[blml] Thai braking [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Tony Musgrove]

As Richard says

t 09:00 PM 31/03/2007, you wrote:
>An problem with the standard WBF Victory Point
>scale is the issue of "breakage".  That is, the
>majority of imps scored are worth nothing, but
>a minority of particular imps are worth a full
>victory point.
Not the only problem as pointed out by John Probst
among others.  I have been trying for many years to
find who invented the WBF scale which has almost
universal currency in Oz.  Indeed, I was accused of
using an "illegal" scale by one player when I used an
"improved" scale of my own devising, some years ago.

Congratulation to the Canberra Bridge Federation which
seems to have finally "split the VP".  Thai breaking indeed.
Several years ago I recall about a 4 way tie occurred in a
major competition.  The tie was decided by local regulations
which required each of the opponent's total VP scores to
be totalled to see which one of the tied scores was the
more worthy (i.e. they had played against better opponents).
The advantage of the new system should be in making these
arcane deliberations a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, in Oz, where master points are the desideratum of
all tournament players, a teams match is at present deemed to
be drawn if the result is less than 0.2 IMP per board.  For the
9 board match, this is rounded up to 2 IMP, which I note from
the scale to be a 15.65/14.35 division of the available VPs.

When we have discovered that VP's are divisible, can it be long
before the same applies to the masterpoints?   What next?  I
use a divisible scale even for IMPs  (suggested by de Wael who
was quick to promote the end of the world if VP's were allowed
in non integral lumps).

I think I will take another glass of my prescription now,

Cheers,

Tony (Sydney)