[shif6]

How many overall awards are given? Does it depend on the size of the field? What is the size of the awards in the A bracket? The B bracket? The C bracket?. If it depends, please give an example. Finally, why are the awards not transparent? Is there any justification for the lack of transparency?

[pigpenz]

you got to browse down all the sections to find best rewards....but disappointingly I would have thought it would pay more for the top ten

[shif6]

 pigpenz, on 2018-December-08, 17:46, said:

you got to browse down all the sections to find best rewards....but disappointingly I would have thought it would pay more for the top ten

Yes, it appears that most or all of the top ten finishers received 1.5 points on December 7. This is a paltry award given the number of entrants (about a thousand). Anyone, but leaders in the ACBL would expect the awards to be far more generous. Instead of pretending that the ACBL gives generous awards in events like those that now accompany the National tournaments, the ACBL should explain why the awards are so small in comparison with the live events. To be sure, there is an argument that excessively large awards might discourage attendance at the tournaments, but the awards are so comparatively small that the reasom must lie elsewhere.

In addition, the ACBL needs to have a serious conversation whether its claim of generous masterpoint awards in the National online events is misleading and betrays a lack of integrity on the part of the organization. Full disclosure and appropriate discussion would involve a comparison of the formula for masterpoint awards in live events at the Nationals with the formula for the National online events.

[pigpenz]

as far as my self I enjoy playing with the robots, not in acbl games but the challenges and I UNCHECK best hand format. to me that is real bridge. Yesterday I picked someone who was in top ten and check their boards. 6 times in 12 hands they opened a minor with a 5 Card Major...to me I just cant call this real bridge.

As far as masterpoints, like Leo said they could go to 18 board matches and give full section awards, but the overall awards are real paltry. I would have expected in the 5 to 10 range.

[pescetom]

 pigpenz, on 2018-December-09, 12:31, said:

Yesterday I picked someone who was in top ten and check their boards. 6 times in 12 hands they opened a minor with a 5 Card Major...to me I just cant call this real bridge.

So your RA (ACBL) gives out masterpoints in a situation where there is no control that people disclose their real agreements?
Seems strange to me.

[johnu]

 shif6, on 2018-December-08, 13:51, said:

How many overall awards are given? Does it depend on the size of the field? What is the size of the awards in the A bracket? The B bracket? The C bracket?. If it depends, please give an example. Finally, why are the awards not transparent? Is there any justification for the lack of transparency?

In the News Feed on BBO when you log in, it has this post on the ACBL Daylong thread,

Quote

Rain said:
Hi,

Johnhinton is correct. (How did you know?) Found a bug :/ Top few were supposed to get extra, more than if they would have won the non massive tournament. Uday and team are fixing.

That being said, why doesn't BBO post some expected awards for various size tournaments so prospective players know what they are playing for?

[johnu]

 pescetom, on 2018-December-09, 14:22, said:

So your RA (ACBL) gives out masterpoints in a situation where there is no control that people disclose their real agreements?
Seems strange to me.

I'm 100% sure that these players send a note to GIB partner and opponents disclosing their methods. GIB partners can't remember anything except preset agreements, at any time, so basically you don't have any special agreements with GIB partner.

[johnu]

 pigpenz, on 2018-December-09, 12:31, said:

As far as masterpoints, like Leo said they could go to 18 board matches and give full section awards, but the overall awards are real paltry. I would have expected in the 5 to 10 range.

Leo likes 18 board matches because his winning percentage goes up (in addition to higher awards). You might get lucky playing 12 boards against Leo and beat him, but you need to be exceptionally lucky to beat him playing 18 boards unless you are as good or better than him.

The problem with 18 board matches is 1) The luck factor - you are more likely to get lucky and win awards in 12 boards compared to 18 boards and 2) Cost - BBO used to have 18 board ACBL robot tournaments but they cost $1.50 instead of $1.00. I thought that was ridiculous to charge 50% more for 50% more boards. There should have been a discount, maybe $1.10 to $1.25, at least some kind of discount. Plus, as fewer and fewer players signed up to play, the awards plummeted since they are tied to table count.

[hrothgar]

I have long criticized the length of the ACBL tournaments, noting that the small number of boards turn these into crap shoots...

A relatively weak player who happens to have a lucky day is much more likely to win a 12 board event than a 24 board match.
Moreover, you have a really ugly feedback loop in which the relatively small number of boards strongly encourages high variance strategies.

However, ultimately, the ACBL is much more interested in collecting $$$ than maintaining any integrity to game.
They need some way to recover from all those recent "oopsies"...

• A $2 million loss on ACBL score
  
• A $630K loss on a bad hotel contract in Hawaii
  
• The cost of replacing the last two CEOs
  
• The upcoming class action lawsuit

Might as well make as much money now before the membership numbers crater...

[pigpenz]

 pescetom, on 2018-December-09, 14:22, said:

So your RA (ACBL) gives out masterpoints in a situation where there is no control that people disclose their real agreements?
Seems strange to me.

No you are missing my point! I don't like the best hand format. that is not real bridge.
Try playing one of the challenges at imps no best hand format for 4-7 boards, you and 7 gibs.

try doing it in a victory point format like your in a tournament see how you do.

[hrothgar]

 pigpenz, on 2018-December-13, 10:10, said:

No you are missing my point! I don't like the best hand format. that is not real bridge.
Try playing one of the challenges at imps no best hand format for 4-7 boards, you and 7 gibs.

try doing it in a victory point format like your in a tournament see how you do.

Comment 1: If you don't like the events, don't play

Comment 2: I don't think that the best hand format has a significant impact in the way in which people distort their bidding playing with GIBS. I'd be willing to bet that that third hand bidding would be far more chaotic absent a best hand format...

[barmar]

 hrothgar, on 2018-December-13, 10:26, said:

Comment 2: I don't think that the best hand format has a significant impact in the way in which people distort their bidding playing with GIBS. I'd be willing to bet that that third hand bidding would be far more chaotic absent a best hand format...

It definitely affects my bidding.

If I open a boring 12 count, I won't bother raising partner's response, since he has at most 12, so I'm not going to accept an invitation. We get to play safely on the 1 level, rather than on the 3 level.

And if one of the robots opens, you know their maximum possible points. If they bid strongly when you have a minimum opener, you know they're bidding on shape, not HCP. This can help if you end up defending.

All these inferences are different from "normal" bridge, but I wouldn't say it's "not bridge". It's just another type of hand-reading, and it's available to all the competitors since it's duplicate. In normal bridge we have competitors in every seat, so it would be unfair to discriminate between them, but that's not the case in robot duplicate -- all the humans are in the same seat, they can all make the same inferences.

[barmar]

 johnu, on 2018-December-09, 16:37, said:

That being said, why doesn't BBO post some expected awards for various size tournaments so prospective players know what they are playing for?

I think the information is somewhere on the ACBL website, but you probably have to hunt for it. It's essentially the same as awards for stratified f2f club games. But since we only play 12 boards, it's reduced to 60% of the normal club awards (that's ACBL's general rule for games with less than 18 boards). For sections with at least 15 tables (we try to have as many of these as possible), a section top in stratum A is 0.90 points; the awards drop as the size of a stratum in a section drops. Overall awards top out at 1.50. You get the higher of your overall or section award; this basically means that only the first 4-5 players get overall awards instead of section awards in regular ACBL games.

The one significant difference in daylongs is how we do overall awards, because of the huge number of players. Instead of treating all players as one field, we divide it into "metasections" of about 100 players each. Each metasection has a similar range of results, we basically "deal" the players to metasections in order of their final results (the regular 15-table sections are arranged to have similar numbers of players in each stratum). We then give overall awards to the top 40% of each stratum in each metasection.

What this essentially means is that the top 1% of all players get "overall top", the next 1% get "overall 2nd", and so on. The awards are 1.50 for a top in A, 1.20 for B, and 0.96 for C. And as with normal duplicates, you get the higher of your overall and section awards.

There was a problem with scoring the first ACBL Daylong, we forgot to deploy the version of the scoring program that assigns the overall awards. This afternoon I updated the points of all the players who should have gotten these awards. Out of 1114 players, 309 got increased awards. Over 80% of those originally didn't get anything -- this was mostly due to all the C players who did well overall, but poorly in their sections.

[johnu]

 barmar, on 2018-December-13, 15:59, said:

I think the information is somewhere on the ACBL website, but you probably have to hunt for it. It's essentially the same as awards for stratified f2f club games.

The chance that I'm going to do that is slim to none, and slim has left the station

Thanks for the overall description. I would have guessed that the overall 1st place award would have been larger than 1.5 since that would be the award for winning an 18 board tournament with just 15 participants if I understood what you said correctly.

[barmar]

 johnu, on 2018-December-14, 03:03, said:

The chance that I'm going to do that is slim to none, and slim has left the station

Thanks for the overall description. I would have guessed that the overall 1st place award would have been larger than 1.5 since that would be the award for winning an 18 board tournament with just 15 participants if I understood what you said correctly.

ACBL reduces awards to 60% when the game is less than 18 boards.