[ArtK78]

Wayne_LV, on 2012-February-08, 09:30, said:

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.

[Wayne_LV]

ArtK78, on 2012-February-08, 09:44, said:

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.

[BunnyGo]

jillybean, on 2012-February-07, 21:58, said:

Is there an "exclude bunny" option for BBO tournaments now?

Damn it Jilly! You can't exclude me! I'll exclude you!

[Vampyr]

Wayne_LV, on 2012-February-08, 09:30, said:

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.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2012-February-08, 10:14, said:

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.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2012-February-08, 10:30, said:

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.

[BunnyGo]

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...

[barmar]

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.

[mgoetze]

billw55, on 2012-February-08, 07:41, said:

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.)

[billw55]

mgoetze, on 2012-February-08, 14:35, said:

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.

[mycroft]

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.

[pooltuna]

Step Bridge levels
http://www.stepbridg...age=competition

[billw55]

pooltuna, on 2012-February-09, 11:12, said:

Step Bridge levels
http://www.stepbridg...age=competition

It'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?

[dwar0123]

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.

[barmar]

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?

[billw55]

barmar, on 2012-February-10, 12:44, said:

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?

I think that a user-chosen starting point would work well enough. There is much less incentive to grossly misrate, since the rating will change with results anyway.

[dwar0123]

barmar, on 2012-February-10, 12:44, said:

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?

Perhaps not, but I certainty don't favor the one that makes it hard for new players to find games.

[HighLow21]

wank, on 2012-February-05, 20:09, said:

i would have predicted the top 2. i'm surprised india isn't higher.

I might not have put Italy in the Top 2, and I would have put China higher, but #1 I could have guessed without pausing.

[ScanDerBer]

LLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Turkey first LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL