Analysis of duplicate bridge tournament data

Among all card games, contract bridge is one of the world's most popular intellectual games. However, in the literature, there is not much statistical work related to the analysis of scores of bridge players. Seeger (1993) and Yu & Cowan (1995) used linear models for the analysis. In this paper, we adopt a ranking approach and propose a permutation model for analysing the match-point (MP) scores which are commonly used in most of the duplicate bridge tournaments. It is shown that under the proposed model, the total MP scores are sufficient statistics for inferences on the bridge players' skills. The method of selecting the best pair is presented. A game on a duplicate contract bridge tournament is analysed. Copyright © 1996 Board of the Foundation of the Scandinavian Journal of Statistics.