[keolalani]

I am dismayed by the extent to which the terms "expert" and "world class" are misrepresented by so many players on BBO that clearly do not measure up to that level - AND, the ego that appears so apparent there.

I suggest BBO eliminate each of these designations in favor simply of novice, intermediate, advanced and tournament player.

If you agree, please convey your sentiment to BBO as well.

[Zelandakh]

Welcome to the forums. If you have a little look around you will see that this issue has been raised before a time or 200. Self-rating is not perfect but the alternatives are generally considered worse. The simple truth is that by the official BBO definitions close to 80% of the players are intermediate. It is a good idea to assume all players are of this standard until they show you otherwise through their playing skills.

[helene_t]

Echognome's signature: "Half the people you know are below average" applies here (although strictly speaking it should be "below the median").

[Free]

Welcome to the forum.

Similar suggestions have been made in the past, but there aren't any good arguments or solutions to put effort in changing this. It's really low priority and wouldn't solve anything, that's why BBO hasn't done anything about this.
Btw, you have all sorts of players in tournaments, from beginner to real expert/world class. So what would you expect when a "tournament player" sits at your table? At least now we know that "experts" and "world class" are probably poor players, especially if this is combined with certain flags. Change it and we won't know anything anymore...

(a little word of advice: there are many subforums and there's a seperate forum called "suggestions for the software" where this thread belongs)

[inquiry]

Look for players who mark themselves as "advanced". Online, this group seems to be better on average than BBO members who mark themselves as experts or world class. As a general rule, anyone marked world class without a gold star is highly unlikely to be world class or an expert either. I think this post is probably where it should be (or moved to a general BBO discussion forum) because the OP is looking for people to lobby BBO higher ups. My personal opinion is I don't think the proposed solution would be better than the current method, but we all surely appreciate the point being made in this thread (yes, surely for the 200th time, which shows it is an annoying for many BBO members over long period of time).

[Gerben42]

helene_t, on 2011-August-25, 02:59, said:

Echognome's signature: "Half the people you know are below average" applies here (although strictly speaking it should be "below the median").

In real life, this doesn't work. I am sure that most of the people I know are way above average.

[semeai]

How about allowing a "custom" option, which lets you put in your own text? Then those who want to could use "tournament player" or "good enough" or anything else.

If it's all self-selected anyways, I don't see how this would be harming anything. Think of it as a "private" rating but with a bit of useful explanation. In fact, I think whatever is put would be much more telling than any of the predefined ranks.

This seems better than promoting the use of advanced as a sort of crypto-expert anyway.

[barmar]

There are text fields in the profile where you can put things like that.

[inquiry]

semeai, on 2011-August-25, 11:48, said:

This seems better than promoting the use of advanced as a sort of crypto-expert anyway.

If this is a snide remark concerning my comment that "advanced" players play better than self-professed experts and world class, you mistook what I said. It seems that players who mark themselves as "beginners" "intermediates" and "advanced" are more likely to be honest about their self-evaluation than those who profess to be expert or world class. This does not mean that people who mark themselves as "advanced" are experts in hiding (crypto-experts), it simply means you have a much better chance of finding a reasonable player (lets call them good) than you do selecting a random experts....

Beginner == most beginners and novices call themselves beginners. An occasional expert with gold star will list themselves as beginner
Intermediate == some beginners in this group, most are really intermediates.
Advanced == generally people who know what an expert bridge player and know they are not at that level, but they have read books and played a lot
Expert == most experts list themselves this way, sadly, way too many beginners and delusional intermediates list themselves that way too. Since there are too few real experts and too many delusional people, 9 out of 10 people marked this way are not experts.
World class == without a gold star, ignore them.

[semeai]

barmar, on 2011-August-25, 13:20, said:

There are text fields in the profile where you can put things like that.

And yet nobody does this. Also, it would be most common to look at the level section for an assessment of the player's level.

inquiry, on 2011-August-25, 13:54, said:

If this is a snide remark concerning my comment that "advanced" players play better than self-professed experts and world class, you mistook what I said.

Sorry, I didn't intend it as snide.

I meant this all as a serious suggestion and think it would be better than the current situation. I agree with your assessment of the situation at various levels. Perhaps crypto-expert wasn't the right thing to say, but it sounded fun, and has some degree of truth in that some if not many advanced are experts in relation to the typical "expert".

[jdeegan]

Over a five year period I have managed to identify a reasonable cadre of BBO'ers who can play fairly well as potential partners in pairs tournaments like the ACBL Speedball. Most of them call themselves Expert, and a few call themselves World Class. Some even have a star.
In fact, there are even a few starred World Class players who can't (or at least don't) play. Maybe there was an imposter or too many drinks involved.
I also play a lot of BBO indies and find the players' self-ranking in those events is not too bad.

[nige1]

inquiry, on 2011-August-25, 13:54, said:

Beginner == most beginners and novices call themselves beginners. An occasional expert with gold star will list themselves as beginner Intermediate == some beginners in this group, most are really intermediates.
Advanced == generally people who know what an expert bridge player and know they are not at that level, but they have read books and played a lot
Expert == most experts list themselves this way, sadly, way too many beginners and delusional intermediates list themselves that way too. Since there are too few real experts and too many delusional people, 9 out of 10 people marked this way are not experts.
World class == without a gold star, ignore them.

An accurate assessment. IMO, It would beneficial if members could upvote moderators as well as each other.

[helene_t]

I think most self-labeled "advanced" players are not advanced by BBO definitions. But I agree that on average the "advanced" players are better than the "experts".

[dicklont]

Would it be an idea to give a rating to other players?
This rating should be public.
Like the feedback you can give on ebay.

[babalu1997]

dicklont, on 2011-August-26, 13:15, said:

Would it be an idea to give a rating to other players?
This rating should be public.
Like the feedback you can give on ebay.

Ah, like when we could down vote the forum posts.

Splendid! when do we start?

[mikeh]

The comment about WC without a star is not entirely fair.

I am playing currently with a partner who meets the definition of WC on BBO who doesn't have a star. He asked me to get him one, but uday told me that he had to ask himself because a number of true experts don't want a star.

I understand why....not an hour goes by on BBO when I am not asked, usually several times, to play a 'STRONG' team game despite my profile clearly saying I won't.

I don't play much on BBO but my impressions are:

1) many starred players from non-bridge playing countries got their star for accomplishing something in a weak field and are not true experts
2) many alleged WC players aren't. I know ALL of the top Canadian players and I see a number of Canadisn 'WC' players who are no better than a club expert or are simply unknown to me. I assume the same phenonomen is true elsewhere
3) many really good players use 'private' as their skill level. I don't know if there is a positive correlation between 'private' and skill level, but I am inclined towards that view


As for allowing others to rate one, that is worse, imo, than the current situation for a variety of reasons.

[jdeegan]

I think getting upset about self-ranking is stupid. If you are one of the better players in your city, then you must be an Expert. If you have won a few well-attended tournament events, you must be Advanced. If you have represented your country, you must be World Class.
Duplicate bridge is played mostly for one's ego. I know local non-BBO players who would consider themselves Expert who wouldn't recognize a simple squeeze if it bit them on the nose. The great thing about BBO is that it does throw you into the deep end of the pool.

[babalu1997]

jdeegan, on 2011-August-26, 16:00, said:

I think getting upset about self-ranking is stupid. If you are one of the better players in your city, then you must be an Expert. If you have won a few well-attended tournament events, you must be Advanced. If you have represented your country, you must be World Class.
Duplicate bridge is played mostly for one's ego. I know local non-BBO players who would consider themselves Expert who wouldn't recognize a simple squeeze if it bit them on the nose. The great thing about BBO is that it does throw you into the deep end of the pool.

“After considerable research, I discovered that there were half a million bridge players in California, three of whom freely admitted they were not experts.”

Jim Kauder in "The Bridge Philosopher"

[MrAce]

There is a lot to be said about the BBO World Class stars and the requirements to get it, imo the bar is set too low but it is too late to fix since they can not be taken back anymore. Perhaps (hopefully) in the future they can be color coded though. Such as RED STAR = World Champions GREEN STAR = International Contenders Orange = Ladies/Seniors/Juniors/Nationwide champs. Just an idea.

[FrancesHinden]

Unfortunately there is no way of telling if a player is any good or not from their ranking, or indeed from whether they have a star or not. There are plenty of players with stars who are not very good. There are plenty of players without stars who are very good indeed. I don't know what the answer is (I suspect there isn't one, other than watching & playing enough to find out who is who) but going by Inquiry's suggested list is no better than any other approach.