[pclayton]

jdonn, on Sep 1 2008, 09:49 AM, 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. (snip)

LOL when I was just getting back into the game in 2000 - 2001 and I would need to go to the partnership desk (I can think of one time this happened), that's exactly what I would say. 400 masterpoints wasn't getting anyone's attention, but my 10-12 BRPs were worth something I thought.

I ended up in Bracket I and we lost in the finals after beating two good teams along the way. My random pard still calls me for games

I do tend to agree online that people that feel the need to specify their BLM / SLM usually aren't world class, but I don't think this is any less of an achievement than being a star player from a small country.

[SoTired]

Unfortunately, bridge is different than almost any other game/sport. If you are an expert bowler, chess player, baseball player, tennis player, sudoku player, or whatever, and you walk into a game with strangers, it will not take long for them to recognize your abilities. Not so with bridge.

A top expert could play at a local game for weeks and except for a pattern of success (which may not even occur), no one would recognize his expertise. I can just imagine overhearing this conversation: "He seems to play the cards well, but I saw him open a weak 2 on Qxxxxx, so he is missing some basic bidding skills." "Yes, I know what you mean. I played with him last week and he dbled an opening 4S bid with only 3 sure tricks and no spades. They made it easily for a bottom for us."

Self-rating does not work. A person learns bridge, plays for a while and assumes intermediate. He plays with another intermediate who fouls up the declarer play on a hand, so he figures, "What a louse. If he is intermediate, I must be advanced." Then he plays with a few advanced players and they don't signal properly, so "I must be an expert."

Alternatively, if you mark yourself honestly as intermediate, you will never get any decent partners.

Now I read that everyone claims masterpoints are no good; Ratings are a disaster; And someone said that even good accomplishments are not a good measure either.

I'll paraphrase an old saying, "Everybody sucks except for you and me... and I am not so sure about you."

[FrancesHinden]

mr1303, on Sep 1 2008, 06:02 PM, said:

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.

Do remember that in general, to become a "person of authority in the EBU" it is not required that the person have any bridge ability whatsoever. For most of the committee positions - which are voluntary and unremunerated - what is required is

- enthusiasm
- preparedness to turn up to meetings

In theory, you also have to win an election, but there are rarely more people standing than there are vacancies. And even then, bridge ability is quite often not required or necessary. Do you need to be good at bridge to (e.g.) chair the tournament committee? No (although I can think of a number of other useful skills). To take an example totally at random, I would prefer that the selection committee were worse at bridge and better at producing the system regulations for the trials rather sooner than a week before the event.

Anyway, you should know well enough that people whose response to genuine discussions or questions if of the form
"I'm a good player (for whatever reason) therefore I am right" are generally not worth bothering with. Real good players (polite ones, anyway) will explain why they are right.

[fred]

I don't think it is very nice to belittle other people's proudest bridge (or non-bridge) accomplishments.

Maybe becoming a Bronze Life Master or earning a bunch of Blue Ribbon qualifications are not meaningful accomplishments for some of the best players among the regular Forums contributors, but there are many ACBL members for whom such things represent the culmination of many years of hard work. I don't see anything wrong with people being sufficiently proud of their greatest bridge achievements that they want to let other BBO members know. And it is not just players in the Bronze Life Master class who do this - some stars include statements like "multiple NABC championships" in their profiles.

Considering that the average ACBL member has something like 50 masterpoints, perhaps becoming a Bronze Life Master or earning a dozen Blue Ribbons qualifications is more significant than some of you think.

But even if you disagree with this, reading these posts leaves a really bad taste in my mouth - to me they sound like examples of "making myself feel big by making others feel small". I am sure this was not the intention of the posters in question, but how do you think you would feel if you had spent your bridge lifetime in pursuit of a goal only to hear players you admire proclaim that your achievement has no meaning?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[jdonn]

Sorry Fred I'm not with you this time. Firstly I think you are too focused on the examples I used, when I would make the same statements about people whose profile say "Bermuda bowl 6th place 1997" or whatever (although I have never come across such a profile). It doesn't have anything to do with the particular level of accomplishment. I just used the type of examples I have tended to run across.

I also think if you read my post, I was not belittling these people as bad people or something. I was stating my observation, which has held quite strongly among those I have come across, that people whose profiles say such things generally do not play as well as they would have you think (and that group is hardly alone on BBO in this regard, as overstating skill level is very common). This is also backed up by logic, as I perhaps badly stated. I'll try it again.

Naturally, the worse a player is, the more proud they would be of a particular accomplishment and thus the more likely to want to show it off. It makes perfect sense that the people who would list a particular accomplishment in their profile are at the lowest skill level among those who have reached that accomplishment. Of course this is not a perfect indicator, but my experience tells me it's a very good one. This is not an attack on anyone's character, and doesn't belittle their accomplishments in my opinion. It simply stands to reason.

It was careless of me to say they were "terrible" so I shouldn't have said that (noting that I meant bridgewise, not person-wise). But I wouldn't back down from (nor think it's a bad thing to say) that they would tend to be worse than expected for having reached that skill level.

[SoTired]

So a person who is proud of their accomplishment is not as good as someone who does not care whether they win or lose?

So being proud of winning a gold medal at the olympics only proves that you are not that good????

Is that your logic?

What a bunch of rubbish.

[matmat]

SoTired, on Sep 1 2008, 04:24 PM, said:

So being proud of winning a gold medal at the olympics only proves that you are not that good????

I think the point is that, generally, the good players don't feel the need nor the desire to flaunt their accomplishments.

[jdonn]

SoTired, on Sep 1 2008, 04:24 PM, said:

So being proud of winning a gold medal at the olympics only proves that you are not that good????

I didn't say anything proves anything. I said I see a correlation. You don't have to act so offended by it. I didn't when it was suggested I felt that way to "make myself feel big by making others feel small", which seems a more fitting accusation of people who brag about their accomplishments if you ask me (I don't believe Fred was accusing me of anything, he was just stating how it would look to him).

Questions: Who do you think is (justifiably) more proud of reaching 300 masterpoints, the intermediate who has toiled at the club for 20 years, or the Italian 10 time national champion who comes to the US for the first time and tears a national to pieces? Who do you think would be more likely to shout "300 masterpoints" in their BBO profile?

[TimG]

I think that the reason people put XLM or Y BRQs in their profile is not so much because they are proud of or bragging about their achievements*, but because these things are something that potential pick up partners can relate to. We all know that self-ratings are essentially meaningless. People could lie about their masterpoint total just as easily as their skill level, but I think people view the two differently.


* They may well be proud of their achievement, but I don't think that's why they put it in their profile.

[gnasher]

There is a difference between pride and ostentation. Pride is a personal matter, and doesn't require any public announcement. Summarising your bridge achievements in your BBO profile is the online equivalent of having a T-shirt printed with a list of your best results and wearing it every time you play.

If the idea is to get a better game or to discourage unwanted criticism, that's fair enough. If the purpose is to impress, intimidate or provide authority for criticism of others, it is, to say the least, unattractive.

[zasanya]

SoTired, on Sep 1 2008, 01:28 PM, said:

Unfortunately, bridge is different than almost any other game/sport. If you are an expert bowler, chess player, baseball player, tennis player, sudoku player, or whatever, and you walk into a game with strangers, it will not take long for them to recognize your abilities. Not so with bridge.

A top expert could play at a local game for weeks and except for a pattern of success (which may not even occur), no one would recognize his expertise. ............

This is of course a digression from the subject of the original post and I generally
do not post if I disagree with a comment strongly,Yet I must assert here That I think an expert bridge player is recognized as easily as an expert would be in any other field provided the observers have some understanding of the game.If the observers are all novices then perhaps what you say is true but most bridge clubs have players above the novice category.

[brianshark]

Whenever we achieve something, we all want to show it off a little. It's human nature to seek the approval and admiration of our peers. What's the point being great if no one is about to recognise our greatness!

I believe the vast majority of people who do advertise their achievements do it for the above reason, not to 'rub it in' or fake authority or anything like that.

[geller]

Bridge is a team sport. Like any team sport we want some quantitative evaluation of individual performance (our own and others). Masterpoints give one such scale. Some sports lend themselves to easy statistical evaluation of individual performance (baseball) while others do not (soccer).

It would be great if someone came up with a whole variety of statistical measures other than masterpoints (e.g., % of makeable contract made, number of "unforced errors") to supplement MPs. These would be very hard to keep track of in F2F bridge but in on-line play it might be possible to automate the statistics somehow. But until the (faraway) day when this is done everyone will be following their MP totals as well as other stats like regional of national or international wins, etc.

-Bob

[vuroth]

I completely understand the bad rep masterpoints get, but yeah, I do care about them.

I knew a local chess master who made bridge life master in about 2 years (less?). THAT, to me, is the kind of thing I'd like to be able to say about myself someday, even with the caveat that "life master" is not necessarily an indication of actual skill.

I suppose the other thing that appeals is getting my life master before I'm a certain age - say 40 or 45. Once I'm on the other side of it, maybe it won't matter to me as much as I think it will.

/shrug

Ultimately, my long term goal is to become a very good player. If I'm not pulling in the big master points in tourmanents, then chances are I'm not there yet.

V

[pclayton]

SoTired, on Sep 1 2008, 10:28 AM, said:

Unfortunately, bridge is different than almost any other game/sport. If you are an expert bowler, chess player, baseball player, tennis player, sudoku player, or whatever, and you walk into a game with strangers, it will not take long for them to recognize your abilities. Not so with bridge.

I cannot disagree more strongly. If I am paying attention, I can give you a good sense of a players ability in one hand. Sometimes it takes two. If you can't recognize good from bad, then you aren't that good yourself.

SoTired, on Sep 1 2008, 10:28 AM, said:

A top expert could play at a local game for weeks and except for a pattern of success (which may not even occur), no one would recognize his expertise.

Well, a run-of-the-mill club player isn't that good, so they can confuse charlatans with good players.

[Mosene]

I do not have the time to play much - so I would prefer a system that ranks based on where you place when you play (and who you play against). And my guess is that the masterpoint system blocks any attempts to develop such a system.

[han]

I think masterpoints are fun. However, it bothers me that the brackets of knockout tournaments are based on them as they are sillly as a rating system.

[pigpenz]

fred, on Sep 1 2008, 03:14 PM, said:

I don't think it is very nice to belittle other people's proudest bridge (or non-bridge) accomplishments.

Maybe becoming a Bronze Life Master or earning a bunch of Blue Ribbon qualifications are not meaningful accomplishments for some of the best players among the regular Forums contributors, but there are many ACBL members for whom such things represent the culmination of many years of hard work. I don't see anything wrong with people being sufficiently proud of their greatest bridge achievements that they want to let other BBO members know. And it is not just players in the Bronze Life Master class who do this - some stars include statements like "multiple NABC championships" in their profiles.

Considering that the average ACBL member has something like 50 masterpoints, perhaps becoming a Bronze Life Master or earning a dozen Blue Ribbons qualifications is more significant than some of you think.

But even if you disagree with this, reading these posts leaves a really bad taste in my mouth - to me they sound like examples of "making myself feel big by making others feel small". I am sure this was not the intention of the posters in question, but how do you think you would feel if you had spent your bridge lifetime in pursuit of a goal only to hear players you admire proclaim that your achievement has no meaning?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

one of the greatst things about Bridge was that you used to be able to compete against World Champions on a daily basis. But, sorrily this has gone by the wayside since the advent of bracketed KO's and lack of matchpoint events. sure you may still be able to get into a "A"matchpoint event but not on a daily basis like before....where else could you do this....imagine going to the golf course and playing against Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods.

[y66]

I don't care about masterpoints. Thought it was pretty cool though to see Migry Zur Campanile win the Fishbein Trophy for most masterpoints at the summer nationals and also to see her playing with Chris Willenken.

I've got 90 or so masterpoints. I have a good friend with quite a few more. I like to tease her when we're discussing a tough problem that *I'm sure* she'll be able to solve because she has *so many* masterpoints. She smiles every time, knowing she's about to be had. So, they're good for that.