[fake_user+rv@forums.bridgebase.com]

Hi folks,

I am aware of cumulative MPs (with very little or no depreciation over the years) used to rate
bridge players in various countries and even at world level. Cumulative MPs is a good indicator
to identify folks for Life time achievement and induction into Hall of Fame and it can be continued
for that purpose. Unfortunately above method is not true reflection of ranking based on
current form/ability to seed players and teams at national and world level since it gives
too much importance to historical achievements and.

A few questions to ponder on this subject:

a) Do we have any rating system in bridge similar to ELO ratings in Chess? Ratings of players in OKbridge
is something similar based on expectation of your performance based on your rating against pd/opps based on
their rating. It is complicated system for layman to understand and calculate though.

b) Does any country have rating system for players based on performance in last 3-5 yrs(for mind sport, we could
factor in performance for slightly longer period unlike physical sports like Tennis where say ATP ranking is
based on past 1 yr data). I heard there France used to follow rating system where 100% weight is given to last yr performance,
80% of points for previous year, 60% of points for couple of yrs back etc till 20% for performance 4 yrs back.

c) Should we have rating system for partnerships in addition to Individual players. Since bridge is partnership game,
ratings for partnership should be more important than for individuals. Maybe there should be ratings for Teams as well
though it is bound to a bit more complicated since players could change teams in Open events.

d) Should WBF and NBOs sit together to identify category of events like i) World level ii) Zonal level iii)
National level and give different point structure for various categories so that we have unified rating system
which can be employed across the world. Currently ACBL seeds teams based on performance primarily in their nationals
which shouldn't be the case for players who have achieved a lot in other countries and zones.

Rgds,
RV

[mr1303]

The EBU NGS rating seems to be quite similar to what you suggest for b and c. There's a thread already about that here somewhere. Try www.ebu.co.uk/ngs for more information.