aurora1920

Aurora1920 - As a purely sociable bridge player, the more I hear about competitive bridge (with or without $) the happier I am it doesn't interest me. What kind of person gets satisfaction out of winning by cheating? Like playing golf and cheating. Or cheating by peaking doing a Soduku. How can any NORMAL person get personal satisfaction out of that? They are weird people--not worth hanging out with. They're the kind that if you eat out with them in a group don't tip and count on the rest to do it for them! Or disappear when the check comes. Are the dollars that big on internet bridge that they cheat on line purely for the money? I don't understand the ramifications of the penalties you're considering, but with my estimation of the human nature aspect, I'd make the penalty both costly and humiliating and only one chance before you get tossed out. There's no percentage in keeping characters like this in your game--they'll be sure to find some other way to cheat. Probably in the DNA. It is amazing, even amongst little old ladies like me, at marathons and other competitive events (not like ACBL stuff) or involving money, some will cheat. To cheat in a sociable situation like our kind of bridge? To me that's slightly sick. How could one ever trust such a person as a friend again? I'll stick to may dollar donation games -- divided up for prizes 1, 2 sometimes 3 and always a dollar for last in place so loser doesn't pay for a lousy game experience. Love to win, but don't mind losing--that's the best attitude. Or rather, MIND LOSING but not enough to degrade myself by cheating.

I browse around in these blogs about competitive bridge even though I've no interest in ever playing it, because I've written a book, and now have a blog (http://bridgetable.net). My cause is to promote sociable bridge (and that will grow serious bridge as well) and I frequently say "there are two kinds of bridge--serious and sociable." Now I find out here, there's two kinds of serious bridge--friendly duplicate and deadly duplicate. Here's excerpt from recent NY Times article about Dr. Marty Seligman, a psychologist and ardent bridge player, on why some people "keep joylessly playing bridge?" [sounds like category 2 players.] It was a blog by Linda Lee that alerted me to the article's existence. Dr. Seligman noticed them at bridge tournaments, "They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn't play to make money or make friends. They didn't savor that feeling of total engagement . . . psychologists call flow . . . they were quite willing to win ugly, sometimes EVEN WHEN THAT MEANT CHEATING." [caps are mine reflecting my surprise at the statement.] "They wanted to win for its own sake even if it brought no positive emotion . . . They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself." That's a fancy word for something needed, wanted by human beings. But how can winning "ugly" by cheating give any NORMAL person a feeling of accomplishment? At some level you must know you're a fraud. Seems to me as total outsider that those willing to cheat to win, and those who've become too friendly in their duplicate games, need to be ignored (or form their own organizations/tournaments and ACBL concern itself with what's left.