Mathematically impossible tournament results Mathematically impossible tournament results
#1
Posted 2020-October-03, 03:29
Here are the hands.
https://webutil.brid...rname=Huibertus
I had the feeling I did well, so I checked the results. Had the (shared) top result on 7 of the 8 boards, and the second best result (shared) on the 8th board was only topped by 1 player.
That means mathematicaly in MP's it is impossible to have finished any lower then (shared) runner up. And that only if the one player with the better score on the 8th board had the same top results on all other board, otherwise I must have finished (shared) winner.
However, according to BBO I finished 392nd !
Can anybody explain what the issue is, and how it is being adressed?
#2
Posted 2020-October-03, 05:27
Most of your apparently stunning results appear to have been in hands that everyone did well in - ?push boards? meaning that there is a ceiling on the percentage that your cohort can obtain.
On one board you "under-excelled".
It's devastating I know, but on the plus side it was free, you didn't have to pay and it cost you nothing. Already three good things!
Also, they did the bidding for you, so that's quite a saving in mental energy too. Seems like a bargain to me.
Imagine if it had been a "classic format". Then the robots would have played two of the hands as well.
#3
Posted 2020-October-03, 13:05
#4
Posted 2020-October-03, 14:09
Both the 'Just Declare' and 'Classic' formats seem to remove too much of the 'game' from the game.
To then aggregate everything into tiny groups just makes it a lottery.
Good players will consistently come out on top in the long run, but the randomness injected by the format is too great.
This why I prefer the Challenge format.
I don't know if it's possible to implement, but how about setting the daylongs so that each person has 5-10 minutes to play each board, but they can start the board whenever they want in the 24-hour cycle.
Cheating seems to be a minimal problem in the Challenge formats that run at the moment.
Algorithms exist to detect people that use the exact same line of play - real cheating is very hard. What would it look like?
Does BBO have any evidence that the implementation of this approach successfully prevented any cheating at all?
#5
Posted 2020-October-08, 09:58
And while you're not all being compared on the same boards, on each board you're being compared to a significant number of other competitors. Your final score represents whether you were playing overall well or poorly that session.
It's true that in short IMP games, one or two swingy boards can completely dominate the results; if you're not lucky enough to get any boards like that you'll have a hard time winning (but also a hard time coming in last if you find yourself on the wrong side of the swings). This is not as severe in matchpoints, since all boards have equal weight.
But the more boards you play, the more these random factors even out, as everyone should get about the same proportion of flat and swingy boards. The NABC Online is 72 boards, and at matchpoints this luck factor should be minimal (I won't go as far as saying negligible, but it could be). The fact that we consistently see the same collection of players near the tops of the leaderboards supports the hypothesis that skill is the dominating factor.
#6
Posted 2020-October-09, 00:54
#7
Posted 2020-October-09, 10:18
I could run the daylong with one of my scratch accounts, then do it as "me" later. To catch IP tracing, I'll do it from different computers, and all the scratch accounts will only ever log in from McD's wireless.
I'm sure it *has* been done, which is why things are done this way.
Given the distressing level of "almost, but not quite, good enough to win" players we've seen getting "that little extra" now that
Frankly, I have listened to people say that "20-30% of club players cheat" (give and read body language, listen to other tables, coffeehouse,...) for decades (along with the somewhat patronising "but as long as you don't expect bridge, it can be fun, and you'll beat them anyway." I've always thought that overblown (at least in its extreme form presented - definitely "getting that little extra" is there in measurable quantities). It looks like, either because when everyone starts playing screen regulations, or they have to play outside their little pond, or whatever, said players aren't quite as good as they think they are, a lot of them can't face that and find ways to get back to "their skill level".
It might not be 20-30%, but it sure looks like it's 20-30 in a thousand.
#8
Posted 2020-October-10, 14:43
mycroft, on 2020-October-09, 10:18, said:
A few years ago, unexpected analysis of urine samples during medical certification of amateur sportsmen in Italy showed 6% positive for doping. In decades of competition and coaching in physical sports I came to conclude that 6-8% would cheat regularly, more or less independent of level or risk of discovery. Nothing I have seen so far suggests bridge is much different.
#9
Posted 2020-October-11, 23:12
#10
Posted 2020-October-12, 10:31
And, as I've been saying for decades, this is an education problem, not a players problem. How to educate without beating on the novices; how to educate the TDs about both the problems and how to resolve them properly without causing offense; how to make people interested in "all that confusing law stuff"; those are the questions.
But as I said, it is interesting watching what happens when everyone suddenly has to play "screen rules". And what the crutch-users do when their crutches go away.
#11
Posted 2020-October-12, 11:03
mycroft, on 2020-October-12, 10:31, said:
When I moved our club onto BBO during the first wave of the pandemic, for most it was the first time ever without face to face crutches. One pair candidly admitted that they had had to relearn their bidding system from scratch because "they didn't have anything else to go on".