INTRODUCTION: Shuffle boards anew or not ?

The competition between two or more teams-of-four  is one of the
few procedures which will produce a just result: but under the condition
that "everybody plays against everybody and all boards" (round robin).

This way of acting needs a great number of boards, and/ or duplicating deals
when many teams compete. To avoid this, there are movements where deals
are shuffled again for each new round.. The score results of each
round can not be accumulated because they cannot be compared..
To make them comparable, the organisators of such events invented the
Victory points. To see the nature of VP's, click h e r e.
There is no doubts that results based on VP's are of inferior quality:
the priciple " compare equal with equal" has been hurt.
 
 

The SCORER#2
produces results for 2 to 8 team4's in "round robin" fashion within
the same tournament  and shows adequate statistics.
Example of a teamsheet in use.

For big events 16 team4 and  up to 48 boards per team4 can be handled
within  a tournament ( each round = 1 sub-tournament or inning).
Such results can be transferred to excel files. The different forms of big
events will then be operated by diferent excel based programms.
( not part of the scorer#2). ( rough copy click here)
 

The Scorer#2  feeds the special neeeds of round robin !
There the NS partners of a team4 are allowed to speak to their EW partners
only after the last board played of all rounds. Results of the team4 sheets
will be put into the PC continously, and fully calculated team4 sheets
will be shown and may be printed. Team members may now discuss their
performance. Special statistic may be shown on the blackboard.
Players having less experience in calculating will be releaved.

The scorer#2 has additional abilities:
Instaed of putting in the score, the game data ( i.e.N 3 NT made) are put in
and the Scorer#2   calculates the score. Printed team4 sheets show now
the full set of data, and players have a better basis for their reconsideration
of result.  This is a great help for newcomers

Movements: The scorer#2 shows movements  and corresponding cards for
print in  the INFO part. They also  may be constructed and printed with the
help of the "movement section" of the Scorer#1.
There are additional movement cards in a excel supplement.
Which team4 plays against a given team4 may be establihed in the
teams sheets of the Scorer#2, but there are prefixed movements
for the usual 3 to 8 team tournemnts inside the Scofrer#2.
 

Features of the Scorer#2:

P L A Y E R S    A D V A N T A G E

VP's are a very special species of points, they only show up when relatet to international
matchpoints - the so called IMP's - and they are so to speak the third dimension of scores,
the basis of counting in bridge.
Where do they come from and why are they used  ?

For better understanding we must remember, that IMP's are nothing but the difference-value
between two scores, which were made by two teams fighting each other. But "big" figures (values)
are transformed to smaller figures (values) by a specific list. By this transformation the importance
of the original score-value is altered. In consequence, the influence of very high values to
the total-result is diminuished. Example:

Score IMP-value relation
120        4       30
420        9       46
650       12       54
990       14       70
1440      16       90
lf you, dear reader, make a vulnerable slam,  you will earn only four times the value
of a 2NT contract, and not twelve times the value as in a private game. ( 4x4=16 // 12 x 120 = 1440 )
The simple employment of IMP's is sufficient to find the winner.

In bigger events,  many teams play, and sometimes they play a different number of rounds. The teams
which play more boards than he other will earn a greater number of IMP's.
Therefore, a mathematical balance based on the number of boards is  needed, and VP could
serve to this end.

But this is not the main reason for introducing a victory point system. If teams play different
distributions (bords), the pure IMP outcome does not show the winner, the results of all
teams can not be compared, beacause different deals give different possibilities to score.
So we need an other instrument or method to make result comparabel: this is the VP-system.

Thinking of Victory points, we should remeber that the transformation of IMP's into
Victory Points (VP's) is additional transformation of the original evaluation system .
The mecanical handling of creating VP's goes as follows: you attach IMP's to both competing
team and you calculate the difference between these two values. Now you take the
difference-value and you look into a special list for the adequate VP-value. But this
does not explain the idea behind this list.

The idea is a chain of logical thoughts :
Two very strong team fight against each other, but - miracle - they all have the same scores.
Now, lf we want to compare this result to the result of oher teams, we have to find a solution.

And this is the  logical solution:
Whenever two teams meet and play , 30 counting-units (CU) will be distibuted. lf teams are
equally strong (could read weak ! ), each team gets the half of CU's, that is 15 CU's to each team.
According to stronger or weaker force - measured by IMP's each team makes - the better
of the teams get more CU's and the weaker less CU's.
We could easily construct a VP-Scale :
Team A is           Team B is
Very strong         very weak
strong              weak
average             average
weak                strong
very weak           very strong
Such a scale is of small practical use, because you cannot express the outcome in numbers,
which could be added.  But this scale shows clearly, that Victory Points are not somehow
altered scores, but a own specie of measuring units. They express the relation of ablility
between competing pairs.
Such transformation is of small use lf you consider only the result of one board played.
The relation of strenght is allready expressed in the IMP value. But this might be accidental,
a lucky lead, a favorable high point distribution.  Therefore, that a least the results of four
boards must be added, to employ the VP scale.
The main virtue of VP evaluation is the fact, that strenght-measuring is independent of boards
played. Different groups may play different deals, or within a tournament only a part of the
deals you play are the same to other opponents. But , lf verybody plays against all other
opponents   a n d   everybody plays all boards, there is no necessity to use the VP scale,
the IMP total will do.
We have to call attention to an additional effect of employing the VP scale: the number of VP
you may win is limited. If your opponent is down, he can only be down and not more. This might
lead you to make a cautious bid in the last deal you play against this opponent.
In different nations VP scale may differ, but the effect is alsways the same.

exposee made by Paul Hauff, Germany www.bridgeassistant.com

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