Correct way to handicap an individual pairs event
For the last 40+ years my local club has run a handicapped individual tournament scored by matchpoints.
Traditionally, if a player had a handicap (we don't use NGS in the English part of Scotland) of 52% then 2% would be removed from their scratch result to give the handicapped result.
Does this sound reasonable? Or should, perhaps, only half the handicap be applied? Or something else?
I'm not a big fan of ScoreBridge but handicapped individuals is an area where it shines as it supports the format - unfortunately we don't use it any longer. EBUScore Individual does not support handicaps and Pianola does not support individuals so there is always a manual element to the scoring for the trophy; which I'm currently preparing for next season and what got me thinking.
Comments
I hadnt considered this at all. I guess with NGS, you would need to work out the average pair NGS for each round, and then adjust accordingly at then end. There is no world standard on bridge handicapping and I think intuitively there will be a big random effect in an individual if you happened to play with some really weak players or vice versa. I dont think theres a clear answer and anything you invent is probably accurate for the purposes.
Note that Individuals are not matchpointed or NGSd in England (and presumably not in Scotland?)
I'm not surprised :)
https://berwickbridgeclub.co.uk/
My understanding
Halving it is close. In an 8 player event against 50% opps the 52% player would expect to score 51% and the rest of the field 49.85%. With 12 51% and 49.91. AS the number of tables increases the difference would tend to 1.
Individuals are both matchpointed and masterpointed but are not NGSed in England.