Sections in Robot Tournaments

[jmunday]

Anyone else dislike the addition of sections to the robot tourneys?

 

This punishes the winner of the overall event by reducing the top award and

distributing it among section winners.

 

The live pairs use this format but at least there is an overall award issued.

[SimonFa]

Anyone else dislike the addition of sections to the robot tourneys?

 

This punishes the winner of the overall event by reducing the top award and

distributing it among section winners.

 

The live pairs use this format but at least there is an overall award issued.

 

How are the sections decided?

 

I can see an argument that it stops a couple of lucky bad bids meaning a poor player wins over all against well played hands so if its somehow by ability I can live with it.

[42krunner]

Anyone else dislike the addition of sections to the robot tourneys?

 

This punishes the winner of the overall event by reducing the top award and

distributing it among section winners.

 

The live pairs use this format but at least there is an overall award issued.

 

I'd like to see a comparison with what would happen woth the old system. When several of my tournaments had three sections, the number of people awarded looked smaller.

[ArtK78]

I would like to see overall awards added.

 

Otherwise I am withholding my judgment until I have a chance to play in more events. So far, what I see is a reduced award for the top finishers in many cases, increased awards for lower finishers, and a somewhat random sprinkling of awards throughout the field. For example, suppose there are 3 sections and the top three scores are in one section. The top three finishers in the event will get significantly reduced awards compared to the previous system, and the top finishers in the other sections (none of whom finished in the top 3 of the event) will get significantly increased awards compared to the previous system. And this is due to players random placement in sections.

 

I am assuming that the boards are scored across the field and not within sections.

[TylerE]

I think it's just as dumb in the live events. Considering that you can lose out on a section top to another pair that played a completely different set of opponents. I would much rather, for ACBL Pair events, see just an overall ranking (since boards are matchpointed accross the field anyway), or if you're going to have sections have 4 table sections so it's an all-play all.

[runewell]

How does this format punish anyone? The most these 12-board games paid out was 0.90 to one person. The awards went down from there, and say that 40% of the field wins an award and 45 participate. Then the top 18 would get an award. In the new format the 45 people are divided into 3 sections of 15. The top 6 in each section win an award, so still 18 people are recipients. But now they give out the top 6 places x3. Three people can win 0.90 instead of one. People looking to accumulate masterpoints should love the new format, which isn't inconsistent with the way things are done today at a large club game. Sure, you can get unlucky and land in a challenging section, but in the long run it will certainly be more lucrative.

 

Years and years ago on ebridge there would only be one section and it wouldn't be unusual for me to get 53% in a pairs game. That might be 30th out of 85 pairs, and I would win 0.04. I'm glad those days are over. I don't think that masterpoint giveaways should be ridiculous, but again I don't see any major flaws.

 

Except that with the smaller sections there really shouldn't be any need to limit the number of registrants to 48, should there? If there were a reason to do so before, it would be because the awards got rather small.

[runewell]

OK when a section is small, only 10 tables, it is true that the top award is reduced to 0.60. But, you only had to defeat 9 other players to achieve this award, instead of 14 or 47. In the end the new scoring system should prove more profitable, even if you don't get 0.90 with each win.

[Leo LaSota]

The new format of determining number of sections is extremely bad. The maximum award that BBO awards members is winning 0.90 (.06 per player * 15 players = 0.90). Under the old formula of one section, whether the session had 15 or 48 players, the overall winner got the deserved top prize of 0.90. Under the new formula, BBO adds a section at 16, 31, & 48!!!. So, if you are lucky enough to play in a game with exactly 30, you have 2 full value sections. If you are lucky enough to play in a game of 15, you have one full value section. If you are lucky enough to play 45, 46, 47, you are lucky to have 3 full sections (15, 15, 15; 15, 15, 16; 15, 16, 16). If you are unfortunate to get 16, you get 2 8 table sections. If you are unfortunate enough to get 31, you get 10, 10, 11. If you are unlucky enough to get 48, you get 12, 12, 12, 12. BBO absolutely better increase max section size to at least 20. If not, they will see decreased participation as more and more members catch on to this.

[itryhardr]

I do not like the "sections" system. Yesterday, I handily beat 5 of the 6 point-getters in the other section, and I won no points. I had a 56% game, and three of the "winners" in the other section were below 50%. Is this stratified? Go back to straight scoring. Why pay to play at BBO if the system is so silly. They might just as well put all the players in a tourney in a hat and draw to see who wins points.

 

I think the one who devised this system is probably the same person who taught the robots how to bid.

[xeno123]

I do not like the "sections" system. Yesterday, I handily beat 5 of the 6 point-getters in the other section, and I won no points. I had a 56% game, and three of the "winners" in the other section were below 50%. Is this stratified? Go back to straight scoring. Why pay to play at BBO if the system is so silly. They might just as well put all the players in a tourney in a hat and draw to see who wins points.

 

I think the one who devised this system is probably the same person who taught the robots how to bid.

 

I agree here. Let me contrast my results in two recent IMP tournaments:

 

1. In the first tournament, I was the top overall scorer with +26.89 IMPs, and received 0.52 points as winner of Section 1. The winner of Section 2 was fourth overall with 15.98 points (well behind players who came second and third overall) and scored 0.56 points (more than I got).

 

2. In the second tournament I played badly and ended up with a score of -1.27 IMPS, good only for 12th place out of 25 boards. But amazingly, that was good for 4th place in Section 2, yielding me 0.18 points. In fact, even the person with a -6.7 IMPS score received some points in my section! Compare that to Section 1, where the matching 5th place finisher scored +9.22 IMPS. So two players with a nearly 16 IMP difference between them got the same number of points.

 

I suppose this could be ameliorated some by stratifying the sessions on some basis. But I really fail to see what the Sectioning achieves other than to spread masterpoints around more liberally in a somewhat random fashion. Basically this devalues new masterpoints compared with those achieved under the old version.

 

(I should note that I personally would likely "benefit" from this new version because I only just started playing tournaments last month and still have under 10 to my name.)

 

Peter

[TylerE]

It's almost as if it's intended to be a masterpoint lottery. The ACBL would never sanction something like that, obviously.

[fred]

It's almost as if it's intended to be a masterpoint lottery. The ACBL would never sanction something like that, obviously.

As you probably know, ACBL clubs and tournaments routinely divide large games into sections. I assume they do this for the same reason that we recently chose to do this in our ACBL Robot Duplicates (and for the same reason we have been doing this in our ACBL Speedballs forever) - to increase the total number of masterpoints that are issued. That seems to be what most ACBL members want.

 

If you think this makes such events lottery-like then that is your right of course. My personal opinion that, while the randomness of who ends up in which section may result in anomolies in any given event, such things will certainly even out in the long term. Besides that, we are currently working on code that will in theory make the sectioning less random.

 

For the record, we never make significant changes to our ACBL-sanctioned events without prior approval from ACBL.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[ArtK78]

Besides that, we are currently working on code that will in theory make the sectioning less random.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Some sort of seeding system, Fred? That would make sense, as that is what is done in face-to-face tournaments.

[TylerE]

Fred, how do you square that with running 'Best hand' tournaments, which are clearly in violation of laws 6A and 6B, clarified in 6E4, which require a "wholly random" shuffling of the cards? If your argument is that it's what makes the players happy, fine, but at some point (and I would argue that whereever that point is, robot best hand is on the other side of it), it becomes some sort of bridge-like game, but not Duplicate Bridge.

[fred]

Fred, how do you square that with running 'Best hand' tournaments, which are clearly in violation of laws 6A and 6B, clarified in 6E4, which require a "wholly random" shuffling of the cards? If your argument is that it's what makes the players happy, fine, but at some point (and I would argue that whereever that point is, robot best hand is on the other side of it), it becomes some sort of bridge-like game, but not Duplicate Bridge.

Yes we are trying to make the user experience as enjoyable as possible - most bridge players seem to find the game more fun when they hold good hands.

 

ACBL has recognized that robot tournaments have a lot of benefits (I could provide a long list but I am sure you can figure out most of its elements) and have allowed us to implement features like "best hand" that some might argue are not in strict accordance with the laws. Various bridge clubs do things (like banning psychs) which also may violate the laws of bridge because they believe that such rules make the game more enjoyable for the majority of their regular players.

 

I am not an expert on the laws so I am not in a position to judge whether such measures are legal or not nor am I interested in hearing the relevant laws quoted or having a debate on the subject. That being said, I agree with the concept of taking certain liberties in low-level games if such liberties are in the interest of promoting the game and/or increasing player enjoyment, regardless of whether you call that game "Duplicate Bridge" or a "bridge-like game".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[uday]

I'm working on stratifying the robot dups as we speak. In addition, the next upgrade will make the allocation of players -> sections smarter.

 

While I did not create the GIB bidding rules, i must take partial responsibility for how GIB works. I must also take at least partial credit ( or "credit") for the breaking of robot dups into sections.

 

 

I'll start by answering with some Qs of my own :) Then I'll answer some of yours.

 

Why do real-world ACBL games break up large fields into sections?

Why aren't tournaments scored as one huge section?

Why are Bracketed KOs more popular than BAM?

Why are individuals unpopular in real life?

Why are Bracketed-Round-Robin Swiss events popular?

Why does ACBL stratify real-world tournaments?

Why does ACBL hold 0-10K NABC events?

Why does the ACBL Red Ribbon pairs exist?

 

OK, no need to answer those, those are rhetorical, and the answers are not complicated.

 

The reason we break fields up into sections is simple. This leads to an overall increase in masterpoints awarded. And most people will like that (in my opinion), or perhaps get used to it.

 

Consider a 15 table tourney and a 30 table tourney and a 90 table tourney side by side.

 

A section top in the 15-table field is .90 points.

A section top in the 30 table field is .90 points

A section top in the 90 table field is .90 points

 

By splitting into multiple sections, ACBL or BBO can issue multiple section tops, section second, etc.

 

A side effect is that if we split a 20-table game into two 10-table sections, the individual section tops are smaller than .90. But the total issued is not less, and is usually more.

 

The effect of all this is that people who frequently scratch in huge sections will sometimes win a little less ( whenever the sections are smaller than 15) and that people that don't perform quite as well will sometimes win a little more. The typical player will scratch more often and win more masterpoints. With one very obvious exception, I can't think of too many people who will do worse in the long run in the new system in terms of Masterpoints won.

 

It is true that issuing section-rankings across multiple sections can lead to apparent inequities. This is true of any club game, or any regional game, AFAICT.

 

Masterpoints aren't really about skill, tho that's just my opinion, and you're welcome to yours. Then again, bridge isn't really about skill as much as it is about other things, and the same caveat applies.

Anything that increases participation is good for BBO, good for players, good for ACBL, good for bridge, good for you, good for me - tho again you're welcome to your own version of that opinion.

 

We could easily run some events that are closer to "winner take all" but i suspect events like that would go the way of the dodo, and faster. It might be interesting to try to construct one big section of people who feel like this and let the rest go into smaller sections but I'm not sure I'd be allowed to mess w/that.

 

The version of robot dups that includes stratification and 'smarter' placement of pairs is being tested and i'll be able to roll it out next week, with luck.

 

I've heard some ideas about larger sections as a compromise between the efficiency ( of MP issuance ) and the reduction of section tops, and i'm thinking about this. I'm not sure what to make of this approach yet, i want more data, and the passage of time will grant me that.

 

I'd love to be able to issue overall awards for robot dups as we do in the speedballs and in normal ACBL club games - a limited # of "big" overalls are applied to the top 6 (?) or so winners. We'll get to debating this w/Memphis (now Horn Lake) once the stratification is done.

 

As an aside, the 18 board ACBL Robot Dups don't suffer from the recent MP reduction imposed on online in 2012. You need to be fast to play in this one, but the MP awards are disproportionately larger than the MP awards in 12 boards games. Maybe we'll run a promo to get people to try those, since without sufficient attendance, the award size is rendered moot by tiny game sizes.

 

We could run a survey of robot dup players and find out what people think once the dust settles. What I think we should do now is chillax and see how it goes for a week or three. After all, ACBL has been doing this for decades and we've been doing this in speedballs for many many years. Change is sometimes disconcerting but maybe it isn't bad this time. And if it is, it isn't like we can't undo it at will.

 

 

U

uday@

[ArtK78]

Uday:

 

It would be nice to play in the 18 board robot tournaments. I did play in a number of them when they first came out. Now, it seems that there is little or no interest in them, and it doesn't even pay to register to play.

 

Maybe there are some being played in the middle of the day (Eastern US time), but most of us can't play then.

 

So, I will continue to play in the 12 board tournaments (primarily IMP tournaments, as I prefer them to matchpoints). But if participation in the 18 board events increases (above zero) I will play in some of those as well.

[barmar]

I also wish more people entered the 18 board tourneys. Not because I care about the masterpoints, just because I find a longer game more meaningful and enjoyable, since one bad board doesn't have as much impact (this is especially noticeable in IMP tourneys).

[itryhardr]

IF you're going to stick to "sections", I feel that, if it can accurately be done, they've got to be equitable in the numbers of A,B and C players in each section... this is obvious based on my results mentioned (above), and seconded by Xeno123 (above).

[Leo LaSota]

Masterpoints are not a pure measure of a person's skill by any stretch of the imagination. Masterpoints are related to 3 factors:

 

1) How many sessions a person plays

2) How well the person does in the sessions that they play (level of skill)

3) How much luck they receive (by far the lowest of the 3 factors in determining a player's overall masterpoint total).

 

 

While it is true that masterpoints are not directly correlated to skill, a person must generally have a considerable amount of skill if they accumulate a large number of masterpoints.

 

I have earned over 10,000 online ACBL points and believe that this is largely related to my skill level and because I have played alot of sessions.

 

I believe that BBO's current formula for adding sections in the robot games results in a decrease in the correlation between masterpoints earned and level of skill.

 

I, as well as many other successful players, are upset at BBO minimizing awards to the winners by so much. The current system does result in a slight increase in the overall number of masterpoints awarded. However, the system also significantly reduces masterpoints earned by the top players.

 

BBO really should adjust the maximum section size to 20. This would be a small compromise that would still result in higher overall levels of masterpoints awarded than when they ran games with just one section. However, that would significantly reduce the loss in masterpoints for the top players.

 

If BBO increases section sizes to 20 and begins stratifying the sections, with equal number of "A", "B", and "C" players in each section, this would satisfy many of the participants. It would also add more meaning to a masterpoint earned against the robots since the very successful players would continue to earn a large number of masterpoints.

[Leo LaSota]

In speedball tournaments, the award for the section tops does not vary much at all for mid to large sized tournaments. In the system currently used for ACBL robot tournaments, you have a section top = 0.9 for 30 tables and a section top for 31 tables only equal to 0.60 for 2 of 3 sections (0.66 for the 3rd). Why should the section award increase by 50% when you decrease the entries by 1????? (0.6 award for 31 tables; 1 entry removed = 0.9 for section top (50% increase over 0.6!!). Get this corrected BBO.

[ArtK78]

To demonstrate how the addition of sections in the Robot games adds to the randomness of the awards.

 

Last night, I played in a Robot ACBL MP game. There were 35 players, divided into sections of 12, 12 and 11. We all play the same hands against the same Robots and the matchpoint scores are scored across the field. So, in a sense, it is about as fair a competition as can be devised.

 

I was second overall with a score of about 67.7%. But, because the winner (68.1%) was in my section, I got a section 2nd. Not only that, but I was in the 11 player section, so not only did I get a smaller award than the two other section tops (64.7% and 57.7%!) who scored less than I did, but I also got a slighly smaller award than the two other section 2nds (56.3% and 53.8%!) who were far behind me.

 

Obviously, this system can benefit many players. For example, the player who scored 57.7% and got a section top would have finished well down the list if the game were scored as one section. Even the 64.7% score earned by the other player with a section top would have finished 4th if the field were scored as one section (the player who finished section 3rd behind me had 66.5%!) and earned a smaller award.

 

I have benefitted from the division into sections a couple of times. I had a few games with small scores which got awards for section 3rds that I probably would have received little if anything if the game were scored as one section.

 

It all seems rather random.

 

I like Leo's idea of increasing the section sizes in the Robot games. Lift the restriction on entries (currently 48) and divide the field into sections no smaller than 15 players each. That, along with stratification, should please everyone (well, almost everyone).

[itryhardr]

Go back to the old way. Seeing a person with a 57% game get no award and then seeing many with percentages below 50% in the same event getting points because they were arbitrarily in a different section is frustrating, and, if it happens frequently, lessons enthusiasm to play on BBO at all (except for the weaker players who benefit from sections).

[Zelandakh]

I like Leo's idea of increasing the section sizes in the Robot games. Lift the restriction on entries (currently 48) and divide the field into sections no smaller than 15 players each. That, along with stratification, should please everyone (well, almost everyone).

I do not personally play in these but that would give a division of:

 

1-29 tables: 1 section (ie 1-29)

30-44 tables: 2 section (ie 15-22)

45-59 tables: 3 sections (ie 15-20)

 

Another possibility would be a compromise between that and the current system, giving a maximum of 20 tables in a section. That gives:

 

1-20 tables: 1 section (ie 1-20)

21-40: 2 sections (ie 10-20)

41-60: 3 sections (ie 13-20)

 

Or you could fine tune the critical boundary before the first split, say

 

1-25 tables: 1 section (1-25)

26-40 tables: 2 sections (13-20)

42-60 tables 3 sections (13-20)

 

...which gives a minimum of 13 per section. Lots of possibilities. It is just a matter of working out the largest tournament size that is wanted and, perhaps more importantly, the smallest.

[boni58]

I just played a tournament on June, 20th, number 4719, where I got a 3rd position of section 1, with 63,7 %.

I noticed that the winner of section 2, had only 58,59%, but got double points of mine!

I got .22 points and he got .44.

I do not find that is ok or even regular, because I investigated and we played exactly the same boards, the sames hands and the same NS direction.

The sections only make sense if the players play on opposite hands, isn't it?

Like this, I only can say that it is unfair and I do hope you reconsider this change of the rules.

My best regards