[mr1303]

Some people out there care about finishing 19th or 20th in a Green Point event (EBU land) if they win a couple of matches and therefore green points. No doubt there is something similar in ACBL land and other parts of the world.

Do you care?

Please discuss.

[P_Marlowe]

Water cooler topic?

I think ot MP as kind of measure, how I did
in a year compared to the previous year,
but I dont care much, I dont know my MP
amount, so I dont care much, if at all,
maybe I will have look today.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[paulg]

Whether you care about your personal masterpoints, there is little doubt that the pursuit of masterpoints is a primary contributor to the funding of the (tournament and club) game.

So I do care about masterpoints.

Paul

[david_c]

Actually I do care. Not very much, but a little. It's nice to be rewarded for doing well. Particularly in all the swiss events that we have here in England, you can be out of contention near the end of the competition, and it's good to be actually playing for something, even if that something has only symbolic value.

And what Paul said - you should care about the masterpoint scheme, because for a lot of our opponents it's what keeps them coming back, and masterpoints are an important source of income for our NBOs.

[kenrexford]

When you play in a multiple-day event, qualifying means that you accomplished some goal.

When you play in an event, at least scratching does something.

In the olympics, getting a medal is the goal, but making the finals also is an accomplishment.

So, I kind of like the idea if masterpoints, in that it creates a little more redemption for the OK game. On the good day, I can win or hit a close second. On a so-so day, we rallied in the last round to land safely in the overalls. On a terrible day, after a lousy afternoon set, we won the section top for the evening, at least some cure for the embarassment. On a hopeless day, partner executed the squeeze right and my low-level double worked for at least a scratch. After beer all night on the last evening, the sunday swiss resulted in two match wins. In the joke of jokes tournament, I almost escaped any masterpoints (and almost could have claimed that I never went -- prove otherwise) except for that stupid .46 in the side game.

Eh, it's nice.

[JoAnneM]

Masterpoints are my prize for playing well, of course I care I about them. I am not going to say I don't believe those who say they don't care, but "some" people think they come across as very sophisticated when they say they don't care.

Also, masterpoints justify all the money I have spent on bridge, to my husband, a nonplayer.

[nige1]

mr1303, on Aug 31 2008, 03:29 AM, said:

Some people out there care about finishing 19th or 20th in a Green Point event (EBU land) if they win a couple of matches and therefore green points. No doubt there is something similar in ACBL land and other parts of the world. Do you care? Please discuss.

However flawed, the master-points scheme confers many benefits ...

• Master-points are a source of revenue to Bridge organisations
  
• Members who want to collect master-points, encourage clubs to affiliate.
  
• Master-points provide a continuous cumulative memento of past achievement.
  
• Master-points provide interest for players who can rarely aspire to win an event.
  
• Master-points can form the basis for more meaningful rating systems (such as EBU Gold points).
  
• Without master-points, with little else to to aim for, good players, doing badly in an event, would be more tempted to take increasingly extreme actions in order to win. e.g. bidding grand-slams on two finesses. This can ruin an event by randomising the results for those in genuine contention.
  
• Without master-points, professional bridge players would have fewer clients.

[JoAnneM]

Bravo!

[jillybean]

Coming from the other end of the scale, I have very few MP’s and don’t take any notice of them. The first few times I won point something of a MP were a source of amusement but a hopeless measure of how well I played. MP's have no influence on where or why I play and I dont think its anything to do with feeling sophisticated but rather disinterest, Im sure some forum members have influenced my attitude here. Maybe if I played more live bridge and accumulated more of these points I would feel differently but I hope not.

I do see some not so hot players using their accumulation of these magic points to lord over ‘lesser’ players, I’d rather there was another method to identify the truly great players.

[pclayton]

Jlall, on Aug 31 2008, 01:15 AM, said:

Also, and this is kind of silly, but whenever I meet a non bridge player and tell them about what I do they say "oh, so what's you're ranking?" I used to try to explain to them that there really isn't such a thing but they still ask so now I give them my rank on the Barry Crane list LOL.

Plus chicks dig it

There's always something satisfying with finishing well, or at least 'in the money'. So masterpoints matter to me too.

[gnasher]

nige1, on Aug 31 2008, 04:17 PM, said:

Without master-points, with little else to to aim for, good players, doing badly in an event, would be more tempted to take increasingly extreme actions in order to win. e.g. bidding grand-slams on two finesses. This can ruin an event by randomising the results for those in genuine contention.

I can't think of a single good English player who cares enough about master points for this to be a factor. I agree with the rest of Nigel's points though.

A couple of other comments:

- In flighted events and when several events are run in parallel, generous masterpoint awards in the lesser flights/events encourage weak players to stay out of the open event, thereby making the main competition stronger. This seems to work better in the ACBL than in the EBU, perhaps because the ACBL is better at making people feel good about winning masterpoints.

- One's masterpoint rank looks good on a CV (resumé).

- Until recently, English clubs used to issue masterpoints on small slips of paper. These were quite useful for writing down phone numbers.

[CSGibson]

I find that I care if I scratch or not in an event, but the quantity of masterpoints earned is not important to me. I might feel differently if they were harder to get; the people who I've noticed that really seem to care have spent between $50 and $100 in club fees per masterpoint earned; my ratio is less than $10, so they do probably have intrinsically less value.

I am also young, so there's no urgency for me to reach the whatever rank. Some of the older people want to earn their rank before age makes them less effective bridge players. So be it.

[EricK]

I cared about masterpoints when I was young and improving. Now I know how good I am (better than the average club player, not in the same league as any "good" player) I don't really see the point. Looking back, I don't really see the point of caring when I did, but I can't change that!

[TimG]

I care about masterpoints, but I don't care about how many I "win".

[mr1303]

The trouble is (as I see it) is that master points seem to be available to either a) players with a lot of money or b ) players who have played for a very long period. Either way, they see themselves as superior (and certain competitions are based upon this) than those who are a) poor (like me) or b ) haven't played for very long (relatively)(like me).

I know of one person of authority in the EBU who made several statements along the line of "I'm a good player, I have the masterpoints to prove it!" which he used to belittle any argument I came up with against him.

[paulg]

mr1303, on Sep 1 2008, 05:02 PM, said:

The trouble is (as I see it) is that master points seem to be available to either a) players with a lot of money or b ) players who have played for a very long period. Either way, they see themselves as superior (and certain competitions are based upon this) than those who are a) poor (like me) or b ) haven't played for very long (relatively)(like me).

I know of one person of authority in the EBU who made several statements along the line of "I'm a good player, I have the masterpoints to prove it!" which he used to belittle any argument I came up with against him.

It is doubtful whether it is desirable, or even possible, to argue with such a person.

[matmat]

cardsharp, on Sep 1 2008, 12:07 PM, said:

It is doubtful whether it is desirable, or even possible, to argue with such a person.

it is certainly both impossible and undesirable to engage a person like that.

i think this has been mentioned before numerous times, but some sort of a decaying masterpoint system might work better. (see platinum pairs?)

Also, I'd be in favor of a percentage merit award, where your ranking is computed based on the ratio of masterpoints won/masterpoints available in events played.



That would require some normalization/tweaking and a floor/quota for how much you played. Again, not ideal...

[jdonn]

When someone's profile says something like "bronze lm" or "12 blue ribbon Qs" or "second day of several national pairs events", that's the first sign to me that I will think they are terrible. In my view there is a strong correlation between lack of skill and desire to demonstrate high level of skill through lifetime of random achievements. This is partly personality related, but it also makes logical sense because someone will naturally brag about their most impressive achievements, meaning that for a player who has reached those achievements they would tend to be on the very low end of the range.

Of course when they do this based on masterpoint totals it's even worse, since not only does their bragging mean to me they are bad, but they are bragging based on an inaccurate measure.

[matmat]

jdonn, on Sep 1 2008, 12:49 PM, said:

When someone's profile says something like "bronze lm" or "12 blue ribbon Qs" or "second day of several national pairs events", that's the first sign to me that I will think they are terrible. In my view there is a strong correlation between lack of skill and desire to demonstrate high level of skill through lifetime of random achievements. This is partly personality related, but it also makes logical sense because someone will naturally brag about their most impressive achievements, meaning that for a player who has reached those achievements they would tend to be on the very low end of the range.

Of course when they do this based on masterpoint totals it's even worse, since not only does their bragging mean to me they are bad, but they are bragging based on an inaccurate measure.

hehe

that's like the first sign that you should boot someone from your table is them asking to clear score... you *know* they'll be bailing in a board or two.