Cheats on BBO

[Wayne_LV]

   

[jikl]

In some ways removing kibbing would be of great detriment to BBO, How many times have you logged on and not really wanted to play but want to watch some top-class bridge?

 

As Ben said, prove someone is cheating before you make these accusations. You are saying it is a "serious problem", BBO investigates cheating reports, are you also saying that they are not serious about removing cheats Wayne?

 

Sean

[Wayne_LV]

   

[inquiry]

If a player is suscpected of cheating, a quick trip to My Hands and a look at the past month's results for that player can often be very revealing.  A win rate at IMP of 1 or more IMP per board.  An average MP score of over 55% for a large number of boards is also very suspect.

I want to comment on a couple of issues. I am totally against banning kibitzers. BBO is as much a social site as it is a gaming site. For some, it is much more social than gaming. Ban them from ACBL and cash prize tournaments is begrugding ok, since this clearly prevents one common form of cheating. But from the main room? That is just too much.

 

Now to the quote about myhands, I will discuss primarily the premise about imps (your if they average 1 imp that is a very suspect). First, what does it take to average 1 imp per board? I did a study of players imp average based upon their published okbridge lehman's rating. As might be expected, lehmans is based on performance, so a person with average lehman averaged around 0 imps. The top lehman ratings averaged 1 imp per board (see Admit it, you always wanted to know.... for the study)

 

But let me add some caveats to this. Some people come to bbo and play with the same partner against the same small cluster of opponents. In this case, if one pair is significantly better than the other, they will AVERAGE higher than expected imp scores. Why, because a better partnership will do better in the long run against a weaker partnership. Second, there is a fair number of people who set up an run team games. Because of ego problems, they always pick the strongest pair to be their teammates, so they win much more often than they lose, especially if they pick weak opponents. So if you are using myhand to look for average imps, please disregard any team game events from the mix (those are the ones that all the boards are perfect numbers, 3.00, 12.00, etc.. all with 00 after the decimal point). Also when really good players come to BBO and only play in team games against other, equally really good players, their average is very low (theoretically 0 if evenly matched). And when really good players decide mostly to play with/against students in the main room, they can have really high averages (a few gold stars who do this average upwards of 2 imps/board). Using myhands and looking at average imps per board is a very poor starting point. Of course if you think someone is a cheater and you check and they are averaging MINUS 1.3 imps per board, maybe you should rethink. :P

 

As to Flame's comment about partner telling him in private chat the meaning of a 2♣ bid, I don't mind that IF IT WAS MADE PUBLICALLY to the table. I invite my opponents to work out such things (03,14 or 14,03-- for example) publically. Technically and ethically, there is a name for using private chat to work out such things, it is called cheating. Not the most horrible kind, but the fact that private chat was used to express it (and this had to be messenger chat) suggest that your partner was concerned about the appearance of the comment as well. And of course, the BBO site rules expressedly forbid such communications.

 

I hear all kinds of cheating complaints. For example, dummy jumping over to declarer seat after declarer loses connection to finish the hand. As dummy he saw all the cards in the other hands. Is this cheating? Well, if it is, it is not chronic, and it is not secret. How fair is it? How fair is it to place a sub who has not seen any of the earlier played cards either. The only solution is to redeal or wait for the recently departed to return. I try to calm those situations down and don't make a big deal out of it. Likewise, if some bids 4NT in the main room and announces to the table 14,03 and I get called, I try to defuse those as well. After all, it really is just a game.

[jikl]

I like to able to chat with some of the good players I know while they are playing the hands. (Of course not at an important time) That way I can get some feedback while the action is happening,

 

Sean

[csdenmark]

I agree that cheating is a serious problem for online bridge and only a small amount of cheating can make the game all but unplayable.  Only 1 pair cheating out of 16 pairs that play a board in the Main Room is enough to spoil the results.

One pair cheating in a tournament can also spoil the results for all other pairs.

 

bjlover says: "However, let me say that the cheating is not that frequent that someone can’t find a new table in a hurry with all honest players. Indeed, if you avoid tourneys (where you are locked in for 12 hands) it’s quite easy to find an honest game… and a diligent person can find a good, honest game."

 

The cheating does not have to occur at YOUR table to affect your results.  A pair at another table sitting in your direction and cheating - bidding and making an off odds game or slam can cost you plenty in the scoring.

 

I have some suggestions that might dramatically reduce cheating.

 

1. Prohibit kibbing entirely in duplicate scored games ... tournaments, teams matches, open room games .. totally.  If someone wishes to follow the play of another player it can be done via My Hands after the board is played.  In the case of tournaments, all boards are posted and available for review shortly after the tournament is finished.  Sure this is not in real time, but that is the point. 

 

For the social animals that rather party than play bridge, allow kibbing in Rubber bridge and Total Points games.

 

2. Modify the program so that the dummy CANNOT see the ops hands during the play, no matter what the settings are.  The dummy guiding the declarer as to which way to finesse and when to drop stiffs is probably the most common method of cheating by "casual" cheaters.  This would also put a stop to the annoying cry of the dummy to his partner to CLAIM when it is not apparent to players with less than total information that a claim is in order.

 

The "serious" cheaters use 2 computers and play both sides of the table or use the 2nd computer as a "kibber" and see all the hands at all times.

 

I agree with the original poster for this thread that you can sense when you are being cheated.  The pattern is pretty consistent. 

 

The first clue is when you are being beaten much worse than normal and you and partner are not playing badly.

 

Ops are consistently bidding and making small percentage games and slams.  Unusual leads occur often and seem to "magically" hit partner's unbid suit.  An unusually high number of close doubles and redoubles that succeed.

 

And yes, all of these things do occur in bridge even when nobody is cheating.  But not for 50 boards and definitely not for 1000 boards.  I have observed records of players that never make a bad judgement call for over 1000 boards and never is that player a star player.  Star players are far better than us average hackers, but they are far from perfect in judgement situations. 

 

If a player is suscpected of cheating, a quick trip to My Hands and a look at the past month's results for that player can often be very revealing.  A win rate at IMP of 1 or more IMP per board.  An average MP score of over 55% for a large number of boards is also very suspect.  Most often cheaters using 2 computers will play with only one "partner".  I would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance.

 

And yes, it is true that you can suspect cheating and review hundreds of hands and rarely find conclusive proof from the hand records.  But patterns of consistent off odds bidding and play show one of 2 things:  The player is either psychic and should not be on BBO but in Las Vegas breaking the town or that player is cheating.

 

BTW,  since nobody has even broke one casino, let along the entire town, I can only conclude that psychic powers relating to cards does NOT EXIST.

 

Wayne

I agree that cheating is a serious problem

Poor moral standard to accuse others without any kind of proof for what you would never dream of doing yourself.

 

I would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance.

You only need to offer your service. We need proofs. False accusations can be used for nothing than proving yourself non-serious.

[csdenmark]

Might sorprise you but i dont think talking on messanger is necessarily cheating and i dont think its necessarily wrong.

Cheating is playing against the rules and the rules is there to make sure  the game is good for everyone. If im playing with a friend online, and i open 1NT and he bid 2♣, on messanger he remind me that we play truscot, i dont think this is cheating because i think this is only making YOUR game more fun i dont think it would be fun for you to see us making mistake playing in a stupid contract going down. Im sure you would prefer us bidding normal.

Yes if i would tell my partner on messanger, "play spade" then it would be cheating, but i would never do that because i dont see any fun in that.

When i say something on messanger it will at most be as we had FD, and calling FD cheating is definetly wrong since its was made by BBO.

I think most of those "cheaters" dont cheat.

Please note and take care about Messenger. 'Rules for these sites' below:

 

http://bridgefiles.net/Picture/BBO-a1.jpg

[sceptic]

would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance

 

Hahahahaha, any one can't tell the difference between crap play and cheating, please do not bother looking at my hands

[hrothgar]

Poor moral standard to accuse others without any kind of proof for what you would never dream of doing yourself.

 

I would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance.

Claus

 

I seem to recall that your mentioning that you didn't have any experience as a programmer. It certainly comes across in your posts.

 

I have a pretty good background in both statistics and software. What you're asking for would be a nightmare to design.

 

Lets consider a VERY simple case: In theory, I could design a computer program that looked for boards where there is a two way finesse available. For example, I could look for suit layouts like the following

 

AJ97 opposite KT86

 

I could also design a statistical test to determine whether players are successfully finessing the Queen more than 50% of the time. All of this is quite simple.

 

Here's the problem: How do I take skill level into account. Some folks are smart enough to listen to the opponent's bidding and figure out that the player who opened is more likely to have the Queen that the player that passed. Other players will be able to execute discovery play and determine that East has extra length in Spades and Hearts, therefore East is likely to be short in Diamonds.

 

The screening program that you suggest would need to intelligent enough to compensate for an enormous number of potential variables. I'm not saying that the task is impossible. It might even be interesting to work on. However, I wouldn't want to touch a problem like this one without an absolutely first rate expert level bridge program. In an ideal world, it might be possible to use an a program like Jack to determine the best single dummy line of play for a given hand and then look for deviations from the single dummy line of play. In theory, random departures from the single dummy line of play should lower ones score. If the departures increase the score it suggests one of two things:

 

1. The player is more skillful than Jack

2. The player may have a wire

[hrothgar]

I'm going to try to restrain myself to one simple point: If you really believe that cheating is a significant problem on BBO do something about it.

 

BBO allows players to create private clubs with their own set of membership rules. Why not go and create your own "virtual" bridge club and build your own regulatory system. If you determine that a player is cheating, kick him out of Melviss's club.

 

From the sounds of things, you have a lot of friends who are serious players and would appreciate this type of value added service.

 

If you do a good job you should be able to attract a large and vibrant player base.

[inquiry]

I am not fond of the idea of software investigating cheating. For one thing, there is a big-brotherish feel to this. For another, the presumption of innocences exist, the BBO does not proactively look for cheaters, instead, it waits for someone to turn in credible evidence. I forget the number of hands that abuse ask for. Seems like it is more than three and less than ten. But I can assure you that if it was only one, there would be hands available on almost everyone...after all misclicks happens to some of more than you might think is possible, and if the misclick turns out to be "lucky" well there is your one hand "proof".

 

Those of you who suspect cheating should turn the people in.. .but a word of caution, if you turn in a bunch of people, none of whom cheat, I think your future submissions will be ignored....

[pclayton]

Ever been accused of cheating at the table? I have twice.

 

Once it was in a real life game, and the moron on my right misread my hand and as a result he thought I coffee-housed on a play. After the hand, I gave him a warning, but he wouldn't shut up. ZT was duly enforced.

 

The other time it was on-line. I'm in one of my riduculous contracts, and I need to pick up a singleton King offside with 9 out to make my contract (don't ask). It was and I did. My LHO was frosted and accused me of cheating.

 

I've never received a better compliment :rolleyes:

[csdenmark]

Poor moral standard to accuse others without any kind of proof for what you would never dream of doing yourself.

 

I would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance.

Claus

 

I seem to recall that your mentioning that you didn't have any experience as a programmer. It certainly comes across in your posts.

 

I have a pretty good background in both statistics and software. What you're asking for would be a nightmare to design.

I don't care whether such an application can be created or not. What I say is that it is poor moral to raise false accusations. If those persons raising suspicions have no proof or at least very strong indications of cheating - then they have to shut up.

 

If they insist a solution is right to handle via software I am sure they will be welcome to come up with such themselves or alternatively to place a commercial order at BBO.

 

The story is no longer than that I think.

[inquiry]

Ever been accused of cheating at the table? I have twice.

To the best of my knowledge, I have been accused of cheating twice on the BBO myself.... One of the two times, I made a public post about the accusation... you can find it here...

 

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...indpost&p=13466

 

This hand is not this much different from a hand written up by Mike Lawrence and posted today at the BridgeClues website, level 2 hand

 

The second time was about 1 year ago. In a "swiss" tournament, I was on table 10 in the last half with a few rounds to go (I think there were only 11 or 12 tables). I held a balanced 10 count (4333 I thnk, and my partners will tell you I subtract a point for this distribution) and passed partners 1NT opening bid (we play 14-16). I don't remember the exact hand, but I could look it up on bridgebrowser later since I remember the opponents name (accuse me of cheating, and your name gets burned into my memory). 1NT turned out to be the limit of the hand, and won me a lot of imps as the field overbid. The opponent accused me of cheating with my pass with 10 pts. I tried to explain that if 3NT was making, the field would bid it and I wouldn't move up the ladder, and that pass seemed the best way to pick up a swing. My opponent told me to stop thinking up "strange hypothesis" to explain my cheating and he was going to turn me into abuse.

 

The fact that I was at TABLE 10 out of 11 late in an event should have been defacto evidence that I wasn't cheating... but there you go. A yellow who ended up in the bottom half of a free swiss event turned in for cheating for making a bridge (state of the match) decision, and on the earlier hand, a normal good play. No doubt both of these players were 100% certain I was cheating. But being certain doesn't make them right. Same for phil's example.

[kenberg]

Might sorprise you but i dont think talking on messanger is necessarily cheating and i dont think its necessarily wrong.

Cheating is playing against the rules and the rules is there to make sure  the game is good for everyone. If im playing with a friend online, and i open 1NT and he bid 2♣, on messanger he remind me that we play truscot, i dont think this is cheating because i think this is only making YOUR game more fun i dont think it would be fun for you to see us making mistake playing in a stupid contract going down. Im sure you would prefer us bidding normal.

Yes if i would tell my partner on messanger, "play spade" then it would be cheating, but i would never do that because i dont see any fun in that.

When i say something on messanger it will at most be as we had FD, and calling FD cheating is definetly wrong since its was made by BBO.

I think most of those "cheaters" dont cheat.

This whole thread is a bit strange but on the off chance that someone reads the above post and thinks that silence amounts to agreement, I guess I should say something. In a non-tourney event, if you want to remind your partner of the meaning of your bid, you could do it by simply typing in the remark on chat to the room. If that is ok by your opponents, they will stay. If not, they will go. I would go. If, however, you do this by private message to your partner it is sneaky, reprehensible, and shows a complete lack of respect for your partner, your opponents, the bbo site, and the game of bridge.

 

If you wish to do it during a tourney, just let the director know of your actions. He will no doubt express an opinion.

[Guest Jlall]

To the best of my knowledge, I have been accused of cheating twice

Dude... I think I've been accused of cheating twice in the last week :P haha

[inquiry]

To the best of my knowledge, I have been accused of cheating twice

Dude... I think I've been accused of cheating twice in the last week :P haha

Well, since I seldom make a winning play or call, there is seldom reasons for people to accuse me. Come and join me as a mediocre player by bidding worse and playing worse Justin, and the cheating allegations will decrease.

[akhare]

To the best of my knowledge, I have been accused of cheating twice

Dude... I think I've been accused of cheating twice in the last week :P haha

Sorry, but couldn't resist the following pun:

 

Any sufficiently advanced expert play is indistinguisable from cheating (to novices) (with apologies to "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" :D)...

[matmat]

I agree that cheating is a serious problem for online bridge and only a small amount of cheating can make the game all but unplayable.  Only 1 pair cheating out of 16 pairs that play a board in the Main Room is enough to spoil the results.

One pair cheating in a tournament can also spoil the results for all other pairs.

 

The cheating does not have to occur at YOUR table to affect your results.  A pair at another table sitting in your direction and cheating - bidding and making an off odds game or slam can cost you plenty in the scoring.

 

 

heh. if you're actually paying attention to your "results" in the BBO main room you're already making a mistake. Comparing your score to the field is (with all due respect to BBO management and the good players on BBO) just plain wrong. I don't have numbers for this, but I'd guess that a quarter of the scores for each board are fouled due to stupid things like disconnects, lazy claims, lack of agreements in partnerships, misclicks, declarer/defender distraction, spite, drunkenness etc. (i am sure i left some stuff out)

 

 

I have some suggestions that might dramatically reduce cheating.

1. Prohibit kibbing entirely in duplicate scored games ... tournaments, teams matches, open room games .. totally.  If someone wishes to follow the play of another player it can be done via My Hands after the board is played.  In the case of tournaments, all boards are posted and available for review shortly after the tournament is finished.  Sure this is not in real time, but that is the point. 

what a remarkably bad idea. let's punish the 99.9% of people that don't cheat and take away from their enjoyment. Kibbing is social, kibbing allows you to ask questions of other kibs regarding plays/bids etc that allow you to improve your own game, kibbing allows you to make fun of players (when they deserve it -- or not), kibbing allows you to ask the players about choices they made when you don't understand them, again, I'm sure I am leaving them out. Seems to me you want to turn the MBC into some sort of rigid, stuck up, unfriendly place, just like most f2f clubs seem to be, with the grumpy old men and the fierce old ladies occupying the various seats, snarling at anyone that happens to walk by.

 

 

2. Modify the program so that the dummy CANNOT see the ops hands during the play, no matter what the settings are.  The dummy guiding the declarer as to which way to finesse and when to drop stiffs is probably the most common method of cheating by "casual" cheaters.  This would also put a stop to the annoying cry of the dummy to his partner to CLAIM when it is not apparent to players with less than total information that a claim is in order.

I think you are exhibiting a total lack of faith in the majority of humanity. This is almost paranoid. I do agree that it is rude for dummy to shout things like "CLAIM" or "???????????????" or such, I don't think hiding opps hands would stop this behaviour. I do have a different theory about what might be going on here, but i think i might be a little controversial and somewhat insulting to some, so i'll reserve it to myself for now.

 

 

Ops are consistently bidding and making small percentage games and slams.  Unusual leads occur often and seem to "magically" hit partner's unbid suit.  An unusually high number of close doubles and redoubles that succeed.

 

And yes, all of these things do occur in bridge even when nobody is cheating.  But not for 50 boards and definitely not for 1000 boards.  I have observed records of players that never make a bad judgement call for over 1000 boards and never is that player a star player.  Star players are far better than us average hackers, but they are far from perfect in judgement situations. 

 

Are you sure they're small percentage games?

Is it possible that these are people who have a much better grasp of cardplay than bidding?

Is it possible that they are good at recognizing "the only" chance to bring in a contract and play for it?

Is it possible that you just selectively remember these low percentage games as opposed to all the other normal contracts they play?

Is it possible that they have a different idea of opening leads?

Is it possible that your auction is so revealing that it makes it clear to either lead the implied p's suit or it makes it clear that to lead one of your own suits would be suicidal?

Is it possible that they are making bids and plays that are beyond your grasp?

 

If a player is suscpected of cheating, a quick trip to My Hands and a look at the past month's results for that player can often be very revealing.  A win rate at IMP of 1 or more IMP per board.  An average MP score of over 55% for a large number of boards is also very suspect.  Most often cheaters using 2 computers will play with only one "partner".  I would like to think that a screening program could be written to mine the hand archives for extreme results that could flag potential cheaters for surveillance.

I think as ben points out, scores are a function of your opponents. so if playing against "weaker" pairs is cheating... oh my...

also, there are plenty of non-starred players that are better than many of the stars, and you might not realize this. And, as has been pointed out many times in this thread -- just because you don't understand a play doesn't make it "cheating"

Now, there are ways to raise some red flags (if two players are playing from the same IP, for example) but again, that would still be an unfounded accusation and would only lead to discrimination against that pair with no obvious grounds.

 

And yes, it is true that you can suspect cheating and review hundreds of hands and rarely find conclusive proof from the hand records.  But patterns of consistent off odds bidding and play show one of 2 things:  The player is either psychic and should not be on BBO but in Las Vegas breaking the town or that player is cheating.

BTW,  since nobody has even broke one casino, let along the entire town, I can only conclude that psychic powers relating to cards does NOT EXIST.

the psychic powers, of which you seem so afraid, are most likely just superior (or perhaps inferior) hand analysis skills. Maybe they saw you fidget at the table? maybe your partner tanked before following low to a card? maybe the auction told them something that you don't realize?

 

anyhow. pointing fingers and calling everyone cheaters is vaguely reminiscent of Salem, MA, a few hundred years ago.

[the saint]

To the best of my knowledge, I have been accused of cheating twice

Dude... I think I've been accused of cheating twice in the last week :P haha

I'm clearly not trying hard enough then!!

 

Why do some people take things far far far too seriously? People will think they can see anything if they look hard enough for it.

[Al_U_Card]

Perhaps if the tweekers and the twiddlers and the whiners would go away, we could just play some enjoyable bridge on this, the best bridge site on the net.

[jikl]

After reading the posts in the thread Ben cited, it really brings to light what I read in Cathy Chua's book "Fair Play or Foul? Cheating Scandals in Bridge". The worst thing about public accusations is that it is impossible to prove your innocence. Sure you might do it in a court of law, but the fact is every single player that has heard that you were reported for cheating will consider you a cheat for life.

 

I still remember always not sorting my cards against one opponent because someone mentioned he was a slotter once. (Slotting being watching where the cards come from in the hand to determine suit lengths and strengths etc) And this was from one comment, I did this for years against him because of one idle comment.

 

Cheating accusations must be private and to people that will never say a word to anyone about it unless it can be proved conclusively. We live in a litigious world where false accusations can be costly, even Culbertson settled out of court to someone he accused of cheating, but this is less well known.

 

Sean

[pigpenz]

hmmm...... i had a hand the other day where me and one other inidvidual were the only 2 people to go down out of 22 tables playing the same contract. Were the other 20 tables cheating? I dont think so. In bridge there are alot of forks in the road and what makes one better than another is open to discussion. I have seen numerous hands where people handle their card combinations incorrectly...does that mean they are cheating or just careless?

[pigpenz]

Cheating accusations must be private and to people that will never say a word to anyone about it unless it can be proved conclusively. We live in a litigious world where false accusations can be costly, even Culbertson settled out of court to someone he accused of cheating, but this is less well known.

 

Sean

looked at what happened to the Duke Lacrosse players that were accussed of rape. If they are innocent their lives have been ruined forever.

[Wayne_LV]