Accused of cheating for a lead

[Free]

It seems quite obvious to lead a trump here imo. Dummy looks like being short in ♦, and declarer will always finesse the right side anyway if it's necessary, after ruffing some ♦s... Accusing anyone from leading a ♥ is plain ridiculous!

 

As noted by others, the bidding of NS looks a lot more like cheating. If opener had singleton ♦ I might agree with his leap to 4♥. But with a balanced minimum hand and a partner bidding 6-9, it's crazy! South is bidding even worse than an absolute beginner.

Maybe they start accusing people because they know they cheat on themselves and they sure aren't alone. :)

 

The least I can say is that they don't know ANYTHING about bridge and/or cheating.

[kenberg]

This last point of Free's bears repeating. If they are cheating they are doing a lousy job of it. It suggests that they aren't. If they are, it's really embarrassing.

[kenberg]

To turn that around a little, recently in a tourney someone vaguely hinted maybe my partner and I had an open phone line. The ound changed before I had a chance to reply but I was going to suggest they look at my defense on a board from the previous round. It was bad enough as it was, but if I had inside information I would ahve to have been a total idiot.

 

K

[glen]

...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. ...

If this was an ACBL tourney with a paid TD, then:

 

1) West should not have had to "defend her honor" - the TD should have shutdown all open dialogue, imposed a Zero Tolerance penalty on NS for openly suggesting cheating, and forced S to retract his/her statement if NS wished to continue playing.

 

2) After discussion was shut down, the TD should have quickly determined that there was no evidence of cheating, and then should have openly stated such.

 

3) The TD should not have "missed entirely everything else about the hand", unless the BBO software does not allow them to see the full hand. Also the TD should have investigated the NS bidding to determine if NS were relatively new to bridge - if so, the TD would educate the pair about not saying somebody was cheating, and might even rescind the ZT penalty - if the pair was not new and not alerting what should have been then some more of the book would be thrown at them.

 

4) "...kibitzers at the table, but none of them even hinted to the director..." - the kibitzers should stay quiet, unless the TD invites them to contribute.

 

In tourneys with paid TDs, these situations can be quickly defused by a TD with a firm hand and the necessary knowledge of bridge and procedures.

 

If the above was followed, then:

W would not have had bad feelings after the tourney

S would understand the proper way to vent

 

When a TD does not handle the situation, then

W rightly feels hurt and did not enjoy the tourney experience

S feels free to openly accuse others

Silliness continues...

[Stephen Tu]

There's a good old saying something like "never abscribe to malice, what can be attributed to stupidity". Whenever opponents do something very strange that works out great, I just assume they are bad players who got lucky, it is almost always wrong to assume they are cheating. Browsing through their other results will usually confirm this, lots of weird stuff that doesn't work, just your bad luck they got their top against you. It would take many boards of weird stuff working, without instances of weird stuff backfiring, before I would take any cheating accusation seriously.

[bid_em_up]

So, let me see if I have this right.

 

Holding honors in both black suits that have been bid by North, and North has reasonably shown a hand that is 4-3-1-5 or 4-3-2-4 most likely, opposite what is supposed to be a weakish hand in the South, a competent West decides to lead trump to cut down on possible ruffs in dummy and is accused of cheating?

 

This, when South has A) misbid his hand, B ) misplayed his hand, and C) violated every rules of ethics when he made his accusation?

 

Oh, Please.

 

I sincerely hope that South has been banned from BBO, or at least, severely reprimanded.

 

jmoo.

[pigpenz]

well looking at that hand i would expect dummy to have a singleton or doubleton diamond, i see nothing wrong with a trump lead.

[keylime]

I'd be torching the accusers at this point - completely unfounded waste of breath. Matter of fact, if this did happen in ACBL the accuser should be sent in from of a C and E hearing and asked specifically how their psuedo-expert, piece of %^$ reasoning can justify this outlandish statement of falsehood. ACBL TD'S - START ENFORCING THE DAMN ZT POLICIES FOR ONCE!

 

When the ACBL decides to bar the players from slandering in essence, fellow customers, will be day the game markedly improves. Drop the hammer on this individual - AND MAKE IT VERY EXPLICIT that this conduct is not permitted.

 

I am an ACTIVE proponent of trump leads. I table one right here, right now.

 

If W-E was REALLY cheating, why didn't they lead a CLUB?

[pigpenz]

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.

 

.

sometimes people are just really bad bidders....like your example had open 2 spades and rebid 3 spades then we bid game, next hand same person bid 4 hearts to openers one hearet making 12 tricks when there was 13 off the top...oh well.