We need: No more kibitzing at tournaments

[jocdelevat]

I like to kibitz however I sugested before that in Yahoo bridge you have the option to hide your hand from kibitzers. I think this will improve the safety of players who are concern about kibitzers.

[uday]

What I've learned from all our experiments w/speccing:

 

1. Most of the players don't care (or don't tell us they care) whether specs are on/off

 

2. The people who do care care very, very, much. Some people stopped playing in games when we blocked specs. Others when we allowed some specs back in.

 

I will add to this a third thing that we all knew all along

 

3. Blocking specs only prevents a specific form of cheating (self speccing). Collusive cheating cannot be blocked.

 

and a fourth thing that that we probably suspected

 

4. In this debate, the wishes of the players carry much more weight with me than the wishes of the casual non-playing spectators

 

 

Someday, perhaps we'll split the ACBL tourneys into 2 halves; one with specs allowed and one (using different hands) with specs disallowed and see what happens.

 

Until then, there is likely no solution that will please the parties on both sides of the debate.

 

The current approach -- allow specs if the specs have won 5+ points on BBO -- seems as reasonable as anything to me for the moment. I might harden this requirement over time, requiring (say) 20+ points to spec or whatever but I have no immediate plans to do so.

[glen]

However, I think that you share a misperception with other posters, namely that some people who don't play "standard" bridge are "up to something".

Why would I share this "misperception" given I opened 3NT on the hand above - wouldn't somebody who opens 3NT on the hand above, and does lots of other bids out-of-the-norm* actually be more accepting of non-"standard" stuff?

 

* I would do even more if psyches were not frowned on.

[glen]

Some people stopped playing in games when we blocked specs.

This I did not know - that customers were becoming non-customers if kibitzers were not allowed. Given this is the case, and that I will not become a non-customer if kibitzers continue to be allowed, then I retract my call to have kibitzers banned. Certainly I've had good entertainment value in watching friends play in the tourneys.

[Guest movingon]

I agree with manig's desire to see kibitzers banned. I, too, have seen some pairs make rather astonishing bids and plays frequently that seem to work to their benefit.