[MzFinesse]

My partner and I are barely bronze LM's. We've played a few virtual club games and have been classified as A players. How are the strats determined? We're up against A players with many thousands more points- argh.

Thanks!

[mycroft]

Depends on the event. For many, it's divvied up in three, basically equal groups.

As "barely bronze LMs", you are in the top 23% of ACBL members. If we remove players with <10 MPs (because we can really call them "non-tournament players"), you're still in the top 30%.

Eventually you have to be A. The longer you're in B or C, the faster you accumulate points - which will eventually put you into A...

[barmar]

Strats are determined dynamically based on the entries to the game. We simply order all the players by masterpoints, and the top third are A, middle third are B, and lower third are C.

There are some special cases that force players into A, but probably don't apply much in the virtual clubs.

[stubbs7]

 barmar, on 2020-May-02, 20:28, said:

Strats are determined dynamically based on the entries to the game. We simply order all the players by masterpoints, and the top third are A, middle third are B, and lower third are C.

There are some special cases that force players into A, but probably don't apply much in the virtual clubs.

It happens to me frequently in virtual games.

[barmar]

 stubbs7, on 2020-August-26, 19:14, said:

It happens to me frequently in virtual games.

No it doesn't. The special case is for players who aren't ACBL members, but non-members aren't allowed to play in virtual club games.

However, I was incorrect that we just divide the field into thirds. In games with multiple sections, the way we do the dividing sometimes causes big differences in the sizes of strata. I found an extreme example in a speedball where A was 96 tables, while B and C were only 64.

We're deploying a new version of the server tonight that should clear this up.

[Jim Oser]

It appears that in an ACBL virtual club pairs game, the strata is based solely on the points of the top player of the pair, not on the average number of points of the two players.

So that a pair, which has one player having 300 points and the other player with 0 points, would be put in the same strata as a team where one player has 300 points and the other player has 299 points.

This does not encourage stronger more experienced players to play with weaker newer players.

Does the ACBL virtual director have an option of choosing the stratas based on top player's points or average of the two players? In the preCovid19 world, the director using ACBLScore would have such an option.

[mycroft]

There's a term for players who want to play with weaker players to drop a bracket or a strat. It's not very nice, so I won't repeat it here.

If you're an A player, and your reason for wanting to help newer players is to scratch in B, you're not helping anyone and I don't care about you.

OTOH, I can understand this being a reason for weaker players to not want to challenge themselves with their mentor or ask a stronger player to play, if they're forced into A. I have even mentioned it to people who have asked my partner and me to be on a team - "you do know we put you in A, right?" - and sometimes the answer is "Yes" and we're good, and sometimes the answer is "Oh, I guess I'll find someone else" (usually after the question about monsterpoints. I don't know why I feel like 'not an A player' to these people. I have a guess though - and that's also not very nice, so I won't repeat it here.)

Me, one of my best feelings in bridge was when I asked for an A entry (at about 400 MPs) and was asked who I was playing with. When I answered, I got a seeded, not just A, entry. For me, that's a challenge. But I know I'm unusual.

[Vampyr]

 mycroft, on 2020-September-01, 10:27, said:

There's a term for players who want to play with weaker players to drop a bracket or a strat. It's not very nice, so I won't repeat it here.

If you're an A player, and your reason for wanting to help newer players is to scratch in B, you're not helping anyone and I don't care about you.

OTOH, I can understand this being a reason for weaker players to not want to challenge themselves with their mentor or ask a stronger player to play, if they're forced into A. I have even mentioned it to people who have asked my partner and me to be on a team - "you do know we put you in A, right?" - and sometimes the answer is "Yes" and we're good, and sometimes the answer is "Oh, I guess I'll find someone else" (usually after the question about monsterpoints. I don't know why I feel like 'not an A player' to these people. I have a guess though - and that's also not very nice, so I won't repeat it here.)

Me, one of my best feelings in bridge was when I asked for an A entry (at about 400 MPs) and was asked who I was playing with. When I answered, I got a seeded, not just A, entry. For me, that's a challenge. But I know I'm unusual.

Self-flighting is an idea that appeals to me. In the ACBL, there seem to be a lot of people who don’t want a good game against good players. I have even heard of people who are disappointed that they themselves have earned too many attendence points to play in a game that they feel is their level. The ACBL should give their customers what they want. Let them use the average MP of the partnership. Let the top strata of the “B” game be unlimited. Let it be a free-for-all while the serious players play quietly in another room.

I have an idea that would make this work. Introduce blue points and award them for limited games. They can get other points, but the difference is that the blue points decay. This will serve to keep the lesser players at the level they want to play at. Transition using the blue points for flights, strata, whatever. Or use something like the EBU’s NGS.

[barmar]

 Jim Oser, on 2020-August-31, 22:02, said:

It appears that in an ACBL virtual club pairs game, the strata is based solely on the points of the top player of the pair, not on the average number of points of the two players.

We changed this to average in the server upgrade this week.

It applies to all stratified games, not just virtual clubs.

[Jim Oser]

 barmar, on 2020-September-03, 20:40, said:

We changed this to average in the server upgrade this week.

It applies to all stratified games, not just virtual clubs.

Thanks.