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Take this with a grain of salt. I'm not sure if I should get a vote. After 15 years away from BBO and bridge in general I'm up to a grand total of two hours a week, with a set partner, against robots.
Here's the thing. Apparently, some people have a weird reaction to cards. It turns them into big rude jerks. It's so bad that I prefer to play against robots because they don't belittle each other or type at each other in all caps. People are nuts!
This is true, playing for zero stakes and the ability to politely excuse themselves. If they start obsessing about their ratings I'm afraid of the bridge playing population being wiped out by spontaneous human combustion and exploding craniums.
Rating Players Basic theory
#141
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Posted 2022-August-10, 13:54
http://badmonsters.blogspot.com probably will not change your life.
#142
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Posted 2024-July-11, 09:33
This is a long, long dead thread, but I can't resist. So what if nobody reads it.
When I was playing in my 20s and 30s, the ACBLs system annoyed me. It "rated" players based on a function of quantity of play, ability and hiring of pros. A young player could get a reputation, but not a rating.
In chess, an 8-year old can become a grandmaster. Having a quality-of-play rating system makes the game more attractive to younger players. I know other young players in the 1990s were expressing frustration with the lack of a quality rating system.
As far as privacy, you can break it down into flights. I was a Flight C chess player at age 17-18, and didn't stop because of a lack of success, it was because I went to college in a town without a chess club. When I dropped out of bridge for 20 years for my career it wasn't because of rating, though it is only life master. If you want to experiment, permit an opt-in or opt-out and the ability to mask if you start a rating and don't like it. Then people can choose to play with those who hide their ratings or not.
When I was playing in my 20s and 30s, the ACBLs system annoyed me. It "rated" players based on a function of quantity of play, ability and hiring of pros. A young player could get a reputation, but not a rating.
In chess, an 8-year old can become a grandmaster. Having a quality-of-play rating system makes the game more attractive to younger players. I know other young players in the 1990s were expressing frustration with the lack of a quality rating system.
As far as privacy, you can break it down into flights. I was a Flight C chess player at age 17-18, and didn't stop because of a lack of success, it was because I went to college in a town without a chess club. When I dropped out of bridge for 20 years for my career it wasn't because of rating, though it is only life master. If you want to experiment, permit an opt-in or opt-out and the ability to mask if you start a rating and don't like it. Then people can choose to play with those who hide their ratings or not.
#143
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Posted 2025-February-01, 11:28
awm, on 2009-November-20, 14:55, said:
Suppose for the moment that we had a highly efficient, highly accurate rating system. It's still not obvious how we'd want this displayed on BBO, and there would still be some undesirable social effects. For example:
(1) People would be reluctant to play when they are not up to their "best game" because their rating would go down. Presumably the rating system controls for strength of partner/opponents, but it's not going to control for the hands I played during the weekend I was in bed with the flu, or the hands I played to de-stress before sleep after working thirty straight hours. Thus people who care about their ratings will play less than before.
(2) People would discover that they are worse than they think they are. In some cases this might cause people to become discouraged with bridge in general. This might be especially bad for players who are getting older and definitely used to be better than they are now, watching their ratings decline over time.
(3) People will become more picky about partners. No one wants to play with a partner who is "much worse than them" (barring teacher-student type situations or friendships away from the table). This will make it harder to find pickup games, and the amount of complaining about "bad pickup partners" may actually get worse rather than better.
(4) However good the rating system, it's still likely that there will be an initial period when players new to BBO have not played enough hands to get an accurate rating. Other players may be reluctant to play with/against these people until their rating has stabilized, making it hard to find a game (and extremely hard to find a decent game) even if the "new to BBO" person is actually a good player. This might drive people away from BBO.
(5) It's always possible on BBO to create a new ID. I suspect that a lot of the people with truly bad ratings will do this. That increases the seriousness of problem 4 (since "new to BBO" rated people are often bad players creating a new persona rather than true newbies).
(1) People would be reluctant to play when they are not up to their "best game" because their rating would go down. Presumably the rating system controls for strength of partner/opponents, but it's not going to control for the hands I played during the weekend I was in bed with the flu, or the hands I played to de-stress before sleep after working thirty straight hours. Thus people who care about their ratings will play less than before.
(2) People would discover that they are worse than they think they are. In some cases this might cause people to become discouraged with bridge in general. This might be especially bad for players who are getting older and definitely used to be better than they are now, watching their ratings decline over time.
(3) People will become more picky about partners. No one wants to play with a partner who is "much worse than them" (barring teacher-student type situations or friendships away from the table). This will make it harder to find pickup games, and the amount of complaining about "bad pickup partners" may actually get worse rather than better.
(4) However good the rating system, it's still likely that there will be an initial period when players new to BBO have not played enough hands to get an accurate rating. Other players may be reluctant to play with/against these people until their rating has stabilized, making it hard to find a game (and extremely hard to find a decent game) even if the "new to BBO" person is actually a good player. This might drive people away from BBO.
(5) It's always possible on BBO to create a new ID. I suspect that a lot of the people with truly bad ratings will do this. That increases the seriousness of problem 4 (since "new to BBO" rated people are often bad players creating a new persona rather than true newbies).
"People will become more picky about partners. No one wants to play with a partner who is "much worse than them" (barring teacher-student type situations or friendships away from the table). This will make it harder to find pickup games, and the amount of complaining about "bad pickup partners" may actually get worse rather than better."
Formula can be arranged to give more points when you play partners with a lower rated player rather than a higher rated one. So its easy to fix it i guess.