[EarlPurple]

There is a lot of difference between having ratings here, which is a partnership game, and in a chess server, where you have an individual game.

In a chess server, you only lose ratings by your own losses, particularly against lower-rated opponents.

With bridge, where you have a partner, you start to get a situation where players protect their ratings too strongly. And perhaps they are right to, as anyone without a good rating is liable to be excluded from stronger games. So the whole situation becomes far more "tense".

If you do have to have a rating system, then at least let it be inclusive of only the last 3 months of results. That would help newbies get a chance to "establish" their ratings within a reasonable length of time, and anyone who has done badly knows that the ratings will be "worn off" sooner rather than later.

By the way, I think we could have peer-ratings - you can privately set someone's "rating" so you can mark them as a "weak player" (maybe someone you wouldn't want to partner) without having to mark them as an "enemy".

[Trpltrbl]

bucmar, on Aug 14 2003, 03:36 AM, said:

It could be nice to create something like the ATP tennis ranking
Perhaps only the stars should maintain their rating.
Many thanks for the attention.

I would really like to see theses stars mantain their ratings, because I have seen some play as if they just learned the game. I think it would be to funny to see a star with a beginner rating, because some do deserve it...

Mike

[sceptic]

Most people know if they are good or bad at playing bridge, what we should rate is peoples egos

[Trpltrbl]

I agree

Mike

[EarlPurple]

Trpltrbl, on Jun 28 2004, 09:20 AM, said:

bucmar, on Aug 14 2003, 03:36 AM, said:

It could be nice to create something like the ATP tennis ranking
Perhaps only the stars should maintain their rating.
Many thanks for the attention.

I would really like to see theses stars mantain their ratings, because I have seen some play as if they just learned the game. I think it would be to funny to see a star with a beginner rating, because some do deserve it...

Mike

You think there are people who take up the name of a top bridge player claiming to be them?

[paulhar]

EarlPurple, on Jun 29 2004, 09:05 AM, said:

You think there are people who take up the name of a top bridge player claiming to be them?

I know for a fact that this happens. In one case it was obvious that it was an imposter rather than the real expert playing drunk because the impersonated expert has some rather unusual views on bidding that he feels quite strongly about, and these views were not shared by the person playing with that name.

Please remember that when you suspect an expert to be playing like a beginner. Any of them (the real world class players, not their impersonaters) would trounce any of us mere mortals in a long match. Even the best have their lapses - yes, even an expert would go down in a contract that you would make. Perhaps maybe he actually played a higher percentage line that you don't see - but your line would have worked this time?

[Trpltrbl]

EarlPurple, on Jun 29 2004, 09:05 AM, said:

Trpltrbl, on Jun 28 2004, 09:20 AM, said:

bucmar, on Aug 14 2003, 03:36 AM, said:

It could be nice to create something like the ATP tennis ranking
Perhaps only the stars should maintain their rating.
Many thanks for the attention.

I would really like to see theses stars mantain their ratings, because I have seen some play as if they just learned the game. I think it would be to funny to see a star with a beginner rating, because some do deserve it...

Mike

You think there are people who take up the name of a top bridge player claiming to be them?

That I am not sure of, just that being a star from certain countries doesn't take a whole lot.
In the land of blind people, one-eye is King.
If you only have 500 players in your country, and 100 of them play in competition, it's a lot easier to win few national titles. You don't even have to play good bridge.
But I have already long discussions about this

Mike

[amfnz]

If rating points are provided only in tournaments then players who choose not to play in tournaments will never be rated.

I prefer the self assessment system. You are able to make your own judgement of self assessments and make comments in the profile if you feel players are abusing the system

[jtfanclub]

Pardon me for talking out of my butt here....

Why not have an Advanced private club? Put a dozen people who it's generally agreed are good players in charge of it, have them set the criteria as anything they want. Then they can let people in and out as they choose, which will likely not be based solely on how well they play bridge.

We can even have an additional rank to Beginning/Intermediate/Etc....Advanced Club member. Then if people want to only play with Advanced club members, they can play in that room.

What's the disadvantage to playing with this sort of ranking system?

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on Jul 11 2004, 04:57 AM, said:

Pardon me for talking out of my butt here....

Why not have an Advanced private club? Put a dozen people who it's generally agreed are good players in charge of it, have them set the criteria as anything they want. Then they can let people in and out as they choose, which will likely not be based solely on how well they play bridge.

We can even have an additional rank to Beginning/Intermediate/Etc....Advanced Club member. Then if people want to only play with Advanced club members, they can play in that room.

What's the disadvantage to playing with this sort of ranking system?

hi jt... there's already at least one such club, abalucy... and welcome to the forums

[nige1]

inquiry, on Aug 29 2003, 09:55 PM, said:

What makes BBO different, if you haven't noticed, is that it really is setup to serve as an educational tool....

The lecture room
Teaching tables
Partnership bidding tables
Chat rooms
private clubs (often used for lessons)
double dummy problems
direct links to BBO's excellent educational software

The environment coddles beginners and novices, and that carries over here in the BridgeBase Forums. 

Are ratings evil? Not in and of themselves. Think about it, as an educational site, wouldn't it be useful to find players of better skill level to kibitz or ask questions? The "gold star" players worth watching helps with this. What is bad is ego...people who can't stand a bad result, who "NEVER PLAYS WITH BEGINNERS...or intermediates...or whatever". Those people and their boarish behavior will be with us with or without a rating system per se... sit down with them, and make a bid (even an expert bid) that they don't agree with... they will label you a beginner or novice... and act with the same behavior.

Now, having said that. I am not all that wild about changing the "self" rating system. What i am looking forward to is ladder team play, ladder tourments, etc, just for the fun of competiting.

Ben

Ben's arguments persuade me. The point is that BBO has a rating system, (ab)used by members.

For example, few self-rated "experts" are.

In my experience. on BBO "experts" have the worst manners. They often refuse to play with "lesser" players. They leave in a huff in the middle of a hand, usually after perpetrating an egregious error.

The problem is that BBO self-rating and even Fred's star rating of players is subjective.

An objective rating system would be still be a crude measure of skill but more accurate and reliable than subjecitve assessment.

This would prevent the majority of players from getting away with spurious claims of expert or world-class status. They might then behave more humbly and less rudely.

I endorse Ben's main argument. Young and improving players would be the main beneficiaries from objective feedback. A rating system would recognize talent early and accelerate its development to its full potential.

Objective ratings could be optional and apply only to designated open tournaments. It's hard to understand the violent objections to this idea. Surely all could be happy. The non-rated would continue to enjoy peaceful play in the main bridge club and in non-rated tournaments, spurning those ""with an inferiority complex. scrabbling after the reassurance of winning rat-races". The rated player would play in both environments, depending on his mood; and he would feel superior to "residents of a fools-paradise terrified of self-knowledge".

[hrothgar]

nige1, on Jun 6 2007, 02:24 PM, said:

An objective rating system would be still be a crude measure of skill but more accurate and reliable than subjecitve assessment.

This would prevent the majority of players from getting away with spurious claims of expert or world-class status. They might then behave more humbly and less rudely.

I endorse Ben's main argument. Young and improving players would be the main beneficiaries from objective feedback. A rating system would recognize talent early and accelerate its development to its full potential.

Objective ratings could be optional and apply only to designated open tournaments. It's hard to understand the violent objections to this idea. Surely all could be happy. The non-rated would continue to enjoy peaceful play in the main bridge club and in non-rated tournaments, spurning those ""with an inferiority complex. scrabbling after the reassurance of winning rat-races". The rated player would play in both environments, depending on his mood; and he would feel superior to "residents of a fools-paradise terrified of self-knowledge".

Design a rating system that

1. Is accurate
2. Can be explained to Carl Hudachek
3. Will be warmly embraced by those players who are ranked below average

[inquiry]

nige1, on Jun 6 2007, 06:24 AM, said:

An objective rating system would be  still be a crude measure of skill but more accurate and reliable than subjecitve assessment.

If you are just interested in how you are doing, and you are REALLY interested, I can tell you what your lehman rating is using the same metric they use on OKBRIDGE. Private message me if you like. I have checked yours using the NUMBER ONE as the last character of your name. There is a player with the letter "L" as the last character as well.

I will tell you that your lehman is currently above average despite the fact that you play with no single partner very much, as you have played with 59 different partners so far this year in the main room. So far, the most hands with any one nickname was only 31, and there are nine one board partnerships. Switching partners a lot usually results in lower ratings. All that is for Main room play, you play with many fewer people in team games and tournaments.

On the otherhand if you want to check out other people's lehman's you are on your own. Because I agree with Fred's views on this, So I don't share the ratings as a rule, nor tell you how you can get them but they are publically available for a small fee -- and also because currently mine is not as high as it should be ....

[BillHiggin]

hrothgar, on Jun 6 2007, 06:49 AM, said:

Design a rating system that

1. Is accurate
2. Can be explained to Carl Hudachek
3. Will be warmly embraced by those players who are ranked below average

In trying to examine how a bridge rating system might be designed so as to match the acceptance level of elo ratings for chess, a variation on #3 finally convinced me that the effort was doomed.

Some people are motivated more by instant gratification than long term gain. "Some" being very intentionally fuzzy. Unlike chess (where every result can be attributed to fine performance by one player or poor performance by the other), in bridge you can have a very poor result that is neither a result of poor performance on your part nor brilliance by your opponents - partner can blunder. All bridge players are all too capable of blundering, but we are most accutely aware of our own. Any player, not just the below average ones, may percieve that better players who place special value on their rating will not be willing to risk playing with them for fear of the instant loss should they blunder. Whether this fear is genuine or merely percieved matters not - the rating system generates that fear and thus lowers the confidence of "some".

In my opinion, most players are not overly concerned with the idea that they might be ranked below average (unless they truly are convinced that they are substantially above average). What bothers them is the idea that they may be shunned becuase of others trying to protect their ratings. Even if the ratings are done in such a way that the stronger player is not penalized over time (or is even rewarded), the fear of instantanious decreases alters behaviour and that cannot be prevented by any statistical based rating system (i.e. one that cannot truly "place blame" which is an exceedingly difficult thing to do).

Arguments that "things will even out over time" are approximately as effective as trying to convince a teenager that doing his homework is more important than the party at the friends house (and some teenagers will actually listen to that).

I am convinced that Fred has made exactly the best decision and am happy to know that he will stick to it.

[awm]

Accurate rankings for individuals in a partnership game are actually a hard mathematical problem. A number of career mathematicians are working on this sort of thing; my dad (a mathematician) went to a talk about this a while back.

There are arguments that a system which actually rated accurately might be less objectionable than a system like the Lehman ratings used by OKB. The problem is that it's fairly easy to manipulate your Lehman rating by carefully selecting your partner and opponents -- this creates an environment where people who care about the rating are encouraged to do this sort of selection, which makes for a rather unpleasant site. Basically, if you want to raise your Lehman rating all you have to do is play exclusively in established partnerships against pickup opposition.

One thing that might be interesting is to rate partnerships instead of individuals. Of course, this doesn't satisfy the goal that most rating proponents seem to have of "being able to pick my partner as someone good." Nonetheless, rating pairs accurately should be easier, and it might be interesting to see how some of us rate in our favorite partnerships.

[mike777]

awm, on Jun 6 2007, 12:38 PM, said:

Accurate rankings for individuals in a partnership game are actually a hard mathematical problem. A number of career mathematicians are working on this sort of thing; my dad (a mathematician) went to a talk about this a while back.

There are arguments that a system which actually rated accurately might be less objectionable than a system like the Lehman ratings used by OKB. The problem is that it's fairly easy to manipulate your Lehman rating by carefully selecting your partner and opponents -- this creates an environment where people who care about the rating are encouraged to do this sort of selection, which makes for a rather unpleasant site. Basically, if you want to raise your Lehman rating all you have to do is play exclusively in established partnerships against pickup opposition.

One thing that might be interesting is to rate partnerships instead of individuals. Of course, this doesn't satisfy the goal that most rating proponents seem to have of "being able to pick my partner as someone good." Nonetheless, rating pairs accurately should be easier, and it might be interesting to see how some of us rate in our favorite partnerships.

Along the same lines.

The debate over picking a team, in whole, as compared to picking the 3 best pairs.

Rose Meltzer and partner as one case in point. Transnationals teams encourage pairs and partnerships from across the world. You are free to choose 2 or 3 pairs to form a team in whatever manner you wish. Rose won at the table. She has played under other methods of choosing teams. Rose won at the table.
Other multimillionaires have won or lost but today she is winning. I think this shows some level of a very very important skill at winning bridge.

Rose for Hall of Fame in bridge?
How and where do you rank Rose?

[the hog]

Mike, you can't have "3 best pairs." Best is the superlative; you surely mean the "best 3 pairs."

[mike777]

The_Hog, on Jun 6 2007, 11:59 PM, said:

Mike, you can't have "3 best pairs." Best is the superlative; you surely mean the "best 3 pairs."

Dont call me shirley

[geller]

The problem of how to rate individuals in a team sport is faced by coaches and general managers of professional and serious amateur sports. They use a combination of subjective and objective data. If their team loses they get fired. If their team wins they still get fired, but it takes longer.

The reason you need coaches and general managers in bridge is that perfect objective ranking is impossible. In bridge when you have a sponsor he/she puts together what he/she thinks is the best roster available (but he/she may have poor judgement of who's worth it). In putting together teams and pairs for F2F tourneys those of us who are neither sponsors nor pros try to put together the strongest available team/pair of compatible players. Do we always get it right? You all already know the answer to that.

On BBO, where you have constantly forming/dissolving pairs the rating problem is even harder. Why worry about it? Just chill, play bridge, and have fun.

-Bob

[MorK]

only my position in some words:
I think it's necessary to get a rating system; but it should be a extensive one so it scores other when you play with a player which rating is very good against 2 players with a very bad rating, etc.
Concerning to the words someone wrote earlier:

Quote

The BBO system is ok, is based in trusting people which is good, if you find a player that you think is better or worst than his level just add a comment to him and you won't have the same problem twice.

The BBO system is NOT ok, because you can't trust more than 50 % of the players in BBO if they entered something in their skill. I'm not a racist, but 90 % of the turkish experts e.g. play like beginners/intermediates.
If you want to play good bridge and write "experts pls" i mostly don't accept those "turkish experts" (often you can doubt it reading their profil... they play transfers and all this difficult stuff) but I often get opponents, who are not approximately expert and that's frustrating me. I don't want to kick them later (it's impolite, too) but I don't want to play against those beginners and I don't want to change the table every 10 minutes.
If I don't want to play against experts it doesn't mind, but if I want, it does mind. And if I play an individual tournament and my partner wrote expert and can't even lead the Q from QJT it is not much fun - cause you EXPECT something other. If there would be a beginner in profile, it would be all fine.

And for the rating: I'd not do individuals in the rating; it's only gambling.

Sincerely Yours,
Felix Zimmermann.