Greater New York Bridge Association

I logged into BBO today and saw a notice about “The Biggest Online Bridge Tournament.” I’m obviously a huge fan of both BBO and online bridge. Unfortunately, after a good 15 minutes of searching and Googling, I have no idea what this event is all about or how to register. That’s concerning and frustrating given that there are supposedly only 10 days left until the event, and many players are in the middle of SF NABC as we speak!

Somehow both FunBridge and BBO are both involved? The format is “20 boards, Matchpoints.” There will be prizes – diamonds if you are on FunBridge, and BB$ if you are playing from BBO. But surely they need to provide more information! How about…

• What time on December 12th does the event begin??
• Is it a robot tournament, or do I need a partner?
• Does everyone get the same boards?
• How does someone register for this biggest event?
• Do we play at the same time or is it play whenever?
• Is it stratified? (for any sort of point award system?)
• Will it be cross platform across BBO and FunBridge?
• Can someone enter on both BBO and FunBridge?

Unfortunately, I do not know the answers to any of these questions. Perhaps someone could clarify for us all?

Finally, after 20 minutes, I figured out how to register, and it requires menus I have never touched in prior hundreds of hours using BBO. From the Home Screen, click on “Competitive”. Then “All Tournaments”.

Here is the BBO alert that first caught my eye. I even tried Selecting other languages to see if there is more info – no luck.

Fall NABC is off to an excellent start for Greater New York. Congrats Iulian Rotaru and Radu Nistor for a commanding victory in the Nail Life Master Open Pairs! After 4 sessions, they finished a full 2 boards ahead of the pack. Also, Alex Perlin and Igor Savchenko took second place (which goes to show playing well against robots sometimes carries over to playing against humans).

New York saw several other deep-in-the-platinum finishes. David Moss and Kevin Rosenberg finished in 9th place. Stephannie Culbertson and John Fout took 13th. Peter Trenka and Sam Amer won exactly 20.00 platinum points for 20th place. Leonardo Fruscoloni with partner Claire Alpert placed 31st.

One of the most prestigious NABC+ pairs events at Fall NABC is the Blue Ribbon Pairs, a 3-day, 6-session pairs event with half the field cut each day, and partial carry-over each day. On the same exact days and times, there is the mini-blue ribbon pairs, limited to players with 0-6000 masterpoints. Both events also require each participant to have a Blue Ribbon Qualifier, most commonly obtained by winning 1st or 2nd in a 2-session or longer regional event (Bracketed Teams being the easiest way).

Everyone expects Mini-Blue Ribbon to have a significantly easier field than the pro-laden Blue Ribbon. But how different is the difficulty divide? And how does it compare to Red Ribbon Pairs, which are limited to 0-2500 and held in Summer (possibly changing to Spring).

Power Ratings as a Difficulty Estimator

Measuring the strength of any field would require a rating system, which the October 2019 Bridge Bulletin discussed at some length. Unfortunately, several unofficial rating systems exist, but no one agrees which one is most accurate, or even that we need one. While we don’t endorse any particular system, the most widely available data comes from BridgePowerRatings.com, which analyzes club results from TheCommonGame and ACBL tournament results.

Difficulty on Day 1

A total of 205 pairs entered Day 1 of the Blue Ribbon Pairs in Honolulu NABC 2018. The average Power Rating of the pair was a 61.4%. Roughly speaking, a typical Blue Ribbon participant entering an average single-session club game would expect to score a 61.4%. The data also shows that players with 10,000 masterpoints on average have a Power Rating of 61%.

In the Mini-Blue Ribbon, 106 pairs entered with an average Power Rating of 56.0%, the strength of a typical player with 3000 masterpoints. As a comparison, a typical Open Pairs session during NABC ranges from 54%-58%, depending on the other events that day. A Gold Rush pairs event during NABC ranges from 48%-50%. The I/N events such as 299ers are 44% and below.

Does the Field Get Harder on Day 2 and Day 3?

In both events, about half the field qualifies to move on to Day 2. Then, half of THAT field moves on to Day 3. Does the field become noticeably harder each day, as predicted by this rating system? If not, we might have reasons to be suspicious (or we could conclude luck plays a large part in any 2-session event).

On Day 2, the number of pairs in Blue Ribbon average power rating increases to 63.3%, skyrocketing to the typical 20,000 masterpoint player. For Mini-Blue, the average rating also increases to 57.4%, approaching the upper end of the 0-6000 limitations required for entry.

By Day 3, the field strength increases yet again. Blue Ribbon is down to the final 51 pairs, with an average Power Rating of 65.1%, aka 35,000+ masterpoint quality (the datapoints get few and far between when you surpass 65%, so the masterpoint conversion also gets more silly). Day 3 of the Mini-Blue, the remaining 28 pairs have an average of 58.2%.

Numbers In Summary from Honolulu Fall 2018 NABC

(EDIT: The Motion seems to apply only to Regional tournaments, not clubs. Therefore, our NYC and Long Island clubs should not be impacted)

Both Honors and Sagamore have their version of a Life Master / Non-Lifemaster event, focusing on giving newer players a chance to partner and learn from a more experienced player in a fun and casual setting. Someday, we can do comparison between the two.

More time-sensitive is ACBL Motion 193-21, which places restrictions on bracket sizes for any Bracketed Teams event. In fact, our photo last time depicting many brackets is from the twice-annual, charity LM/NLM team game that kicks off the Long Island Regional.

Item 193-21: No more than 2 brackets in an event may have less than 7 teams for the purpose of applying the awards in this section, when there are more than 22 teams in the event.

There must be some background for this motion, (EDIT: it ensures larger brackets for 2 and 4 session regional events, but does not impact clubs). At face value, it seems net positive for paying more masterpoints. By having brackets of size 6, only 1st and 2nd spots pay overall. With normal brackets of size 8, 3rd place also gets overall awards, and with 9 teams, you even pay 4th place. In other words, 33.3% vs 37.5% vs 44.4% of teams leave “happy”.

Unfortunately, Masterpoints don’t tell the whole story. Having a large bracket also causes a few problems. First off, granular bracketing in theory ensures all teams have a fair chance of winning – larger brackets increase the odds one team clearly doesn’t belong in the bracket.

Club events also tend to run only one session. With 25 boards, you can at most squeeze in 5 tiny matches, and more likely opt for 4 matches of 6 boards. A larger bracket should be run as a mini-swiss, which adds more work for the directors, and adds more luck to the final outcome as many teams never face each other. Honors simplifies the rotation by having two mini-round robins of 4, so the team never interacts with the other half of their bracket except to see who has the most Victory Points at the very end.

Lastly, and this is actually an often overlooked problem: players tend to hate 3-way matches. Brackets of 9 pays the highest percent of teams, but requires a 3-way every round. Forget about the delayed gratification of not checking scores for 2 rounds. The 3-way adds a lot more work for the directors and plenty of confusion for newer players. It also breaks the Swiss component slightly. The top teams should be facing off each round, but we’ve all seen teams emerge from a 3-way with two near-blitz victories.

We previously discussed some reasons to play teams instead of pairs. Most team games will either be a Swiss or Bracketed Round Robin. A Swiss includes one large pool of teams and at each round, your opponent should have a similar Victory Point as yours. For the first round, your opponent is usually the team that lined up and bought an entry just before or after you. Then they put everyone on a massive, colorful scoreboard.

When it’s called Bracketed Swiss or Bracketed Teams, it almost always means Round Robin – directors place teams into brackets of 8 teams of similar masterpoints, and you play every team in the bracket once. The top 3 spots pay overalls – sometimes the directors need to make a few brackets 9 teams, and in those cases the top 4 spots pay.

Some believe Round Robin is more fair. In a Swiss, your reward for winning early matches is usually more difficult opponents, sometimes leading to some very interesting come-from-behind wins by round 7. In a Round Robin, your opponent is not a function of your current score – it’s usually a fully pre-determined schedule.

Which To Play?

Usually, you don’t have a choice. A tournament will have either Bracketed Round Robin or Swiss on any given day, but rarely both. The only exception is during NABC, say Dec 4th 2019, when you might have A/X/Y Swiss (open), Bracketed B Teams (0-3000), and Gold Rush Swiss. If either your masterpoints or skill do not meet certain requirements, then your only choice is to vote with your feet and attend the one you want.

There are other formats still found in the wild – notably Knockouts and Board-A-Match. The Grand National Teams and the new Soloway Knockout Teams combines two formats: Swiss to qualify a fraction of the field, then days of Knockouts to determine the ultimate winners. These formats have cool but weird nuances that we shall discuss another time.