The Integrity of the Masterpoint

[Kaitlyn S]

I am going to describe a situation. If I can contain myself and not make it obvious what I think in this post, I'll give my views later. However, I'd like to know what others think.

 

A teacher wishes to run a sanctioned duplicate game for her students where some of the deals not random; rather they deal with her most recent lesson topic. Clearly she could run this event as a non-sanctioned game but some of the students have joined the ACBL and like the masterpoints. These games are quite popular.

 

The ACBL is telling her that these games are illegal; that every deal must be random to maintain the integrity of the masterpoint. However, she is strongly encouraged to run these games non-sanctioned.

 

Comments?

[sfi]

The ACBL's stance seems reasonable. It's the only product they have to sell and they don't want bridge to mutate into something else.

[Bbradley62]

As long as the "planned" hands are kept to a small percentage of total hands, I don't see why ACBL cannot sell masterpoints partly based on a bridge student's ability to learn, recognize and execute tonight's lesson in competition.

[1eyedjack]

ACBL is perfectly happy to sanction robot tournaments with all sorts of peculiar quirks. The critical thing is that the playing field should be level. The thought that somehow the reputation of masterpoints could be degraded any further than they are already by the occasional club deviation, of which you would have to run several thousand before a gnat's incontinence could possibly be noticed, is risible. By contrast, if awarding masterpoints helps to protect and promote the event and attract players, then no foul I say.

[MrAce]

I am going to describe a situation. If I can contain myself and not make it obvious what I think in this post, I'll give my views later. However, I'd like to know what others think.

 

A teacher wishes to run a sanctioned duplicate game for her students where some of the deals not random; rather they deal with her most recent lesson topic. Clearly she could run this event as a non-sanctioned game but some of the students have joined the ACBL and like the masterpoints. These games are quite popular.

 

The ACBL is telling her that these games are illegal; that every deal must be random to maintain the integrity of the masterpoint. However, she is strongly encouraged to run these games non-sanctioned.

 

Comments?

 

I am 100 % with ACBL on this one.

[hrothgar]

I think that this is an example where the ACBL needs to stop the camel from pushing its nose into the tent.

 

Once you allow one type of deviation from random deals, there will be demands for another and another and another.

As an obvious example, some folks will want to have the deals adjusted so that N/S and E/W receive the same number of HCPs and this will create all sorts of problems.

 

Arguably, the use of "best deal" settings for robot tournaments has already let the camel in

(I think that the ACBL made a mistake here as well)

 

Still, I would be disinclined to make the matter worse.

 

As a separate issue, I'm not sure why the ACBL would want to trust your ability to do a good job generating these hands or spend the time/effort to understand whether your are qualified to do so.

A blanket policy seems much easier to enforce.

[Tramticket]

I'm sure that the EBU would have a similar response. I'm not particularly a fan of Master Points (they reward longevity rather than skill). But if they are to have any value, the integrity of the competitions should be maintained.

 

Players make adjustments to their bidding and play when they know that the hands are constructed. This is fine from a teaching point of view - but it is not real bridge.

[helene_t]

Arguably, the use of "best deal" settings for robot tournaments has already let the camel in

(I think that the ACBL made a mistake here as well)

This. If partner and/or opps are robots it is still contract bridge IMO, but once we start making non-random deals (whether it is best hand south, hands that fit the teaching theme, goulash or average 10 HCPs to everyone) it shouldn't be called "contract bridge" anymore for masterpoint purposes.

 

1eyedjack has a point but I think it is easier to have the simple rule that the laws of duplicate bridge have to be followed. At one of my local clubs they redeal hands that are passed out in 1st round, that is strictly speaking not contract bridge and they can't award EBU masterpoints.

[billw55]

In an ideal world, we would disallow this. But ..

 

In case anyone hasn't noticed, bridge is in trouble in the USA, a long steady decline. Encouraging participation must be priority #1. If a few constructed hands in a beginner club event help with this, it should be allowed. Stick to idealism above all else, and you may soon find that your purist devotion is to something that doesn't exist anymore.

 

"the integrity of the masterpoint" is an ... amusing concept, to say the least. Serious players already don't pay attention to them, so what would we really accomplish by protecting them?

[helene_t]

There are some valid arguments for both. Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to introduce a new colour of masterpoints for teaching events?

[mycroft]

You could find out if, if "some of the hands" aren't random, but you play enough that you can throw those out, the ACBL would sanction the game based on only the random boards.

 

An "18-board game" with 24 boards, for instance, run as 6 rounds of 3, with the "training board" first and ignored in the scoring.

 

Yes, it creates two winners and two events, only one of which scores masterpoints; but it might be allowable. Yes, it means all the students know which board is the "training board", but that I think is better than "oh, so we're scrapping 1, 6, 14, 17, 22, and 28 tonight" at the end of the night.

 

I too agree that a game where the players know going in that a particular skill will come in handy (and frequently, only for the declaring side, and that if they do it right they're going plus) should not be sanctioned. Sure, the 0.59 MP it will award is ignorable at 1300, or even the 500 LM target; but with the players at 8 or 50, that 0.59 that seems undeserved (and woe betide if it has to be a Howell, and there's that one pair on the wrong side of all the prepared boards!) looks like a significant "accomplishment" that should have been theirs.

[neilkaz]

I am 100 % with ACBL on this one.

Me too.

[johnu]

I have no problem with the club having a game that while not 100% random is at least fair to all the players. It's still a game whether or not there are hands that are chosen to reinforce certain ideas.

 

As an aside, am I the only one who thinks the ACBL could make some money by sponsoring a credit card where you get masterpoints instead of cashback rewards? :D At national tournaments, you could get masterpoints for staying at the host hotels and eating at the hotel restaurants. The Gold Rush events where you get gold masterpoints for playing against mostly flight C players shows that the ACBL doesn't consider winning masterpoints to be a measure of skill.

[Kaitlyn S]

As a separate issue, I'm not sure why the ACBL would want to trust your ability to do a good job generating these hands or spend the time/effort to understand whether your are qualified to do so.

A blanket policy seems much easier to enforce.

Just to be clear, I am not running any games, and the person that wants to do this lives over 2,000 miles from me. I tossed out the idea to get feedback.

[hrothgar]

I have even less reason to trust your random friend

[johnu]

The ACBL is telling her that these games are illegal; that every deal must be random to maintain the integrity of the masterpoint.

 

LOL, when was the last time ACBL masterpoints had integrity? Who does the ACBL think they are fooling?

[nige1]

The ACBL has the right to make and enforce it's master-point rules but surely Kaitlyn's friend can compromise. For example, she can include her pre-set hands for play -- but not count them for master-point scoring purposes.

[ggwhiz]

I took over running 6-board tournaments for the School Bridge League in 2006 when they used pure randomly generated hands and I noticed that they were subjecting 10 year olds to 6 consecutive never bids with no defense on occasion so I cooked the hands. No masterpoints but I bet a lot that they would have been thrilled to award some. If they don't cook the hands for most of the youth nabc events, they should.

 

Had a small weekly club for the parents of our students that played the worst bridge you might imagine and scooped some good placings in STACs causing a small number to join the ACBL and participate in I/N games as perpetual novices for the last 5+ years and if their baby game was not sanctioned they would be nowhere to be seen.

 

Now that it takes 500 mp's to make LM what's the harm? And what's with using "integrity" and "masterpoint" in the same sentence. I would tell the teacher to just generate a bunch of hands and happen to pick a few relevant ones.

[Kaitlyn S]

It is probably not too hard to guess that I am on the side of the teacher.

 

Let us look at this from the ACBL's point of view. They are essentially in the position of selling masterpoints, and of course, the product they are selling has to have some value to the buyers. To cheapen the masterpoint they could in theory make the masterpoint less desirable. So I can understand their point about maintaining the integrity of the masterpoint.

 

However, the masterpoint has already taken on some aspects of fiat money. When I started playing tournament bridge, you needed 300 masterpoints to become life master including 25 gold points. Gold points could only be obtained by winning a section top or an overall placing in a game where a top expert could play. Shortly after I started, they started awarding gold points for overall placings and section tops in Flight B events. The upper limit for these events were about 750 points. At the time, it was a lot harder to collect a lot of points than it is now, so a player could have near 750 masterpoints and if he hadn't been playing forever, he would have been competent. Some new life masters could win a Vanderbilt or Spingold match. Not often but it did happen once in a while.

 

Nowdays when Flight B tops out at 2500, the top players with over 2000 points would have virtually no chance whatsoever to win a Vanderbilt or Spingold match. So clearly there has been major point inflation. A point earned 40 years ago is worth the same today as a point earned today but the point from 40 years ago was much more difficult to attain.

 

So the ACBL is trying to maintain the integrity of the masterpoint in a similar fashion to the way Helicopter Ben Bernanke was trying to maintain the integrity of the dollar; yes, it had value, but that value was going down all the time.

 

How much integrity does a masterpoint have anyway? If I were so inclined (and I hope you all know that I would never be so inclined), I could sit in my office with my sweetie on two computers and play in an ACBL BBO tournament, and know each other's hands at all times. Masterpoints are given for these tournaments.

 

There are Bridge Plus+ games that give masterpoints (albeit a pitiful number of them.) The students are allowed to ask questions about bidding and play (!) during the game.

 

http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/units/bphandbook05.pdf

 

Players can "earn" masterpoints for paying a professional player to play with them, or have a team of professional players.

 

Wretched players can "earn" masterpoints by going to a STAC or a ACBL-wide game or a Grand National Pairs in the weakest game in their unit. Can't find a weak enough game? Start a new game at your local college and play those hands against a bunch of people that barely know the game.

 

Need I say more about my opinion of the integrity of the masterpoint?

 

Now let's look at the issue from the ACBL's point of view.

 

In an ideal world, we would disallow this. But ..

 

In case anyone hasn't noticed, bridge is in trouble in the USA, a long steady decline. Encouraging participation must be priority #1. If a few constructed hands in a beginner club event help with this, it should be allowed. Stick to idealism above all else, and you may soon find that your purist devotion is to something that doesn't exist anymore.

 

"the integrity of the masterpoint" is an ... amusing concept, to say the least. Serious players already don't pay attention to them, so what would we really accomplish by protecting them?

 

Indeed bridge in general and tournament bridge are in a steady decline, and who can be surprised? There are far too many activities for bridge to compete with. In order for tournament bridge (or even club matchpoint bridge) to compete with all these other activities, I believe that any good idea which may encourage people to join the ACBL and get hooked must be seriously considered. Here is a teacher that says her idea is successful. If it is successful for her, it may be successful for many people. By sanctioning her games with seeded boards, the ACBL can acquire the information from her students and advertise to those students things such as 0-299 tournaments the new "Bridge Life" magazine meant for novices (which will let the continually advertise) and may actually manage to hook some of these people on tournament bridge. Say her idea goes nationwide and many other teachers find those games wildly successful too. What do you think that will do to ACBL membership and the size of tournaments? Of course, the ACBL can put an upper masterpoint limit on games in which lesson deals can be seeded.

 

The ACBL has another option - they can cater to the experts and they will be the only ones left since the wishes of the least experienced of their members are ignored.

[nige1]

IMO, most local regulations are nonsense but rating systems are highly successful in hooking up new players. It's tempting to ignore rules that you don't like but there is a danger that you condone a cheat's charter :( Better to comply with the rules and campaign for change :).

[sfi]

Say someone at a regional has the bright idea of running a regionally rated goulash tournament, or one where everyone is guaranteed exactly the same number of points for the session (better not have skips!). Do we draw the line at this?

 

How about a national championship? Do we draw the line here? If not, maybe it will become the most popular event due to its existence at the local level, and now the game has changed significantly.

 

I dislike arguments that use the concept of a slippery slope, but if you don't like the end point you either need to identify a natural barrier to change or introduce one. The ACBL has chosen this one.

 

In Australia we do have some masterpoint provision for supervised sessions. But they are very limited and the hands are expected to be random. And membership is growing, so it's not the lack of masterpoints for novelty events that are the barrier.

[Kaitlyn S]

IMO, most local regulations are nonsense but rating systems are highly successful in hooking up new players. It's tempting to ignore rules that you don't like but there is a danger that you condone a cheat's charter :( Better to comply with the rules and campaign for change :).

 

I am not advocating that anybody try to cheat the system. I would think it's totally fine to build up ten sections of those novices using those rules, play them non-sanctioned, and never introduce them to the ACBL or the ACBL to them. Heck, she could start her own league with her own masterpoints and if her idea is any good, it would catch like wildfire and would rob the ACBL of it's influx of new players. If it grew enough, she could print her own equivalent of the Play Bridge magazine using old material of famous authors with their permission. (I'm not suggesting that she do this but she has a much better business sense than I do so I can't rule it out; I think this is a fairly drastic solution and probably a better solution exists.) She could try to run under the auspices of the ABA. I don't know much about that organization but they might be more amenable to her idea.

 

My point is simply this: if the ACBL is currently giving points in games where the students can get help from the teacher while playing, why not accept and proliferate an idea that has been successful at getting new players into a duplicate bridge game. Of course, I would not say it should be allowed anywhere but some low-point game. Bridge Plus+ stops at 5 masterpoints. Once the player gets those, he will never be able to get help while bidding in another sanctioned game again.

 

I am campaigning for change. I posted this to see what others think of that change. Right now most of you are arguing that my change could be harmful to the league because it would cheapen the masterpoint. I might agree with those posters if the ACBL hadn't already done other things to cheapen masterpoints.

 

Do not get me wrong. The ACBL can do whatever it wants to do. I am not saying it is wrong for the ACBL to stand firm on this and say it is an illegal way to run a game. I'm just saying that I think it is unwise for the ACBL to ignore someone who has an idea who is bringing new players in and filling seats at a duplicate game with them - and I also think it's unwise for the ACBL to alienate someone by simply telling her to "Just play the games unsanctioned, and send them to us when they're ready to play real bridge." For what might happen is that the "send them to us" part never happens. For if there are people that are playing duplicate bridge, and the ACBL has no access to those people, then IMO the ACBL is doing something wrong.

 

I can see one legitimate argument against this idea. Let's say that the ACBL says "OK you can do this but you must limit these games to 20MP." Two bad things can happen - the people that really love these games are not going to join because they never want to get 20 MP, or that people are going to be complaining that they now have 20 points that they can no longer play in the game that they want to. (Of course they can play as ineligible as long as the others in the game don't complain.) If this happens, the ACBL might cave in and raise the limit. (Of course, if they keep inflating masterpoints, they should raise the limit, but that's another issue.) This certainly happened with Flight B - people complained that they weren't good enough to play in Flight A but had too many points to play in Flight B so they raised the limit. Then they did it again. And again. And again. Soon, I'll be able to play in Flight B again for the first time in 30 years. So the same thing could happen to this limit, and if someone objects to the idea of limited masterpoint games being allowed to seed lesson deals for this reason, then I can't disagree with you.

[jogs]

LOL, when was the last time ACBL masterpoints had integrity? Who does the ACBL think they are fooling?

What's right. The goal of the ACBL is to make money by selling masterpoints.

Swiss teams started losing popularity in the nineties. Too few winners. Too expensive for most teams to buy masterpoints.

Then they invented bracketed imp teams. Attendance soared. More teams. More winners. More masterpoints awarded.

[ggwhiz]

It's tempting to ignore rules that you don't like

 

What makes you think there was a rule rather than a knee jerk reaction from the ACBL? Quite a few special games that come with an analysis booklet have no or very little difference imo.

[Vampyr]

An "18-board game" with 24 boards, for instance, run as 6 rounds of 3, with the "training board" first and ignored in the scoring.

 

Yes, it creates two winners and two events, only one of which scores masterpoints; but it might be allowable. Yes, it means all the students know which board is the "training board", but that I think is better than "oh, so we're scrapping 1, 6, 14, 17, 22, and 28 tonight" at the end of the night.

 

It creates four winners if played as a Mitchell with no arrow-switch.

 

But anyway if the students really want masterpoints, they might decide not to spend their time and energy on boards that won't help them earn some. So perhaps they need an incentive, for instance giving prizes only for performance on the cooked boards.