[hrothgar]

mrdct, on Nov 26 2006, 11:39 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Nov 26 2006, 08:29 AM, said:

1:  Does the Vugraph technology that we have available today present a real security risk? 

From my perspective, the answer to this question is a clear and resounding yes.  As I've commented a couple times in the past, it would be fairly easy to use a simple radio system to wire information about boards to players.

Nonsense. The security risks to which you refer are either identical to those associated with having kibitzers or can be easily mitigated by any and all of:

...

- don't allow mobile phones and other electronic devices in the playing area.

You've done a quite convincing job demonstrating the error in your argument:

You have some ability to physically proctor the playing environment. Its pretty easy to determine if a kibitzer is entering information on their Blackberry and beaming it into the ether... You have zero ability to proctor people watching the Vugraph on the Internet. These folks can do whatever they damn well please with this data, including relaying it in real time to folks playing the match.

As I've commented before, it would be pretty easy to build a simple receiver into the heel of a shoe or a belt buckle. If it were me, I'd use a cell phone signal as a carrier for a simple data protocol. Good luck distinquishing that one cell phone signal from all the other electro-magnetic garbage in your average hotel. (I'm not saying that the WBF or the ACBL couldn't start sweeping players for bugs, but I've never been particularly impressed with their grasp on techology)

This type of system would give you a real edge and its a hell of a lot less conspicuous than sticking your head under a screen to fix cards or loading a deck during a team match.

People cheat. Its a fact of life. And we're making it damn easy for them to do so.

[pclayton]

Bridge cheating is a curious thing.

Why would a top professional player even risk such a thing? It has happened, and it will happen again. But most if not all would not even consider it, any more than a professional golfer would bump his lie in the rough when no one was looking. I think most bridge players have very high standards for their own conduct. So take the .5% of scalliwags.

Locks only keep the honest people out.

The Open and Closed room concept is sound, and it should work fine if its enforced. At Chicago, it really wasnt. Its also easier to enforce in a KO match, when you are playing 16 boards at a time. I don't know how the movement in the Reisinger works, but maybe its not practical, since the boards are played 3 at a time and then the players switch.

[hrothgar]

pclayton, on Nov 27 2006, 12:44 AM, said:

Bridge cheating is a curious thing.

Why would a top professional player even risk such a thing?

No clue... Do you think that Buratti and Lanzarotti would be willing to comment? Maybe we could get a ouija board and summon up Shoeless Joe Jackson... There have been a hell of a lot of point shaving scandals over the years... I'm sure some of the individuals involved had good reason for fixing games. Rumor has it that in some case, they were trying to make more money.

If we want to cast our net a bit further and look corporate scandles (Enron, Tyco, Boesky, and the like) there are any number of examples of respectable professionals involved in outright criminal behavior. ***** happens. Its ridiculous to beleive that bridge players are some immune to these types of temptations.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive to the possibility of cheating. Then again, Moses Ma and Steve Sion were both regulars at the MIT bridge club. This was before my time, but the stories are pretty well known arround here. In a simialr fashion, the MIT blackjack club was in high gear when I was playing in Boston. I know the time and effort that folks are willing to spend to get an edge.

[fred]

My thoughts:

Various organizations that run major bridge tournaments (including ACBL and WBF) have asked me about the concept of including a programmed delay in vugraph broadcasts. This would not be too difficult for us to achieve, but it is something I have strongly resisted and will continue to resist.

The reason is that, as regular online vugraph watchers know from some of the sensational matches we have witnessed, these broadcasts can be extremely exciting and dramatic. I believe that including a delay would pretty much kill this.

I have good reason to believe that ACBL and USBF (and probably others) will soon start using electronic surveillance devices on a regular basis regardless of whether or not vugraph is being broadcast.

Even though there is no prize money at stake in a tournament like the Reisinger, there is still a lot of money at stake. The top professional players earn upwards of $20,000 to play in the Reisinger and most will receive some kind of bonus if their team is successful. That's pretty good for what is at most 3 days of work - I suspect it is considerably more than the average yearly salary in all but a handful of countries in the world.

While I believe that most of the leading players are honest and would never consider cheating, money can be a powerful motivating force (for some purely due to greed and for others out of concern for their livelyhoods and their families).

Cheating is a real danger and the ACBL should definitely be concerned about it.

Yes, it would have been better for us if the ACBL had duplicated 40 sets of boards for the purposes of making the Reisinger semi-finals more secure. However, once they did not do that, I think they should be applauded (or at least not ridiculed) for cancelling the vugraph show. I believe they made the right decision.

The ACBL gets an awful lot of criticism when they do not do everything perfectly, but they rarely get the praise they deserve for some of the things that they do extremely well.

There are something like 4000 bridge players here is Hawaii playing in dozens of events every day. I have no idea how many TDs, people working behind the scenes, sets of boards, bidding boxes, tables, etc. it takes to make all of this run smoothly, but it sounds like a real logistic challenge to me.

It does run smoothly - very smoothly. I find this impressive.

Furthermore, if the ACBL decides that it wants to allocate its resources toward making the 4000 people who have each paid 1000s of dollars to play in this tournament as satisfied as possible with the experience, I can understand that.

It is not unreasonable that this (as opposed to satisfying the online vugraph audience) should be the ACBL's highest priority in Hawaii.

Perhaps the ACBL did not have enough sets of boards on hand to duplicate 40 sets for the Reisinger semi-final. Perhaps they did not foresee the security risk of having vugraph without duplicated boards.

Believe me, the ACBL does recognize the value of online vugraph in terms of promoting bridge and in terms of serving its members who are not able to attend their big tournaments. There has been a clear trend in recent years toward more and more online vugraph of ACBL tournaments. I, for one, am grateful for this.

In this particular case, I suspect that the TDs responsible for organizing the Reisinger itself either did not know that there was going to be vugraph of the semi-finals or did not consider the security implications of using non-duplicated boards. I am not sure about this, but I believe that in recent years the ACBL has broadcast only the finals of the Reisinger (where duplicated boards are always used).

It is a good thing that the ACBL chose to broadcast the semis as this year and, while it is unfortunate that the security situation forced them to cancel this broadcast, I am hopeful that they will learn from this experience and find a way to make it work next year.

Publicly calling the ACBL a bunch of pathetic idiots is not going to help as far as this is concerned. If I was one of the people responsible for ACBL online vugraph policy and I read some of the posts in this thread, it would certainly not encourage me to throw additional resources at online vugraph in the future. My natural reaction would be "screw you".

The ACBL is far from perfect, but I know the people who manage this organization and I can assure you that their hearts are in the right places. They genuinely care about serving their members and about trying to ensure that bridge has a bright future.

But just like the rest of us, they sometimes make mistakes. I personally believe that if we want to see the ACBL improve, we would be much better off adopting a constructive and sympathetic attitude toward such mistakes. Publicly insulting them will only make things worse.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[helene_t]

Thanks Fred, your comment sets this in the right perspective I think.

The below is obviously a stupid question, but I still don't get it:

How would duplicate boards help solve the problems described by Richard? There would still be people on the internet watching the full deals while they were played. Now I give one of my friends who plays in the semi-final GSM receivers in both his shoes and we agree of the following simple protocol: a sting in his left foot means "finese left".

Without internet vugraph the signal will have to come from the players themselves or from someone else in the room. This would pose more challenges for the cheater:
- They would have to agree on cheating with someone else (teammate, partner, kibber).
- The trick may backfire since players will loose focus if they have to concentrate on relaying information at the same time.
- Transmitters are more clumpsy than receivers.
- Transmitters are (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know much about electronics) possible to detect.

[pigpenz]

interesting we were worried about cheating on BBO ACBL Online games and here we are talking about cheating by the best of the best where ethics should be the highest

[Walddk]

pigpenz, on Nov 27 2006, 05:24 PM, said:

interesting we were worried about cheating on BBO ACBL Online games and here we are talking about cheating by the best of the best where ethics should be the highest

For many Ethics is, sadly, a village in Siberia. However, I prefer to treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty. Yes, we may get another Buratti-Lanzarotti issue at some point. It would be foolish to rule it out.

Accordingly, I am all for that organisers take precautionary action, but I am still confused regarding the Reisinger semi-finals. More than a month ago, Rick Beye, the ACBL Chief Tournament Director, sent me an e-mail where he specified that the ACBL would be broadcasting from the semi-finals as well.

So this was the plan all along. If the organisers were unable to provide 20 sets of boards (not 40 as Fred writes), they must have known in advance. Therefore, it would have been appropriate if they had let Fred or me know, perhaps with short notice, that they had to cancel the broadcast from the semi-finals due to security reasons.

They did not, and that was a clear mistake. Everyone was looking forward to that broadcast because we all thought that it would go ahead once it was listed on our vugraph schedule page.

As it turned out, all our spectators were disappointed - and with good reason in my view. It is not unreasonable that this comes to the attention of the ACBL so that they can avoid the same mistake next year.

That is what I consider constructive criticism, and there is no reason why the ACBL should take offence.

Roland

[helene_t]

pigpenz, on Nov 27 2006, 05:24 PM, said:

interesting we were worried about cheating on BBO ACBL Online games and here we are talking about cheating by the best of the best where ethics should be the highest

I donno why ethics should be higher at the highest level. You might expect to see less of the ethical slugishness you see at the local club (players who don't know the rules, players who don't call the TD because they don't want to ruin the good atmosphere, players who never thought about the diference between gut feelings and UI). But as for deliberate cheating, I don't see why there should be any correlation with level.

The crucial diference is that cheating in a Reisinger semifinal would be much more devasting than would cheating in some only online tourney.

[pclayton]

hrothgar, on Nov 26 2006, 02:05 PM, said:

pclayton, on Nov 27 2006, 12:44 AM, said:

Bridge cheating is a curious thing.

Why would a top professional player even risk such a thing?

No clue... Do you think that Buratti and Lanzarotti would be willing to comment? Maybe we could get a ouija board and summon up Shoeless Joe Jackson... There have been a hell of a lot of point shaving scandals over the years... I'm sure some of the individuals involved had good reason for fixing games. Rumor has it that in some case, they were trying to make more money.

If we want to cast our net a bit further and look corporate scandles (Enron, Tyco, Boesky, and the like) there are any number of examples of respectable professionals involved in outright criminal behavior. ***** happens. Its ridiculous to beleive that bridge players are some immune to these types of temptations.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive to the possibility of cheating. Then again, Moses Ma and Steve Sion were both regulars at the MIT bridge club. This was before my time, but the stories are pretty well known arround here. In a simialr fashion, the MIT blackjack club was in high gear when I was playing in Boston. I know the time and effort that folks are willing to spend to get an edge.

And I'll bet you the racecars haven't been besieged with pro offers as of late.

Mind you, the crime they committed was pretty simple. But what I've heard, allegations were floating around for years about them. A pro I know labeled them "The Cheating Italians" (somehow sayng this after the incident doesn't seem derogatory).

A pro pair has to be concerned with its image and its reputation. Once they are caught, their career is finished. There is a motivation to stay straight.

The Black Sox came about because they hated the Owner, Charles Comiskey. Why would bridge players ever feel disgruntled?

I'm not concerned about the players that are already successful (is anyone?). I'm concerned about the new team that wires itself and wins everything.

Getting back to the main point; if you wanted to cheat, would using vugraph be the medium? I'd be more concerned with blackberrys. Banning kibs in the CR makes some sense too. Results from the CR could be sent through a director.

Wouldn't you just need to isolate one of the rooms; assuming the boards are played sequentially? How could the open room cheat - although communicating info about boards in play could be done. How would you interpret the following; Kib comes to table, speaks in a foreign language to a player, and the player picks up QTx of trump sitting over dummy's J9xx and declarer's AK8xx.

Maybe it doesn't make sense to have duplicated boards for these events either.

[mike777]

Please take a look at the latest info on Shoeless Joe Jackson. Some interesting stats have been run showing he played up to his full potential in the series.

Having grown up a few miles from Sox Park let's keep an open mind please.

BTW great thread and points made by many here on this issue. I hope the ACBL read these forum posts.

[glen]

Gerben42, on Nov 26 2006, 05:17 PM, said:

Any delay more than a few minutes is completely weird. You'd be watching and suddenly the winner is announced.

How would a winner be suddenly announced? The commentators would not reveal the ending, if they happened to know it, until the end (or were spoil-sports). The ACBL tends to have a lag between end of event and result appear on their web site. So if the time-delay was 3 1/2 or so hours, then there should be no sudden announcements to ruin the drama.

Anyway for me I would rather have 27 boards knowing the result, or with a chance of finding out the result before the end, than 12 boards only and the "drama" of waiting a very long time between the scheduled start and seeing 6 of those boards, and then waiting a very long time to see another 6.

Loved the final yesterday, and much thanks to the ACBL, BBO, commentators, and everybody else that made it a successful Sunday.

Of course, for me it is a tired Monday since our alarm clock did not adapt to the early morning result.

[pigpenz]

Walddk, on Nov 27 2006, 10:52 AM, said:

pigpenz, on Nov 27 2006, 05:24 PM, said:

interesting we were worried about cheating on BBO ACBL Online games and here we are talking about cheating by the best of the best where ethics should be the highest

For many Ethics is, sadly, a village in Siberia. However, I prefer to treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty. Yes, we may get another Buratti-Lanzarotti issue at some point. It would be foolish to rule it out.

Accordingly, I am all for that organisers take precautionary action, but I am still confused regarding the Reisinger semi-finals. More than a month ago, Rick Beye, the ACBL Chief Tournament Director, sent me an e-mail where he specified that the ACBL would be broadcasting from the semi-finals as well.

So this was the plan all along. If the organisers were unable to provide 20 sets of boards (not 40 as Fred writes), they must have known in advance. Therefore, it would have been appropriate if they had let Fred or me know, perhaps with short notice, that they had to cancel the broadcast from the semi-finals due to security reasons.

They did not, and that was a clear mistake. Everyone was looking forward to that broadcast because we all thought that it would go ahead once it was listed on our vugraph schedule page.

As it turned out, all our spectators were disappointed - and with good reason in my view. It is not unreasonable that this comes to the attention of the ACBL so that they can avoid the same mistake next year.

That is what I consider constructive criticism, and there is no reason why the ACBL should take offence.

Roland

yes the ACBL had promoted the event on their web site that it would be available on BBO VuGraph. So someone dropped the ball somewhere I know myself I sat around for about an hour waiting for something to get going on saturday first semifinal session finally came back the next day.

[fred]

helene_t, on Nov 27 2006, 09:58 AM, said:

How would duplicate boards help solve the problems described by Richard? There would still be people on the internet watching the full deals while they were played. Now I give one of my friends who plays in the semi-final GSM receivers in both his shoes and we agree of the following simple protocol: a sting in his left foot means "finese left".

When the boards are not duplicated, the players do not play the same boards at the same time. Here is a possible cheating scenario that could arise:

Suppose that during the first round table 1 is on vugraph playing boards 1, 2, and 3. Someone watches these boards on BBO vugraph from his hotel room and then goes to the playing site and tells his friend "on board 1 EW can make 6D but only if they play N for the Queen of trump".

His friend plays board 1 later in the session and knows what he has to do in order to get a good result.

If all tables play the same boards at the same time this cannot happen.

There is still a danger that a player could receive information about a board via some kind of electronic signal, but the player receiving the signal would have to have some kind of hidden device (using a Blackberry, for example, would not work because other people at the table would see this). Passing meaningful information via a hidden electronic device might not be trivial to begin with, but ACBL will likely be scanning players for such devices before too long.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mycroft]

Hrothgar's "buzzer in the shoe" would be all it takes (two way guess for the queen, finesse LHO vs. squeeze RHO, aggressive vs. passive) - and Vegas cheats have been using those for decades.

It's clear that the solution, if we wish to continue to broadcast highend pairs games, is to play with duplicated boards, everybody playing them at the same time. Barometer would be an interesting, but definately not necessary, addition to the program (and of course it would change the nature of the event!) This is an expense and needs to be planned beforehand (yes, I know the europeans are laughing themselves sick right now, but in the ACBL duplicated boards tends not to happen).

And we may have to have a 30 minute delay in the system, to stop the buzzer-in-the-shoe. On the other hand, the live Vugraph would have to have that as well (remember, all the signaller needs, besides enough bridge knowledge to know what one piece of information would be best to give the player, is a switch in each of *his* shoes - one can almost inconspicuously "tap" the foot without the shoe moving).

I think that, provided it is a consistent delay - so the tempo that is so revealing remains to comment on/in - there wouldn't be too much of a problem with this. If this means that the reporting of the final results is also delayed to ensure that the VuGraph audience isn't "spoiled" on the last round - why anyone would do that I don't know, but I've been a Canadian too long, and seen too many calls to Ontario to get election coverage while the polls are still open in Alberta, to know that somebody, somewhere, will do it - then oh well. Stick it in the Conditions of Contest, so that the players know about it *in advance*, and they can look at the one-to-go when they're done, go to the bar, have a drink, and come back for the results. If they gripe, well, they knew when they entered.

Michael.

[pclayton]

In a semi final match of a major KO, all four tables are playing the same boards in sequence. When I played with screens in Long Beach, we received 16 boards in a pile that we played; they werent sent to the next table, since the other table had their own set.

Vugraphs are more interesting when there is a lag between boards. This opens up the possibility for cheating however, because the extra time gives the crooks more time to transmit info.

My main point about duplicated boards is that I don't think its sacrosanct that each match play the same boards. The more times they are played, the more opportunities there are to send illegal information. I know it makes the Daily Bulletin and the Bridge World articles more readable, but its more problematic from a security standpoint.

Pairs events - even the big ones - have no control over players transmitting data about boards, especially since the hands aren't played at the same time (or am I wrong about this in a National Final like the 3 session LM's?). I seem to remember the need to have bathroom monitors for instance.

[mrdct]

fred, on Nov 28 2006, 11:27 AM, said:

Here is a possible cheating scenario that could arise:

Suppose that during the first round table 1 is on vugraph playing boards 1, 2, and 3. Someone watches these boards on BBO vugraph from his hotel room and then goes to the playing site and tells his friend "on board 1 EW can make 6D but only if they play N for the Queen of trump".

This cheating scenario has little to do with vugraph as exactly the same thing can easily occur if a kibitzer sits down at the table and watches board 1, 2 and 3 and then wanders around the playing room, toilet area or whereever players mingle between rounds and tells his friend "on board 1 EW can make 6D but only if they play N for the Queen of trump".

As I keep saying, proper security measures deal with both the vugraph environment and the non-vugraph environment.

If the ACBL were indeed worried about cheating the Reisinger semi-final due to boards not being played simulatanteously, kibitzers would need to be banned and player movements in between rounds would need to be very tightly controlled. If they didn't do that, they are just acting in fear and ignorance by blocking the vugraph.

[Walddk]

fred, on Nov 28 2006, 06:27 PM, said:

When the boards are not duplicated, the players do not play the same boards at the same time. Here is a possible cheating scenario that could arise....

<snip>

If all tables play the same boards at the same time this cannot happen.

While all this is true, I find it perfectly legitimate to point out that the ACBL erred for more reasons than one:

1. 5 weeks before, the ACBL announced that they would be broadcasting from the semi-finals. I think we all agree that this gave the organizers plenty of time to plan.

2. A couple of days before, and even on the same day, they promoted the event on their web site, again telling everyone that there would be a broadcast from the semi-finals.

3. When the broadcast was due, the table was opened.

4. We had an operator (Sue Grue) ready at the table. Nothing happened, and our operator wasn't even able to tell the audience what had gone wrong.

1 hour later it was finally confirmed that no play would take place at the BBO table due to security risks. The boards were not duplicated. Is it really unreasonable to expect that the organizers knew that well in advance?

Again I think we can agree that they did know. Would it have been too much to ask that someone had told us about it, and also told the operator not to bother? The organizers decided not to have duplicated boards in the semi-finals, fair enough, but then they also knew that they were not going to broadcast.

I agree with you, Fred, that the ACBL does many good things for bridge, but that doesn't mean that one should ignore the obvious errors they make. Did we yet see anyone step forward to tell the world: "Sorry, we could and should have done better than this. We will do all we can to avoid the same mistake next year."

No, we did not. I am not so sure as you are regarding the desire to vugraph the ACBL events. We do not get accurate information until very late (sometimes not at all, sometimes even wrong info). As an example, we were also promised two tables; we only got one. And I know for a fact that they even had a spare operator at hand!

To be honest, I don't think the ACBL cares much about vugraph presentations, and that is a serious mistake in my opinion. It's obvious nice to get all the top class ACBL tournaments on vugraph and we should all be grateful that we do. However, this works both ways:

1. The ACBL gets the opportunity to promote their events in front of thousands of viewers all over the world.

2. For that purpose they can use the BBO software free of charge.

I think the ACBL (like all organizers worldwide) should be grateful too. I don't call the organizers "pathetic idiots", because I don't think they are, but I do think they make mistakes, and this was clearly a significant one.

Roland

[glen]

Fred wondering why picked Vegas and not Hawaii, on Nov 26 2006, 10:52 PM, said:

Believe me, the ACBL does recognize the value of online vugraph in terms of promoting bridge and in terms of serving its members who are not able to attend their big tournaments.

As noted by Fred, there are two more things the ACBL gets when it runs a successful vugraph:

- it gets happier customers: that is ACBL members who pay annual ACBL fees are happy that some of their money is being used to showcase bridge, which many of us believe is a legitmate and necessary use of these funds.
- it promotes the NABCs as world class events, attracting new customers to these events and/or preventing drain to other events (not just promoting bridge, but promoting the NABC itself).

Thus it is in the best interest of the ACBL to care about their vugraph presentations, and I look forward to seeing some constructive steps by them.

[fred]

It is hard to disagree with Roland about one thing: the ACBL clearly made a mistake.

But this does not imply that they do not care about vugraph. I know the people responsible for making vugraph-related decisions and I can assure you that they do care about vugraph (and about security). I am not trying to make excuses for these people or for the ACBL in general, but the fact of the matter is that they have other important things to be concerned about and they are not exactly overwhelmed with resources.

These are smart and dedicated people with good intentions. I suspect they will learn from this mistake and that it will not happen again.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

Back at the beginning of the thread, Gerben wrote "They say players were concerned with security." Perhaps ACBL intended to show the semi-final, considering the security issues to be minor, and didn't anticipate how strongly the players would feel about it. It probably would have been better for them to survey in advance the experts who were likely to make it to the semis, before promising the Vugraph on the web site, but this is a difficult logistical problem.

Another complaint I'm surprised people haven't made is that only one table was shown during the VuGraph of the finals -- last year we had both the open and closed rooms. I was very disappointed when I saw this because I was in Hawaii, spoke to the director who was organizing he Vugraph, and offered to be an operator (I operated during last year's Reisinger), but he told me that he had all he needed. Imagine my surprise when Roland announced at the start of the Vugraph that only one table was being shown due to lack of volunteers!