Cheats on BBO

[inquiry]

Blocking kibitzers who come from the same IP address as any of the players will not be fair to the honest people who do this and would not be effective for a variety of reasons.

So far what has happened in the ACBL games has been great but there are times when you play against couples that auctions seem to be manipulated. Now when we report to abuse@BBO we get a confirmation about authorization that what we sent is not spam :lol:

 

any way that it can be set up so on the forums we can post to abuse here, maybe a fourm where we can only see what we post and it then becomes invisible except to the yellows or whatever is in charge here?

 

My two biggest questions have come against couples on board 12 twelve of tournies where kibbing is opened up to the general in the last round where the bidding has appeared to be manipulated. coincidence or luck.

First, I have edit your post and minor edits to some of the replies to make it difficult for people to use myhands to look this hand up in an effort to protect the identity of the people you strongly hint may be using extra information (cheating). I believe we can discuss your issue publically without all the nitty-gritty details and publically casting a cheating allegation directly at a pair of BBO players. We routinely remove such details from post (better to say "I kibitzed" or something like that even when you played the hand, so no one would try to look it up). You even gave the data and the board number, plus the contract... .that was way too specific to stay when attached to the concerns you raised.

 

Next, very few of the BridgeBase Online game players ever visit this website, so I suspect that having to report abuse here would not work very well. I am not sure what board 12 has to do with "couples", I mean, by definition, would couples need to wait until the table is open up for kibitzers if they were going to cheat (and would they have three computers to do so?).

 

Also, i find bidding with the hand in question after the double more or less acceptible. The real question is what was the double? Suggesting very good holding in the doubled suit? Takeout? Lead directing? Some two suited hand conventional? Last board swing?

 

I will tell you that if you send just this one hand to abuse, the odds are fairly good nothing will come of it. Abuse ask for a number of hands (more than one), although one "good one" can get action from abuse, it is important to remember that a single funny board can be anything from a misclick to a misunderstanding, to plain stupidity that worked well.

[csdenmark]

Wayne - the most frequent way of cheating is using undisclosed methods(Gigolo bridge). Approx. 98% of players are guilty of that - and most of them dont know and dont care.

If I understand this correctly, you're refering to pairs who bid and signal on the basis of unformalized mutual understanding rather than formalized agreements. Pairs who play symmetric relays and similar formalized methods can (and often will) provide near-100% disclosure. Pairs who use less formalized methods can't do that, in particular with respect to negative inference and mixed strategies.

 

We had (at the Dutch stepbrigde.nl/forum) a discussion about this problem, initiated by a case from a high-level Dutch pairs tourney in which one player (playing Ace-asks-attitude) objected to the agreement that "we play either count, attitude or suit pref depending on what we think partner is most interested in". He said that pairs playing non-formalized carding methods are not providing full disclosure.

 

I don't think it's fair to call this "cheating" except in the highly hypothetical case when a pair deliberatly chooses non-formalized agreements in order to lessen the disclosure obligation. It's certainly not against the rules and I don't think it's against good sportsmanship if only because 98% (your number) of all players have no alternative.

 

Another thing is that I don't think the problem (if it is a problem at all) is very prevalent on BBO. Most partnerships just have the agreement to play "Sayc" (who knows what that means ....) and don't have enough partnership history to have much knowledge of each other's style. So partner is equally uninformed as are opps.

Pairs who play symmetric relays and similar formalized methods can (and often will) provide near-100% disclosure

This is just perfect. If all did so the medicine would have proven right. So thats not the problem Helene.

 

Most partnerships just have the agreement to play "Sayc" (who knows what that means ....) and don't have enough partnership history to have much knowledge of each other's style. So partner is equally uninformed as are opps

This is a part of the problem - but no core part

 

If you review some of the threads about mis-information and missing alerts I think the nature will become clear to you. Or maybe take a look to a thread up right now about opening multi 2♦. Also an example which will likely cause problems to as it looks like not only opps. but the players themselves as well.

 

I don't think it's fair to call this "cheating" except in the highly hypothetical case when a pair deliberatly chooses non-formalized agreements in order to lessen the disclosure obligation. It's certainly not against the rules and I don't think it's against good sportsmanship if only because 98% (your number) of all players have no alternative.

Regarding rules it is 40a and 75. The rules Richard are much better at than I am. You can find several threads dealing with these problems. I think it is against good sportmanship for 2 reasons:

• Lazyness - you dont pay attention to the event and time and effort of your opponents
  
• You use arbitrarian tools paying little attention to partner and opposition
  

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Please note when I state 98% it means nearly everybody and not only online bridge. The problem is based in ignoring the problem in club level.

 

As discussed elsewhere the handling of the problem will be a bit easier if bridge rules would be updated to be fit for today. This means to introduce handheld devices like mobilphones and pocket-PC. At high level some kind of neurologic tools will be right - at least in the future. In that way WBF is likely to be able to gain authority online as well as they now have offline.

[pigpenz]

Also, i find bidding with the hand in question after the double more or less acceptible. The real question is what was the double? Suggesting very good holding in the doubled suit? Takeout? Lead directing? Some two suited hand conventional? Last board swing?

i would answer your question but then you would have to edit my response.

 

he said he was pretty sure we were cold for 6spades and was hoping for us to redouble so he could now bid his 6 card suit! this was his response to me at trick two ;) Pretty clairvoyant of him to say that :lol: Do i need to send you the chat logs next???

[inquiry]

Also, i find bidding with the hand in question after the double more or less acceptible. The real question is what was the double? Suggesting very good holding in the doubled suit? Takeout? Lead directing? Some two suited hand conventional? Last board swing?

i would answer your question but then you would have to edit my response.

 

he said he was pretty sure we were cold for 6spades and was hoping for us to redouble so he could now bid his 6 card suit! this was his response to me at trick two ;) Pretty clairvoyant of him to say that :lol: Do i need to send you the chat logs next???

Anything that deals with specific BBO members that smacks of possible cheating allegations should not be posted in the public forum. So anything else I have to say (or you want to say) should be handled via email or private BBF mail.

 

Thanks.

[pigpenz]

Also, i find bidding with the hand in question after the double more or less acceptible. The real question is what was the double? Suggesting very good holding in the doubled suit? Takeout? Lead directing? Some two suited hand conventional? Last board swing?

i would answer your question but then you would have to edit my response.

 

he said he was pretty sure we were cold for 6spades and was hoping for us to redouble so he could now bid his 6 card suit! this was his response to me at trick two ;) Pretty clairvoyant of him to say that :lol: Do i need to send you the chat logs next???

Anything that deals with specific BBO members that smacks of possible cheating allegations should not be posted in the public forum. So anything else I have to say (or you want to say) should be handled via email or private BBF mail.

 

Thanks.

i am talking about playing real bridge Ben!!!

If there are 40 something tables playing the same hand and the auction is virtually the same on all 40 plus tables except for one individual that is a little weird.

 

Now in real world bridge you can get barred for capricious bidding.

 

I dont expect you to do anything cause I relaize most likely nothing will ever happen.

 

But then we are also not idiots either

[inquiry]

i am talking about playing real bridge Ben!!!

If there are 40 something tables playing the same hand and the auction is virtually the same on all 40 plus tables except for one individual that is a little weird.

 

Now in real world bridge you can get barred for capricious bidding.

 

I dont expect you to do anything cause I relaize most likely nothing will ever happen.

 

But then we are also not idiots either

What is weird is if the bidding goes the same at nearly 40 tables, not that one table deviates.

 

I am uncertain of two of your quotes.. the first being "talking about playing real bridge". What I said was that "Anything that deals with specific BBO members that smacks of possible cheating allegations should not be posted in the public forum. " This refers to any posting, by you or others. BBO simply does not allow public accusations of cheating. Period. What real bridge has to do with my statement is unclear.

 

Your next quote was "Now in real world bridge you can get barred for capricious bidding." While this is true, I seriously doubt there would be any consequences for this pair in the "real world". They bid to a contract and made it. Lucky? Completely weird? Sound bridge? Big gamble needing a swing? Utter beginners?

 

As far as expecting me to do nothing, that is already clearly not true. I have edited your post, I have edited others post (very minorly) in response to yours, and I invited you, should you care, to continue the dialogue via email or BBF private messaging. So there are something syou know about. I have taken a very limited step of making your complaint here a "formal one", that is, rather or not abuse gets your email, the details of your complaint have been logged.

 

Finally, "but then we are also not idiots either". I am not sure who "we" are in that sentence. It seems a number of responders didn't think much of the hand you showed, so it is not the forum members who responded when they could see the "evidence." I assume this statement is meant to suggest that you are certain that the evidence of this one hand is overwelming that cheating was occuring. We never reach a conclusion on the grounds of a single hand, and we start off with the presumtion of fair play (innocent if you prefer).

[jdeegan]

;) I seem to be a late arrival to this thread, but I do have one observation that may be of interest to some, although I doubt it is news to the BBO management. It is:

 

THE EASIEST AND MOST FOOLPROOF WAY TO RECOGNIZE CHEATS IS TO CHEAT YOURSELF.

 

As you attempt to maneuver a competitive auction in YOUR favor, you witness your opponent distorting HIS auction in response. It can become very obvious and can be quite interesting in a droll sort of way.

 

Other than watching my 'friend' play these sort of games, I, personally don't have a clue who is cheating when I play normally. During the brief period when I was watching my 'friend' cheat, I got the impression that most tournament pair games have at least one pair up to no good. This bothers me not at all; it just makes the competition better which is a good thing for me as I am just trying to stay in practice for the 'real thing'.

[the hog]

;)

Other than watching my 'friend' play these sort of games, I, personally don't have a clue who is cheating when I play normally. During the brief period when I was watching my 'friend' cheat, I got the impression that most tournament pair games have at least one pair up to no good. This bothers me not at all; it just makes the competition better which is a good thing for me as I am just trying to stay in practice for the 'real thing'.

Yea verily. A Daniel come to judgement.