Tournament Scoring improvements possible ?

[dtlq1]

After playing a lot of tournaments and reviewing the results I have a few points for improvements. I am sure this has bothered also a lot of other players.

We all play mostly for fun but why not improve it if possible....

 

1. In almost all tournaments (especially in daylong) we see players being frustrated by the outcome of the first few hands bidding all further contracts 7NT or similar.

As we know players are divided into different sections thus playing different sets of cards. Some sets have more "potential" for those reactions making the already score breaking

differences even worse. In general there should be a filter to exclude the worst (and obviously non serious) results from the overall calculation.

2. Speaking of different sets it would be nice if we could see in more detail which rank we have scored compared to our "direct" opponents. I think this is/was done in some tournaments.

Is it possible to implement this (again) or do I only not see it ?

3. Is there any possibility to mitigate somehow the impact different sets have on the overall scoring ? If you get a good placement it is far to often due to "only" descent play in a set with

a lot of potential. Especially valid for IMP scoring. Playing a set with e.g. 8 boards flat 4 ♠ =/+1 even with overtricks here and there you get like 6 IMPs at the end, other

players in sets with make-able slams get 10 from one hand only. I would like to hear some ideas how to make the different sets more realistically comparable. Maybe adjust scoring mechanism

or making the sets more equally balanced.

 

Thank you in advance for any feedback on this.

[steve2005]

If someone bids an obvious hopeless 7N out of spite it would be good to void these .

Your other suggest while good will run into security problems. The more hands are played by the same players the more chance something "funny" will happen.

[nekthen]

It is not possible for BBO to look at the results of every hand. That would be a ridiculous amount of work. However, at imp scoring it would be possible to discard the top and bottom 5 or 10% of scores before calculating the par result against which all results are calculated

 

e.g. a board where everyone bids and makes 3N except for a few idiots/malicious results. Anyone bidding 3N gets zero imps instead of gaining some. I think this would be easy to implement. I do not think that there is anything similar that is possible in MP scoring.

 

It might also be possible to suspend users who go down more than one trick in 7 level contracts on multiple occasions

[barmar]

It is not possible for BBO to look at the results of every hand. That would be a ridiculous amount of work. However, at imp scoring it would be possible to discard the top and bottom 5 or 10% of scores before calculating the par result against which all results are calculated

We don't calculate a par result, we do cross-IMP scoring, then we average those over the number of tables.

 

Discarding outlier scores is a suggestion that comes up regularly. But it won't actually make much difference.

 

Remember, what matters is not your absolute score, but your score relative to other players. If there's an outlier, it will add about the same IMPs to all the other players, and all their final scores will be increased by that amount. It won't change the ranking.

[barmar]

After playing a lot of tournaments and reviewing the results I have a few points for improvements. I am sure this has bothered also a lot of other players.

We all play mostly for fun but why not improve it if possible....

 

1. In almost all tournaments (especially in daylong) we see players being frustrated by the outcome of the first few hands bidding all further contracts 7NT or similar.

As we know players are divided into different sections thus playing different sets of cards. Some sets have more "potential" for those reactions making the already score breaking

differences even worse. In general there should be a filter to exclude the worst (and obviously non serious) results from the overall calculation.

Only Daylong tourneys have players playing different sets of hands. But they're not divided into sections that all play the same set of hands. For each board number there's a pool of deals, and each player gets a random deal from each pool.

2. Speaking of different sets it would be nice if we could see in more detail which rank we have scored compared to our "direct" opponents. I think this is/was done in some tournaments.

Is it possible to implement this (again) or do I only not see it ?

This suggestion seems to be based on the misunderstanding that you have a set of opponents who all play the same boards. As I said above, that's not how it's done. Every player plays different sets. When you get the final results, you can click on the traveller for each board to see how you did against all the other players who played that particular deal.

3. Is there any possibility to mitigate somehow the impact different sets have on the overall scoring ? If you get a good placement it is far to often due to "only" descent play in a set with

a lot of potential. Especially valid for IMP scoring. Playing a set with e.g. 8 boards flat 4 ♠ =/+1 even with overtricks here and there you get like 6 IMPs at the end, other

players in sets with make-able slams get 10 from one hand only. I would like to hear some ideas how to make the different sets more realistically comparable. Maybe adjust scoring mechanism

or making the sets more equally balanced.

It's very unlikely that you would get an entire set of flat boards. Because each board is selected randomly from different pools, everyone should get similar distributions of flat and swingy boards.

 

It's true that with short tournaments like 8 boards, you can occasionally get an unlucky set (if 25% of each pool are flat, there's a 1 in 65,000 chance of getting all flat boards). But mostly-flat sessions should be rare, and sometimes you'll get lots of swingy boards. This is why the NABC Online Individual will have 24 boards each day -- the chances of getting a flat set are infinitessimal.

[dtlq1]

@ Barmar , thank you for the insight. This answers most of the questions and or suggestions. It is actually much better done as I initial thought.

[jjtl]

Thanks for clarification of these issues.

However, I have another annoying idea :)

Usually I play all three daily MP tournaments.

It makes 24 boards, what significantly reduces

variance. Would it be possible to publish results

of such combined event, a tournament of 24 boards?

If you are generous, you could even reward participants

with BBO points.

Of course, this have to be restricted only to players

who spend 0.75$ for all three tournaments.

But frequent clients deserve a reward...

Warm regards,

jjtl

 

 

 

Only Daylong tourneys have players playing different sets of hands. But they're not divided into sections that all play the same set of hands. For each board number there's a pool of deals, and each player gets a random deal from each pool.

 

This suggestion seems to be based on the misunderstanding that you have a set of opponents who all play the same boards. As I said above, that's not how it's done. Every player plays different sets. When you get the final results, you can click on the traveller for each board to see how you did against all the other players who played that particular deal.

 

It's very unlikely that you would get an entire set of flat boards. Because each board is selected randomly from different pools, everyone should get similar distributions of flat and swingy boards.

 

It's true that with short tournaments like 8 boards, you can occasionally get an unlucky set (if 25% of each pool are flat, there's a 1 in 65,000 chance of getting all flat boards). But mostly-flat sessions should be rare, and sometimes you'll get lots of swingy boards. This is why the NABC Online Individual will have 24 boards each day -- the chances of getting a flat set are infinitessimal.

[barmar]

Thanks for clarification of these issues.

However, I have another annoying idea :)

Usually I play all three daily MP tournaments.

It makes 24 boards, what significantly reduces

variance. Would it be possible to publish results

of such combined event, a tournament of 24 boards?

If you are generous, you could even reward participants

with BBO points.

I actually thought of the same thing last week and suggested it to management. Don't know if anything will come of it.