No more kibitzing at tournaments

[PaulSK]

I much prefer playing the tournaments to just playing 'at a table'. It's much easier to have the system get opponents for me and there's never a problem of someone deciding to leave 'the table'.

 

But I often have to log on after a tournament has started, and then I like to watch a friend (and nag him when he blows a hand).

 

No more. All kibitzing is disallowed at ACBL tournaments, says ACBL_16. He told me there was 'too much' cheating. He had to stop talking to me after one or two exchanges (for which I do not criticize him -- he was running a 50-table game and had plenty to keep him busy) but I think it merits more discussion and perhaps a report.

 

What cheating did BBO find? How could they tell?

 

I knew all along that cheating could happen in this environment; you don't see the players and have no control over any 'extracurricular' conversation. Perhaps the problem was the awarding of masterpoints. It seems that the scale of awards was high enough to provide a temptation, in which case it should be lowered.

 

Any clarification? Ideas?

[nickf]

It's not just the lure of masterpoints that attracts cheaters. There is cheating going on in the MBC and in team games - why? I'm not sure. We're not playing for sheep stations after all. Perhaps it is all related to ego, perhaps the need to cheat is a mental illness.

 

As for how can you tell someone is cheating? I've looked at lots of cases of alleged cheaters and I can assure you the smelly stuff just jumps right out at you:

- like consistently dropping singleton kings off side or never losing a two way guess for a queen

- like engineering auctions so you play the hand rather than your hopeless partner (when only 1/2 players is cheating)

- like finding double dummy defenses time and time again

- like playing in slam with minimal values and magic fits

etc etc etc

 

I applaud the ACBL decision to bar kibbitzers. It's a bit anti-social but then not compared to cheating.

 

nickf

sydney

[uday]

Not that this is the end of the world, one way or another ;) but we've decided to block specs in ACBL Ts to see if it has an impact on the number of complaints we get about odd actions by the opponents.

 

For the moment (mostly bec. it took no coding to achieve) all specs are blocked in ACBL tourneys. I think we'll shortly switch to allowing specs towards the end of the tourney.

 

And later, as I find time, I'll try to come up with some way to let the civilians back into the game as specs while blocking people I can't trivially affirm are indeed civilians.

 

No TD (acbl or otherwise) rates to have enough information to make any sort of blanket statement about cheating. We're trying something out, and we'll see what happens.

[blackshoe]

we've decided to block specs in ACBL Ts to see if it has an impact on the number of complaints we get about odd actions by the opponents.

Just out of curiousity, who is "we"? More specifically, did anyone from Memphis have anything to do with the decision?

[jodie]

I guess I don't really understand how stopping kibs in ACBL Tourneys is going to stop cheating. With all the messenger progams available, not to mention skype, etc, it seems unfair to me to bar kibitzers. I like to watch my friends, and often, will go over hands at the end with them. I guess I wouldn't feel so strongly about it if I felt it'd really end cheating, but, seems to me, if people are going to cheat, they will find a way. I just don't like being punished for the actions of a few.

 

Thanks!

[mink]

If I intended to cheat I would certainly prefer seeing all cards as a kib over other methods that all involve communication with my partner, which is distracting, may involve misunderstandings and useless when I am declarer.

 

But I guess that banning kibs at some tourneys will hardly decrease the overall amount of cheating, as the cheaters simply play in other tourneys.

 

I am sure that the BBO abuse team does a good job identifying the cheaters simply by their way of play and the fact that some other account was logged in from the same IP address. This is the way the problem should be handled, rather than banning lots of innocent kibs just to keep a few cheaters out.

 

Karl

[uday]

did anyone from Memphis have anything to do with the decision?

 

No. Memphis has no more to do with the ACBL club games on BBO than the ACBL club games at any offline bridge club.

[uday]

I guess I don't really understand how stopping kibs in ACBL Tourneys is going to stop cheating.

 

It certainly won't, but it will prevent some forms of unauthorized information (for example, by a player who logs in twice: once to watch and once to play).

[inquiry]

I am a long time advocate for ALLOWING Kibitzers. I have even posted here that I would not play in tournaments that block kibitzers (see for instance.. one of my post boycotting kibitzer-less tourneys. Currently my fee-based tourneys still allow kibitzers (I think we are now one of the only two fee-based tourneys that allow them...along with BIL tournaments).

 

Having said that, I will have to agree that I reluctantly support the decision by BBO to block kibitzers in the ACBL events (clearly this is a BBO decision not some directive from Memphis). There are two general types of cheating (there are a few other ways too, but i am not going to talk about those here)

 

Type one, a player either self-kibitz and sees all four hands, or has a friendly kibitzer who tells the essential information about all four hands.

 

Type two, a partnership agrees to cheat and they cheat together using a telephone, a messenger program, or just talking to each other as they sit one foot apart in their living room or an internet cafe. And in some cases, i suspect one person logs on with two different user names and plays both hands in a partnership.

 

Banning kibitzer stops type one. Type one cheaters do VERY well with whoever they play with, and they most often play with a lot of different people, but not always. They have the power to play with a lot of people and still do very well (most of us would be able to do very well seeing all four hands). They always find the winning line (as nickf pointed out). Often the winning line they find is serioiusly anti-percentage. Banning kibitzers stop this type of cheating 100%.

 

There is no systematic to stop the type two cheats, as players have to see their own hands, and having seen them, they can share information with their partners outside the BBO program. Type two cheater are more at risk of detection, however. First, they have to AGREE with someone else to cheat, and of course it is the same partnership(s) that cheats. To do so in ACBL where it is useful to them -- that is they can earn ACBL Masterpoints, they have to give the BBO their ACBL number, so the partnership is "Fixed" despite perhaps using many usernames. A partnership that cheats together soon attracts attention based upon unrealistic and consistent high results. Since dummy can not see opponents hand, investigating a partnership that cheats together has some VERY unusual findings. First, as declearer they play the hands no better (luckier) than anyone else. This is because they can not know the lie of the opponents, however, on defense they become deadly with highly lucky opening leads to hit their partnerships best suit, and once dummy comes down, they play with double dummy efficiency. They frequently average higher scores on DEFENSE than they do on OFFENSE. World class players do very good on defense, but not as good as they do on offense.

 

By eliminating the type one cheaters, the bbo's limited resources can focus on catching and banning the type two cheaters. (there are FAR more type one cheaters than type two cheaters, but two good players who also cheat together can be very difficult to prove cheating).

 

Will banning kibitzers stop cheating on the BBO or any other online gaming environment? No. Will it reduce the cheating, to where in individual tournaments it is all but eliminated (collusion can still occur), and it wil greatly reduce the amount of cheating in those events that block kibitzers, as self-kibitzing is the most common form of cheating.

 

I will tell you, in case any of you had any questions. BBO does investigate cheating allegations and does ban cheaters as best they can. That effort will continue. But I will also tell you that many bridge players see cheaters anytime someone gets a good result against them. People who come in dead last in a tournament will be turned in for their one good board as "cheaters-- or how else could they have bid like that to the lucky game, or stayed out of the 99% game that went down?" The answer is simple... look at how they did on the other hands, they are bad players and one time out of 12 their wrong bid/play worked. This is why ABUSE ask for several hands on any alleged cheater (links to myhands will do).

[inquiry]

BBF doesn't allow anonymous posting. However, one member made a passionate plea with a somewhat reasonable reason why they didn;t want to publish this under their name. So I am posting it for them.

 

Annonymous post:

 

I commend BBO and ACBL on bbo for the good work you do for the enjoyment of so many and for taking measures to stem unethical behavior in ACBL tournaments.

 

However, if players want to resort to less than honest means, they can use instant messenger, phone or if in the same household, direct dialog. Players should always report what I refer to as "observations" to abuse.  Players found to be less than ethical are given "vacations" or even long-term or permanent suspensions. ACBL on BBO does a wonderful job of sending these players on "vacations."

 

The main drawback I see to this measure is that players who wish to kib to learn, such as students and players from the BIL, and many who like to watch world class players, are prevented from kibbing.  Kibbing the top players is a great way to learn.

 

I have a suggestion, which is similar to an idea in one of the replies.  Have an "enemies' " list of kibs; and bar those on this list from kibbing.  The software could ban players on the "kibs' enemies' list" from kibbing.  Allow everyone else to kib.  Of course, players found with less than honest intentions can be added to this "enemies' list;" and players on the list who are found to have honorable intentions can be taken off the list and allowed to kib.  "Innocent until proven guilty" should apply in making this list.

 

Thanks again everyone for a fine job!

[hrothgar]

Here is an alternative suggestion that I think represents the best of most worlds...

I suspect that the enhancement that I suggest would require a fair amount of programing effort on the part of Fred and Uday. On the other hand, this type of system would permit spectators to watch tables while still eliminating "Type 1" cheating.

 

Build a 10 minute time delay into the spectator's feed...

 

I can't think of a single reason why tournament spectators need to watch an event in "real" time. Its not like this is a social table where kibitzers and participants are chatting with one another. If BBO provided an option to delay each and every action at the table by a uniform amount - say 10 minutes - folks could kibitz to their hearts content without any worry that they were involved in some cheating operation.

 

I'll note in passing that I have a very real concern that unscruplulous players could use real time Vugraph feeds to cheat in "serious" events. Given the amount of money that passes hands in events live the Cavendish and the Bermuda Bowl, this is a question of when, not if.

 

In an ideal world, you might be able to get the ACBL or the WBF to subsidize the development cost of this new functionality. Even if they weren't willing to defray the costs, this type of feature might give BBO a leg up when negotiating for Vugrpahs rights for major events.

[fred]

Since it was largely aggressive lobbying by me that led to our recent change in ACBL policy (which I should note should be seen as an "experiment" and which, as Uday notes, is likely to soon change to allow some people to kibitz), I would like to add some comments.

 

First, as we have stated on numerous occasions, our general policy is to NOT remove functionality from BBO in order to make it more difficult to cheat if we believe that such functionality makes BBO more enjoyable for those that do not cheat.

 

That being said, if we believe that such functionality is being abused to the point that our honest members are being hurt more than any benefit that such functionality provides, we tend to take action. This is a "comparing apples to oranges" situation - the best we can do is rely on our own subjective judgment in making such decisions.

 

In this particular case, my subjective judgment (based largely on the number of recent cheating reports in our ACBL games, most of them legitimate and most of them due to self-kibitzing) suggested that the apples clearly outweighed the oranges. There were also additional factors to consider:

 

- We have a responsiblity to the ACBL to do our best to stop cheating in the ACBL-sanctioned tournaments that take place on our site.

- Our yellows and TDs were spending too much time dealing with cheating accusations and looking over 100s of board records (instead of spending their time helping our members enjoy our site and the tournaments we run).

- I was getting a sense that the atmosphere in our ACBL tourneys was in danger of being "poisoned with suspicion"

 

As Uday stated, we will almost certainly find a way to allow people who have proven themselves trustworthy to kibitz. The solution suggested by the anonomous poster (barring only kibitzers we don't trust) is not a good solution. It is too easy to sign up for a different ID on a different computer. Given that our policy is (and will remain) that we never conclude "cheating" unless the evidence is beyond overwhelming, barred specific cheating kibitzers (who would invariably resurface in another guise) would not really help.

 

Many people have correctly pointed out that it will still be possible for people to cheat in other ways (talking on the phone with partner for example). What many people fail to realize is that all such methods involve COLLUSION between two players.

 

The reason COLLUSION deserves to be written in all capital letters is that it is it is a giant step for potential cheats. The main reason why potential cheats choose to not cheat is their fear of getting caught. The very act of asking partner for the first time to collude with you for the purposes of cheating is a huge risk for such people. Not only might their partner lose all respect for them, they might (and hopefully would) let BBO know about it.

 

It takes either very little brains or a lot of guts to ask your partner to cheat with you. Most bridge players have enough brains to know the risk that this entails. For those that do not have enough guts to suggest to their partner that they collude, stamping out self-kibitzing will effectively keep such people honest.

 

Another way to play on the guts factor is to make it very clear to our members what they are risking if they end up getting caught. Expulsion from BBO may not be the end of the world for some of these people, but if they knew that the ACBL would be informed of the behavior they were considering, the risk/reward numbers would change for a lot of potential cheats.

 

I suspect that many ACBL members who might otherwise cheat would not do so if they knew that getting caught could result in diciplinary action from the ACBL, all their bridge friends in real life finding out...

 

Something else that should scare any potential cheats out there who might be reading this: You will almost certainly get caught.

 

It is a lot easier to identify near-certain cheats than many people think (for obvious reasons I will not go into the details as to why this is the case). The hard part is going from "near-certain" to "certain". This is something we take very seriously and such investigations almost always take considerable time and effort.

 

As a result, sometimes our honest members get annoyed with us at the length of time it takes for us to deal with a person that "everyone knows" is cheating. The reason for this is that, for us, there is a big difference between "strongly suspecting" and "knowing".

 

Sorry that it sometimes takes us longer to convict suspected cheats than some of our ACBL regulars might like. But I suspect these people would appreciate the care we take in this area if they are ever falsely accused of cheating as a result of a few random lucky hands.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[bid_em_up]

Just curious Fred/Uday, Can you not prevent two logons from the same IP address? To the best of my knowledge, most people with multiple PC's at home will be using a router which (I think) connects to the internet via the same IP.

 

No?

 

Seems to me that this would be an effective way to prevent someone from logging in multiple times. Yes, there are ways around this (via a ghost IP address)....but to be honest, I seriously doubt most people have the knowledge to be able to accomplish the task.

[bid_em_up]

The main drawback I see to this measure is that players who wish to kib to learn, such as students and players from the BIL, and many who like to watch world class players, are prevented from kibbing.  Kibbing the top players is a great way to learn.

While this is a nice sentiment, I havent noticed that many "top" players playing in ACBL tournies, so its really a non-issue, imo.

 

Most top players confine their play to MBC games or team games, from what I have seen, and all allow kibitz, so are still available to watch. :(

[fred]

Just curious Fred/Uday, Can you not prevent two logons from the same IP address? To the best of my knowledge, most people with multiple PC's at home will be using a router which (I think) connects to the internet via the same IP.

 

No?

 

Seems to me that this would be an effective way to prevent someone from logging in multiple times. Yes, there are ways around this (via a ghost IP address)....but to be honest, I seriously doubt most people have the knowledge to be able to accomplish the task.

Yes we could do that, but we want people to be able to log in twice from the same IP address since many households have more than one bridge player and more than one computer.

 

Preventing a kibitzer from watching a table if one of the players shares his IP address would be more reasonable and would certainly be better than allowing anyone to kibitz, but it is easier to get around this than you suggest.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[uday]

Can you not prevent two logons from the same IP address?

 

yes, but that is not a reliable guide. Some service providers ( i've seen this from Italy and Bulgaria at least) use the same external ip address for more than one customer.

 

Secondly, it is easy enough to connect via another IP address.

[pigpenz]

actuallly I think no kibbers is the way to go it levels the playing field for everyone.

If one wants to watch what a star player does during a tourney then can always go back to my hands for the player and go through everything there....now if only you could actually have a movemetn where all boards are in play at the same time so it would take away from the swinging on the last two boards.

[hotShot]

Just curious Fred/Uday, Can you not prevent two logons from the same IP address? To the best of my knowledge, most people with multiple PC's at home will be using a router which (I think) connects to the internet via the same IP.

 

No?

 

Seems to me that this would be an effective way to prevent someone from logging in multiple times. Yes, there are ways around this (via a ghost IP address)....but to be honest, I seriously doubt most people have the knowledge to be able to accomplish the task.

Just imagine for a moment an ISP/company would decide to hide all their clients behind a firewall (proxy), they would all have the same IP.

[matmat]

as an overly dedicated kibitzer, this saddens me B)

 

perhaps BBO could start a no holds barred tournament where any and all forms of covert cheating are allowed and have those that want to participate in non-ethical games play there?

 

on a side note, not quite sure if it is doable or not, but perhaps force kibbers in acbl games to declare who they will be kibbing and only let them see what that person sees?

[jikl]

on a side note, not quite sure if it is doable or not, but perhaps force kibbers in acbl games to declare who they will be kibbing and only let them see what that person sees?

 

This won't work, because now only one player from the partnership could be cheating.

 

West gets a friend to kibitz East, friend messages West with the hand.

 

Now we have something inbetween Ben's earlier type 1 and 2 cheating.

 

Sean

[PaulSK]

First, many thanks to all the members who responded to my post. I am impressed with both the quantity and quality of the responses -- all were considered and thoughtful. Here is my riposte, er.. I mean re-post.

 

To Nickf, who was first to respond, perhaps because being in Australia, he was the only one awake at the time -- what are "Sheep stations"? Are these very expensive or are they very cheap?

 

But mostly to Fred: Thank you for your extended discussion of the circumstances leading up to this decision. That was exactly what I was requesting. About some of your points (and some made by others):

 

1. It is certainly true that if someone is found out, he could always rejoin under another name. He could also change his email address and other information, but if he wants the masterpoints, how does he change his ACBL number? If you simply advise him that no further masterpoints will be awarded by BBO to ACBL number 1234567, one incentive is gone.

 

2. An attempt to stop kibitzing by 'enemies' of some sort is subject to the same problem - it is possible to reregister under another name. But how about turning that around? Since I know I am not one of the cheaters, I would not object to a rule that requires me to ask permission to kibitz tournaments, and having been granted it, may only kibitz those I have listed as friends. So if those friends start making brilliant plays (believe me, that is not likely) you won't have far to look for the 'wire'. This would take some coding, I am sure, but (see next)

 

3. I offer this 'contract': For my part, I will recognize this takes time to figure out, and I won't pester BBO about this. For your part, you won't put it on the back burner. [You have my permission to skip town this month for the Hawaii Nationals.]

 

4. You are absolutely right about the 'collusion' issue. I have always wondered, when cheating scandals arose, how one bridge player managed to get another to cheat with him. I believe Reese mentioned this issue in his book about the 1965 affair, but I am away from home and don't have access to it. (Maybe Truscott said it.)

 

A personal note about the R-S affair. In 1964 the World Olympiad was in NY and I watched R-S play. I sat right behind Reese. DAMN! IF I ONLY KNEW!

[fred]

A personal note about the R-S affair. In 1964 the World Olympiad was in NY and I watched R-S play. I sat right behind Reese. DAMN! IF I ONLY KNEW!

I met Reese exactly once. He was kibitzing at a table I was playing at during the MacAllan Initvitational in London about 10 years ago. One of my opponents at the time was Boris Shapiro. That was an eerie moment.

 

At the time Reese seemed like the oldest man I had ever met. I told him I really enjoyed his books. I don't think he heard me. Reese died about 1 week later.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[dogsbreath]

Hi ..

 

Fred .. are you claiming some part in Reese's demise? :unsure:

 

rgds Dog

[nickf]

<snip>

 

what are "Sheep stations"?  Are these very expensive or are they very cheap? 

 

</snip>

refer Sheep Stations

 

nickf

sydney

[the hog]

Quote from PaulSK

"A personal note about the R-S affair. In 1964 the World Olympiad was in NY and I watched R-S play. I sat right behind Reese. DAMN! IF I ONLY KNEW! "

 

If only you knew what? I hope this is not an intimation that Reese Shapiro were cheating. This perrenial emerges regularly on rgb.

 

Incidentally this will be an highly unpopular opinion, but I would not worry about cheaters on BBO at all. If someone is so pathetic a human being that they resort to cheating in order to bolster their ego, then let them. After all as Nick points out, there are no sheep stations at stake here.

 

Unfortunately I suspect that those putting pressure on BBO are just as concerned with their egos and are taking a somewhat self righteous attitude. "I am better than you; if the only way you can beat me is by cheating than I will ensure that that avenue is closed so that I can prove my superiority legitmately."