BBO Skills

[Ken16]

I have no rating to protect. My sole purpose of changing the present skills listing is that for we lesser capable players it does not help us to find tables that match our skills.

The ecpect and world vlass players tell you who they want ant their table.

[Ken16]

My skills message was my first posting and I am trying learn how to respond so if you see several posts of the same type from me blame it on my POSTING SKILLS.

 

As I read the comments I was surpised to find that so many took my message to

be about RATINGS. Read my post carefully and you will not find the word RATING mentioned.

 

The preent listing of SKILLS aslo does not mention RATINGS. As listed just what is the criteria for each one from NOVICE to ADVANCED. I think we players of lesser talent would feel more comfortable if we had an idea of just what our partners would expect of us as we play. As we find an open chair I doubt that we check the skills that one lists as they join. Some of them have so many conventions theat I am afraid to get close to them.

 

If we first play with partners of similiar skills we will be more adept at them and willing then to move up (or down).

 

Note in my post that I said Fred and others could more accurately set up the skills. Incidently, Fred does not agree with I had posted.

[the hog]

"As we find an open chair I doubt that we check the skills that one lists as they join. Some of them have so many conventions theat I am afraid to get close to them."

 

Ken you should not be afraid to get close to them. In many cases you will find that players don't even properly know half the conventions they list; (for example they say they play Cappelletti, but when they have a good hand is response to the Cap bidder, they have no idea whatsoever on how to proceed). Some others just list copious conventions I suspect in order to either intimidate the opposition or to impress prospective partners. (Think of it as a peacock preening in order to impress its mate.)

 

It was your suggestion of Sayc as a "lingua franca" to which I took umbrage.

[Fluffy]

Yeah Ken, I think it was Flame's post about maybe developing a rating system that started all the discussions

 

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal. Also I can imagine people not allowing undos, or not accepting claims, I really like playing fast bridge where you can claim when a deal is actually done at trick 3 (Even if 3 losers are still to be cashed), bu on a rating system my opponents would not accept, or I would play to try for an overtrick.

 

Rating systems atract cheaters, I can recall an example, when I joined bbo there were no tournaments, and not many cheaters also, but when tournaments started,and there were very few of them, I found loads of cheating on them, jsut because people wanting a director to say on the lobby that they had won a tournament...

 

Also there was a famous private club who developed a rating system... I am not really sure, but think they found a lot of cheating there.

[Chamaco]

To see how bad ratings perform, it is not necessary to be far-sighted: just look at your country's rating system.

 

The rating system tends to be related to *how often* one playes rated tourneys, rather than its real skill.

 

Sure, there are awesome players who are high rankd; but there are also many discrepancies (e.g. many times high-ranked players are not SO good as it might appear, and this occurrence is VERY frequent).

 

Moreover, "rating discrimination" also lead to rudeness etc etc.

 

All in all, I really believe there is no reason to copy a system which tends to fail even for live bridge.

[TimG]

The rating system tends to be related to *how often* one playes rated tourneys, rather than its real skill.

But, there's no reason a rating system can't be designed to actually measure real skill rather than how often one plays.

[TimG]

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal.

When I read this, I couldn't help but wonder why you play bridge. I know that may seem harsh, and I don't really mean it to be. But, if you're not concentrating, why play bridge instead of hearts or crazy eights?

[Trumpace]

As a result I usually had to play with complete novices and my rating never improved. A catch22 situation.

If you are better than the novices you were playing with, your rating should have gone up when you played with them. If it did not, either your perception that you're better than a novice is wrong, or the rating system was flawed.

Well, I was talking about my partners. Opponents would usually be advanced, they were there to improve their rating! I don't know if the rating system was flawed or not, but I did manage to get to intermediate after a while. It was quite furstrating before that. Also, I was an occasional player and that might have had something to do with it.

[Flame]

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal.

When I read this, I couldn't help but wonder why you play bridge. I know that may seem harsh, and I don't really mean it to be. But, if you're not concentrating, why play bridge instead of hearts or crazy eights?

Why not bridge ?

If he would play hearts you could have ask him why doesnt he play bridge.

When i play online i am usually serfing the internet.

[hotShot]

Would you stop playing with the novice or beginner that is fun to play with to protect your rating?

An accurate rating system would not force you to avoid novice partners; your rating (if it was accurate) would not go down as a result of playing with novices.

If the rating system would avard you for winning against novices, then it is flawed.

 

Wenn you play with a novice parnter against novices, and the rating system knows.that you are a better player, it should not improve your rating.

 

But it should downgrade your rating, if you start loosing against novices.

[inquiry]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue). There are attempts by a number of private clubs to implement their own rating system, and maintain those ratings on line somewhere (other than Bridgebase pages of course).

 

I am not fond of rating systems, for the reasons outlined by Fred. But if you are out there trying to devise one for your own use, make it like a chess rating... if you beat inferior players, your rating doesn't go up, but if you lose to them, then your rating sinks (takes away the incentive for "bunny-bashing" aka, good players looking for complete novice to trash to drive their rating up).

 

We have, sadly in many ways, a rating system on BBO now. Players who have won internationally are given gold stars. This shows them to be the superior player that they are. Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't write me and say that they deserve a gold star because they are much better than _______ (fill in the blank with virtually any BBO gold star). I have a link on my desktop to Fred's description of what earns you a gold star, and I post that to them. But I will tell you, there are plenty of outstanding players without a gold star who have no problem with not having one, but even this quantifiable, real world standard of excellence draws caustic remarks from some who don't qualify for the gold star.

 

Self assessment, for the most part "works". I agree that more than half who claim to be expert are not even close. I like to think this is because they have no clue what an expert bridge player really is. This is what you should do. Find a group of friends of like mind, hopefully similiar ability to you, and play with/against them. Find out who they like to play with/against and play with them too... soon you will ahve a group of 50 or 60 players who you enjoy playing with, that is enough competion for any of us. Then the self-inflated rating are not a problem.

 

Ben

[TimG]

When i play online i am usually serfing the internet.

Next time I'm playing online and do something silly, I'm going to say: "sorry partner, I just found this cool website I was checking out and wasn't paying attention to the bridge game."

[TimG]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

[inquiry]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

Lol... you got to be kidding. Boian, maybe the best regular player on BBO has no such number... so I guess he is a beginner. And some of the people who play four and five tourneys a day have face cards, do you think that means they are great?? These numbers are probably losely related somehow to ability, but they never decrease (Well you could have an King and drop to a 7 if others zoom ahead of you...if you know how the point scale works..but that is an exception).

 

Ben

[fred]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

No Tim. You are wrong.

 

Those symbols represent accomplishment. They do not represent skill.

 

Same goes for the star symbol.

 

No doubt there are plenty of people out their besides you who misinterpret the intention of these symbols. Once in a while we attempt to remind people of what they mean. Perhaps the time has come for another reminder...

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Guest Jlall]

I have been playing on OKB again recently and I must say I HATE the lehman rating system. The environment on BBO is so much better because it doesnt have one. Some problems include:

 

Many people wont play vs me because of the rating system

Many are abusive towards their partners because they are "wrecking" their lehmans

Cheating.

 

 

PLEASEEEEE keep BBO rating free

[uday]

Here is an interesting website about ACBL masterpoints. I think it is relevant to this discussion because it talks about awards (like the bbo symbols, like masterpoints) and ratings.

 

http://www.masterpointinfo.com/

 

The author posted his link to usenet, where it also generated a lively discussion

 

Thread on usenet on this subject

[sceptic]

I think ratings suck for some of the reasons given, rudeness etc etc.

 

But there again, an afwul lot of people want them, I am not convinced that they want to know who is the BEST player in BBO, but more to find the level of pick up partner and level of Opps.

 

Justin has a made a point that is indicative of BBO

 

Many people wont play vs me because of the rating system

Many are abusive towards their partners because they are "wrecking" their lehmans

Cheating.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way Justin (no offence intended, BUT, I have never seen you open a table and not lock it, you are just as fussy (on occasions) as who sits at your table, may be not for ratings but for your enjoyment, you want to play against (most of the time I think, not that I pretend to know what you are thinking) people of a certain level.

 

That is an ideal for us all, I would always want to play against better opponents than myself (I have an advantage over Fred and Justin here) a far bigger pool of people to choose from )

 

May be take expert off the ratings system and replace it with adv, adv+, adv++, adv+++ or int, int+, int++, int+++ and describe intermedaite with a much broader description in BBO as I am sure more belong there than anywhere else

[sceptic]

Ken you should not be afraid to get close to them. In many cases you will find that players don't even properly know half the conventions they list; (for example they say they play Cappelletti, but when they have a good hand is response to the Cap bidder, they have no idea whatsoever on how to proceed). Some others just list copious conventions I suspect in order to either intimidate the opposition or to impress prospective partners. (Think of it as a peacock preening in order to impress its mate.)

 

Spot on Mr Hog, I consider myself in this catorgory (not out to impress) but I list conventions I have learnt, you are correct, take Lebensohl on my convention, I am learing it, but if I don't list it I never get the chance to try it, I should have a statement on my profile saying conventions I am willing to try, please expect the odd disaster (but alas there is not room to write every think down I would like to and I doubt most people would bother reading it anyway.

[TimG]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

Lol... you got to be kidding. Boian, maybe the best regular player on BBO has no such number... so I guess he is a beginner. And some of the people who play four and five tourneys a day have face cards, do you think that means they are great??

No, I don't think it means that any more than hundreds of ACBL masterpoints denote bridge skill. Or, even achievement. But, there are lots of people in the ACBL who mistake (at the encouragement of the ACBL) masterpoints as a measure of skill. And, there are, no doubt, those who do the same with BBO's symbols next to names scheme.

 

It seems to me a mistake for BBO to start down this path; like ACBL, I imagine BBO will find that once you've started down the path it is impossible to turn back.

 

Tim

[TimG]

Same goes for the star symbol.

Another status symbol which causes confusion.

[inquiry]

And, there are, no doubt, those who do the same with BBO's symbols next to names scheme.

 

It seems to me a mistake for BBO to start down this path; like ACBL, I imagine BBO will find that once you've started down the path it is impossible to turn back.

 

Tim

Tim,

 

Let's be realistic about the situation on BBO. Fred is adamant that free tournements and free access to BBO remain. People from the world over can log on and find, at no cost to them, a place to play bridge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On the otherhand, the servers, software development, and support cost Fred and his partners money.

 

How can such a situation be maintained? Well, for one thing, people volunteer their time. You will find 100's of people running absolutely free tournements, who donate their time and effort so members can find free tourneys to play in. For another, you will find dedicated members who take on a number of task in the form of being a yellow host, or to serve answering support email or abuse email, without compensation. Fred and uday I am sure are not compesated (at least directly) for their software development time. You will also find dozen of volunteer beta testers right here on this webpage who try to help track down software bugs.

 

But how does the negative cash flow associated with mantaining a site get fixed? The answer is through selling software (bridge master, and the various other commercial products prepared by Bridgebase), and more recently the "fee-based tourneys".

 

But if there is going to be "free" tourneys (and there are still way more free ones than fee-based ones..... .it looks like that is not the case if you look at the list of upcoming ones, but the fee-based ones go on a week, maybe two in advance, the free ones pop up anywhere from an hour to 10 mintues before they begin), what value do the fee-based add to get people to pay some amount (typical $1.00) for them? In ACBL event, it is ACBL masterpoints. The use of numerals and bridge face cards as an "award" is the way other events add value. If having a JACK on your profile is attractive to you, then you will be more encouraged to play in such events. If it means nothing to you, the fact that others have it should not bother you.

 

I look forward to the day when fee-based tourneys offer post hand analysis which includes full travellers for all hand played, which includes the hands themselves iwth par result, and includes "expert=commentary" on how the bidding/play might should go, and why. But obviously, this would require 1) money for the director to arrange the hands, 2) money for the "expert" to prepare the commentary, 3) money for someone to piece together the hands and travellers, and 4) money for someone to collect email addresses amd send the hands, or make a password protected webpage where these could be accessed only by those who played in the event.

 

The day will come sometime too, where "pro's" can charge students BBO$'s to play with them and a small percentage of that money going to BBO. And more and more teachers may start classes that use BBO facilities and collect BBO$, again with a small amount going to BBO to help defray cost.

 

My personal belief (THIS IS NOT A BRIDGEBASE ONLINE VIEW, JUST MY OWN) is that it is a responsibliity of all regular onsite players who have the financial ability to do so to play in at least an occassional fee-based tourney. That is, if you are enjoying and benifiting from the site, you should be willing to support it at some modest finincial level Better yet, buy their software. Of course it helps if we could all find tournyes with value-added that we would like to have... if it is not the rating awards of the profile symbols, then something eles.

 

I myself volunteer my time on line as a yellow, here as a moderator, I have purchased bridgemaster hands in the past, and I have bought some of the BBO software as a gifts. I have also played in a fee-based tourneys. I plan to continue with each of these (other than paying for bridgemaster hands, as I have worked them all now).

 

Ben

[fred]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

Lol... you got to be kidding. Boian, maybe the best regular player on BBO has no such number... so I guess he is a beginner. And some of the people who play four and five tourneys a day have face cards, do you think that means they are great??

No, I don't think it means that any more than hundreds of ACBL masterpoints denote bridge skill. Or, even achievement. But, there are lots of people in the ACBL who mistake (at the encouragement of the ACBL) masterpoints as a measure of skill. And, there are, no doubt, those who do the same with BBO's symbols next to names scheme.

 

It seems to me a mistake for BBO to start down this path; like ACBL, I imagine BBO will find that once you've started down the path it is impossible to turn back.

 

Tim

Tim,

 

Both BBO and the ACBL are businesses. The nature of both of these businesses is that we try to make our members happy. The more happy members we have the more successful our businesses will be.

 

ACBL members like masterpoints. The subset of the BBO membership that pays us money to play in pay tournaments likes the symbols. If the remainder of the BBO membership doesn't like these symbols, I am afraid I don't have much sympathy. Having to endure them is a small price to pay for access to a high quality free online bridge site.

 

These symbols have been and continue to be good for business so I cannot imagine what you are thinking when you characterize our introduction of these symbols as a "mistake".

 

For sure there are plenty of BBO members who do not understand what these symbols are meant to represent (and there are plenty of ACBL members who do not understand that having lots of masterpoints does not necessarily mean having lots of bridge skill). This does not imply that there is anything wrong with the symbols (or masterpoints) themselves.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[TimG]

These symbols have been and continue to be good for business so I cannot imagine what you are thinking when you characterize our introduction of these symbols as a "mistake".

My characterization of the symbols as a mistake was in relation to your anti-ratings stance. Even if what you are rewarding is achievement in ACBL games on BBO, you have introduced a ranking scheme. Perhaps it doesn't rate bridge skill, but it could easily be mistaken for an attempt to do just that. (Otherwise, why would anyone be proud of their symbol? Why are the symbols good marketing tools?)

 

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics. But, you cannot attempt to rank things without also rating them. To rank is to assign a relative value or position. To rate is to assign relative rank. They go hand in hand.

 

I've read your explanation of the symbols and they are a ranking scheme. They rate relative performance (or attendance) in ACBL tournaments on BBO.

 

In light of this, I thought Ben's statement:

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

to simply be wrong. There is at least one rating system on BBO.

 

Perhaps your position is that there will be no system wide rating system. Or, that there will be no dynamic rating system. Or, that there will be no rating system which attemtps to measure bridge skill. But, you've already instituted a rating system.

 

Tim

 

PS I'm in favor of rating systems; I wish there were lots of them.

[slothy]

Dear All,

 

May i just corroborate what Fred and Ben said in their ultimate posts in this thread.....

 

My spiel on this. IMHO, Fred is in the unenviable position of having to run a business, as he said - yet unlike some businesses, i believe he has a genuine concern in standing by his principles (as long as he can) and having his ear open to suggestions from the users of his product and responding to them if HE sees fit and if HE believes it is realisable and for the overall good of the evolution of the site, whilst concurrently minimising any compromise of these principles. He isnt seeking accolades or martyrdom, but if i read between some of his lines he is a bit pissed off with some people (my understanding) making a bagel out of bread-crumbs (excuse my imagination, couldnt think of any other way to put it).

 

If having a rating system - whatever that may be and if it REALLY constitutes a RATING system per se as some of these posts, vortexing into a whirl-pool of Babeldom, seem to be discussing - is a source of income, which ANY business needs to concern itself about, isnt it a SMALL price to pay (if you dont agree with it, whereas some people seem to like it and endorse it) to be able to play on a site for free??? and one that, perhaps, arguably offers a better service than ones one has to subscribe to and, in some cases, implement the very thing you seem to want BBO to avoid?

 

***

 

I still fail to understand what the bone is about? some people are chewing a bone that obviously has a bitter after-taste to them...

 

if one believes that the self-appointed rankings are a bad idea, DONT LOOK AT THEM or<span style='color:red'> JUDGE A PLAYER BY THEM</span>.

 

They were introduced originally, i am sure, for people to be able to pin-point people of a comparable standard to themselves, and if ego-inflating people wish to distort them for delusional self-aggrandisement or in some cases out of sincere ignorance as to their own standard, lol <span style='color:red'>DOES IT REALLY MATTER</span>????

(In fact one of the posters recently had WORLD CLASS in his profile .. ummmm)

 

if one really believes that stars are wrong, or that a particular star-studded player has been wrongly appointed (which i know is an implicit dig of some of the posts in other threads) <span style='color:red'>DONT LOOK AT THEM </span>or <span style='color:red'>JUDGE A PLAYER BY THEM</span> . A benchmark has to be used, for the reason in the next sentence, and the metric that Fred has used is as good and as fair as any i have come across. The fact that a BBO user may want to randomly kibbitz someone who is of a high calibre for his own enjoyment or to watch good bridge to learn from, there must be some way of knowing who they are...

 

It shouldnt cause CONFUSION unless one is reading more into the symbols or whatever abstraction we are talking about than what they were originally conceived to convey...

 

BBO is an on-line 'community' yet simultaneously a business - like any similar social arrangement, and there are many believe me, compromises have to be made whether they want to or not. As it happens, in this case, the decisions lie with those who ultimately have a lot more to lose than the rest of us, have more at risk and have much more invested and and thus are, i am sure, very conscious of what are the best compromises to make or not to make.

 

I come on here to play bridge - good bridge if i am in the mood - and to socialise with a very diverse group of people and i think it creates a happy medium between the two. If there is anything that i dont particularly agree with, i tolerate it as, in my experience, the satisfaction and benefits BY FAR outweigh any slight dissatisfactions. I dont really care whether someone thinks i am a bad player or a good player or whether any symbol quantifies or qualifies my standard or anybody elses and certainly dont see the point of squabbling as to whether it does or not.

 

I just play bridge and let people decide. If i enjoy it, because of the standard i wish to play or because of the company i wish to keep, and I and others can create an environment at the table/tourney where they also feel the same level of enjoyment then my time on BBO aint wasted...

 

Sorry to say folks, everything else is just baloney...

 

Alex