[Overpasser]

Would it be possible to add an option to play with others who are at the same level as you?

[jillybean]

I think it's a very good idea.
All those self rated WC and experts can play together.

[nullve]

 Overpasser, on 2024-March-15, 23:09, said:

Would it be possible to add an option to play with others who are at the same level as you?

Yes. Which is why I play (chess) on chess.com and almost never (non-robot bridge, at least) on BBO, although I'm much more interested in bridge than in chess.

[mycroft]

Well, how exactly would you work "same level" out?

And nullve, do you play bughouse on chess.com? If so, how do they set the "same level as" for the partnership? And does the "number of games with the same partner" matter?

Yes, there are answers. And yes, there are answers that will not be accepted by people who don't, really, want to have their self-perceptions of their play level pointed out to them. And therefore, even if they would help, will never be (publicly) implemented.

But then again, there are solutions that are "clear, simple and wrong". Many examples of which can be found (along with some of the other ones) in previous threads on this topic.

It is very hard to determine the level of a player, when the scoring is by partnership. A player at level X, playing with a regular partner, will play 5% better than with someone they don't know, but who is the same level player.

I have said for years that everybody wants a game with a partner at their same level (as they think they are, i.e. slightly better) against opponents at the same level (but that they can still beat, i.e. slightly worse). A solution to that is difficult, I think. OKB's Lehmans tried (and tried to handle the "well, equal for you would be 40% against this pair" and the "60 playing with 47" problems too) and failed miserably (and when it didn't fail, the way it was used by the players failed it).

I play less bridge online than I might because I don't much care about the strength of the game, or of my partner, as long as it's polite and fun. And I'm more likely to find (in a pickup game) players who don't fit that than I am to find someone so far out of my skill level (either way) that the game would be unpleasant. So I almost only play in set games with players known to me, and as I am still a- (or anti-) social, I don't organize as much of those as I would wish.

(grumble, mycroft, you still need to put out feelers for partners for FtF games for the next month).

[nullve]

 mycroft, on 2024-March-17, 16:10, said:

And nullve, do you play bughouse on chess.com? If so, how do they set the "same level as" for the partnership? And does the "number of games with the same partner" matter?

No, but I've tried the teams version or four player chess there.

support.chess.com said:

Teams rating adjustment is done just like a 1v1 game, except the rating of the teams is calculated slightly differently.

For the team rating, it is not an average of the two team members' ratings, but is instead weighted toward the higher rated player. The calculation is done like this, with the higher rating being H and the lower rating being L:

(2H+1L)/3

so if team A, an 1800 and a 1300 were playing versus team B, a 1500 and a 1600 then the rating adjustment would be calculated as if a game between a 1633 player (Team A) and a 1566 player (Team B)

 mycroft, on 2024-March-17, 16:10, said:

It is very hard to determine the level of a player, when the scoring is by partnership.

So rate the partnership. (And think of bridge as a two-player game, as John von Neumann did.)

[mycroft]

Argh, lost one. Let's see if I can summarize (no, turns out I can't . Who finds that surprising?)

That team-of-four rating scheme looks a lot like Lehmans (don't have the formula to hand, but it also "biased toward the strong player"). On OKB, it led not to "games at our level", or to "here's the scoring point you're actually playing for, not 'better or worse than 0 IMPs'", but "Lehmans 45-48 only" and the 53 playing with 40 student/spouse/friend is SOL.

(Okay, I looked up team 4-player on chess.com. There are a couple of things where "the stronger player is weighted" are - magnified? - over bridge. Like the private chat and the "draw arrows on the board for partner" stuff. Arguably, the 1800 player playing with the 1300 could effectively be "moving their hands" rather than "playing with" them. Imagine the outrage if that were bridge.)

A lot of the "problems that doesn't solve" applies to 4-player team chess as well. In many cases, it's not that the querent wants "a game at my level", it's that they don't want to play against stronger players *at all*, even if they're playing with a novice and are therefore "at my level". I don't know if that happens over there; but it sure happens with pasteboard (I used to mentor on OKB. Finding a rated game to play in was - very difficult. Finding a non-rated game to play in was impossible (nobody played unrated). Eventually the solution was "organize set games with another mentor/novice pair" (and take over that novice too, and their regular partner, when the other mentor stopped. But that's another story)).

Rating partnerships: Great! Fabulous! I'd love this!

But it doesn't solve many problems:

• It certainly doesn't solve the Permanent Floating Pickup Pool. Effectively all partnerships are "new", and you have to assign a provisional rating (Lehmans, or weighted ELO, probably is as good as any - provided there's a rolling handicap applied to the first 100 boards or so). It doesn't solve the problem of "I want to get a *partner* at my level". It doesn't solve the "I want to get a partner that plays what I play" issue (but of course, ACBL's other expansion, and "standard [country]", helps with that).
  
  Even with that, it isn't going to solve the "Holy Carp, I've just been landed with a ferret because we're playing against a couple of rabbits. I'm just going to *love* this" problem. For the A player *or* for the ferret who gets continual reminders about Just Why this has happened...
  
• It doesn't solve the "I want a game that people will stick around for, once they find out we play SMP/K-S with Keri/'anything else that makes filling out a CC interesting...'." problem. Skill is (to a certain point) independent of those kinds of "don't wanna" issues.
  
• We do have to worry about "bridge players don't actually *want* to know how bad good they are". Okay, this can all be done behind the scenes, but then again, how do we know it isn't?
  
• So, I'm playing a few hands with J while she's waiting for her regular partner/student/friend from back Home to show up. They do, and I fade to kibitz. J's opponents are now facing at least one "Can't Play" level change in partnership (up or down!), and they haven't changed...do we find them another table? What if they don't want to go?

That last is a small example of another difference between bridge and chess - what's "a game"? Chess is very much defined - one start-to-finish against one opponent, taking a (n approximately) set period of time. Bridge? One hand is clearly not "a game"; especially if playing against SMP or T/Walsh or whatever, you really want minimum 6 or so for it to be worth having a defence (and if all our "one-hand" opponents don't have a defence, what does that do to our partnership rating?) Usually events are either "longish match against one/a few opponents" or "short matches against a large part of the field". To do those "at our level", do we have to find everybody at that level, and have 6 or 7 "flights"? Or are we talking about "find me/me and partner a table" - a good comparison to "find me a game by rating" on chess.com - in which case, again, what's "a game"? And what happens if X wants to bail on me after half the "game" because I'm just not good enough?

And what about the people (like me) who don't really care about "a game at my level" (as long as it's not a slaughter every day, either way), but do really care about "a game at my level" (of Law-abiding/interest in non-"Correct Bidding Lessons"/table talk and respect for all)?

I'm not trying to be a buzzkill. It's just that there are many problems with bridge that "a rating system" is proposed as the solution to, and I'm pointing out that:

• creating a rating system is difficult,
  
• creating one that will solve any one problem is also difficult, and
  
• it is almost certain that any solution to some of the problems will have no effect, or perhaps even a negative effect, on others.

If we can look at a specific, well-defined, meaning for "a game at my level", we can absolutely aim for a rating system that will solve that. And the next person that complains about their version of "a game at my level"? Well,...

[0 carbon]

Swiss pairs puts players with similar results playing each other. Like T16 Rockies UltraSpeedball IMPs at 4pm Eastern Time