[fred]

The_Hog, on Oct 18 2009, 06:10 AM, said:

Where we appear not to agree:

1) Stating opinions of cheating publicly without offering any proof is despicable behaviour.

2) That Wolff's opinions can't be criticized nor his approach criticized because he has gravitas. (See point 6 of your post.)

Actually I think that 1) is true and that 2) is false so I think we agree.

I think you have misunderstood my point 6 which suggested that the stature and experience of Wolff and company mean (to me at least) that his opinions are more important than those of Cathy Chua (or me or you or just about anyone else), not that such opinions can't or shouldn't be criticized.

Quote

Actually if you do want gravitas: I assume you are aware of the public challenge made by the late Tim Seres in Australian Bridge when accusations of cheating were first made against the SA? Seres offered a bet of 10,000 pounds if anyone could prove cheating. (That was a lot of money in those days). No one took up the offer. I wonder why? Does Seres have enough gravitas for you?

Maybe Tim made the bet because he thought he would win the bet.

Maybe Tim thought he would win the bet because, even if the allegations were true, they were not provable.

Sounds like a smart bet to me.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[nige1]

John Swanson's site contains interesting excerpts from his excellent book Inside the Bermuda Bowl about The Italian foot soldiers and the Burgay affair.The latter is relevant to this discussion.

Nevertheless, Fred's "no smoke without fire" argument is notorious for generating false positives. It is especially questionable because Americans have accused so many Europeans of cheating on diaphonous evidence. For example, see My review of Swanson's Book. I admire and respect the author, who posted all reviews, uncut, on his site.

[gwnn]

I'll note in passing that it might make sense to address the three hands Mr. Wolff posted on the blog. eg. when someone passed out 1Hxx with a good 4261 with heart AJ. I am curious what is the legitimate explanation for those hands, few as they are. I hope I didn't offend anyone.

[cherdanno]

nige1, on Oct 18 2009, 12:48 PM, said:

Nevertheless, Fred's "no smoke without fire" argument is notorious for generating false positives. It is especially questionable because Americans have accused so many Europeans of cheating on diaphonous evidence. For example, see  My review of Swanson's Book. I admire and respect the author, who posted all reviews, uncut, on his site.

Nigel, I read your review. I don't understand your point. From the above it sounds like your review is evidence that the accusations are based on flimsy evidence.

In the first three examples, there are clear standout leads, or at least clear standout alternatives, and the lead chosen at the table is not among them. If this was a hand on vugraph, and you asked me for a bet, I would have given 15:1 odds against the lead chosen at the table. In the last hand, there is very good bridge logic supporting the lead chosen at the table. I am happy to bet that it would be the majority choice among all expert BBF posters here, if you make it a poll.

[PassedOut]

cherdanno, on Oct 18 2009, 01:38 PM, said:

nige1, on Oct 18 2009, 12:48 PM, said:

Nevertheless, Fred's "no smoke without fire" argument is notorious for generating false positives. It is especially questionable because Americans have accused so many Europeans of cheating on diaphonous evidence. For example, see  My review of Swanson's Book. I admire and respect the author, who posted all reviews, uncut, on his site.

Nigel, I read your review. I don't understand your point. From the above it sounds like your review is evidence that the accusations are based on flimsy evidence.

In the first three examples, there are clear standout leads, or at least clear standout alternatives, and the lead chosen at the table is not among them. If this was a hand on vugraph, and you asked me for a bet, I would have given 15:1 odds against the lead chosen at the table. In the last hand, there is very good bridge logic supporting the lead chosen at the table. I am happy to bet that it would be the majority choice among all expert BBF posters here, if you make it a poll.

The heart lead on #4 was clear. The actual leads on #1, #2, and #3 are hard to believe.

[nige1]

cherdanno, on Oct 18 2009, 01:38 PM, said:

Nigel, I read your review. I don't understand your point. From the above it sounds like your review is evidence that the accusations are based on flimsy evidence.
In the first three examples, there are clear standout leads, or at least clear standout alternatives, and the lead chosen at the table is not among them. If this was a hand on vugraph, and you asked me for a bet, I would have given 15:1 odds against the lead chosen at the table. In the last hand, there is very good bridge logic supporting the lead chosen at the table. I am happy to bet that it would be the majority choice among all expert BBF posters here, if you make it a poll.

PassedOut, on Oct 18 2009, 04:48 PM, said:

The heart lead on #4 was clear. The actual leads on #1, #2, and #3 are hard to believe.

• I don't think all Swanson's suspects were Italian (but I don't have the book to hand).
  
• I wouldn't make any of the chosen leads -- for what that's worth
  
• I just don't regard any of the leads as evidence of cheating.
  
• I would have been happy to take cherdanno's 15:1 odds on the first 2 examples
  
• I think cherdanno's idea of an expert poll on all hands advanced as evidence of cheating would be a good idea.
  
• Nowadays, that is the kind of procedure that a director would follow.

[awm]

I think #2 is a quite normal lead. Leading from a broken three card sequence is not unlikely to give a trick, and the opening side is less likely to have substantial spade length than club length. I'm also not particularly suspicious of #3, where I think leading a heart or trump is quite bad and it is clear to lead a minor suit ace (either minor suit ace seems okay to me).

On #1, I would think that the spade lead is a strong favorite. Of course, it's easy to make a weird lead on occasion (maybe he thought spade jack would score, maybe he had a club in with his spades, maybe he just pulled the wrong card) and this lead did not work out spectacularly well in practice (the contract was just cold). Plus this is not a lead by one of the aforementioned Italians.

Honestly the result on #4 is a little suspicious if they had no discussion/agreement of these doubles. Certainly it's reasonable that doubling 7NT says "do not make a passive lead" but: (1) a diamond lead would be the least passive and was not lead (2) leading the unbid suit would be a fairly normal action without the double (3) many pairs agree that a lightner double asks for the lead of dummy's first-bid suit, for better or worse. It does seem like when a top American player makes an amazing lead it is classed as "good judgment" whereas when a top Italian player makes an amazing lead it is "evidence of cheating." This is not to say that top Italians weren't cheating (or, for that matter, that top Americans weren't cheating) but it takes more than a few hands where some unusual action worked out to prove a cheating allegation.

It's worth mentioning that the Italians have a different lead philosophy from most American experts. Americans tend to be fond of active leads (away from honors) in fairly neutral auctions. The Italians are much more likely to lead from three small, and make passive leads in many neutral sequences. When the American experts get riled up that a passive lead worked and claim that "no expert would make that lead" a lot of times this reflects the difference in lead style.

[nige1]

Jlall, on Oct 17 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

The type of thing Han was talking about (and I also) was intentionally taking advantage of UI.
At the world class level the players are very in tune with what's going on, even if they are lying to themselves and saying the do it subconciously they know they're doing it imo. And many of the ones who do take advantage of UI at that level are probably thinking more about "can I get away with this or not?" again imo.
I agree there are those who bend over backwards when they have UI to not use it, this is how I was taught and I think my personal hero Bob Hamman is the best at this and I'm happy I got to learn a sense of his ethics, but in my experience this is far and away the exception not the rule.
I totally agree with what Fred said, against other world class players these people will be more ethical. This is because they can get away with less, and someone like Fred telling all of his friends that player X is unethical is worse than someone like me saying it. This also doesn't mean they won't do anything against other world class players, there are still things you can get away with.
Likewise I'm sure these people who get away with whatever they can vs me are being even more unethical with people worse/less well known than me. I mean at a regional against a non pro team you could pretty much just take advantage of everything and get away with it. I suspect there are those who do just that.
Unfortunately in bridge a lot of the rules remind me of the honor system in school. That just doesn't work, especially when there is big business and a lot of money on the line. Especially when you are playing against people who you suspect of doing unethical things, or even know they are, but have NO way of getting them for it. I think most people do not have the mental fortitude to keep being ethical in the face of that.

JLall makes thought-provoking points. I agree that the rules contribute to such problems:

Laws of Duplicate, on Introduction,2007, said:

The laws ... are primarily designed not as punishment for irregularities but rather for the rectification of situations where non-offenders may otherwise be damaged. Players should be ready to accept gracefully any rectification or adjusted score awarded by the Director.

Directors have been given considerably more discretionary powers.[SNIP]

Bridge is played in different ways in different countries so the Laws give more power to Regulating Authorities to make controlling regulations.[SNIP]

Thus the law book is

• Based on re-establishing the status quo before an irregularity; rather than deterring the law-breaker or compensating the victim for damage or encouraging players to report irregularities.
  
• Over-reliant on the subjective judgement of directors.
  
• So incomplete that laws need to be supplemented by idiosyncratic local regulations that differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction
  
• Too complex and sophisticated for most players and directors to understand.

[mrdct]

PassedOut, on Oct 18 2009, 04:48 PM, said:

cherdanno, on Oct 18 2009, 01:38 PM, said:

nige1, on Oct 18 2009, 12:48 PM, said:

Nevertheless, Fred's "no smoke without fire" argument is notorious for generating false positives. It is especially questionable because Americans have accused so many Europeans of cheating on diaphonous evidence. For example, see  My review of Swanson's Book. I admire and respect the author, who posted all reviews, uncut, on his site.

Nigel, I read your review. I don't understand your point. From the above it sounds like your review is evidence that the accusations are based on flimsy evidence.

In the first three examples, there are clear standout leads, or at least clear standout alternatives, and the lead chosen at the table is not among them. If this was a hand on vugraph, and you asked me for a bet, I would have given 15:1 odds against the lead chosen at the table. In the last hand, there is very good bridge logic supporting the lead chosen at the table. I am happy to bet that it would be the majority choice among all expert BBF posters here, if you make it a poll.

The heart lead on #4 was clear. The actual leads on #1, #2, and #3 are hard to believe.

Leading is not an exact science as we all know and there can be all sorts of authorised extraneous information floating around that can influence one's selection (e.g. state of the match and opponents' tempo/mannerisms). Sometimes people of all skill levels feel inclined to try something a bit different.

As all of my partners will testify, I'm generally quite a poor opening leader, but fwiw on the three hands where the Blue Team opening leads were considered questionable by John Swanson, the Blue Team lead was my 2nd choice lead on each occassion (although on #3 it would be fair to say that it was a distance 2nd). I can also say that I tried to be as objective as possible in ranking my top 3 lead alternatives and was not purposefully trying to include outrageous or massively contra-indicated leads).

If one were to go through all of the hands for the event in question where the Blue Team was on lead, I would be very surprised if an analyst couldn't find three hands where the Blue Team selected the non-preferred lead (for argument's sake let's define that as the lead selected by 9 out of 10 "world class" experts) and it worked out poorly for the Blue Team.

Finding an anti-percentage lead that happens work three times in an event of several hundred boards is not proof of cheating.

Some of my non-world class analysis of the three questionable leads:

#1: ♣ looks totally wrong and I tend to avoid doubleton leads so it's between ♠J and a ♦. ♠J is what I'd probably do at the table but if I had some doubt in my mind as to the merits of a ♠ lead the ♦8 would be hitting the table as a perfectly defensible passive lead.

#2: I don't want to lead a trump and pick-up that suit for declarer, so a passive middle ♦ is my first choice, but if I'm going to try to get on the front foot with a black suit lead I'm probably going to try a ♠ as I hate it when I lead from QJ9 and find LHO with A10 and RHO with K. Also, the opps didn't explore the possibility of a ♠ fit so I think that increases the chances of partner having something in that suit.

#3: ♥9 would probably hit the table without too much thought, but if I was going to lead something else it would be motivated by a desire to get a look a dummy and still keep my options open to either switch a ♥ to get my ruff or diagnose a minor shortage or cashing minor King. So as to reduce the chances to killing an entry to partners hand or having my own Ace picked-off at trick one, if I was going to lead a minor Ace it would be the ♣A.

[gnasher]

Roughly how many hands are there in total which have been presented as evidence of cheating by the Blue Team (excluding the foot-tappers)? I assume that there are more than the three in Nigel's review and the one additional one cited by Wolff on his wife's blog, but how many more?

[hanp]

nige1, on Oct 18 2009, 07:43 PM, said:

Jlall, on Oct 17 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

The type of thing Han was talking about (and I also) was intentionally taking advantage of UI.
At the world class level the players are very in tune with what's going on, even if they are lying to themselves and saying the do it subconciously they know they're doing it imo. And many of the ones who do take advantage of UI at that level are probably thinking more about "can I get away with this or not?" again imo.
I agree there are those who bend over backwards when they have UI to not use it, this is how I was taught and I think my personal hero Bob Hamman is the best at this and I'm happy I got to learn a sense of his ethics, but in my experience this is far and away the exception not the rule.
I totally agree with what Fred said, against other world class players these people will be more ethical. This is because they can get away with less, and someone like Fred telling all of his friends that player X is unethical is worse than someone like me saying it. This also doesn't mean they won't do anything against other world class players, there are still things you can get away with.
Likewise I'm sure these people who get away with whatever they can vs me are being even more unethical with people worse/less well known than me. I mean at a regional against a non pro team you could pretty much just take advantage of everything and get away with it. I suspect there are those who do just that.
Unfortunately in bridge a lot of the rules remind me of the honor system in school. That just doesn't work, especially when there is big business and a lot of money on the line. Especially when you are playing against people who you suspect of doing unethical things, or even know they are, but have NO way of getting them for it. I think most people do not have the mental fortitude to keep being ethical in the face of that.

JLall makes thought-provoking points. I agree that the rules contribute to such problems:

Laws of Duplicate, on Introduction,2007, said:

The laws ... are primarily designed not as punishment for irregularities but rather for the rectification of situations where non-offenders may otherwise be damaged. Players should be ready to accept gracefully any rectification or adjusted score awarded by the Director.

Directors have been given considerably more discretionary powers.[SNIP]

Bridge is played in different ways in different countries so the Laws give more power to Regulating Authorities to make controlling regulations.[SNIP]

Thus the law book is

• Based on re-establishing the status quo before an irregularity; rather than deterring the law-breaker or compensating the victim for damage or encouraging players to report irregularities.
  
• Over-reliant on the subjective judgement of directors.
  
• So incomplete that laws need to be supplemented by idiosyncratic local regulations that differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction
  
• Too complex and sophisticated for most players and directors to understand.

Are you a fool or what?

Justin's complaint about the bridge rules has nothing to do with how they are written. The problem is that people are themselves responsible for playing honestly and it is pretty much impossible to prove that someone else is cheating.

Justin's post is so clear that you must either not have read his post, or you did and you know very well that your point does not agree with his.

Reminds me of Fred's "either you lie or you are a moron".

[nige1]

Jlall, on Oct 17 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

[SNIP] Unfortunately in bridge a lot of the rules remind me of the honor system in school. That just doesn't work, especially when there is big business and a lot of money on the line. [SNIP]

nige1, on Oct 18 2009, 07:43 PM, said:

JLall makes thought-provoking points. I agree that the rules contribute to such problems [SNIP]

hanp, on Oct 19 2009, 04:11 AM, said:

Are you a fool or what? Justin's complaint about the bridge rules has nothing to do with how they are written. The problem is that people are themselves responsible for playing honestly and it is pretty much impossible to prove that someone else is cheating. Justin's post is so clear that you must either not have read his post, or you did and you know very well that your point does not agree with his. Reminds me of Fred's "either you lie or you are a moron".

I'd rather be called a fool or a moron than a liar. In view of the fate that usually befalls whistleblowers in all walks of life, including Bridge, I commend JLall for his bravery and altruism. IMO infraction frequency is directly related to the state of the rules. For instance ...

• Complex and sophisticated rules are hard to understand, even for experts and directors. Simpler rules would foster fewer infractions from ignorance, carelessness and rationalisation.
  
• Simpler rules would also engender less unauthorised information. Hence provide less opportunity for the kind of deliberate cheating, high-lighted by JLall.
  
• Less subjective rules would mean more consistency. Secretary-bird rhetoric would be less effective. So decisions would seem fairer.
  
• More deterrent rules would make law-breaking less profitable.

rules = laws, regulations, WBFLC minutes, conditions of contest, and so on..

[awm]

Perhaps the middle ground between what Justin said and what Nige1 is saying, is that some of the problem comes from the difficulty of doing anything about opponents who are unethical and/or cheating. Like Justin says, when you are playing against people who are bending the rules and you feel like you cannot do anything about it, it becomes tempting to bend the rules yourself. And even if you're in the minority who would absolutely never bend the rules, it makes you less eager to play bridge since you'll often get cheated out of good results by less ethical opponents.

Thus it would help if there were ways to do something about unethical opponents. This would deter them from being unethical, and also deter the larger number of people who would normally be ethical but become tempted to cheat by the prevalence of playing against cheaters.

Obviously there's only so much that can be done. And I disagree with Nige1 about the remedy being changes to the Laws -- it's more about conditions of contest. In particular:

(1) There should be a threshold whereby, if a certain number of recorder forms alleging unethical behavior are filed about a particular player or pair, there is an automatic investigation. In the current ACBL approach the recorder just records, and only an accusation by a "high profile" player or administrator can trigger an investigation. Since players are less likely to behave badly against "high profile" opponents (see Justin and Fred's points) this means a lot of stuff goes unpoliced, and also discourages filing of recorder forms since they have no noticeable effect.

(2) If someone is convicted of cheating/unethical behavior then this should be made public. Often the publicity is worse than the punishment! This makes sure everyone knows that the system is working and people are being disciplined. In the current system, aside from a small number of high profile cases, names and details are normally kept quiet. This also makes it believable that totally innocent pairs have been found guilty of cheating, since rumors tend to bounce around and no one knows for sure what happened.

(3) Serious events should have screens and barometer-style play whenever possible. Europe is moving towards this, if not already there. ACBL is dragging its feet outside the big three team events.

[Cascade]

Trinidad, on Oct 18 2009, 04:48 AM, said:

Using Unautharized Information (UI) is not cheating.

I don't think this statement is accurate.

There is a whole range of Unauthorized Information usage from deliberate cheating to subconscious usage (Fred mentions this above).

There are players who never bend over backwards (my paraphrase of what the law requires) to not take account of UI.

There are players who frequently vary their action "to bury" (to quote another poster - although I think the quote is a little harsh as some UI is not deliberate) their partner after UI.

There are situations where it is clear cut what the UI suggests and it is easy to avoid what is suggested.

There are situations where it is far from clear what the UI suggests or where in the presence of UI it is far from clear where the boundary lies. Almost all players in this situation will occasionally fall on the wrong side of the boundary. The exception would be for players that bend over backwards too far to avoid problems.

There are players that are very good at reading subconscious or subtle signals. This is a great bridge skill when you are reading your opponents but not so legitmate when you are reading your partner. I suspect some very good players probably usually subconsciously have problems with this. If subconscious then it is hard to do anything about on the other hand perhaps these players need to be actively doing more to avoid taking account of information from partner.

IMO using UI can be anything from blatant cheating to innocent mistakes.

Sadly I think there is no doubt that there are some pairs or players including some very 'good' players that happily, deliberately, regularly and illegally use UI to their advantage. Like other cheating examples in this thread specific allegations can or would be very hard to prove.

[Trinidad]

Cascade, on Oct 19 2009, 08:43 PM, said:

Trinidad, on Oct 18 2009, 04:48 AM, said:

Using Unautharized Information (UI) is not cheating.

I don't think this statement is accurate.

There is a whole range of Unauthorized Information usage from deliberate cheating to subconscious usage (Fred mentions this above).

Wayne, Did you see my reply to nige1? It starts with:"

Quote

Let me clarify my position a little bit.

Obviously if the use of UI satisfies the four conditions that you give, it is cheating. But more than 99.9 % of the UI cases don't satisfy your conditions.

If you read that, I think that you will agree with me that we actually pretty much agree.

The text that you quote was a reaction to a post where someone proclaimed that the use of UI was equal to cheating. I certainly didn't intend to claim that it was never cheating, I just claimed that many times it was just too difficult for the player to do it right. Call it ignorance, foolishness, adrenaline rush, insanity, poor judgement, whatever... Using UI is very rarely premeditated, conscious and deliberate and thus very rarely cheating.

The reason is simple. By using UI, you can only win against palooka's. (And you would have won against them anyway.) Against a mildly seasoned bridge player, you will lose when you use UI.
If you win, they will call the TD and you get an AS which, at best, will be the score that you would have gotten without using the UI. So, on average, you will lose. (*)

If your action was unfortunate enough to lose, they are unfriendly enough to not allow you to undo. You are stuck with your bad score.

There are a couple of difficult UI problems left over. These are the ones that are hard to catch. Think about the play from a singleton or doubleton. I don't doubt for a second that there are players roaming the tournament scene who use that kind of UI... and get away with it. But again, against seasoned opponents, they won't. They will call the TD, kibitzers will testify, and they are caught.

(*) This is one reason why I don't like the principle behind weighted adjusted scores. Fortunately, in practice, TDs and ACs give the NOS some benefit of the doubt in their weighting method, making sure that offenders end up on the losing side of the equation.

Rik

[Trinidad]

BTW, I am still interested in the answer to Andy's question:

gnasher, on Oct 19 2009, 09:20 AM, said:

Roughly how many hands are there in total which have been presented as evidence of cheating by the Blue Team (excluding the foot-tappers)?  I assume that there are more than the three in Nigel's review and the one additional one cited by Wolff on his wife's blog, but how many more?

Rik

[cherdanno]

Trinidad, on Oct 19 2009, 05:09 PM, said:

There are a couple of difficult UI problems left over. These are the ones that are hard to catch. Think about the play from a singleton or doubleton. I don't doubt for a second that there are players roaming the tournament scene who use that kind of UI... and get away with it. But again, against seasoned opponents, they won't. They will call the TD, kibitzers will testify, and they are caught.

Well, apparently at least some world class players think this is not true.

[MFA]

Trinidad, on Oct 20 2009, 12:11 AM, said:

BTW, I am still interested in the answer to Andy's question:

gnasher, on Oct 19 2009, 09:20 AM, said:

Roughly how many hands are there in total which have been presented as evidence of cheating by the Blue Team (excluding the foot-tappers)?  I assume that there are more than the three in Nigel's review and the one additional one cited by Wolff on his wife's blog, but how many more?

Rik

The Swanson book contains a good dozen, I think. He is partly referring to an article by Sheinwold about the 1958 Bermuda Bowl final. Swanson's chapter on the Blue Team didn't impress me that much the two times I've read it, and it doesn't now either when I make another quick run through his hands.

[Zelandakh]

fred, on 2009-October-16, 17:48, said:

I am surprised by your impression. FWIW my impression is that the game is very clean at its highest levels these days.

I have had a lot of experience playing against almost all of the world's most successful professional partnerships during the past 10+ years. In that time, the number of leading pro pairs who have left me with a clear impression of "cheating" could be counted on one finger - I don't recall how many hearts that shows in the R-S methods...

Almost all of the others top pro pairs (probably several dozen) have left me with a clear impression of "honest".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Time for a little necro action. I found this post from Fred mildly ironic given the events of the last couple of years. Even Justin only appears to have been suspecting fellow players of minor actions at this time and not of any signalling. It would perhaps be interesting to find out when that perception changed.