[alphred]

Hi all,
In Badminton Double a pair plays against another pair.

Imagine:
Two pairs could unite and make a team. One of the pairs could call itself North-South, and the other pair could call itself East-West.That would be team A.
Two other pairs could do the same and make team B.
Then A North-South could play against B East-West and B North-South against A East-West.
The results are expressed in numbers, and a winner team could be declared, much like you do in Bridge.
Wouldn't it be absurd?
Why isn't it absurd in Bridge?

Thx all

[nige1]

In teams-match at Bridge, pair A2 plays pair B2, using the same boards and under the same conditions, as pair B1 plays against pair A1.
This reduces the luck element so is quite sensible.

[The_Badger]

I can just see it now at international tournaments, between plays bridge players with table tennis bats knocking shuttlecocks across the dividing screen....

The IOC have just sanctioned the new game of Bridgeminton.

And yes, I have been on the sherry again before anyone comments...

[ahydra]

The_Badger, on 2017-September-27, 14:02, said:

I can just see it now at international tournaments, between plays bridge players with table tennis bats knocking shuttlecocks across the dividing screen....

The IOC have just sanctioned the new game of Bridgeminton.

And yes, I have been on the sherry again before anyone comments...

Well, if we can have chess-boxing, why not bridgeminton?

ahydra

[alphred]

Hi nige1,

Yes, the luck element is reduced in a Bridge teams-match.
Just as it would be in a Badminton teams-match.
They would have the same courts and the same conditions.
But does that make teams-matches in Badminton an interesting proposition?
And: How big is the luck element in a pairs tournament in Bridge?
The pairs have the same boards and the same conditions.
What I mean is: In Bridge the fighting unit is a pair.
In a team you are dependent on luck in finding the other pair.

Thank you all.

[barmar]

It's that in bridge there are also asymmetric conditions, because of the different hands that each player is dealt. When you play team games in bridge, your teammates at the other table have the hands that your opponents at this table have. This allows the entire team to play play with all the same hands. In general, the advantage in bridge goes to the pair with more points on a hand, this cancels out that advantage.

Most other sports don't have any similar asymmetry.

[Zelandakh]

Let me give you another bat and ball analogy. In the sport of table tennis there are (at least) 2 distinct branches. One is the table tennis you might know from the Olympics, the other is known as hardbat and uses a more restrictive range of options for the choice of rubbers along with a few other minor differences. If a regular table tennis professional played a hardbat player they would normally expect to win assuming relatively equal skill levels.

One way of countering that and allowing matches between regular and hardbat players would be to use a team system, whereby one (or 2) regular and one (or 2) hardbat players formed a team and played against other such teams. The team method has ironed out the discrepancy in equipment levels between the players. It does the same thing in bridge only now it is the discrepancy in card distribution that is being countered. Normally if one pair got an average of 25hcp and the other just 15, the first pair would expect to score higher. But if you get an average of 25 and your teammates the corresponding 15 then this advantage has been removed.

In badminton, the team method does not make sense in the form that you have described it because it is not evening out anything uneven. In a sense, mixed doubles could be thought of in this way, if one accepts the idea that male professional badminton players are stronger than female ones. Similarly, you change ends after each set in order to minimise any advantage from one side over the other. A more direct comparison is difficult to construct because most bat and ball games do not have a random element that can easily be reproduced for a second match. In essence, both sport types have created rules designed to minimise random influences and maximise the bearing of player skill. That seems like a sensible approach to me, just as it is logical for different types of sport to have different effects that need to be equalised.

Just a thought, are you actually a bridge player? It struck me from the last post that you might be a little confused as to the way duplicate works. Duplicate is not dependent upon finding another pair and forming a team. By far the most common form of bridge played at clubs is MP Pairs, where the "fighting unit" is a single pair. The most common form of scoring on BBO is Cross IMPs, where again the "fighting unit" is a single pair. Bridge players play teams because they enjoy doing so. In the same way as I play table tennis in a team because that is more fun than playing only as an individual. In the same way that many badminton players prefer doubles to singles, even though "in a doubles pair you are dependent on luck in finding the other player." To be honest, this part seems to be identical between the sports despite their very different natures; you just have to equate a bridge pair with a single badminton player (ie the "basic units" of the games). Perhaps you can re-state what you find confusing about this...