[lycier]

blackshoe, on 2014-May-28, 23:38, said:

Novice, beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert. The first two and the last are nouns. The third and fourth are adjectives being used as nouns. Surely we could come up with better terminology.

Personally, I go with what the Martian said: "I am only an egg."

very good idea!
From another perspective, the skill level is usually self to show off the capital.
Without skill rank,but only "I'm only an egg ",you still are very free and easy.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2014-May-28, 23:38, said:

The third and fourth are adjectives being used as nouns.

Intermediate is a noun as well as an adjective and verb. The odd one out is Advanced but it is hard to imagine why anyone would have a problem with this. There is also the rating Unknown - I suspect "egg" is simply a subset of this one.

[helene_t]

barmar, on 2014-May-24, 20:03, said:

It's not just knowing what the conventions are, but understanding them, i.e. being able to use them well.

OK, I suppose it depends what the purpose of the rating is. If two players both know the BBO advanced stock convention card in details then you could say that they are compatible partners, even if one of them is a good player and gets a bit frustrated if his partner can't count to 13, convention expertise nonwithstanding.

Maybe, when looking for a pick-up partner, I should be looking for someone who knows my system, while when looking for teammates or for opps for a training sesion I should be looking for good players and don't care if they have ever heard about transfers and negative doubles.

But even then, if it is really more about knowledge than about skills, I wouldn't put things like transfers and 2/1 on the list. Yesterday I played a tourney with a self-rated advanced player who had Niemeijer, Ghestem, Muiderberg, Roman carding etc. on his profile. He made some astonishing bids including a double of a 1♥ opening holding Kxxx-AKQxx-Jx-xx.

If you want to start training for becoming a bridge teacher or TD in the Netherlands you first have to pass a bridge knowledge test. It is about things like hand evaluation and ability to solve problems like the ones Ben posts here - you don't have to know any conventions at all in order to pass it. It still doesn't translate into playing ability - I passed it easily while I know better players than me who failed. But at least it is relevant for some purposes.

[Bbradley62]

blackshoe, on 2014-May-28, 23:38, said:

Novice, beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert. The first two and the last are nouns. The third and fourth are adjectives being used as nouns. Surely we could come up with better terminology.

Personally, I go with what the Martian said: "I am only an egg."

All five are being used as adjectives with the noun "bridge player" understood.

[Zelandakh]

Bbradley62, on 2014-May-29, 06:54, said:

All five are being used as adjectives with the noun "bridge player" understood.

I am pretty sure you cannot officially use beginner as an adjective; not sure about novice.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-29, 07:45, said:

I am pretty sure you cannot officially use beginner as an adjective; not sure about novice.

English is very flexible in this regard, words can often be used outside their strict part of speech. We see this most often when nouns are verbed (see what I did there?). Proper grammar would be "beginning bridge player", but if someone said they were a "beginner bridge player" it would be acceptable unless they were using it in a writing class.

Go to english.stackexchange.com if you want to see lots of questions about word usage like this. In casual speech and writing, the rules are quite liberal.

[1eyedjack]

Likewise, there is no noun that cannot be verbed.

[Zelandakh]

Could you outline the usage of the verb "to personality" please, Jack.

[sfi]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-29, 11:26, said:

Could you outline the usage of the verb "to personality" please, Jack.

I believe that's a synonym of 'to anthropomorphise'.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-29, 05:55, said:

Intermediate is a noun as well as an adjective and verb. The odd one out is Advanced but it is hard to imagine why anyone would have a problem with this. There is also the rating Unknown - I suspect "egg" is simply a subset of this one.

Apparently you haven't read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Part of my reason for suggesting "better terminology" is that the range of some of these is at least in theory narrow, while the range of others - I'm thinking of 'intermediate' here - is very wide.

On a really good day, I might consider myself advanced. Most often I'd say "intermediate". On a bad day, "novice". On a really bad day, "idiot". I seem to be having a lot of those last lately.

[1eyedjack]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-29, 11:26, said:

Could you outline the usage of the verb "to personality" please, Jack.

I'll give it a go.

To personalitise/ize: to assign/ascribe a personality to an individual/object or to imbue said object/individual with a peronality

All tongue in cheek of course, as was earlier post.

Note that to verbalise a noun, it is permitted to change the ending of the noun.

[GreenMan]

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language.

Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.

--Peter Ellis

[pradipm]

I frequently play in tournaments in the site & found that members arbitrarily put advanced or expert etc against their name. I have a suggestion instead of members putting the skill themselves you people can put a ranking as mentioned in bboskill.com & display that figure against the respective member's name.

This way anyone can fairly gauge the skill level of their partners before committing to partnership. This used to be practised in chess site where I use to play.

It serves dual purpose, it tells the others about your skill level as well it informs you about the improvement in one's skill on a regular basis & people will strive to go higher up the ladder.

[1eyedjack]

pradipm, on 2014-June-02, 03:40, said:

I have a suggestion instead of members putting the skill themselves you people can put a ranking as mentioned in bboskill.com & display that figure against the respective member's name.

This way anyone can fairly gauge the skill level of their partners before committing to partnership.

As far as I know, the ranking at BBOSkill does not carry the seal of approval of any reputable statistician or peer review, and is no more or less snake oil than any other method.

The problem with publishing this data as if it had any validity is that then the ill-informed will place greater trust in the outcome than is warranted in reality.

[billw55]

1eyedjack, on 2014-June-02, 04:28, said:

As far as I know, the ranking at BBOSkill does not carry the seal of approval of any reputable statistician or peer review, and is no more or less snake oil than any other method.

The problem with publishing this data as if it had any validity is that then the ill-informed will place greater trust in the outcome than is warranted in reality.

They are already doing it. Awareness of bboskill has spread in the MBC, apparently a fair number of players take it seriously. Of course it is very easy to rig a high "rating" that way, much easier than in most rating systems.

[Zelandakh]

The ones that take it seriously are those that think getting an IMP every board or two against beginners makes them expert. Because that is all bboskill does - it takes your results for the month (freely available online) and decides that any plus makes you advanced and a modest plus above that is expert. No allowance for opponent level, or at least none worth mentioning. It is more accurate to pull the results for the month yourself because at least that way you can cast an eye down the names in the list in case there are some there you recognise.

And just on a serious note to pradipm, ratings on bridge sites have been tried more than once. They have been found (so far) to cause more issues than they solve. It is different from chess because it is a partnership game. More than that, the BBO management have consistently stated for a very long time now that they are not going to introduce such a system. It is not that noone has thought about it, it is a design decision. If you search around you might find alternatives where ratings are implemented. Most of the feedback I have heard from those sites is still quite negative about how the ratings work in practise but perhaps they would work for you - just be careful not to drop below 50%!

[helene_t]

hahaha Han is intermediate-, Meikever is intermediate+ with a raw score of -0.12 and an adjustment of 0. That rating site is 100% ridicolous.

Richie has an adjustment of -0.17, that is pretty amazing also.

[hotShot]

helene_t, on 2014-June-02, 06:33, said:

hahaha Han is intermediate-, Meikever is intermediate+ with a raw score of -0.12 and an adjustment of 0. That rating site is 100% ridicolous.

It says I am advanced+!

So why should I object. I will have to wait until it has the bad boards scored too.

[sfi]

pradipm, on 2014-June-02, 03:40, said:

This way anyone can fairly gauge the skill level of their partners before committing to partnership. This used to be practised in chess site where I use to play.

Or you could play half a dozen hands with someone. If you can't tell how good they are, they are good enough to play with more regularly.

[Zelandakh]

jec has an adjustment of -0.28 - he needs to come to the Acol Club and play against the real experts!

Meanwhile jack has an adjustment of +0.1 and a Total Score above both Jimmy and Justin. I eagerly await his appearance in the next Bermuda Bowl.

Pradipm has a rating of 0.1, half of which is adjustment. In the bboskill world this is enough to make a player Advanced. In the real world this is intermediate unless you are playing against a better calibre of opponent. That is the case for Han with his score of -0.36, close to beginner on bboskill and still considerably more impressive than +0.1 against randoms.

So a final question - what rating do you arbitrarily put next to your name Pradipm?