[JLOL]

So Jan is it confirmed we have to go to a club to do this?

[JanM]

It is confirmed that each player will have to be monitored. If the monitor isn't a director at a recognized club, the arrangements will have to be approved by the USBF Junior Committee.

The monitor's responsibility will be to confirm that the player did not use a cell phone and did not have any Instant Messaging or Email programs running on his or her computer. Hopefully, the Conditions of Contest will be more precise than this, and may include a requirement that no program other than BBO is running on the player's computer.

[mike777]

'may include a requirement that no program other than BBO is running on the player's computer.'


This cannot be correct.

[Lobowolf]

PeterGill, on Apr 4 2009, 07:46 AM, said:

The top-scoring six or seven pairs in the Final in each of these nine years
are consistently among the best ten pairs in the event, with the top-scoring
three pairs usually being among the best five pairs in the event.

This data strongly suggests to me that matchpointed yotuh events do
sort out the best players efficiently in a quick time. I think it takes a
(much) longer time for imp pairs events to sort out a youth field efficiently.

I would expect similar results if I did a similar analysis of the World Junior Pairs, which also is matchpointed.

Peter Gill
Australia.

Not sure I get the logic here. Matchpointed adult events sort out the best players pretty efficiently, too, but I can't think of any major IMP events offhand that sort out qualifiers by matchpoints.

The Spingold gets some awkward number fields; perhaps 6 sessions of pairs, averaged between teammates, then the best 8 teams play knockout matches?

[PeterGill]

I meant that if the rather short World Junior Pairs was used to identify the
best youth pairs in the world at imps, I expect the process would be valid.

Relative to adult events, youth events scored by IMPs can have unusual
variations, because youth pairs are more likely to give up and throw imps
all over the place (running youth events for decades allows me to make that
statement with 100.0% confidence), for example giving a pair 50 imps in
5 boards (some effect, but less effect, at matchpoints) and the relative wildness
of youth bidding can introduce extra randomness factors more so to youth imps events than youth matchpoint events.

I'm not claiming that I would use matchpoints for this particular event -
I'm just presenting some data based on my experience.

[jdonn]

PeterGill, on Apr 8 2009, 11:52 AM, said:

Relative to adult events, youth events scored by IMPs can have unusual
variations, because youth pairs are more likely to give up and throw imps
all over the place (running youth events for decades allows me to make that
statement with 100.0% confidence), for example giving a pair 50 imps in
5 boards (some effect, but less effect, at matchpoints) and the relative wildness
of youth bidding can introduce extra randomness factors more so to youth imps events than youth matchpoint events.

Well that's nice.

"Since my anecdotal data tells me we can't trust you to try to win all the time because you are so immature, we are going to treat you like babies and change the form of scoring to prevent your results from greatly impacting who wins."

If a pair is way behind, they may rightfully try to swing. Just like in the real event. Playing well against pairs who do that is a skill that is valuable in the real event, as is actually doing it yourself. It's just one of a number of skills valuable at imps that matchpoints doesn't measure well (it's not all about safety plays).

I have no doubt there would be a very strong correlation between who does well in matchpoint and imp events. But of course, that is not the point. It's just so silly for someone to claim (not that you are necessarily are) that matchpoints is a better indicator of skills at imps than imps is, unless they want to admit that essentially every country in every event ever around the world has done a lousy job of picking their teams but suddenly the USA has seen the light.

I don't understand why suddenly there is such a motivation to remove randomness from a junior event. If they play randomly, then randomness is part of the game. With just one notable exception, has there been a single team that is not the best available or at least very close that has won in the trials due to excessive randomness? It's the exact same thing as the cell phone ban. Let's focus on problems that are rampant rather than perceived problems that don't exist on a large scale, especially when the solution creates a perception of unfairness or lost credibility.

[mycroft]

Josh's comment about "suspicious" was exactly what I was thinking...

How many non-youth can throw out the score for 4Cxx+1 off the top of their head (strangely enough, I had to score that one yesterday, for the first time in my life. I'm getting old)? I recall a Rigal story in an NABC bulletin a while back where that result occurred, and the defender bounced out the result right away. "Trust a junior to know that" was the gist of his comment.

I think that a 3-session MP pairs event will generate a really good set of pairs. Especially if (vice the old thread), they can (being the US) qualify 6 pairs in two teams, as they can settle out who's on what team afterwards. Will they potentially miss a heavily IMP-skewed pair? Sure. Might they conversely have a "MP is god" pair qualify, and have them continue to play MPs in Turkey? Sure.

I don't think it's the best way of doing things - I *really* dislike it, in fact - but given the costs of anything better, it might be the least worst option.

[Edit:]I can't imagine anyone reasonable getting five full tops from a random, swinging-to-qualify pair at MPs not qualifying themselves. And it's not just the juniors - didn't we just have the German pair in Beijing swinging to qualify, and dropping 60 IMPs in half a session?

Again, if skewing the results by swinging to qualify and failing is a problem, fix the Conditions of Contest.

[brianshark]

1. You can't take a tougher stance on "suspicious activities" because it makes it more likely you'll wrongfully accuse innocents. In fact, it's even harder to identify cheating in junior events as compared with top class open events because of the chance of more random actions, some of which will work even if a lot of them don't.

Just moniter the players and you won't even need to worry about cheating. You won't even need to ban kibs because the players are being watched so can't be on the phone to their buddy in the gallery.

2. Matchpoints is a totally different game than imps. I'm sorry but if you think the only difference between the 2 is the importance of making overtricks in MPs and the importance of making safety plays in imps, then you don't fully appreciate the difference between them. A lot of the decision making is very different.

For example: In situations where you are competing for the part-score and are vulnerable, it often pays to bid 1 more in certain situations knowingly risking 500 or 800 because it's only a bottom whereas a numerically significant amount of the time, your bid will work because you make, or because they don't double you, or didn't matter because them bidding to the level they did was going to be a near top anyway. You would never dream of overcompeting in some of these situations at imps because the size of the potential imps gain would be small and the size of the potential imps loss is great. And similarly for doubling tight part-scores the opponents have bid when you are sure that if they make they get a good score anyway.

And undoubtedly, you should be testing the imps decision making abilities of the trialists, not the matchpoints decision making.

In my opinion:
- Moniter the players but take no additional action towards cheating than you would in any other context.
- Play imps. Matchpoints is ludicrous.
- If you are worried about variation, pre-duplicate the boards to get a reasonable datum to remove a certain amount of the random element while mentaining the imps pairs format.

[awm]

I think there is a problem being addressed here. The goal is to simultaneously send a good team and give every strong player a reasonable chance to go.

The options seem to be:

(1) Just pick a team. This will end up with a good team, but there are potentially lots of strong players who don't know the right people and will end up with no chance to go.

(2) Run a team event of some sort to select the team. However, this suffers from some of the same problems as the first, because there is a core group of strong players which includes most but not all of the best competitors. This is basically the remnant of the team from previous years, and they will pick people who they like and respect to add to their team. While there might be some good players out there who they don't know well or mis-estimate the skill for, there probably isn't an entire team of six like this, and even if there were they might not all know each other etc. So the team trials ends up with one really strong team, and a bunch of teams with one or two players who might potentially be better than some members of the really strong team, but can't carry an entire team of four-six to beat the strong team.

(3) Run a pairs trials. This gives everyone a chance to go, but especially if it's a short format there is a lot of randomness and a good chance that a weaker team is sent.

Obviously none of these ideas is really satisfactory. The best idea seems to be running an IMP pairs over a very long period, but it seems to be determined from on high that the qualifier cannot take more than three or four sessions. USBF has certainly done the "pick a team" and the "run a team event" things in the past, and these have both resulted in strong teams at least most of the time; however the junior program is really in need of "new blood" at this point with a lot of the top players who have won championships in the last few years now being too old. Basically the problem of "pick a team" is that we end up sending mostly the same people every year, and now that a lot of them are over the age restriction it is much less clear who to pick than it was in previous years.

Certainly it is true that MP pairs has some different features than IMPs. The strategy in both bidding and play is a little different. But take a look at Justin's blog (www.justinlall.com) -- a lot of the best "MP pairs" just play it like IMPs with very minor adjustments! And if we look at the winners of major IMP events, most of them have had success at MP too (and vice versa). So it's not like we are telling the juniors to play poker to decide a bridge team -- IMP and MP are two very similar events. Yet MP has the advantage of being far less random than IMP pairs over the short term. Suppose you bid a slam on one board that's on a finesse where most of the field doesn't get to slam. At IMPs, this one board is going to swing something like 26 IMPs (win 13 if it makes, lose 13 if it fails). That is often the difference between first overall and not even making the top ten or twenty. Do we really want our team to be potentially decided by one random swing on one board?

In fact the one year that the "best team" didn't win the team trials, something very similar to this actually happened. And this is much more possible at IMP pairs than at teams as well, because you don't have your teammates to rely on (instead the "datum" is generated by the field which probably includes a lot of weak pairs especially early on).

It also makes sense to do things in different ways for different events. If we "pick a team" every time then probably the same team goes to every event. This might win some events if it's a good team, but once the players "graduate" from youth status we'll be left with no replacements who have substantial international experience. And it also seems unfair to youths who might be good players but just aren't part of the right cliques and never get a chance to go to anything. If we run a pairs trial every time, we end up with more random and potentially weaker teams. But it makes sense to say that every few events we want some "new blood" and we run a pairs trial. Even this year, we have several different youth events upcoming and I think this one is the only "pairs trial" event.

[jdonn]

I think Adam makes a very good argument for simply picking the team without even realizing it, as long as I refute the negatives. There isn't worry that strong players wouldn't be discovered because if they are strong enough to matter then they have some non-junior results to show for it. And there isn't worry that the players of the future wouldn't get enough international experience because it's just not true. I had gone to Europe four times to play bridge before I was on the team, turning down several other opportunities along the way. And at the start of that I wouldn't have even been a particularly strong candidate as a future team member.

[JLOL]

Whatever, if you're good you'll make the top 6 whatever the format is.

[awm]

jdonn, on Apr 16 2009, 12:24 PM, said:

There isn't worry that strong players wouldn't be discovered because if they are strong enough to matter then they have some non-junior results to show for it.

While it's true that many of the members of the recent junior teams have some strong non-junior results, it's worth mentioning that:

(1) In most, if not all, cases these results actually came subsequent to being first selected for the junior team.

(2) There are a number of eligible juniors who had strong results in national events who were not even seriously considered for the junior teams.

(3) If you ask most people who's a better player, their answer usually does not have much to do with the results those players actually get. Looking at (1) and (2), there is no particular reason to think that the people selecting the team do it on the basis of performance in non-junior events.

If USBF wanted to select things based on results, they could easily do something like:

(1) Add eligible pairs who have finished 16th or higher in a national open event in order of their best placing.
(2) If this is not enough, add eligible individuals who have finished 16th or higher in a national open event in order of their best placing and allow them to select any eligible partner.
(3) If this is still not enough, start going through the limited events with a similar approach.

But this is not how the selection is done, and I see no serious arguments for it. Everyone wants to substitute their personal belief about who is good for any concrete measure. And it's easy to see by talking to various bridge players that these personal beliefs have little relationship to reality (since they differ so widely, it's not necessary to have the "real" ranking of players to determine this).

[jdonn]

Adam you are losing me. They don't select the teams other than having previous winners of the event return. Your 2 and 3 make no sense, you are talking like they have been selecting the teams all along. With 1 I completely disagree, but should clarify I don't think it means you should be winning stuff. If you regularly scratch in national events then people will know who you are.

[mycroft]

JLOL, on Apr 16 2009, 12:57 PM, said:

Whatever, if you're good you'll make the top 6 whatever the format is.

I would guess "if you're in the top 3, you'll make the top 6 whatever the format is."
Which is fine for USA I, at least.

[awm]

My impression was that the last two cycles, the returning medalists selected additional players to augment the team, replacing those medalists who had become too old. So there is a selection process beyond just having medalists return.

Also, the youngest age group seems to be frequently selected (not that there are so many choices). I do not remember there ever being a "trials" for the U21 team. We had some discussion of the process for this team on these forums previously.

If the idea is to select the youth players with the most platinum points (or some other weighting of high finishes in major events) then such a selection process seems okay to me. But I don't think this is what people who suggest "just picking a team" have in mind -- it's more that some committee of "experts" will decide who they think is good based on their own experience. I think that kind of selection method is unfair, very biased, and likely to pick the same people year after year because once they've been on the team everyone knows who they are.

By the way, outside of people like Justin who are already multiple-time medalists in the youth events, which eligible players are regularly scratching in national events? I looked up some of the people who (as far as I know) are supposed to be among the better youth players and didn't see any of them anywhere in the overalls of national open events. They did have some high finishes in limited events like the 1500 spingold and the red ribbon pairs.

[JLOL]

Adam, I would think of Shane for junior with recent successes.

TBH I am more concerned about how the 2 teams will be picked once the 6 pairs are selected. Top 3 and bottom 3 is a horrible format. Top 2 picking the third is more reasonable, but still not great.

I think if once the 6 pairs are selected a committee reviews the results of the trials and picks the top 2 pairs to pick their third pair is the most fair and accurate way to get the best two teams. Note that this is better than that committee picking the top 3, as we SHOULD know by now the top 3 pairs do not necessarily make the top team.

[jdonn]

awm, on Apr 16 2009, 04:17 PM, said:

My impression was that the last two cycles, the returning medalists selected additional players to augment the team, replacing those medalists who had become too old. So there is a selection process beyond just having medalists return.

That's a whole different story, I thought we were discussing the USBF choosing the players. Do you think either team overlooked a much stronger available pair or player in making their selections?

[mike777]

If at all feasible, and this plan is feasible, I strongly prefer not simply selecting a team. If the actual result is that we get 6 eager but average level juniors, so be it. Let's fix the trials next year.

[Elianna]

JLOL, on Apr 16 2009, 02:15 PM, said:

Adam, I would think of Shane for junior with recent successes.

TBH I am more concerned about how the 2 teams will be picked once the 6 pairs are selected. Top 3 and bottom 3 is a horrible format. Top 2 picking the third is more reasonable, but still not great.

I think if once the 6 pairs are selected a committee reviews the results of the trials and picks the top 2 pairs to pick their third pair is the most fair and accurate way to get the best two teams. Note that this is better than that committee picking the top 3, as we SHOULD know by now the top 3 pairs do not necessarily make the top team.

Every pair could submit a list of two pairs (of the other qualifying five) that they'd want to play with, and a pair that they wouldn't want to play with.

(Said somewhat tongue-in-cheek)

[mycroft]

I stand by my statement in the last thread. Qualify the six pairs, then do intensive group training. Unless you're supremely unlucky and have one pair no-one can stand, teams will form.