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Displaying Player Points - Unfair AdvantageWhen playing in duplicate tournaments your display of opponents ratings (e.g. 4+, 9, 17 …) gives a poten Displaying Player points give unfair advantage to more experienced pla

#1 User is offline   Rocket19 

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Posted 2021-October-13, 16:24

When playing in duplicate tournaments the display of opponents ratings (e.g. 4+, 9, 17 …) gives a potential unfair advantage to more experienced players. When they know they are playing against pairs with much lower ratings they can/will be more aggressive in their bidding and playing thinking they will have a significant advantage against more junior players.

I recommend that you stop displaying the points players have earned during the boards being played during tournaments.
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#2 User is offline   pilowsky 

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Posted 2021-October-13, 17:43

First, congratulations on producing the longest forum title in recent memory.
Secondly, the solution that you propose would not solve the problem that you are imagining.
In my (limited) experience, better players are often perfectly happy to let a weaker pair bid like maniacs and then double them for a good score - it used to happen to me all the time and sometimes still does.
Thirdly, the ranking that you see means very little until it gets above about 10 because, below that, the numbers rise on a logarithmic scale.
Fourthly, many excellent players have very low rankings because they don't play on BBO much.
One of the better players on this forum has only 0.9 BBO points giving him a rank of 0.
On the other hand, I am 7+, but this is only because I generally get points against weaker fields. Against people that know what they are doing I get bubkas.

Best advice - play your best game; This seems to be the advice in Mike Lawrence's "Judgement in Bridge", where he also suggests being more aggressive against good players so they can't just walk all over you with their amazing systems.
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#3 User is offline   steve2005 

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Posted 2021-October-13, 18:06

Put world class as your ranking in your profile.
You will then be assured of the respect you deserve.

ps. great title
Sarcasm is a state of mind
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#4 User is offline   Douglas43 

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Posted 2021-October-14, 02:26

Hi Rocket19, yes, just relax and enjoy the game. Over-thinking abut the opponents can be a distraction from playing your own best game. And do carry on posting, the forums are useful and friendly. Good tip from Steve2005 about unilaterally becoming world-class. I might try it myself. It's the only way I'll ever get there!
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#5 User is offline   paulg 

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Posted 2021-October-14, 08:19

When I first worked in computing, the first metric of system performance was MIPS (millions of instructions per second) which we described a "meaningless indication of performance". Although true, we may have been influenced by not having the best MIPS rating.

The same is true about lifetime master point ratings, whether they are from BBO, ACBL, EBU or almost any national bridge organisation. There are a handful of people who have and deserve a high master point rating. There are far more who have a high master point rating due to a lifetime accumulation of points and it doesn't reflect their ability but their dedication to the game.

There are far more strong players who never, or rarely, play in BBO master point games. These, and younger people with high ratings, are the ones to worry about and you'll rarely know who they are until they've beaten you.

So I suggest not over-worrying about it.

Cheers

Paul
The Beer Card

I don't work for BBO and any advice is based on my BBO experience over the decades
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#6 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2021-October-15, 09:27

Why do you think this is a problem? When you play in your regular club or a local tournament, don't you know who the good and bad players are, and adjust your style based on this? I doubt you can get as good an idea of the strength of a player from their BBO ranking if you don't actually know them.

And BBO rank can be very misleading. I'm a J, which you would think suggests that I'm an expert player. But it's mostly because I'm a BBO employee, so I've been able to play for free for the past decade. So I play a LOT of robot games, and the points add up. I'm not nearly as good in human tournaments.

#7 User is offline   Rocket19 

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Posted 2021-October-18, 15:18

While I see several posts showing why not to worry, I haven't seen any postings saying why showing the ratings has some positive value. If there is not positive value they should not be shown.
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#8 User is offline   pilowsky 

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Posted 2021-October-18, 15:55

View PostRocket19, on 2021-October-18, 15:18, said:

While I see several posts showing why not to worry, I haven't seen any postings saying why showing the ratings has some positive value. If there is not positive value they should not be shown.


Many people enjoy them.

It's silly, childish and a bit pointless, but there it is.

People also argue about what the best measure is to reflect skill - BBO ranking is not it.
But in every competitive sport, there are rankings.
Nowadays, the idea of gamification has caught on in the workplace.
Eugene Garfield is partly responsible for destroying the effective operation of the scientific enterprise with his "impact factor" and other false metrics of importance.

Rankings aren't intrinsically valuable, and they are not an "instantaneous" measure of performance, but they do provide a gentle moving average of performance.
You can "earn" gold points in Australia if you pay the governing body to play in large tournaments - but you can't melt them down and sell them.
Rankings, points, medals etc., only have an intrinsic worth to the people that have them; it has nothing to do with you.

The only one that I find intrinsically objectionable is the yellow star because of its historical association with anti-semitism.

There are many people that enjoy the Snark hunt for dubious points, rankings and titles; and a lot of people that don't care about them at all.
You seem to be in a very small category of people that don't like other people taking pleasure from something unimportant - like tennis, football and music.
Would you extend your displeasure to argue that food guides should be eliminated because they prevent people from enjoying restaurants that are to your liking but not to the liking of the rankers?

The Yiddish word for taking pleasure in the success of others is "nachas".
The word for taking pleasure in the failure of others is schadenfreude.

Is there a word to describe a sensation where you feel displeasure at the enjoyment felt by others?
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#9 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2021-October-18, 16:10

The assumption is that people want to show off their achievements. It's kind of a virtual mantle where your trophies are displayed.

IIRC, on OKbridge you could choose to make your Lehman rating private. But if you did that, you generally couldn't get anyone to play with you, because they assume you must have a bad rating to not want to disclose it.

The ACBL Bulletin has a feature at the end of each issue where all the players who have achieved a new Life Master level are listed.

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