnyGo Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 The cash prizes are 1 human vs. 3 robots. It is not so easy to cheat as the humans all see different hands (except the 55% MP) and the scoring is generally total points over an amount of time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 I wasn't talking about the robot tourneys. There are cash prizes in the tourneys run by a number of clubs: BBO LAND, SKY CLUB, BBOTURKIYE, BBO_PL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgoetze Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 The best rating system I know of is on the KGS Go server.As a former KGS senior admin, I must conclude that you do not know of very many rating systems. ;) (Short summary: the main problem is the underlying assumption that players' strength is constant over time, furthermore I found that the difference between two ranks did not often correlate very well with the appropriate number of handicap stones.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 As a former KGS senior admin, I must conclude that you do not know of very many rating systems. ;) (Short summary: the main problem is the underlying assumption that players' strength is constant over time, furthermore I found that the difference between two ranks did not often correlate very well with the appropriate number of handicap stones.)Well I certainly do not know any of them as intricately as a senior admin would. There is the oddity in the handicaps where one stone steps become half stone steps adjacent to your rank. But that seems a small issue. In general I find that the KGS system works very well for its primary purpose, which is matching players of similar skill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mycroft Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 The big thing about ratings - any ratings - is that initially, the ratings are way out and change dramatically; that's why the golf "provisional handicap" with less than 20 eligible rounds, for instance. The problem with bridge ratings is that by and large, regular partnerships will play much better than pickup pairs, or even irregular partnerships. The thing is that new OKB players were more likely to be worse than their 50 "inital rating", so keeping a 55% average against them was relatively easy. Also, new OKB players - especially those that were worse than their 50 initial rating - were likely to be playing pickup. So play against them with a known partner. If you want to sandbag, play a lot of ranked matches with pickups, and then play the important match with your regular partner (who you practised with on BBO, say, and who is also playing a lot of OKB with pickups). A regular partner will play easily 2, 3 points higher than their "with randoms" Lehman, and there it goes. Basically it's a classic example of Campbell's Law. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pooltuna Posted February 9, 2012 Report Share Posted February 9, 2012 Step Bridge levelshttp://www.stepbridge.com.au/show.php?page=competition Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted February 10, 2012 Report Share Posted February 10, 2012 Step Bridge levelshttp://www.stepbridge.com.au/show.php?page=competitionIt's an idea worth the experiment. I see some some flaws, for instance the IMP figures for promotion, relegation, and handicap seem too high, while the number of boards seems to low. Also the whole handicap system seems flawed - in my experience bridge is strongly affected by the weakest link, so that a level 7 and level 1 pair will not be competitive with a level 4/4 pair. Hence, I expect you would see very few cases of partnerships with disparate ranks in competition mode; but at least that is fairly realistic. Even so, I think I may sign up just to try it. Are non-Aussies allowed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwar0123 Posted February 10, 2012 Report Share Posted February 10, 2012 The main flaw with step bridge that I see(having never played) is that new players are always under rated(or lowest level) making them a bad wager to play against. It is difficult enough being the new guy unfamiliar with the specific social norms without having to deal with opponents being openly hostile to the idea of playing against you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted February 10, 2012 Report Share Posted February 10, 2012 Is there any rating system based on actual performance (as opposed to the aptitude test idea) that doesn't have a problem with new players? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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