[pclayton]

Its my understanding that the ACBL is considering new requirements for different masterpoint rankings.

Right now, only LM requires pigmented points. Grand LM requires a NABC win (or a world).

Platinum points arent used for anything except determining Player of the Year honors. What if plats are added to the requirement of a Silver / Gold / Diamond rankings?

[TylerE]

I would be hesitant to add platinum requirements for anything Gold or lower. Above that, sure, fine, but certainly silver, and likely gold should not require platinum. I wouldn't be opposed to adding related color requirements to silver and gold though. Say 125 silver for silver, and 250 gold for gold.

[TimG]

pclayton, on Mar 24 2008, 01:15 PM, said:

Its my understanding that the ACBL is considering new requirements for different masterpoint rankings.

Right now, only LM requires pigmented points. Grand LM requires a NABC win (or a world).

Platinum points arent used for anything except determining Player of the Year honors. What if plats are added to the requirement of a Silver / Gold / Diamond rankings?

It would just be a patch to a system that will never really work unless it is completely overhauled. For instance, there are black and silver point requirements for becoming a Life Master, yet these are simply attendance points, nobody even pretends that they measure significant achievement in the way that gold points do (or used to do).

If you are going to patch things, I think you use something more along the lines of Blue Ribbon Qualifications, though even these are watered down these days. I just checked my Blue Ribbon Qualifications and I can't recall where nearly half of them came from (not because my Flight A wins are so numerous, but rather because they probably came from things like winning the 2nd bracket of a KO that just aren't that memorable).

Anyway, I think there ought to be some measure of real success in open (or top bracket, top flight, etc.) competition, not just section awards or low overalls. And, no need to require anybody to attend an NABC to achieve that success (as platinum points require). Platinum points sort of measure attendance just like any other points; I have some platinum points and I've never finished in the overalls of an NABC event.

[jtfanclub]

TylerE, on Mar 24 2008, 01:30 PM, said:

I would be hesitant to add platinum requirements for anything Gold or lower. Above that, sure, fine, but certainly silver, and likely gold should not require platinum. I wouldn't be opposed to adding related color requirements to silver and gold though. Say 125 silver for silver, and 250 gold for gold.

I think it's absolutely goofy for somebody to talk about how they're a Gold Life Master when they haven't even placed in anything bigger than the side pairs at the Nationals, let alone won anything.

I'm not talking a lot here...10th in the Silver Ribbon Pairs is 25 points, as was 15th in the Silidor Open. I think the rankings would be a little less of a joke if some Platinum points were required to get them. I wouldn't mind if tiny amounts of Platinum were available in regionals (say, 1 point for winning a multi-session A/X Pair game), if the problem is that Platiunum is only available a few times a year.

I dislike Silver intensely, as you can't get handfuls of it like you can Gold. I've won 10+ Gold in a single event, and I wasn't even in the top 5. I couldn't get that much Silver if I won every event at a Sectional.

[awm]

Masterpoints exist mostly as an incentive to get people to play in more bridge tournaments. This is especially for those who aren't likely to "win" in any meaningful way against a strong field.

If we institute a platinum point requirement, this will bar most weak players from making the rank of silver life master (or gold life master, or whatever rank requires a non-negligible number of platinum points). What exactly does this accomplish? It takes away one of the things encouraging those folks to come to bridge regionals.

What's really needed is two different systems, one which measures lifetime achievement and the other which measures current skill level. Master points do an okay job of the first, and act as an incentive to (mostly) weaker players to participate more in order to accumulate them. Stronger players are more likely to look at things like regional/national wins to measure lifetime achievement. But in either case, there can easily be a big disparity between lifetime achievement and current skill level. Nothing currently in use does a particularly good job measuring current skill level -- "seedings points" are okay for the top players but these depend a lot on getting invited to a top professional team for the spingold/vanderbilt/wagar, and there can be a vast disparity in skill level between two people with "no seeding points outside their masterpoint total." Something like lehman rating or masterpoints divided by masterpoints available in events entered might do a better job for this purpose (although again this runs into the "bridge is a partnership game" problem where an elite player playing with a lousy partner will see a declining rating). Anyways, current skill level should be used for things like determining knockout brackets.

[hrothgar]

For what its worth, I agree that it’s a mistake to conflate a measure of lifetime achievement with a measure of current skill level.

At the same time, I think that you’re going to run into every bit as much trouble with a couple other major dependencies

1. Trying to infer individual skill levels from partnership results

2. Trying to compare results achieved competing in radically different playing populations

Here’s a few random suggestions

First, as I have noted before, I think that it’s a mistake to focus on individual ranking when we don’t have a good measure of the skill of partnership. If it were me, I’d start by trying to rank individual partnerships that have played together at least “X” times (where X = some fixed number… 5, 10 what have you)

Second: If folks really care than much about their individual ratings, use the rating of their highest ranked partnership as a proxy. Sure, this means that pros can carry a client, but its no worse than we see today. However, it also means that experts won’t get penalized for playing with nuubs. Furthermore, since the rating system (presumably) counts all results, a pro-client team will need average decently over time and not just score an occasional big match. [As an aside, this type of scheme means that high variance top or bottom bridge isn’t nearly as attractive]

Third: I’d argue that it might make sense to calculate separate ratings for different tiers of events. Today, the ACBL distinguishes different tiers of events by different pigments in the Master Points. As an alternative, we could in theory create different rating systems based on the type of event being entered. Players would have one rating for events that issue Black points and a second for events issuing Platinum points.

I would probably suggest three tiers:

[han]

I suggest that everybody who has been a member of ACBL for 5 years and played regularly (100 games total but I'm open to negotiation) should be rewarded a life mastership. It seems only fair.

[jtfanclub]

TimG, on Mar 24 2008, 02:34 PM, said:

Platinum points sort of measure attendance just like any other points; I have some platinum points and I've never finished in the overalls of an NABC event.

It would be nice if Platinum showed actual skill instead of attendance, something like:

---1 point for just barely finishing in the top 10% of a nationally rated unlimited event, plus one point for every pair/team you beat who got Platinum. For example, if there were 80 pairs, then first would get 8 points, second would get 7, down to 8th who would get 1 point, and nothing for finishing below that.

---1 point for finishing first in a regionally rated unlimited event, 1/2 point for 2nd, 1/4 point for 3rd.

This would make Platinum points hard to come by, but make them actually worth something more than attendence. Require, say, 5 points to make Silver Life Master.

Oh well. Platinum points do mean something...they mean that you competed in top flight events. Not that you did all that well, but at least you competed.

[mike777]

Again this seems to be trying to fix a problem that does not exist. Again if there really is a problem we need to see much more proof of it and what is it?


We have seeding points and platinum points for the top class players and simply winning events or winning MP for the rest of us.

IF you really care about your current skill level ratings, join OK bridge or maybe Ben can run somekind of Bridgebrowser program and tell us all.

[xcurt]

Jlall, on Mar 24 2008, 04:53 PM, said:

I don't agree that platinum points are a measure of attendance.

True, but the contrapositive is not necessarily false.

[matmat]

we clearly need more colors/metals. there need to be aluminum points, and wood points and copper points and diamond points and...

and you can only be a "wood master" or "copper master" or whatnot if you have accumulated enough of a given type

there should also be trade shows, where you can exchange your points with others, or maybe sell them on ebay or some other auction site.

i really wish i would never be asked the question "how many masterpoints do you have?" in the context of playing an event.

[fifee]

TylerE, on Mar 24 2008, 01:30 PM, said:

I would be hesitant to add platinum requirements for anything Gold or lower. Above that, sure, fine, but certainly silver, and likely gold should not require platinum. I wouldn't be opposed to adding related color requirements to silver and gold though. Say 125 silver for silver, and 250 gold for gold.

Have you seen the price of gold and platinum lately?

[jtfanclub]

matmat, on Mar 24 2008, 08:49 PM, said:

and you can only be a "wood master" or "copper master" or whatnot if you have accumulated enough of a given type

I think "wood master" is clearly sexist and offensive.

[matmat]

jtfanclub, on Mar 24 2008, 11:09 PM, said:

matmat, on Mar 24 2008, 08:49 PM, said:

and you can only be a "wood master" or "copper master" or whatnot if you have accumulated enough of a given type

I think "wood master" is clearly sexist and offensive.

meant as such


mhmmm

drunken master

[JoAnneM]

I would like to see masterpoints degrade, kind of like radiation, in some way so that you are rated according to how you are playing now, not how you played 20 years ago.

This would allow the "life novices" to always play within their ranks and would require the "young turks" to play among their peers immediately - something they would probably enjoy.

[pclayton]

Another concept is keeping the ranks, but having some kind of notation next to the rank if you have x # or x % of gold / platinum points. A 24 carat GLM has to better than a 14 carat GLM

I'm not whining the system is broken but I brought this thread up because I know the league is considering some changes.

I do lament the degradation of the gold standard however.

[TimG]

JoAnneM, on Mar 25 2008, 12:38 AM, said:

I would like to see masterpoints degrade, kind of like radiation, in some way so that you are rated according to how you are playing now, not how you played 20 years ago.

This would allow the "life novices" to always play within their ranks and would require the "young turks" to play among their peers immediately - something they would probably enjoy.

"Life novices" can always play within their ranks -- they're called "senior events".

[mycroft]

It would be interesting to see a side ranking of platinum points for people.

But as a side ranking.

To Justin, <50 PP is basically "random player"; to the club people, 5, 10 PP mean that you were willing to play in the majors, and didn't wipe out completely. Yeah, you can get 3 PP for winning the second half-match as the 83 seed against the 46 seed in a 90-team Spingold; but at least you were willing to try, and got somewhere. That means something, same as even making it to the second day of the Red Ribbons (never mind the Blues, or the LM pairs, or...) for the average club player. Frankly, I have more respect for a colleague of mine making the last day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs than I do for his 5500 Masterpoints - and so does almost anybody that matters for this discussion.

You have more than 500? What have you won? What open events have you played in and scratched/overalled/won/progressed to day 2? What is *your* bridge achievement? If it's getting 1000, fine. I don't care, but fine. If it shows some skill besides longevity and a big wallet, and lots of time to play bridge, even if it's a secondary event, well, that's another story. Plus, it's clear that you know what Masterpoints mean. Platinum points respect that - even if they are biased toward people who have the time and money to take 30 days off to play bridge at the Nationals (or for whom it is their job), as opposed to mugs like me who, if I'm really lucky, can make one every two or three years.