[Vampyr]

mgoetze, on 2015-September-14, 17:16, said:

What I'm less sure about is whether the sponsors will be willing to pay people to play in such an environment.

Yes, I have been wondering about this too, especially in the case of playing sponsors. And one could hardly blame them.

[Fluffy]

My mom told me that old players rejected bidding boxes loudly at the club, and threatened not to play if they were forced to use them. 5 months later they would borrow them for their friendly game near the swimmingpool.

I bet something similar happened to screens also.

[1eyedjack]

Fluffy, on 2015-September-15, 02:56, said:

My mom told me that old players rejected bidding boxes loudly at the club, and threatened not to play if they were forced to use them. 5 months later they would borrow them for their friendly game near the swimmingpool.

My guess is that they were sold on them once they realised that they didn't have to work out the score for 3SXX+2, but just looked at the back of the card.

[shyams]

There was a lot of resistance on BridgeWinners to a suggestion of a fully digital solution for bridge.

And although I absolutely like hrothgar's solution, it appears likely that the world-class players don't want to eliminate the tactile element of handling playing cards and the 'table feel' element of playing face-to-face bridge.

A "half-way house" solution could be to use a digital platform only for the bidding portion.

• Players pull their cards from the board, close the aperture and look at their cards
  
• Dealer picks the ipad/tablet on their side of the partition and makes his call. His screenmate does the same.
  
• The calls are electronically transferred to the other side, they make their calls, and so on
  
• Bidding stops when all calls are made. No choice to pick up bidding cards to indicate a pass!
  
• Opening leader makes the lead, then presses a button on their ipad/tablet (to archive all bidding except the final contract) and raises the aperture

[Zelandakh]

shyams, on 2015-September-19, 10:52, said:

There was a lot of resistance on BridgeWinners to a suggestion of a fully digital solution for bridge.

And although I absolutely like hrothgar's solution, it appears likely that the world-class players don't want to eliminate the tactile element of handling playing cards and the 'table feel' element of playing face-to-face bridge.

The solution suggested here by me (and others) does not necessarily eliminate handling cards nor having one opponent visible for "table feel". It simply involves the screen becoming a physical separation to a different room rather than just a barrier to vision.

[glen]

I find the "dozen or so" a vast understatement, given the scope of the 3 pairs cheating. The amount of medals that need to be redistributed is staggering

[cherdano]

awm, on 2015-September-14, 09:51, said:

The cases so far really rest on video evidence. It is theoretically possible to catch someone statistically, but in practice allowing this as formal "proof" will be disaster for the bridge community.

Disagree 100%. Any pair cheating as blatantly on opening leads as F-S or the doctors could easily be caught if we had large enough data sets. There are just a number of caveats:

• The statistical analysis has to be quite sophisticated (I can think of a number of factors on has to control for).
  
• One needs large reliable data sets of many hands including both the auction and the opening lead. (This could of course be taken care of with an electronic playing environment that some BBF poster has been arguing for since many years ago.)

[hotShot]

A first step could be to put a flat-screen on each side of the screen and display the the bids made and the cards played.
This would eliminate all kinds of placing the cards or finger signals.
Using bidding cards and decks with RFID chips and putting detectors on the table should be no problem.

So you could keep the tactile aspect and still get a perfect electronic record.
This record could even record a timestamp so you could analyze variation in timing.

Statistical analysis of all deals played at top level would provide data about what range of deviation can be considered usual.

[Fluffy]

Be careful HotShot, your sample data might contain more cheaters than you expect

I am shocked that so many top players oppose, its like, what are they scared off?
I think this is just natural protection. They are on top, even closer to the very top since 2 pairs above them are gone, and they don't want changes.
It might be that I am biased and since I am not yet on one of the big teams I want things to change and maybe climb a bit more.

I really doubt that "card feeling" is really what they oppose to, it sounds like a childish excuse to me. I bet many have other selfish reasons..