[42krunner]

Hello:

Are the 12-board ACBL Robo Dup's stratified by the max of the user's ACBL and BBO points, or just their ACBL points? I ask this because nowdays when I play the non-ACBL 8 boards, I am usually in 'B' (130 BBO points) but since I am newish, I am typically a 'C' in the ACBL 12 boards.

If it is the max of the two and not just the ACBL points, does it create a disincentive to play the non-ACBL tourneys, or perhaps an incentive to have an ACBL only account so that my BBO points don't push me into 'B'? It seems more appopriate that ACBL tourneys are stratified by ACBL points only.

Best,
Daniel

[uday]

We use the max of both. The ACBL field is usually stronger - most of the players there are LMS

[42krunner]

Thanks - I was in B in an ACBL for the first time yesterday. Must have been a weak field, which would explain my 1st OA

It still makes sense to me to use just ACBL for the 12 boards. Have you thought of doing that?
Daniel

[barmar]

42krunner, on 2014-May-17, 07:19, said:

It still makes sense to me to use just ACBL for the 12 boards. Have you thought of doing that?

What if they're not an ACBL member? Or they've been playing on BBO for years, but just joined ACBL recently, so they have lots of BBO points, but not many ACBL points yet.

Max is more likely to be a reasonable representation of their general experience than just ACBL points.

[Bbradley62]

If an experienced but new-to-ACBL player goes to a f2f ACBL tournament, doesn't he get ACBL masterpoints (in stratified events) based solely on his ACBL point holding? I would think we'd want the conditions of contest of BBO's ACBL tournaments to be as close as possible to conditions of contest for real-life ACBL tournaments.

[42krunner]

Agree with Bbradley62 100%. The online ACBL experience should be just like offline. If someone with 2000 BBO points and 10 ACBL points decides to pay the premium for the ACBL robo-duop's, let them be a C. I seriously doubt this happens often.

[barmar]

Offline ACBL tournaments use your ACBL points because they don't have anything better to go on. We have more information, so we take advantage of it.

It's similar to the way that ACBL deals with players from other countries. If you're a champion from Europe and you show up in ACBL for your first tourney, they'll put you in A.

[42krunner]

barmar, on 2014-May-19, 09:12, said:

Offline ACBL tournaments use your ACBL points because they don't have anything better to go on. We have more information, so we take advantage of it.

It's similar to the way that ACBL deals with players from other countries. If you're a champion from Europe and you show up in ACBL for your first tourney, they'll put you in A.

Only at a Regional/National. I think this is much more like 50 year rubber bridge player showing up at a club. It is so infreuqent that it just is what it is. Playing on BBO it is far more typical that just using the ACBL points is just as representative of their skill as the max and won't penalzie people who have a lot more BBO points.

There is also a simple fix of just using a second account, as long as this doesn't cause any flags. But that is a pain.

[barmar]

Why do you call it "penalizing"? If they have lots of BBO points, doesn't that mean that they're decent players, just like having lots of ACBL points?

Masterpoints in general are not very meaningful. But why do you think ACBL points are more meaningful than BBO points?

Why should the true flight C players in the tourney be penalized by having to compete against good players, just because those good players usually play in BBO tourneys rather than ACBL tourneys?

[42krunner]

Maybe not the best word, you are right. Which direction do you think occurs more? Are there really many high BBO point players with a C amount of ACBL points? And do they really play in ACBL's then?

[Bbradley62]

barmar, on 2014-May-19, 12:30, said:

Why should the true flight C players in the tourney be penalized by having to compete against good players, just because those good players usually play in BBO tourneys rather than ACBL tourneys?

Because when BBO (or anyone else) runs an ACBL-sanctioned club-level game, it should be run according to ACBL club-level procedures, not according to procedures that the tournament manager thinks are better.

[mycroft]

Well, an ACBL club, like almost everything else, can stratify on effectively anything they want - the ACBL devolves a *lot* of authority to the club manager. So if the club manager wants to provide "placing points" to his guests, he can do so. If he happens to have a handy list of placing points to use...

[Barring Country-of-origin illegal things, and US illegal things, effectively.]

[42krunner]

mycroft, on 2014-May-20, 12:07, said:

Well, an ACBL club, like almost everything else, can stratify on effectively anything they want - the ACBL devolves a *lot* of authority to the club manager. So if the club manager wants to provide "placing points" to his guests, he can do so. If he happens to have a handy list of placing points to use...

[Barring Country-of-origin illegal things, and US illegal things, effectively.]

Are we trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist? Or solving the wrong problem?

Which is more common:

1) A "Good ACBL C" player has a lot of BBO points and plays in "B" in ACBL BBO tourneys. This is someone like me that is pretty new to bridge and plays in a lot of 25-penny robo dups with some success.

2) An "A/B non-ACBL" player only has a few ACBL points but many BBO points and plays in "C" in ACBL tourneys. This is like somone that maybe has an ACBL membership but primarily plays in a different league, for money, on-line only, etc. with a lot of success.

Taking the max solves (2). Taking just ACBL solves (1).

Thanks guys!
Daniel

[barmar]

I heard our club director last night saying that he assigned a new player 300 points for the purpose of stratifying our games, because the player is from another country where he has some experience; he's not the total newbie that his 0 ACBL points would suggest. So this practice is not just done in tournaments, and not just for experts. This new player probably ends up in B in most of our games (our strat C limit is usually around 100).

The goal shouldn't be adherence to some arbitrary set of rules, we should be trying to meet the spirit of those rules. The purpose of stratification is so allow players to be scored against other players with similar levels of experience. Whether that experience is in ACBL or non-ACBL games should be irrelevant. Regular ACBL clubs and tournaments mostly ignore non-ACBL experience simply because they don't have the information to use it.

[42krunner]

Understood.
Like I said, one can always open a second account for ACBL tourneys, but that isn't great.

Would it be possible to publish what the typical strata are like for various BBO tourneys? Could this be included in the results, just like at the club? Is there any harm in doing that?