[1eyedjack]

A few posters in these forums seem to be very well informed about the detail of how masterpoints and strata are calculated. Where can I find that detail published?

I imagine that the masterpoints issued to an individual in an event would be a function of:

1) Number of hands played in the event
2) Number of competitors in the section
3) Which strata the player qualifies for
4) where the player ranks in each strata
5) Some other variables that I might not have thought of?

As well as the function/algorithm for working out the masterpoints issued given the above criteria, I am also interested to know the function/algorithm that determines which strata the individual qualifes for. Is this based solely on the individual's masterpoint achievements to date, or is it also dependent on the achievements of other competitors in the event (and how)?

I was also going to ask how the event gets divided into sections, but I see that is discussed in another thread (and is possibly a moving goalpost). But I am still interested to know where the information is published.

Finally, what is the minimum number of entrants below which a robot tourney gets abandoned?

Thanks.

[barmar]

We follow ACBL rules for calculating masterpoints for club games.

http://web2.acbl.org.../stratified.pdf explains how masterpoints are awarded in stratified club games.

http://www.acbl.org/...s/mpchart01.pdf is a chart showing the masterpoint awards for different sized fields.

That chart is for games of 18 boards or more. According to the ACBL Club Managers Handbook, games of 12-17 boards are awarded 80% of the masterpoints. However, in January 2012, ACBL reduced that to 60% for online games -- this was at the same time that they removed the restriction that only 1/3 of the requirements towards masterpoint levels could be met with online masterpoints; they haven't updated the handbook to reflect these changes yet. This is why the maximum you can get in our speedballs is 0.90, versus 1.50 as in the chart.

We created the 18 board robot tourneys to allow people to get the full 1.50 awards. But apparently few people are interested enough, since attendance is pitiful. Only 5 or 6 of them a day get enough people signed up to run the game, and there are never more than 9 tables (and usually more like 5), which is not enough to get the maximum award.

[johnu]

The 18 board tourneys don't seem like a good deal to me. The cost per board is exactly the same as the 12 board tourneys (cost is 50% higher, # of boards is 50% higher). As a Costco member, I'm used to volume discounts .

While the masterpoints you can win are marginally higher (2 x 1.50 = 3.00 if you win 2 18 board tourneys versus 3 x .90 = 2.70 if you win 3 12 board tourneys but as you say, the 18 board tourneys usually pay out less than the maximum because of poor attendance), if you are having a bad game, you've got to stagger through an additional 6 boards until the end, and if you're having a good game, you are just putting more distance between yourself and the rest of the field. I think a fair premium for the 18 board tourneys would be 15-25% more than the 12 board tourneys.

Even then, the extra randomness of a shorter event gives hope to the less expert players that they have a better chance of a high finish. If winning masterpoints is the primary goal, the 18 board tourneys have probably hit their high point in attendance as the most of the non expert players who played them have probably learned that their chances of scoring much better than their average game goes way down when playing 18 boards compared to 12 boards.