[jikl]

Sure people lie about their rankings. We all know that. Some even downgrade their ratings. Is this a problem? No. You can soon work out what their ranking is when you play. If ratings were introduced though it would be severely detrimental to the whole BBO community. You would have cheating, you would have people yelling at each other, you would have people protecting their ratings by only trying to play with people with an equal or better rating. I know people say "Why not make the ratings only known to the player themselves?"

Still very bad.

Ego is an interesting thing. If you can see the rating, would you not want to improve it?

Would you stop playing with the novice or beginner that is fun to play with to protect your rating? Or would you create a separate BBO name to play with this person? Would this not alienate said person and perhaps put them off playing on the site?

There are so many negatives with this idea and so few positives.

Sean

[han]

Nice thread! I agree with the mainstream.

Lately I've been rating my partners and opponents myself. Most people I have played with or against have a little sentence next to their name saying "Nice guy, but not an expert" or "Good player, but obnoxious". Of course, some people I just give a little heart.

I slightly disagree with those who say that conventions have nothing to do with skill level. I'd say that two true experts should be able to play well with eachother, even if they come from different sides of the planet. A little flexibility in system, conventions and carding is a good thing when playing online.

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Jan 23 2005, 04:49 PM, said:

Rather, I am simply noting that if people don't understand the underlying math, they won't have faith in the results...

If the results generally match their perception of player skills, they'll have faith in the results. If the results don't match their perceptions, no amount of underlying math, understandable to the common man or not, is going to convince them the ratings are accurate.

[TimG]

Trumpace, on Jan 23 2005, 04:25 PM, said:

As a result I usually had to play with complete novices and my rating never improved. A catch22 situation.

If you are better than the novices you were playing with, your rating should have gone up when you played with them. If it did not, either your perception that you're better than a novice is wrong, or the rating system was flawed.

[TimG]

jikl, on Jan 23 2005, 04:50 PM, said:

Would you stop playing with the novice or beginner that is fun to play with to protect your rating?

An accurate rating system would not force you to avoid novice partners; your rating (if it was accurate) would not go down as a result of playing with novices.

[Ken16]

I have no rating to protect. My sole purpose of changing the present skills listing is that for we lesser capable players it does not help us to find tables that match our skills.
The ecpect and world vlass players tell you who they want ant their table.

[Ken16]

My skills message was my first posting and I am trying learn how to respond so if you see several posts of the same type from me blame it on my POSTING SKILLS.

As I read the comments I was surpised to find that so many took my message to
be about RATINGS. Read my post carefully and you will not find the word RATING mentioned.

The preent listing of SKILLS aslo does not mention RATINGS. As listed just what is the criteria for each one from NOVICE to ADVANCED. I think we players of lesser talent would feel more comfortable if we had an idea of just what our partners would expect of us as we play. As we find an open chair I doubt that we check the skills that one lists as they join. Some of them have so many conventions theat I am afraid to get close to them.

If we first play with partners of similiar skills we will be more adept at them and willing then to move up (or down).

Note in my post that I said Fred and others could more accurately set up the skills. Incidently, Fred does not agree with I had posted.

[the hog]

"As we find an open chair I doubt that we check the skills that one lists as they join. Some of them have so many conventions theat I am afraid to get close to them."

Ken you should not be afraid to get close to them. In many cases you will find that players don't even properly know half the conventions they list; (for example they say they play Cappelletti, but when they have a good hand is response to the Cap bidder, they have no idea whatsoever on how to proceed). Some others just list copious conventions I suspect in order to either intimidate the opposition or to impress prospective partners. (Think of it as a peacock preening in order to impress its mate.)

It was your suggestion of Sayc as a "lingua franca" to which I took umbrage.

[Fluffy]

Yeah Ken, I think it was Flame's post about maybe developing a rating system that started all the discussions

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal. Also I can imagine people not allowing undos, or not accepting claims, I really like playing fast bridge where you can claim when a deal is actually done at trick 3 (Even if 3 losers are still to be cashed), bu on a rating system my opponents would not accept, or I would play to try for an overtrick.

Rating systems atract cheaters, I can recall an example, when I joined bbo there were no tournaments, and not many cheaters also, but when tournaments started,and there were very few of them, I found loads of cheating on them, jsut because people wanting a director to say on the lobby that they had won a tournament...

Also there was a famous private club who developed a rating system... I am not really sure, but think they found a lot of cheating there.

[Chamaco]

To see how bad ratings perform, it is not necessary to be far-sighted: just look at your country's rating system.

The rating system tends to be related to *how often* one playes rated tourneys, rather than its real skill.

Sure, there are awesome players who are high rankd; but there are also many discrepancies (e.g. many times high-ranked players are not SO good as it might appear, and this occurrence is VERY frequent).

Moreover, "rating discrimination" also lead to rudeness etc etc.

All in all, I really believe there is no reason to copy a system which tends to fail even for live bridge.

[TimG]

Chamaco, on Jan 24 2005, 11:20 AM, said:

The rating system tends to be related to *how often* one playes rated tourneys, rather than its real skill.

But, there's no reason a rating system can't be designed to actually measure real skill rather than how often one plays.

[TimG]

Fluffy, on Jan 24 2005, 11:16 AM, said:

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal.

When I read this, I couldn't help but wonder why you play bridge. I know that may seem harsh, and I don't really mean it to be. But, if you're not concentrating, why play bridge instead of hearts or crazy eights?

[Trumpace]

TimG, on Jan 23 2005, 11:47 PM, said:

Trumpace, on Jan 23 2005, 04:25 PM, said:

As a result I usually had to play with complete novices and my rating never improved. A catch22 situation.

If you are better than the novices you were playing with, your rating should have gone up when you played with them. If it did not, either your perception that you're better than a novice is wrong, or the rating system was flawed.

Well, I was talking about my partners. Opponents would usually be advanced, they were there to improve their rating! I don't know if the rating system was flawed or not, but I did manage to get to intermediate after a while. It was quite furstrating before that. Also, I was an occasional player and that might have had something to do with it.

[Flame]

TimG, on Jan 24 2005, 12:03 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Jan 24 2005, 11:16 AM, said:

The fact that bbo has no rating system is the main reason I play here, I enjoy just playing, wich means I often don't even concentrate while I play, ,I keep chatting, surfing the web and many other things, I often make many mistakes cos of it, and I don't care about it, just play another deal.

When I read this, I couldn't help but wonder why you play bridge. I know that may seem harsh, and I don't really mean it to be. But, if you're not concentrating, why play bridge instead of hearts or crazy eights?

Why not bridge ?
If he would play hearts you could have ask him why doesnt he play bridge.
When i play online i am usually serfing the internet.

[hotShot]

TimG, on Jan 24 2005, 04:51 AM, said:

jikl, on Jan 23 2005, 04:50 PM, said:

Would you stop playing with the novice or beginner that is fun to play with to protect your rating?

An accurate rating system would not force you to avoid novice partners; your rating (if it was accurate) would not go down as a result of playing with novices.

If the rating system would avard you for winning against novices, then it is flawed.

Wenn you play with a novice parnter against novices, and the rating system knows.that you are a better player, it should not improve your rating.

But it should downgrade your rating, if you start loosing against novices.

[inquiry]

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue). There are attempts by a number of private clubs to implement their own rating system, and maintain those ratings on line somewhere (other than Bridgebase pages of course).

I am not fond of rating systems, for the reasons outlined by Fred. But if you are out there trying to devise one for your own use, make it like a chess rating... if you beat inferior players, your rating doesn't go up, but if you lose to them, then your rating sinks (takes away the incentive for "bunny-bashing" aka, good players looking for complete novice to trash to drive their rating up).

We have, sadly in many ways, a rating system on BBO now. Players who have won internationally are given gold stars. This shows them to be the superior player that they are. Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't write me and say that they deserve a gold star because they are much better than _______ (fill in the blank with virtually any BBO gold star). I have a link on my desktop to Fred's description of what earns you a gold star, and I post that to them. But I will tell you, there are plenty of outstanding players without a gold star who have no problem with not having one, but even this quantifiable, real world standard of excellence draws caustic remarks from some who don't qualify for the gold star.

Self assessment, for the most part "works". I agree that more than half who claim to be expert are not even close. I like to think this is because they have no clue what an expert bridge player really is. This is what you should do. Find a group of friends of like mind, hopefully similiar ability to you, and play with/against them. Find out who they like to play with/against and play with them too... soon you will ahve a group of 50 or 60 players who you enjoy playing with, that is enough competion for any of us. Then the self-inflated rating are not a problem.

Ben

[TimG]

Flame, on Jan 24 2005, 02:01 PM, said:

When i play online i am usually serfing the internet.

Next time I'm playing online and do something silly, I'm going to say: "sorry partner, I just found this cool website I was checking out and wasn't paying attention to the bridge game."

[TimG]

inquiry, on Jan 24 2005, 03:36 PM, said:

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

[inquiry]

TimG, on Jan 24 2005, 04:49 PM, said:

inquiry, on Jan 24 2005, 03:36 PM, said:

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

Lol... you got to be kidding. Boian, maybe the best regular player on BBO has no such number... so I guess he is a beginner. And some of the people who play four and five tourneys a day have face cards, do you think that means they are great?? These numbers are probably losely related somehow to ability, but they never decrease (Well you could have an King and drop to a 7 if others zoom ahead of you...if you know how the point scale works..but that is an exception).

Ben

[fred]

TimG, on Jan 24 2005, 08:49 PM, said:

inquiry, on Jan 24 2005, 03:36 PM, said:

Rating systems, it is not going to happen here on BBO (Fred has long ago spoken on this issue).

It has already happened on BBO and it has been endorsed/enabled by Fred. You know those little numbers next to some players' names that denote how many masterpoints they have won online.

No Tim. You are wrong.

Those symbols represent accomplishment. They do not represent skill.

Same goes for the star symbol.

No doubt there are plenty of people out their besides you who misinterpret the intention of these symbols. Once in a while we attempt to remind people of what they mean. Perhaps the time has come for another reminder...

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com