Accused of cheating for a lead

[inquiry]

As you know, the BBO seriously frowns on public accusatations of cheating. You simply are not allowed to make them publically. Write to abuse at bridgebase.com or report them in private to your TD and move on. Here is an interesting hand where such a public allegation was made (all four players will remain nameless)...

 

[hv=d=w&v=a&s=sq42h983dt432ck86]133|100|Scoring: IMP

West North East South

 

 1♣    Pass  1♥    Pass

 1♠    Pass  2♥    Pass

 4♥   

 

what do you lead? Which lead do you think is most likely to get you accused of cheating if it turns out marginally well? Which least likely?[/hv]

 

After we ponder this situation, there will be a part two.

[JohnnyH7]

I would lead a trump.

 

I think the SQ or the CK would be most likely to get you accused of cheating if it worked.

 

I think a red suit would never get you accused of cheating.

[hrothgar]

I would lead a trump.

 

I think the SQ or the CK would be most likely to get you accused of cheating if it worked.

 

I think a red suit would never get you accused of cheating.

I agree with Johnny that a trump lead looks best.

I also concur that a leading either red suit seems very unlikely to case a complaint.

 

As for the cheating accusation:

 

I prefer a Club to a Spade. Either lead could work if partner has a fitting honor. The club could also work if LHO has AQ and is forced to make an immediate guess in Clubs.

 

So I'd guess that a Spade lead produce the complaint.

[Al_U_Card]

I like a Diamond lead here. There is no reason to lead a black suit and a trump tends to make his life easy if pard has the stiff K or Q.....

[inquiry]

I like a Diamond lead here. There is no reason to lead a black suit and a trump tends to make his life easy if pard has the stiff K or Q.....

Not to get involved in the discussion, but part of the title was about discuss auction. How many diamonds do you expect dummy to hold?

[mcphee]

I do not think a trump lead will be effective to be honest. I might try some Qs lead getting ready to say, sorry partner. A slow QS will get the accusations I bet, or the C king.

[whereagles]

I like a Diamond lead here.  There is no reason to lead a black suit and a trump tends to make his life easy if pard has the stiff K or Q.....

Not to get involved in the discussion, but part of the title was about discuss auction. How many diamonds do you expect dummy to hold?

Dummy might have 2 in case opener has a 4324 balanced with 18-19 and couldn't stop bidding game :ph34r:

[inquiry]

 [hv=d=n&v=a&n=sak85hat4dj5cj953&w=sq42h983dt432ck86&e=st763h76dq76cat42&s=sj9hkqj52dak98cq7]399|300|Scoring: IMP

West North East South

 

    -     1♣   Pass   1♥

  Pass   1♠   Pass   2♥

  Pass   4♥   Pass   Pass

  Pass

 

Bidding is all "natural". I think we have gone far enough. Now for the rest of the story. The opening lead was a trump. On the hand, the worse lead is SPADE that allows two overtricks, any other lead it will make one overtrick.

[/hv]

 

Play

H3 H4 H6 HK

DA D4 D5 D6

DK D2 DJ D7

D9 D3 HT DQ

SA S6 S9 S2

SK S3 SJ S4

S5 S7 H2 SQ

D8 DT HA C4

S8 ST H5 HQ <<-- give up self trump promotion instead of a C pitch to make one overtrick.

 

The declarer here accused WEST of cheating for leading a trump, as in his view this cost him a trick (it reality it should not). So director is looking at the hands and trying to see if any evidence EW cheated in finding the trump lead. What do you think of South's preemptive attack on WEST on this hand and any other comments about this hand?

[Chamaco]

Choices, in order of preference:

 

a. trump

b. diamond

c. low spade

d. low club

[luis]

I would lead a spade here, the queen being a good option in case opener has a singleton jack.

Dummy is either 4-3-1-5 or 4-3-2-4, in both cases to defeat 4♥ I need to stablish some spade tricks before declarer can discard them in the clubs, the location of the club king seems to be very bad so an agressive lead is probably needed, a trump looks too passive with the club threat and might blow a trump trick while a diamond will be a waste of tempo when dummy has only 1.

 

I think:

A spade or the spade queen might be a good agressive lead

A diamond (unbid suit) is probably "defaultish" and can't lead to anything but it can be an option for some players.

A trump looks to be too dangerous but some people can lead it to stop diamond ruffs in dummy overlooking that with a singleton diamond dummy has 5 clubs and declarer's plan will be to stablish the club suit.

 

The only lead I would consider suspicious is a club. A club can only work when pd has Ax of clubs.

 

I will strongly hate to think somebody found the spade queen lead strange here because it makes a lot of sense to me, it is agressive yes, but has a purpose and a logic behind.

 

Luis

[Al_U_Card]

Sounds like slander to me. The most common hand shape is 4432. Opener could be 4333 but for sure he has at least 2 diamonds. Getting your tricks before they go away is a good practice. Giving up a trick is part of the game. Trump is a "no mental effort" type of lead so why even consider that it would be cheating?

[kenberg]

Most often I expect dummy to hit with 4-2-3-4 but of course 4-3-2-4 is also fairly common and good old 4-3-3-3 is possible. It's possible that a trump lead will cost a trick, but not likely. There is a serious possibility it will prevent a ruff.

 

So I lead a trump. I suppose leading the 9 and then the 3 might help partner with the count, but I am leading the 3.

 

I cannot imagine leading any black card. It is true that dummy might hit with a great club suit, and we find that we should have started a spade, but I am not doing it.

 

I am also not accusing anyone of cheating if they choose to do it.

 

 

There have been various odd occurrences at the table. Sometimes I look up how these folks do afterwards. Usually not well at all. Some people just do a lot of really odd things. Maybe I do some really odd things. Many years ago I was playing against some jerk who bid 4S after my parner had opened a weak 2. I led a diamond which turned out well for our side. He was dripping with sarcasm as he asked whether we played that a 2H opening bid asked for a diamond lead. This just isn't right.

 

On the other hand, I really would like to see opponents stop hesitating when they have nothing to think about. I have just about come to the conclusioin that if you are developing a suit and an opponent hesitates before playing, it guarantees a stiff. If folks wanted to stop doing that, it would be nice.

 

Ken

[hotShot]

I would lead:

a) trump

Because i don't want west to ruff something, and it is unlikely to help opps.

:ph34r: ♠

Because there is a chance to promote partners spade

c) ♣

This might not be a real suit, but it is less likely to grant opps an extra finesse

d) ♦

West is short in ♦ if partner misses values, they are behind him. I don't want to help opps.

[kenberg]

My comment about doing odd things was before I saw that Luis led the Q of spades. indeed. Maybe he is right. It wouldn't occur to me to do it, but maybe it should. At any rate it is not grounds for accusing anyone of anything.

[david_c]

Perhaps Ben's point is that North-South is the pair whose actions look suspicious on this hand. It would be very reasonable to investigate them further, whereas the allegations against West are clearly unfounded.

 

And I would lead a trump too. Second choice a small spade. Third choice the ♠Q (I could never bring myself to actually do this).

[rona_]

Is 2 ♥ forcing? I would pass 2♥. Isn't the bidding a little strange?

[luis]

I agree the bidding is worth a serious investigation of the NS pair.

[Walddk]

Let me add two points here:

 

1. Declarer should accuse himself of not knowing anything about bridge. He rebid 2♥ on a 16 count.

2. When he has learned the basics, he can turn his attention to his partner for raising a weak rebid with a minimum.

 

And finally: accusing any opponent, in casu West, of cheating is a serious offence and is totally unfounded here. You'd better have some pretty good evidence before you accuse anyone of cheating! By the way, this view is also clearly outlined in the Rules of this Site.

 

Roland

[kenrexford]

In my job (criminal defense), the best street defense is to accuse the police of misconduct. Sounds like the street defense was used here.

[whereagles]

I guess NS complained because some people bitch just for the sake of it :)

 

If this was some appeals committee, I'd deem appeal without merit and assign NS a procedural penalty for undisclosed partnership agreements.

[inquiry]

Ok, we are now at the point of the post. There are several.

 

The first is that public accusations of cheating are wrong.

 

The second is that many people report to the TD's and to ABUSE hands they are certain are evidence of cheating. This south claimed to be certain that no one would lead a trump here (maybe this was to deflect his partners from noticing his misplay that cost a certain overtrick?)

 

The director went to the table and spent his time discovering the "facts" and (I assume) ruled no evidence WEST cheated when she "found" the trump lead. In all the commotion and discussing, the director never even noticed NS;s odd bidding (I eventually discussed this hand with him).

 

The NS bidding was, well, non-traditional as a few have pointed out. Responder with a good 16 hcp and good suit bids a non-forcing 2H and his partner with a minimum opening leaps to game. South, with extra's galore tamely passes rather than making a slam move on the assumption his partner must ahve a great hand. How did North know to bid game rather than pass. How did South know north was broke for his strong auction? Were NS here cheating? We really have no idea and it would be likewise wrong to accuse them in public (hence no names, no dates, this occured in the past). Did EW accuse them publically of cheating? No. Did East or West turn NS into the director or to abuse for cheating? Apparently not,

 

But here in a nutshell is massive problem abuse and TD's face. I can tell you that south thought WEST cheated. West had to defend her honor and the table could have become unpleasant. The director focussed on the allegation when he attended the table, and missed entirely everything else about the hand. So there are numerous (very numerous) false accusations of cheating, and potential evidence of possible cheating goes either un-noticed or un-reported. I found the entire episode an example of why many people think cheaters get away with cheating on BBO. Nothing seemed to convince south West made a normal lead, there were kibitzers at the table (as well as EW), but none of them event hinted to the director that it was NS, not EW that perhaps needed a look.

 

Abuse, TD's, and yellows get reports of cheating all the time. All are investigated, most are like the accusation against EW here, groundless. But when the reporter sees teh "cheater" still online they think abuse did nothing. In fact, abuse investigates,

 

As I mentioned, no one turned the NS pair in, and if they had there are at least three possibilities for NS. 1) they are beginners and have no idea how to bid, 2) they are experienced players who play some odd bidding system they forgot to alert, 3) they are beginners who decided to cheat (better players who cheat are not this obvious about their cheating).

 

I think the declarer's play to 4H combined with the certainty that west would never lead a trump if not cheating strongly suggest they are not better players who forgot to alert some exotic system. But it will take digging and investigation to determine if either of the alternatives apply or if there is some fourth explanation.

[Al_U_Card]

1. Declarer should accuse himself of not knowing anything about bridge. He rebid 2♥ on a 16 count.

2. When he has learned the basics, he can turn his attention to his partner for raising a weak rebid with a minimum.

Isn't self-accuse a sin? :) I don't know who the TD was but he may be in need of a refresher course.....but nonetheless this humorous vignette belies the rank undercurrent of intolerance that pervades most human endeavors. Sad that we cannot protect ourselves even in this sanctum.

[barmar]

The cheating accusation does make it sound like these are weak players. Most experienced players have heard the aphorism "when in doubt, lead trumps", and know that it tends to be applied more than appropriate. But rules of thumb like this cause many people to lead trumps whenever there isn't some really clear killing lead, so it's hard to imagine how this could be cheating.

 

Also, would deliberate cheaters call the TD to the table, risking him noticing their suspicious auction? This reminds me of some of the stupid criminal stories.

[kenberg]

There probably is some cheating on BBO. (Call me a cynic). However, there are also some folks with really weird ideas, at least by my lights.

 

Yesterday:

 

Uncontested auction:

P 1S

4S P

 

 

Dummy came down with an opening hand and a stiff heart.

 

We beat it 1.

 

Afterwards, I just had to ask: Are you guys playing precision? Nope. SAYC. Not that precision would explain the inital pass but maybe the preemptive jump to 4.

 

Declarer sent me a message that he was a sub. I believe him. I told him I couldn't make much of the bidding but figured it really wasn't my business. Of course this technically isn't correct.

 

 

 

Today:

 

Uncontested:

 

1D 1S

1N 2H

4H

 

 

Making 6. The 4H bidder had a minimum, but no matter. The 2H bidder had a 16 count or thereabouts, with diamonds and a stiff club.

 

 

And so on.

 

These both were in acbl tournaments.

 

Of course the auction Ben presents is crazy. I doubt it's a conspiracy, just crazy. The idea of calling for a director and fussing because of a trump lead is reprehensible, and this they should be told. Their bidding? Who knows.

 

There is something called standard bidding, at least in some circumstances. Many folks who play are unaware of any of the tenets. Personally, I am inclined to let it be.

 

Mostly, if you check later on the results, these folks don't do well. Think of them as bridge leprechauns, wandering through the meadow handing out tops and occassional bottoms. They are not cheating, or at least not exactly. I have known more than a few players who "just can't understand" why some bid should be alertable since they are sure their way is standard, and no amount of correction from any authority is going to change their minds.

 

It perhaps would be good if some tournaments told some players to go elsewhere, but really this is not the BBO spirit. I think the acbl planned to have life master pairs (unfortunately this would not be that much of a barrier) but I am not sure that it worked out.

 

 

Hesitating with singletons or in other straightforward situations is fairly rampant. Blatant collaboritive cheating, I think, is not.

 

If I come to believe that a pair is really up to no good, I'll report them. Hasn't happened yet. Might be an idea to watch this pair though. Just pour a scotch first.

 

 

K

[Al_U_Card]

Similar thing happened to me in a tourney. The 2H repeat (After 1x-1H-1NT-2H) was raised to 3 by the minimum opener and then responder bid 4 making 6!!! He had a 17 count and when his pard complained he said that his 2H bid was not even invitational but forcing! I think that these beginners recall that a (new) suit at the 2 level is forcing (since it is "new" to opener it cannot be passed...lol) . Not cheating just ignorance but understandable when you consider all of the info that these people have to assimilate.