[Zelandakh]

barmar, on 2017-May-06, 11:20, said:

if you just use win-loss, they'll win this first match, and it's a toss-up whether they'll play another good team or a team that just managed to get lucky and squeak out a little win against a contender.

If you use win-loss and then order by nett IMPs you avoid this effect without the difference between swingy and non-swingy boards against weak teams being the decisive factor.

[Vampyr]

StevenG, on 2017-April-07, 05:57, said:

But we play MPs almost every session. The reason for multiple teams is so that people can play IMPs occasionally (and there's no demand for IMP pairs).

If only that were true everywhere.

Zelandakh, on 2017-May-05, 10:08, said:

I have always found it ironic that we feel the need to impose an artifical scale to flatten the effects after choosing a scoring method that was specifically designed to flatten the effect of the original scoring method. Perhaps we could just design "Intergalactic Mathpoints" with an even flatter curve and be done with it?

The definition of "ironic" as "very logical and expected" was so far down the list of meanings in my dictionary that I got bored and stopped reading.

Anyway, IMP+bonus points for winning a match will not be implemented, because people are familiar with VPS and they are popular.

barmar, on 2017-May-06, 11:20, said:

Lots of tournaments still do hand scoring for the matches, we only use the computer to convert from IMPs to VPs.

Swiss Teams used to be win-loss scoring, the switch to VPs was done to make big wins more significant.

In the ACBL this did not result in a valid contest, because the change was made while Swiss Team events still used hand-dealt boards. I assume that this no longer happens.

[blackshoe]

Vampyr, on 2017-May-07, 07:16, said:

In the ACBL this did not result in a valid contest, because the change was made while Swiss Team events still used hand-dealt boards. I assume that this no longer happens.

If by "this" you mean hand-dealt boards, sadly your assumption is incorrect.

I don't understand your first comment. What does the method of dealing the boards have to do with the validity of the contest?

[Vampyr]

blackshoe, on 2017-May-07, 09:57, said:

If by "this" you mean hand-dealt boards, sadly your assumption is incorrect.

I don't understand your first comment. What does the method of dealing the boards have to do with the validity of the contest?

Victory Points, or any method based on IMP, cannot be used when the boards are different in different matches. Some sets will be flat, others swingy. I am amazed that this was not obvious to you.

[Pig Trader]

Vampyr, on 2017-May-07, 11:49, said:

Victory Points, or any method based on IMP, cannot be used when the boards are different in different matches.

"Cannot" is a strong word and I don't believe that it is the right word. Just 20 years ago I would play in EBU and BBL Swiss Teams events with different boards in each match, IMPed and VP'd. It's just that when duplimators came along there became an opportunity for much more satisfactory Swiss Teams events.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2017-May-07, 11:49, said:

Victory Points, or any method based on IMP, cannot be used when the boards are different in different matches. Some sets will be flat, others swingy. I am amazed that this was not obvious to you.

If by "cannot" you mean "should not", I suppose you're right -- it obviously can because we've been doing it for decades in the US at all levels. National Swiss Team tourneys don't switch to pre-dealt hands until the final round.

Although I don't see why the scoring method really matters -- using different boards mostly invalidates any comparison between the different matches, although the more boards you play per match the less significant this becomes. If you play 64 boards, winning by 100 IMPs is a whallop, winning by single digits is hardly decisive; I don't think it matters that much that the close match was different boards. The probability of getting mostly flat hands in that many boards is miniscule. Most long matches that end with close scores are still very swingy, they just have about the same number of swings in each direction (this is why it's interesting to see the raw scores, rather than just the net -- 1-0 means a boring match, 101-100 has plenty of excitement).