[AL78]

The director doing his introduction/session information speech along with announcing the session is part of a club competition got me thinking about why we have competitions.

He said "The session is handicapped so everyone has an equal chance of winning". The competition is the average MP% over session on the third Tuesday of every month with the best six scores counting. My thinking about competitive events in games/sports where skill is a significant factor is they should ideally recognise and reward the competitor(s) who performed best overall (I know random variance due to luck also plays a part). Should everyone in a competition really have an equal chance of winning? If so, what is the purpose of the competition in the first place? It doesn't sound right to me that a pair who plays bad bridge instead of appalling bridge should have a good chance of beating a pair that plays good bridge, and the desire to be competitive should be what drives one to put the effort in to improve one's game. Looking at one of these competitions which I am playing in (not deliberately) my partner and I have the highest handicap in the field (around -6%) which means we would have to get well over 60% on every session, and sometimes near 70% to win which is near impossible to do regularly in a mixed field with a low number of tables. It doesn't feel like we have an equal chance of winning compared to some pairs who have minimal negative or modest positive handicaps. I'd be interested in the thoughts of some on here.

[helene_t]

Ultimately, the purpose of the competition is to make the event enjoyable for everyone.

The tournament will always identify the best performing pair - even if only handicapped scores are reported, it is trivial for anyone interested to calculate who would have won without handicaps. But for the purpose of awarding prices, I think that handicaped scores are reasonable. Everyone pay the same fee so everyone should have the same chance of winning.

In games like Go it matters since the handicap makes the gameplay completely different and because the game is deterministic so that it would be boring if a weak player faced a strong player without having a handicap. In bridge it doesn't matter much: there is enough randomness to make the competition meaningful even without handicap, and the handicap has no influence on the gameplay, only on the prices.

[mycroft]

I don't know how the handicaps work in the EBU, but in the ACBL, both for MP and for Team play, it's carefully set to "enough to look good, not enough to balance".

If S&S win a handicapped event, they still had a good game, 53, 54% maybe (which compares favourably to their median 41). In the same field, if my regular partner and I win the event, we either need at least one of the two "MP whales" to have a bad game, or we still need 60 (which compares favourably to our median 55, but - not the same).

Treat it like bracket drag racing - who can do the best with what they have on the day, not who is the best on the day. Which is a competition in itself, and actually should feel *better* when the stronger pair wins?

And yeah, it should be trivial to see raw score and "actual". Those that need their "we won straight up" to salve their "game wasn't great, but I'm still the best player in the room go me" can get it.

Now, if this was the *only* game ever held in that club, yeah, maybe that's a problem.

[mycroft]

I decided to break this into two responses. The above was the "how do I look at this as a competition?" This is "why have this kind of competition?"

If bridge is a game for you To Win, get to the highest level you can do that at, and win there. But if that is "4 table club game", well, then one person deciding to not come back next week is a 4-board sitout, and that leads to the next pair not coming. And now, you're one "I can go to the game tonight, but X is going to beat everyone else by 10% again. I could go to a movie instead this week" from not having a game any more. If you have a shot at winning "your event", maybe that's all it takes. That's why games are stratified (even if there are "graduated from C, no-hope in B" players too). That's why when S&S *did* get their 54% (and won B and C, and placed in A), they got a loud, long ovation from the entire club. And that's why amateur drag races are bracketed we run handicapped events.

One of our players (who can argue, pretty successfully, that he is the best player in the club) suggested a similar competition, but the handicap was "have to play with non-regular players". The intent was actually to try to get people to break their always partnerships and get a little mixing of the community up (which is a good thing in general, bridge is incredibly cliquey, and it's really hard to break into "the next group", especially when you're auto-labelled with that group's average level). "Best 6 scores in the quarter, only two scores with any one partner count". Yeah, he could find three people he could live with for 3 sessions before getting so frustrated, that he could get his two good results and win by a block. And yeah, a competition like that would appeal to him (and a few other people, me included). But he couldn't see that *everybody else could see that*, too - so why enter this competition, rather than not win just as hard with their same comfortable partners?

For this to work, there has to be something for the people who would get mixed up. Now, in conjunction with a bunch of other things (like "played with the most different people in the quarter", "4-is-enough day", and so on) yeah, it's a good idea.

I remember many many years ago a younger now Bridge Pro was commenting here on a competition in his country, and saying that offering cash prizes would increase the people entering. Yeah, for the ones who have a shot at winning. But it would discourage me, and lots and lots of the current players - because the entry fees just went up 20% to pay for the prizes, and I am Dead Money. I don't mind being Dead Money - but if I'm going to pay for the privilege, maybe this time I won't. And the over 50% of tournament players who aren't as good as I (think I) am are even more likely to find another game. And now, to get prizes big enough to be a draw, the entry fees have to go up even more...

Unfortunately for a lot of these "not traditional" events (handicap, 4/8-is-enough, bracketed teams, mentor/mentee, mix-em-up), "accumulate a lot of Masterpoints" correlates at least partially with M:tG's "Spikes"; no matter what the setup, they Want To Win, and so they will game the game as best they can so they Do Win. And unlike M:tG, even the Spikiest of the Spikes get saddled with a partner, who often takes the brunt of Not Winning. For those people, anything designed to grow the game that requires them to handle "people who Can't Play" in a way that could actually affect their results is actively painful. I do understand that. So they do something else instead. Which doesn't help. "But why would I want to play in a game where I Have No Hope of winning?" "You know you're trying to drum up interest in a game in people who feel like that every day, mainly because you're here. Right?"

And I absolutely see this in me as well. [When not directing/being a spare,] there is a level of player I Just Will Not Play with. They need to Want, and they need to Be Polite, and they need to have a Capacity Level at least "this high". How well they meet those three absolutely affects how much I can handle how bad they currently are. And maybe that's a personal fault, verging on hypocritical. Yeah, I'll cop to that.

[AL78]

Perhaps I should clarify that the competition(s) I mentioned are really ordinary club sessions which have been allocated as a competition evening. There is no entry fee and table money is unchanged. This is a bit different from playing in a competition where you have to spend tens of pounds to enter for the privilige of being repeatedly hammered at the table.

Maybe I am out of touch, but my feeling is that if you are at the lower end of ability in a game/sport you shouldn't be expecting to win any time soon unless a large amount of luck goes your way (and I know what it feels like to get completely outplayed and not just at bridge). I've long since accepted my days of winning club competitions are over and I play mostly because I enjoy the company of my partners who I otherwise would lose touch with (without that I would stop playing bridge). I think that in a club environment, at least one competition ought to be unhandicapped and the winner should come down to a combination of who played better and who was lucky.

It seems bridge is trying to emulate golf with an attempt to construct a handicap based on a pair's NGS, analagous to a golf handicap constructed by their average score over a round compared to par. The problem is that with golf, your result is heavily dependant on your ability e.g. if you get a double figure score on a hole it is because you messed up badly, and you have no-one else to blame. With bridge, your score is dependant on people you have no influence over, you can get penalised for taking the objectively soundest action, and your score can be influenced by many things other than your own performance, that I don't think handicapping really works for trying to even out the winning chances across the field. If you want to give inexperienced players a taste of the glory of winning, have rank limited competitions or award an additional prize for highest C category player alongside the overall winner.

[johnu]

AL78, on 2023-August-16, 07:41, said:

He said "The session is handicapped so everyone has an equal chance of winning".

...

My thinking about competitive events in games/sports where skill is a significant factor is they should ideally recognise and reward the competitor(s) who performed best overall (I know random variance due to luck also plays a part). Should everyone in a competition really have an equal chance of winning? If so, what is the purpose of the competition in the first place? It doesn't sound right to me that a pair who plays bad bridge instead of appalling bridge should have a good chance of beating a pair that plays good bridge, and the desire to be competitive should be what drives one to put the effort in to improve one's game.
....

It doesn't feel like we have an equal chance of winning compared to some pairs who have minimal negative or modest positive handicaps. I'd be interested in the thoughts of some on here.

Those who are somewhat serious golfers know about the golf handicap system which assigns handicap strokes to players based on past performance. This allows golfers of various abilities to have matches where the higher handicap golfer has a decent chance to win, instead of basically no chance depending on the handicap difference. In fact, in the US, many golf clubs have (at least) 2 types of championships, one uses handicaps, and the other is flighted by handicaps, but played without handicaps. Some tournaments even have 2 winners, one based on handicaps, and the other based on no handicaps.

From what I know about the golf handicaps, the lower handicaps have an advantage over higher handicaps because of the formula used to calculate handicaps. On the other hand, there's something called sandbagging where a player deliberately plays poorly in some rounds of golf in order to raise their handicap so that they have a much better chance to win a future tournament with their ill gotten extra strokes.

Getting back to bridge and your tournaments, it sounds like you're saying that your handicap to too low (or the bad players handicaps are too high). That sounds like the handicaps need some adjustments.

[barmar]

AL78, on 2023-August-16, 14:33, said:

With bridge, your score is dependant on people you have no influence over, you can get penalised for taking the objectively soundest action, and your score can be influenced by many things other than your own performance

This is hardly unique to bridge. If you're running a race, and your opponent trips, you can win even though you didn't do anything that deserves winning (other than not falling). In any zero-sum game, sometimes you lose because your opponents did something well and you had no way to stop them. OTOH, sometimes you gain when they screw up, even though you didn't do anything to cause it.

But in the long run these things even out. The good players usually do well, the poor players usually lose. There's a reason why we consistently see many of the same players at the tops of leaderboards of major events. Bridge is a game of skill, although there's occasional luck involved. Some hands are easier to bid when you're playing a specific system; if you happen to be playing the system, you get a benefit, if your opponents happen to be playing the system that matches their cards, you'll lose due to no fault of your own.

Getting back to the original topic. As I understand it, the point of handicapping is to measure players against their expectation. If you're a good pair, you have to play great, not just good. On the other hand, if you're the worst pair in the room, you just have to up your game to average to get a decent score. And if you're the best pair, you can hardly afford to screw up at all -- you're already expected to win in the raw score, so you have to play especially well to make up for the handicap.

As an analogy, suppose an average tennis player decides to play against a champion. If the champion plays their normal game, they'll totally shut the random out -- they'll rarely even be able to return the serves, let alone win any volleys. So when we have games like this, we'll usually hobble the champion in some ways, like make them play with their non-dominant hand, to give the punter a fighting chance.

That said, bridge isn't like tennis. There's no such thing as a bid you can't compete against, and ordinary players do get good boards against big name players. But rarely enough for them to win a long competition.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2023-August-16, 18:37, said:

As an analogy, suppose an average tennis player decides to play against a champion. If the champion plays their normal game, they'll totally shut the random out -- they'll rarely even be able to return the serves, let alone win any volleys. So when we have games like this, we'll usually hobble the champion in some ways, like make them play with their non-dominant hand, to give the punter a fighting chance.

Or make them play with a frying pan or something similar which I've seen in some videos.

[TMorris]

For clarity I play in the UK.

Pre-Covid at the club I used to play at we had a handicap event once a year with the handicap based on the NGS scores. Masterpoints were based on the non-handicap (real) results and we showed both. It's a fun event and gave the weaker players an opportunity to do well and possibly win a club competition and a cup (we have plenty of spare cups). I see no harm in this once a year or so. You are getting players to try and beat their average score to win.

In general I think stratified events are complete nonesense and am disappointed that the EBU have gone down this route.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2023-August-16, 18:37, said:

This is hardly unique to bridge. If you're running a race, and your opponent trips, you can win even though you didn't do anything that deserves winning (other than not falling). In any zero-sum game, sometimes you lose because your opponents did something well and you had no way to stop them. OTOH, sometimes you gain when they screw up, even though you didn't do anything to cause it.

A running race is nothing like bridge, it's extremely predictable with every serious contender knowing their probable final position before the start. If a better runner than you trips then you gain one position, that's it.
A cycling race is closer, because the result can depend upon all sorts of factors partially or totally beyond your control: the tactics and choices of your own and opposing teams, the position of yourself, team mates and rivals when a critical attack occurs, mechanical errors, crashes etc.

Not that any of this is particularly relevant to the purpose of competition, I think. And there are very few handicap races in either of the above sports, FWIW. Some countries do organise handicapped long distance running races, but there the handicap is to compensate the objective limitation of being old, not just being useless less brilliant as in bridge (they are fun events, as the older tortoises start earlier and are chased by the younger hares, with real suspense for all right up to the line).

barmar, on 2023-August-16, 18:37, said:

Getting back to the original topic. As I understand it, the point of handicapping is to measure players against their expectation. If you're a good pair, you have to play great, not just good. On the other hand, if you're the worst pair in the room, you just have to up your game to average to get a decent score. And if you're the best pair, you can hardly afford to screw up at all -- you're already expected to win in the raw score, so you have to play especially well to make up for the handicap.

Still seems mildly silly to me. To motivate weaker players to enter you can always award prizes to the best position obtained by a flight B, or best of those eliminated at first cut, or whatever. And to motivate them to keep fighting you can offer a prize for who improves most over the last two rounds, or whatever.

barmar, on 2023-August-16, 18:37, said:

As an analogy, suppose an average tennis player decides to play against a champion. If the champion plays their normal game, they'll totally shut the random out -- they'll rarely even be able to return the serves, let alone win any volleys. So when we have games like this, we'll usually hobble the champion in some ways, like make them play with their non-dominant hand, to give the punter a fighting chance.

I can't imagine why either should enjoy this any more than a total shut out. It should probably be possible to forfait an impossible encounter in tennis. In bridge it would be better to face the medicine and use it as a learning experience.

I agree with OP that the event he describes makes little sense, although it seems harmless enough if once a year.

[mycroft]

Yeah, I repeat:

• raw score determines who did the best on these hands against these opponents.
  
• handicap determines who had "their best game" (against their average).

I see two complaints about this:

• Yeah, actual raw skill should matter some. But on the other hand, if you haven't heard of "masterpoints I want to give back", you may not be good enough to ever run into the phenomenon. If you're the type that don't want to give back the MPs you get for your "because I'm so good, even a bad or lazy game scratches" results; well, okay. Enjoy it. You're going to hate the handicap game, because it forces you to actually play well to win.
  We get around this complaint by either double-scoring the game (like TMorris says) or "it's only Tuesdays; the rest of the days are normal".
  
• "But we have to be impossibly good to win, because they start so far ahead of us!" Yeah, and? That One Pair we all know about needs to be impossibly good to win the rest of the time. Don't you want occasional recognition for the pair that had a great game *for them*, even if it would be "hand 'em back" for us? Again, yeah, there are those who don't. Fine. I Have Opinions, but it's a defensible position. I assume when they go to the Nationals, they play in the NABC+ events, of course. (and if the answer is "well, no", *especially* if they play in bracketed KOs instead, I Have Opinions on that, too.)

I go back to racing. There are many many horse races that are straight up, and the "big winners" are the ones in the big events, which are all straight up. But many many horse races are handicapped - with weight added to the horses that have frequently won in the past. Many many auto racing series (including what I would consider Tier 2/3) are handicapped in-season - you get the points for winning, you get the cash for winning, you also get weight added to your car for the rest of the season for winning...And again, bracket (handicapped) racing is effectively the only game in town for drag racing at "our" (anything but the professional classes) level. (but read the comments on that link. See most of the same complaints as here. And, yeah, legit. But also, note that many of the complaints are "why would I spend a bunch of money to make a great car, with bracket racing, it's all about the starting line" - i.e. why should the most skilled racer win, rather than the one with money to get a faster car? Interesting, that).

You can think of a handicapped bridge game the same as points-betting. Frankly, the reason is the same, too - the people they're trying to get to play again aren't influenced enough by straight-odds to play "these games", so they have to set up something where the weaker side can win, *if they outperform their expectation*. It's just that here, the people we're trying to get play are the actual competitors, not point-shaving racketshonest gamblers.

The goal of any competition is to score the best under the requirements and restrictions the competition puts on all players. You may not like it when the requirements and restrictions are unusual and not to your benefit (and handicap-from-NGS is at least more "current skill" than handicap-from-lifetime MPs). But if the goal is to go out to the bridge club and beat up on the weaker players every week, I guarantee the final chapter has already been written on that. Yes there are other ways to deal with that (lessons, mentor programs (which the "want to win" players don't do either, because they can't "carry" their mentee, and when they try, they destroy the point of the program), ...) but one of those ways is "occasionally, host an event where, if the weaker pair has a great game (for them), they can win".

[mikeh]

AL78, on 2023-August-16, 07:41, said:

The director doing his introduction/session information speech along with announcing the session is part of a club competition got me thinking about why we have competitions.

He said "The session is handicapped so everyone has an equal chance of winning". The competition is the average MP% over session on the third Tuesday of every month with the best six scores counting. My thinking about competitive events in games/sports where skill is a significant factor is they should ideally recognise and reward the competitor(s) who performed best overall (I know random variance due to luck also plays a part). Should everyone in a competition really have an equal chance of winning? If so, what is the purpose of the competition in the first place? It doesn't sound right to me that a pair who plays bad bridge instead of appalling bridge should have a good chance of beating a pair that plays good bridge, and the desire to be competitive should be what drives one to put the effort in to improve one's game. Looking at one of these competitions which I am playing in (not deliberately) my partner and I have the highest handicap in the field (around -6%) which means we would have to get well over 60% on every session, and sometimes near 70% to win which is near impossible to do regularly in a mixed field with a low number of tables. It doesn't feel like we have an equal chance of winning compared to some pairs who have minimal negative or modest positive handicaps. I'd be interested in the thoughts of some on here.

In terms of your last point: the idea behind handicapped events is precisely to minimize the chances of any pair ‘routinely’ winning. A perfect handicap system (which is likely a non-existent concept) should give every pair exactly the same likelihood of winning…indeed, leaving aside the inescapable randomness of mps, each session should see every pair tied!

My bias is against handicaps, probably because if the handicap is based on recent scores (rather than masterpoints) my chances of winning the event are modest at best. We do have six or seven club players with significantly more mps than I or my most regular partner have and in my area the pre-Covid handicap games were masterpoint based. But on the whole I think (infrequent) handicap games are good for club players. A pair that usually scores 44% or so has a chance of winning? Good for them. It shouldn’t bother the better players to have to settle for third place with a 66% game every now and then.

Having said that, handicapping a partnership game such as bridge is far different than handicapping golf. With rare exceptions, such as some situations in match play, golf is the player v the course. What other golfers are doing is, usually, irrelevant to how a golfer plays. So the scores reflect only the skill of the player (variations due to weather, for example, even out and in any event apply to everyone on the course at any time). One’s score at mps, otoh, is heavily dependent upon partner and non-trivially upon whether one is lucky enough to play difficult hands against weak players. At mps, at the club, I hate it when strong opps get to declare against me on tough hands…my score is largely beyond my control.