New convention.

[DrTodd13]

I just invented a new convention that can only be played online in ACBL tournaments. I call it RFH for risk-free hesitations. Here's how it works. If you have a constructive hand but are afraid to bid then just sit there for a minute and then pass. If there is no red dot and partner knows you weren't away getting a cup of coffee then he can infer you have a smattering of points over there. When opps complain that your partner bids again with a minimum then just point them to the ACBL ruling that since they can't prove there wasn't a connection problem that no ruling will ever be made on tempo issues online. Here's the important part, if they ask you why you took so long, just say that you had to go to the bathroom. I predict this convention will sweep like wildfire. Assume that everyone plays it but don't admit to having ever heard of it.

 

I'm a genius.

[the hog]

Todd, is this similar to "Weasel over NTs"?

[keylime]

Todd, I'm sure there are adjuncts coming to this...

[DrTodd13]

I'm sure there are.

[matmat]

old hat

 

been done

 

this is akin to the slow and fast play at trick one when following to p's A or K

 

fast small spot means singleton

slow small spot means honor doubleton

[DrTodd13]

Yes. This has been done before but it is only now that the ACBL has said that they have no way to punish people who do this intentionally. I thought my post was dripping with sarcasm but the point of it was not that I invented a way to cheat but that cheating is for now all intents and purposes legal.

[MickyB]

In my opinion, this is an absolute disgrace. My partner and I put a lot of work into our inverted hesitations, now I wish we hadn't bothered.

[Cascade]

Yes. This has been done before but it is only now that the ACBL has said that they have no way to punish people who do this intentionally. I thought my post was dripping with sarcasm but the point of it was not that I invented a way to cheat but that cheating is for now all intents and purposes legal.

Inadvertently varying your tempo is not cheating prearranging to use your tempo to convey different messages about your calls is cheating.

[DrTodd13]

Yes.  This has been done before but it is only now that the ACBL has said that they have no way to punish people who do this intentionally.  I thought my post was dripping with sarcasm but the point of it was not that I invented a way to cheat but that cheating is for now all intents and purposes legal.

Inadvertently varying your tempo is not cheating prearranging to use your tempo to convey different messages about your calls is cheating.

Is something really a law (and breaking it therefore cheating) if the enforcement agency has no means to enforce it nor will they ever try to? I agree with you. Prearranging to use tempo to convey info SHOULD BE cheating. Even making use of partner's huddle is also cheating. Right now, the ACBL has given carte blanche to both. I believe their decision to treat all delays as connection problems or bathroom breaks is seriously flawed. All delays should be treated as huddles with the exception of where you get the red dot. If partner passes after a huddle, now the obligation is for his partner to be ethical and careful about picking his bid. Is this so bad? I don't know what percentage are actually connection problems or distractions in the home but I suspect that a significant fraction if not a majority of delays are people thinking.

[keylime]

Mike, not only the inverted hesistations, but now Larry and I gotta ditch our denial hesistations, turbo hesistations, and forcing hesistations! What is this world coming to? :D

[hrothgar]

Yes.  This has been done before but it is only now that the ACBL has said that they have no way to punish people who do this intentionally.  I thought my post was dripping with sarcasm but the point of it was not that I invented a way to cheat but that cheating is for now all intents and purposes legal.

Inadvertently varying your tempo is not cheating prearranging to use your tempo to convey different messages about your calls is cheating.

Is something really a law (and breaking it therefore cheating) if the enforcement agency has no means to enforce it nor will they ever try to? I agree with you. Prearranging to use tempo to convey info SHOULD BE cheating. Even making use of partner's huddle is also cheating. Right now, the ACBL has given carte blanche to both. I believe their decision to treat all delays as connection problems or bathroom breaks is seriously flawed. All delays should be treated as huddles with the exception of where you get the red dot. If partner passes after a huddle, now the obligation is for his partner to be ethical and careful about picking his bid. Is this so bad? I don't know what percentage are actually connection problems or distractions in the home but I suspect that a significant fraction if not a majority of delays are people thinking.

I'm (pretty much) in agreement with DrTodd on this one.

 

For better or worse, bridge regulators have tried to eliminate any requirement to prove intent or culpability from much of the legal structure. If I make an undue hesitation, the non-offending side doesn't need to demonstrate that the hesitation was intentional. The very existence of the hesitation is sufficient to preclude partner from taking actions that were demonstrably suggested by the hesitation.

 

I recognize that hesitations are much more common in the world of online bridge. In by gone days these were often a result of network lag or connection problems. More recently, most lags occur because folks are multi-tasking. They need to grab a pizza from the oven or another bottle of soda or there's a particular good segment on "the Office".

 

Personally, I don't find these particularly reasonable excuses for making significant changes to the legal structures. I recognize that hesitation rulings can be complex, however, I'd still like to see the TDs make an effort to produce real ruling. In particular, if I'm paying money for a "real" TD I want them to act like one.

[Al_U_Card]

Easy to punish. If player A1 takes more than ten(?) seconds to make a call, then automatically the next call in line for player A2 (A1's pard) is placed by the system as his legal bid. (RDBL over DBL) Boy would games speed up! (Any seemingly even more onerous sequence could be used. Todd seems to have a penchant for inventing systems :D I'll leave it to his devious mind :D )

[mr1303]

I think Mike's comment was also made in jest....

 

Have a look at this link:

 

http://www.poorbridge.com/?misc=10

 

(About Reverse Tempo Doubles)

[kenrexford]

My favorite convention is the "inverted psychic" convention. Since you get to alert your own bids, and partner does not see this, you can do something like this. Open 2♦. You have a normal 2♦ opening, but you alert it as Flannery. You do this with the chat button, not the normal way.

 

When the director is called to the table, you point out that you got confused. Initially, when you clicked 2♦, you thought it was weak. Then, you realized that you had agreed Flannery. So, you alerted the opponents so they would not misconstrue partner's bids. Partner, then, forgot that you had, in fact, agreed to play Flannery. If he denies this, then you claim that you are completely confused, obviously, but are thankful that he did not jump to 4♥. If you do this well enough, act stupid, you get your top.

[Echognome]

I'm sorry to all involved, but to me this just sounds like whining. I'm not denying it happens, but I can't imagine a TD being able to easily resolve this in an online tournament. If you are worried about a hesitation, call the TD. The TD won't be able to verify if there has been a disconnection, a bathroom break, etc. However, the TD can certainly ask the player and I feel that players tend to tell the truth. A simple "Did you think about what you were going to bid?" usually suffices. If the player says "I'm sorry, I had to answer the door" or "the phone rang" etc, then I'm certainly not going to make it my business to start calling them liars.

 

As per the red dot, I can only say that it's not foolproof. I'm speaking as someone that plays the majority of their online game with friends and I've had connection problems where my computer lagged and no red dot showed. (several posters on here can verify this) I was using a broadband connection and my laptop is less than a year old.

 

Look, we're not going to stop all forms of cheating. I expressed once upon a time about opponents clicking bids and it showing up for their partners. But, I now believe that this is just one but a myriad of ways people can cheat. I think if you're that concerned, make some friends that you trust not to cheat and play against them. If you are concerned about cheating in a tournament, the best thing to do is simply call the TD and tell them what happened. Don't accuse anyone of cheating, just state the facts and let the TD deal with it. If you don't feel the TD handled it properly then go through the appropriate channels for that. Complaining on the forums just seems like whining.

[DrTodd13]

Let me ask you this, why the trick penalty for failing to follow suit? When people don't follow suit, why don't you just ask them why they failed to follow suit and if they say they had their hand missorted then you just restore equity but don't assign a trick penalty? Why is it that nowhere else in the laws does it suggest that director ask someone a question and then always accept their answer as truthful? I would rather have a system where there is some way to penalize the guilty (they inevitably deny being guilty) with the sad fact that the non-guilty will sometimes get a result they don't deserve than have a system where it is impossible to punish the guilty because you can't prove that they were intentionally manipulating the system. Yes, tempo issues are difficult and require polling which is time consuming and complicated but the laws demand that tempo issues be addressed.

[glen]

If you are worried about a hesitation, call the TD. ... just state the facts and let the TD deal with it. ... Complaining on the forums just seems like whining.

Based on the "call the TD" comments, perhaps you misunderstood the "complaining" that seems to you like whining.

 

Calling the TD about hesitations in ACBL-BBO tourneys is pointless as they have decided they can do nothing about these types of calls. One TD put it as "we do not entertain calls about hestitations". Once this policy is realized by the bulk of the players, some wonder if we will see some coffeehouse tempo styles emerge, or as Edgar Kaplan called it, that "old black magic".

[Echognome]

If you are worried about a hesitation, call the TD. ... just state the facts and let the TD deal with it. ... Complaining on the forums just seems like whining.

Based on the "call the TD" comments, perhaps you misunderstood the "complaining" that seems to you like whining.

 

Calling the TD about hesitations in ACBL-BBO tourneys is pointless as they have decided they can do nothing about these types of calls. One TD put it as "we do not entertain calls about hestitations". Once this policy is realized by the bulk of the players, some wonder if we will see some coffeehouse tempo styles emerge, or as Edgar Kaplan called it, that "old black magic".

Indeed. I don't see anything wrong with calling the TD. I don't think it's good to have a policy that says "We will never consider a tempo issue." It's certainly seems inconsistent with the laws (since players are not supposed to base calls on any extraneous information). I just have sympathy for the TDs in being able to resolve it, not saying they shouldn't bother to try. It is not difficult to ask a simple question.

[glen]

I don't think it's good to have a policy that says "We will never consider a tempo issue." It's certainly seems inconsistent with the laws...

and that is the point of this thread

[glen]

It was not clear since the starting post...

was dripping with sarcasm

However in the subsequent post, he goes on to say

but the point of it was not that I invented a way to cheat but that cheating is for now all intents and purposes legal.

that is due to the policy that says "We will never consider a tempo issue."

[Gweny]

:P

Guys I know you love to sit up late into the night and find new flaws in the ACBL program here on BBO.

 

However here is the problem.

 

Lag does occur - regardless of connection type.

 

Lets say you Dr. Todd are holding 18 hcp and your p opens 1 nt. You are happy because you are going to have a fun and interesting auction to find the right spot. About that time you click your bid and get a little annoyed that opp is not passing/bidding.

 

Then the td comes to the table and suddenly your chat window starts rolling by at a high rate of speed and the last 2 lines are something from the td about removing you. You have just been lagged.

 

In Face to face it is always going to be more clear when someone is huddling/hesitating/coffee housing or what ever other name you want to call it.

 

Online it is not.

You, your opps, your partner, the td, or the bbo system itself all could be having delays that are not caused by anyone and you have not one bit of control over it. It is frequently the case that a player will call us to the table and complain of how slow the opps are when it is them that is lagging.

 

We have no method of determining who is at fault. It has been our policy from the start that we cannot prove it therefore cannot penalize for it.

 

We have not published this policy because we really do not like it but until we have a means of determining who is or is not lagging we cannot properly address the issue of hesitations.

 

Am I happy that you are bringing this up? - no not really and for obvious reasons we do not want to encourage people to do hesitations/etc.

[Echognome]

I don't see why this should be such a problem. Someone calls you for a hesitation, you simply ask the person why they hesitated. If they say "I didn't realize I hesitated," "I was lagged," "<something> happened and I was away from my computer," etc, you simply say "Ok. Play on. Try your best to keep up with tempo," and that's that. However, if they say they hesitated or thought about bidding, etc, then I don't see why we cannot enforce the laws as they are. I can understand Gweny's frustration and the difficulty with establishing a hesitation, but I don't understand why we cannot at least ask.

 

TDs have to make judgment rulings at the table all the time. A TD often has to make a ruling without having the facts agreed. Does that mean the TD cannot make a ruling? No! Of course the TD still makes a ruling. So why make this difficult when it's actually quite simple? Just ask the players if they hesitated.

[glen]

First, please note I have not expressed an opinion on this policy in my postings in this thread, and please do not infer one (not that anyone has done so to this point). That qualifier aside, here we go:

 

It has been our policy from the start that we cannot prove it therefore cannot penalize for it.   We have not published this policy because we really do not like it but until we have a means of determining who is or is not lagging we cannot properly address the issue of hesitations.  Am I happy that you are bringing this up? - no not really and for obvious reasons we do not want to encourage people to do hesitations/etc.

The problem here, imo, has been TDs indicating that they do not want to entertain anymore hesitation calls. imo, it would have been better for TDs to continue to entertain these calls. For each call they would find, every time, inconclusive evidence, due to the nature of online bridge, and then let the table result stand, unless somebody had managed to self-incriminate themselves in the discussion with the TD. This would assume that TDs would have the time available to take the call, and undertake some discussion with the players involved, which might not be a viable assumption in large tourneys.

 

Thus I would suggest that TDs take hesitation calls and review the situation and evidence, considering the nature of online bridge. Further I would have this whole thread deleted, imo.

[DrTodd13]

However here is the problem.

 

Lag does occur - regardless of connection type.

 

Lets say you Dr. Todd are holding 18 hcp and your p opens 1 nt. You are happy because you are going to have a fun and interesting auction to find the right spot. About that time you click your bid and get a little annoyed that opp is not passing/bidding.

 

Then the td comes to the table and suddenly your chat window starts rolling by at a high rate of speed and the last 2 lines are something from the td about removing you. You have just been lagged.

 

In Face to face it is always going to be more clear when someone is huddling/hesitating/coffee housing or what ever other name you want to call it.

 

Online it is not.

You, your opps, your partner, the td, or the bbo system itself all could be having delays that are not caused by anyone and you have not one bit of control over it. It is frequently the case that a player will call us to the table and complain of how slow the opps are when it is them that is lagging.

 

We have no method of determining who is at fault. It has been our policy from the start that we cannot prove it therefore cannot penalize for it.

 

We have not published this policy because we really do not like it but until we have a means of determining who is or is not lagging we cannot properly address the issue of hesitations.

 

Am I happy that you are bringing this up? - no not really and for obvious reasons we do not want to encourage people to do hesitations/etc.

I don't understand your point at all. I have 18 points and partner opens. Whenever I get a chance to bid I am going to bid something. Partner doesn't know whether I was considering passing or considering something else so he can't make any inferences about my hand type. I make a bid so we can have a normal auction. There are really no tempo issues if a bid is made. If I have a connection problem and have a hand where I almost have enough to bid but not quite and then partner decides now is the time to take a flier due to my hesitation then he should be punished. He doesn't know whether it is a connection problem or me thinking so he must do the ethical thing and assume that I was thinking.

 

I suggest to you that the laws of bridge are inconsistent with your position here. We do not try to determine why someone failed to follow suit. We only punish them for doing so. Who gets punished by such a rule? Only those who do it accidentally. Why? Because those who might consider doing it intentionally know that it won't pay to try it and so no one does it intentionally. The rule is effective, it stops would-be cheaters at the expense of an innocent person occasionally suffering. The "penalty" imposed when there is a hesitation is even less arduous than a trick penalty. Partner just can't take any fliers after a huddled pass. I don't see why enforcing that rule is such a big deal. People might even get good results out of it.

 

You say you don't want people to hesitate yet have a policy that makes it impossible to discourage hesitations. I _really_ don't want people acting on hesitations and the way to stop it is to enforce the rule. The "ole black magic" is out of the bag once again and will continue to multiply (and teach people bad habits) until it becomes so much of a problem that you change your mind.

[bassaidai]

Someone calls you for a hesitation, you simply ask the person why they hesitated. If they say "I didn't realize I hesitated," "I was lagged," "<something> happened and I was away from my computer," etc, you simply say "Ok. Play on. Try your best to keep up with tempo," and that's that. However, if they say they hesitated or thought about bidding, etc, then I don't see why we cannot enforce the laws as they are.

This seems reasonable, imho.