[fmv104]

What is a stratum?

[Huibertus]

It is a skill-based subgroup of players. Take it with a very large grain of salt here.

[mikeh]

In the ACBL environment stratified events have everyone playing against everyone but within the field, pairs (or teams) are assigned to a ‘flight’ or stratum by masterpoints totals. So flight A may be 5000 up, flight B those with over, say, 1500 and less than 5000. Flight C less than 1500

Flight A players are only eligible for masterpoints if they finish high overall. Flight B playrr err s can win the higher of their ‘open’ placing of their placing within flight B, etc

It allows for a larger field while also allowing less experienced players the chance to compete against more experienced players.

The masterpoints parameters are subject to the discretion of the organizers

[blackshoe]

"Flight" and "Stratum" are two different things.

[mycroft]

Yes, but people asking what a stratum is aren't going to care about the difference.

And even ACBL TDs (at least talking to ourselves) refer to "Flight A" in a stratified game, and we all know what we mean. Sure, we need to be technically correct in discussions with the players, in case they don't know the difference and it confuses them. And we should make the difference here, Just In Case - but probably not for the OP, more for "the players".

So...

Everything (at least in the ACBL, probably on context for the OP because most of BBOs stratified games are, or are based on, the ACBL model) is based on recorded experience ("masterpoints", or BXP level, or whatever). That level is achieved in a combination of two ways - skill and repetition. Because MPs are paid to 40% of the field (and 40% of the "stratum" you're in for that matter), Just Playing A Lot will get you lots of them whenever you get lucky; that's the repetition. The better you are, of course, the more likely you'll be in that top 40%, so you won't have to Play A Lot to get the same amount as the less skilled players.(*)

But by their very nature, time makes up for a lot of skill. This is the perennial frustration of good "new" players in Bracketed events - because there's a masterpoint *floor* for the higher brackets, they either lie (which is bad), or they play in events they can sleep through, just to acquire the Attendance Points required to "look like" their level (which is also bad). ("New" in quotes because I feel I now have the MP holding that reflects my skill. I've been playing seriously since 1995. Now, there are other reasons for my MP accumulation rate, but still).

All that being said:

• A Flighted event has players in different "games" based on maximum MP holding - if you have more than X masterpoints, you can not play in the B (or C) game; if you have fewer than that limit, you can *choose to* play up, but do not have to. But in each game, you will only be playing against - and scoring against - other pairs in your game. This separates out the players who (think they) are not ready for the Open game, while also making a stronger and more interesting Open game for those who are ready. But it does have two downsides:
  • You need sufficient entries to make decent games in all flights. Witness my [city] Regional where because of flighting out the <750s and the KOs, we had a Championship, Two Session, 5-table Open game two of the 5 days.
    
  • As I said, players "think they" are not ready for the Open game, so they restrict themselves to the limited one. So they "never" play the strong players, so they don't learn as fast. And, as alluded to in another thread, they learn skills that work well against their peers and get punished by stronger players; and it's harder to unlearn a bad habit than to learn a good one.
  The different events are called "Flights", and there is "Flight A", "Flight B", and so on.
  
• A Stratified event is one where everyone plays together, and everyone has the opportunity to win the entire event. But there are different strata (like in geology); the Strat B players under a certain MP holding have their own competition, where the players who score best, ignoring the A players' scores, win Strat B. Similarly Flight C players have their own competition. But if a B or C pair do well in the main game, they can "win Strat A" too.

Now, just to be confusing, a Flighted event can be stratified in one or more Flights; my "local" sectional events are all:

• A 2500+
  
• X 0-2500
  
• ==========
  
• B 600-1250
  
• C 0-600

so "AX" is Flight A and "BC" is Flight B. BBO does this I believe with Top, Mid, and 499er games all running at the same time (each one stratified within each Flight).

TL;DR for the OP: Don't worry about it, you're in the bottom strat. If you do well compared to the other less experienced players, you'll get credit for that achievement. If you do well, even compared to the more experienced players, you'll get credit for *that*. Us more experienced players have to do better than you to get credit - as it should be.

(*) Which is where the (snide, but accurate) comment from Huibertus comes from. I tend to phrase it as "A 50% difference in masterpoints doesn't mean much. A 10 times difference almost always does (unless the lower MP player is < 30)" and "Life Master is an achievement. After that, MPs don't matter, it's 'what you've won'." (oh, and "if you can't tell who the fish is at the table in 4 boards, it's you.")