Why (IMO) delayed vugraph is not the answer

[fred]

But, it would add an expense for the tournament organizers to set up a special vugraph room (or rooms).

 

Sure but...

 

1) As I understand it, when tournaments (at least in the USA) make deals with the host hotel, it is easy for the tournament organizers to get some free rooms thrown in as part of the deal.

 

2) Hopefully the time will come in which tournament organizers start leveraging the possibilities of promotion through vugraph to attract more corporate sponsors and to get such sponsors to donate more money than they otherwise would.

 

IMO my point #2 is not just a fantasy and it is also one of the less obvious reasons why vugraph is important and why it is smart for tournament organizers to do what is necessary to commit resources to make sure there is vugraph and that the vugraph attracts a large audience.

 

Perhaps I am significantly out of touch with reality, but asking a competitor to do without the washroom for about 120 minutes does not seem at all unreasonable to me.  Especially if there is a protocol for emergencies.

 

You are out of touch with reality. I can easily go 120 minutes without having to go to the washroom, but in my experience this is far from being the case for many men who are 20+ years older than I am.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Codo]

Of course it would not be practical to do this for tournaments in which there are 100s of tables in play at once, but if it is vugraph-related cheating you are concerned about then you only have to do this for tables that are featured on vugraph.

But, it would add an expense for the tournament organizers to set up a special vugraph room (or rooms).

 

Perhaps I am significantly out of touch with reality, but asking a competitor to do without the washroom for about 120 minutes does not seem at all unreasonable to me. Especially if there is a protocol for emergencies.

My experience is that your are way out of touch.

 

I do not like to go into details, but:

A lot of people drink a lot of water/juice.

A lot of people are seniors.

A lot people are nervous because of the pressure or whatelse.

 

So to have a restroom for every table is a step in the right direction. But as long as you do not have one, everything is possible.

[Echognome]

Why not have the players themselves "donate" the use of their rooms for the top level events? Most of the top level players stay at the hotel onsite and often in pretty decent rooms. You could make it so that players don't play in their own or their partner's or teammates room. Someone could do a quick scan of the bathroom ahead of time. As the tables fold up, they shouldn't be too much of a burden.

 

All you do is make sure play doesn't start too early and work out with the hotel to have the rooms serviced each day before play starts.

 

You obviously have more work to do on the organization side, with making sure people know which room to go to, etc. But it should only be for the "vugraph rounds", so it shouldn't involve too many tables.

 

Also, if trained properly, why not have the vugraph operator be the monitor in general for the room? There could be a set of roving TD's (I imagine two would be enough). If the players have an issue, they could tell the monitor/operator to call the TD's, who are then dialed on their cell phone (or called on a walkie talkie) who then go to the room.

 

Yet another alternative is to have the rooms be set up as the BBO vugraph rooms. They are comprised of TD and operator rooms and act as compensation for their services. Imagine getting free hotel in exchange for being a vugraph operator/monitor and getting to watch the top quality bridge? I'm sure many people would sign up, even if you slept two to a room and they both had to work some. (I can imagine a couple might do this or two juniors, as examples)

[Hanoi5]

I'm sure some designer could come up with (in case it doesn't exist already) some sort of cabin for the vugraph operator to be in in which he can see/hear everything but he is not seen or heard. It can be the size of a telephone cabin and foldable and would be used in tournaments where it is demanded. The operator would be inside just doing the Vugraph and some troubles might be solved.

[fred]

Anyone want to remind us how much some of the top pros make for a single weekend of play?

I agree that this is a relevant question, but I think you shoot down one of your own arguments by asking it.

 

Sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying before, but I believe you argued that cheating with the help of a non-partner/teammate is more likely than cheating with a partner/teammate because the potential cost, in terms of getting caught, to your partner in crime is less if that person is not a player. Therefore that person is more likely to be willing to help you cheat.

 

I agree with that, but the money issue balances this factor at least to some extent:

 

If your partner in crime is also your partner/teammate, that person has more to gain from helping you cheat than a non-partner/teammate.

 

Anyways, I personally think it is a distraction to spend a lot of time thinking about exactly how likely various scenarios are. As long as scenarios exist that are sufficiently realistic that they might happen and as long as it is realistic to stop such scenarios from happening, efforts should be made to do just that.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

If I wanted a "wire" I'd use precisely this type of method.

 

This type of system would be almost impossible to detect. 

You couldn't sweep for the bug.

The transmitter only needs to burst for a short length of time on a few critical hands.

I suspect that this type of system would be pretty cheap, easy to build, and still provide highly actionable information.

 

Folks have done MUCH sillier things in pursuit of filthy lucre...

Richard,

 

You seem to know at least as much about relevant technology considerations as anyone here (or else you are very good at BSing and the people who really know what they are talking about are remaining silent!).

 

For now I will take your word for it that scanning for electonic transmitters/receivers is more complex than I would have guessed.

 

Do you know anything about technologies that block the signals that such devices send and receive?

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

If I wanted a "wire" I'd use precisely this type of method.

 

This type of system would be almost impossible to detect. 

You couldn't sweep for the bug.

The transmitter only needs to burst for a short length of time on a few critical hands.

I suspect that this type of system would be pretty cheap, easy to build, and still provide highly actionable information.

 

Folks have done MUCH sillier things in pursuit of filthy lucre...

Richard,

 

You seem to know at least as much about relevant technology considerations as anyone here (or else you are very good at BSing and the people who really know what they are talking about are remaining silent!).

 

For now I will take your word for it that scanning for electonic transmitters/receivers is more complex than I would have guessed.

 

Do you know anything about technologies that block the signals that such devices send and receive?

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Hi Fred

 

I'm not an RF engineer by any stretch of the imagination. However, I have the luxury of working with a rather eclectic group of individuals.

 

A few monthes back, I picked some of their brains about some of these topics. I am simply reporting what they said...

 

Few points to keep in mind

 

1. It's much easier to detect a transmitter than a dirt simple receiver.

 

By their very nature, receivers can be small and passive. It's certainly possible to detect a passive receiver (You blast our some energy and you listen for a harmonic - The aforementioned Non Linear Junction Detectors do exactly that). However, doing so in a way that you can safely scan people... Thats a nasty problem.

 

In contrast, receivers need to transmit. This means that they're larger, they're going to have power sources, and they're going to be easier to detect.

 

2. The small, simple receivers that I described can easily be thwarted

 

You can use a Faraday cage or some such to shield players

Alternatively, you can pump out enough electromagnetic noise to degrade the signal

 

I'm not sure how feasible either of these courses of actions might be.

 

A Faraday cage is large and bulky

Pumping out lots of noise gets you in trouble with the FCC

 

3. You might be able to design a system that was listening for transmissions. However, if folks are only transmitting tiny little chirps every once and a while I doubt that this would work.

 

As I mentioned, all of this is based on an hour or so of discussions over beers at the Cambridge Brewing Company. None of us have any skin in the game, but we were able to come up with some fairly simple ways to cheat without all that much difficulty. From my perspective, the important point isn't the specific claims, but rather the fact that people can come up with some very VERY clever ideas.

 

Personally, I'd be very worried that folks that DO have a strong financial incentive have figured out something MUCH MUCH more clever.

 

Playing defense against these folks is going to be a royal pain in the butt.

[TimG]

Perhaps I am significantly out of touch with reality, but asking a competitor to do without the washroom for about 120 minutes does not seem at all unreasonable to me.  Especially if there is a protocol for emergencies.

 

You are out of touch with reality. I can easily go 120 minutes without having to go to the washroom, but in my experience this is far from being the case for many men who are 20+ years older than I am.

My wife is an attorney. She tells me that in Federal Court here, the trial day is generally 8:30-2:30 with two 15 minute recesses at approximately 10:30 and 12:30. There is some flexibility, but it is generally expected that all parties make a good faith effort to stick to the schedule.

 

Perhaps senior events should be run in 7 or 8 board segments instead of 15 or 16 board segments. :-)

[mycroft]

If you search me on electronic cheating here, you'll see I'm the champion of "one-bit transmission" as a strategy. Yes, it not only requires vugraph, it requires an accomplice who is good enough to know what bit of information will be useful to a world-class expert (or just determine unambiguously beforehand what to transmit - two-way guesses on my left, maybe. But that's much easier to detect, and much less useful).

 

But it's simple, it's almost undetectable (because, as Richard says, the passive component is the one in the room) and one bit of information on every hand would make a second-level WCE a champion, if a third- or fourth-level WCE were able to double-dummy analyse in real-time and determine what the "need-to-know piece of information" on this hand was. Very likely even counting transmission errors, translation errors, and occasional deliberate misinformation (to screw up the tracers; the active player would need to know that this would happen sometimes - say 15% of the time, usually in situations where the cost isn't too high - or eir reaction to such a failure may be more detectable than the pattern).

 

I'm more concerned, frankly, with the work done to properly seed the RNG for the hand generator, and the procedures in place to ensure it is done (and, of course, to ensure that the amount of random information is high enough to encompass all possible board*sets*). Computing is getting cheap enough that probably $250K would buy supercomputer-class hardware that could crunch through the information provided by the first set (or previous sets) of boards and reverse-engineer the seed in "real-time" - say the first 10 boards of the set. I *think* we have that problem down, after several major public mistakes, but the correct (cryptographic science) answer doesn't seem to be happening; we don't see the seed used to create the hand record set on the hand record set. We need a copy of the hand record generator (don't tell me that it's totally secret and totally secure - *someone's* got a copy for sale to the right bidder, so we have to assume that our hypothetical nefarious WCSponsor has a copy) and the seed on the set, each set, for verification that the system is pristine; we need each seed to determine if there's a pattern to the seeds that could reduce the search space from "all possible sets" to "uniquely determinable given a few hands" (likely pointing to an error in implementation rather than an error in system); we need each seed to determine if there is truly enough random information in it to allow each possible boardset to be produced; we need the Bazaar of Eyeballs on the system and the seeds for two reasons: 1) Schneier's Rule (anyone can create a security system *they* can't break into); 2a) 500, 5000, whatever many interested people with some knowledge emulate, for free, a major security expert or two (Linus' "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"), 2b) the computing power held by that same whatever many people can emulate, for free, a $250k supercomputer (especially if real-time-criticality isn't an issue; see SETI@Home et al.)

 

Man, that was dense. Sorry. But there is a difference between the BB and the finals of the Canadian Open Trials (and certainly between the BB and the Sheardown Memorial KOs at the Toronto Easter Regional); it may be worth doing the whole gamut (both physical and cryptanalytic) for the BB and the Cavendish, and relax it somewhat for other VGs. The problem is that I don't believe what's being done at the moment, even for the BB and the Cavendish, is at the level where open source cryptanalysis wouldn't find a flaw exploitable by people with the resources that our world class sponsors have (again, I'm not suggesting that any of them would, or do; but if I can buy a $2k computer effectively "because I feel like it", then someone making 500 times what I do could easily afford a $1m cryptanalysis effort "because she feels like it"). And I certainly haven't been shown any proof other than "It works. Trust us." Is it necessary? For me, no. I'm willing to live with that trust, and the honour of the players, and the instincts of the honest players to determine who to pay more attention to. But I'm a professional paranoid, working in computer security, with (most of) a graduate degree in cryptographic engineering, so I see the holes that I'm trained to, and they're bigger than they look to the untrained. They're also smaller than they look to the paranoid, of course.

 

As I said, I think a consistent 10, 15 minutes, long enough to let the board go through, would be okay. More than that, or doing the compress rebroadcast, would be an issue. I agree that any delay would hinder the self-correction ability of the VG process, though, so a less-error-prone method of VG input would become very desireable very quickly.

[TimG]

I wonder what different precautions are taken at the Cavendish as opposed to the USBF Open Trials. It seems to me that cheating at the Cavendish could be quite lucrative and must be on the minds of the organizers, perhaps even more so that at the USBF Open Trials.

[Phil]

Why do I have the Mission Impossible theme playing in my head as I read Mycroft's post? :)

[hotShot]

I don't know why so many think that signaling would be done every board.

Do decide a team match between top teams, it would be enough to signal that the next board is a makeable but unbidable game or slam. A player could use a non playing friend without the knowledge of his partner to get that information and just bid a little more aggressive on the next board.

 

If the aid can see what board his partner is playing and what the result off the next board was in the other room, all what is needed is a little time to signal that information. During a live vugraph there is enough time for that.

[Rain]

Delayed vugraph doesn't prevent VO from sending info to players, only vugraph watchers. Unless you mean VO isn't seated at table, but slightly away, and keys in the cards brought to him by a caddy after every 2 boards.

[barmar]

I'm sure some designer could come up with (in case it doesn't exist already) some sort of cabin for the vugraph operator to be in in which he can see/hear everything but he is not seen or heard. It can be the size of a telephone cabin and foldable and would be used in tournaments where it is demanded. The operator would be inside just doing the Vugraph and some troubles might be solved.

The operator often needs to communicate with the players, usually to request information he missed: how many tricks were claimed, what was the explanation of the alert, etc.

 

Maybe we could get players to provide this information more clearly, but I doubt it.

[TimG]

The operator often needs to communicate with the players, usually to request information he missed: how many tricks were claimed, what was the explanation of the alert, etc.

 

Maybe we could get players to provide this information more clearly, but I doubt it.

It has always been my impression that the vugraph operators do not bother the players with this sort of thing, that the vugraph operator enters as best he can what he sees, but does not disrupt the game by asking any questions of the players. Same as any other kibitzer.

[zasanya]

Fred

I am a bridge lover and organizer.As a bridge lover I love to watch vu-graph .As an organizer however I cannot afford to spend a huge amount (by my standards) on security gadgets. I do not mind watching the vugraph after 30 minutes delay.I believe a significant number of people will be of the same opinion.So please consider arranging delayed vugraph for organisations which cannot afford the security arrangements and instant vugraphs for those who can.

[helene_t]

[to Richard]Do you know anything about technologies that block the signals that such devices send and receive?

Jamming and detecting are both infeasible. You don't know what signals to look for (you would basically have to jam/scan all EM frequencies plus uwb and maybe ultrasound. If I sit with the back to the window someone can beam a maser signal to a receiver in my neck and it won't give you any ambient EM to detect), you don't know when they will be transmitted, and you want the players' pacemakers, the vugraph operators mobile internet, the bridgemates and the TDs' cell phones to be unaffected. Also you don't want all the electronic devices in the hotel room or on the corridor to cause false alarms.

 

Consider that airlines (who claim their electronics may be affected by passenger's phones) don't scan but just trust passengers to switch their phones off.

 

If playing against QuantumCat, gwnn, Gerben, Whereagles or other phycisists you can be sure they would communicate through quantum entanglement which is 100% impossible to detect or jam :)

 

I don't think this shoe trick (or other body parts as suggested by Richard) is practical. If I were a tournament organizer I wouldn't worry about it. My priorities would be:

First choice: Allow live vugraph and trust players to be honest. Maybe search jackets and handbags for cell phones in case someone needs to go to the toilet. If they manage to hide a smartphone in a body cavage, congrats, may they enjoy their deserved victory. Hopefully the stress induced by cheating outweighs the gain.

 

Second choice: Delay vugraph and other reporting, i.e. everything is secret until say 10 minutes before the end of the set. I think this would eliminate most cheating since you need another player or kibber to transmit the information.

 

Third choice: No toilet visits unless accompanied by a security officer. But that is a joke.

 

PS: If the boards are played in the same order in both rooms, there is little scope for cheating since when you go to the toilet and check vugraph, you will see mostly or entirely boards you have already played.

[fred]

Fred

I am a bridge lover and organizer.As a bridge lover I love to watch vu-graph .As an organizer however I cannot afford to spend a huge amount (by my standards) on security gadgets. I do not mind watching the vugraph after 30 minutes delay.I believe a significant number of people will be of the same opinion.So please consider arranging delayed vugraph for organisations which cannot afford the security arrangements and instant vugraphs for those who can.

Hi Zasanya,

 

Of course I appreciate it that tournament organizers like you are willing to produce BBO vugraph broadcasts of your tournaments. I am sympathic to the fact that this costs money, that additional security costs more money, and that many tournaments do not have a lot of extra money to work with.

 

But can you please explain, as a tournament organizer, why you are concerned about live vugraph?

 

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hotShot]

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

Player A and his Partner B are part of a top team. Player A expects that winning the tourney will bring him some sort of financial advantage. Player B is completely unaware of what A does.

 

Player A is familiar with the tournament location and manages to get a room that is visible from most parts of the playing area. He asks his wife who shares his financial interest to watch the life vugraph from his match from the hotel room, and change the window status (open/close) if he should bid more aggressive next board.

 

A notices that his wife has opened the window. Next board partner opens 3m and he looks at some sort of Yarborough and would usually have passed. But with the extra information he bids a confident 5m over RHOs pass. Partner goes down 4 dbled non vul., but Opponents miss their slam/grand because of this.

A few board later he notices that the windows is closed again. Next board partner opens 1M and he upgrades his close to maximum single raise to some sort of invitational hand. His partner would have passed 2M, but now risks to bid 4M. The other table had 2M+2.

 

These 2 board should produce a significant IMP advantage for A's team probably enough to win and since their opponents will feel they are behind, they might start making mistakes.

 

Does this sound realistic enough for you?

Of cause his wife could also sit outside on a park bench or walk through the hall as a signal.

[zasanya]

 

But can you please explain, as a tournament organizer, why you are concerned about live vugraph?

 

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Fred

Personally I am not at all worried about security aspect.I do not think any players i know of will have access to electronic gadgets which seem straight out of James Bond Movies.

However some of the paranoid players themselves have apprehensions of the 'signals-from-kibs' or 'washroom/smoking breaks' variety.This used to happen in pre-vugraph era also.Vugraph has added an extra dimension.Organizers try to keep players happy.

Personally I prefer instant vu-graph to delayed vugraph and delayed vu-graph to no vu-graph.

[McBruce]

I had my first experience at being an operator a few weeks ago at the Canadian Championships.

 

(Actually, I only did it for about 8 boards of the 128 board final after a session of practice during the semis; we had two great people -- with a total of 7 ACBL masterpoints!! -- who enjoyed the job so much they covered both tables for most of the two days. Having preduplicated 2,858 boards by hand for the event over the past week and the month before, I was happy to watch most of the match in the hospitality room.)

 

I don't recall a single delay resulting from any of the players leaving the table during any of the 16-board segments. In fact, we had two sessions of 16 boards where one table got only 15 boards in, so there wasn't a lot of time to take breaks. There were some lengthy breaks in the play and bidding on several occasions. (As an operator you quickly learn that these breaks are inevitably followed by some superfast tricks -- given thinking time, the cards and options become clear once the play resumes...)

 

While I understand the concern about cheating and the hope that things can be done to eliminate the possibility, the one thing that occurs to me that doesn't seem to have gotten much airtime on this thread is this:

 

Persistent cheating creates a footprint. If a player wins a significant number of IMPs by making anti-percentage plays, or guessing right often, or getting to miracle contracts, the trend might well be noticed--especially if there are a lot of people watching on VG. This has been the traditional way of catching cheaters, and it is not perfect, but it usually gets the job done--eventually. The Italian pair that were caught in Tenerife won the 2005 Cavendish a short time before that.

 

My opinion is this: introducing security methods to combat cheating actually increases the awareness of potential cheating among the players and spectators. I don't think that this is a good thing at all. I certainly wouldn't want to see commentators remarking with innuendo that Bobby is certainly having a very, uh, lucky day. But I think that is almost a given if we continue to ratchet up the presence of tight security measures.

 

Even worse is this: I suppose that the current method may not catch all cheaters, but the ones it does catch are not victims of circumstance. I have the impression that with all these extra security measures that there is a danger that somebody innocent is going to be investigated or even disqualified: and whichever one is the result, their reputation will be tarnished. Even worse, the process of reporting possible breaches of security (even privately) may become a tactic to throw an opponent off his game. You win 10 IMPs by taking a slightly antipercentage line in a contract. One of your opponents, perhaps someone who has a history with you, spends the next break talking to the TD and you have a TD or tournament official kibitzing you for the rest of the tournament. Good luck with that.

 

A better option, I think, would be to downplay the security, but ensure that more matches are recorded on VG so that the decisions taken by players can be a matter of public record. If someone amasses a huge number of IMPs in 50-50 situations, a full record can be built up and if necessary an investigation can take place for transmission methods. The accused player will have every right to defend himself with the database of hands played from VG.

 

As for live vs delayed vugraph, it seems obvious that delayed vugraph is not the answer. Cheaters will simply find other, more difficult to detect methods if live VG is removed. Simple procedures like piling a bunch of chairs and signs to either side of the VG operator to keep kibitzers away will work reasonably well to prevent anyone getting a view of the operator's screen. I can tell you firsthand that the instructions Roland and Fred gave to me for our team of newbie operators worked out very well.

 

But if delayed vugraph is not the answer, what on earth is the question? Is there a feeling out there that there has been cheating going on? If you feel this way, please do the right thing and inform your NCBO (or the Director in Charge) about your suspicions, noting the boards you suspect and any other information you are aware of. And having done so, let them do what they think best, and trust in their judgment: in other words, drop it. Even worse than cheating is the grapevine of innuendo about some poor player who has no way to defend himself.

[barmar]

The operator often needs to communicate with the players, usually to request information he missed: how many tricks were claimed, what was the explanation of the alert, etc.

 

Maybe we could get players to provide this information more clearly, but I doubt it.

It has always been my impression that the vugraph operators do not bother the players with this sort of thing, that the vugraph operator enters as best he can what he sees, but does not disrupt the game by asking any questions of the players. Same as any other kibitzer.

I've been a VG operator a number of times. I don't usually interrupt them to get alert explanations (occasionally I can see what they've written on the little slips of paper), I hope that some of the commentators know the system. But I usually try to confirm what the final result of the board is if it's not totally clear to me; claims or the last few tricks often go by in a flurry. This is the level of competition where claims are made and accepted on squeezes, which they can see but I can't.

[hackenbush]

From my experience as operator, entering the correct number of tricks claimed is arguably the most important information to get right. If you are wrong the first time, changing it in the movie erases bidding/play of the board. This would be annoying for the audience as well as for record-keeping.

[awm]

Pretty much every form of cheating we've seen discussed involves a transmitter of information and a receiver of information. The receiver is necessarily a player who can act upon the additional information to improve his results. The transmitter doesn't have to be a player.

 

The main problem with Vugraph is that it opens up a number of opportunities for non-players to do the transmitting which would not otherwise exist. In an extreme case, Vugraph itself can act as the transmitter (player goes to restroom, takes out iphone, watches vugraph for a few minutes, returns and takes advantage of the information). There are also cases where the existence of Vugraph makes a human transmitter harder to observe -- for example instead of the human transmitter needing to be present at one of the two tables, the transmitter can be watching Vugraph at some undisclosed location.

 

Delaying Vugraph potentially helps to deal with these problems. It will not prevent all cheating of course, but without Vugraph as a tool it seems that the transmitter needs to be physically present at one of the tables. This means that cheating requires more than one person to implement, and also creates another avenue for detecting cheating by observing the transmitter. Detecting the receiver is typically difficult except through laborious observation of his bids and plays (and even then there is a possibility of false accusations). For example, a player could arrive with a radio receiver disguised as a hearing aid and probably would not even be questioned.

 

One thing I'm surprised that ACBL hasn't implemented is shorter "segments" for matches. Many of the cheating suspicions revolve around what players do when they are "taking breaks" (bathroom breaks, smoking breaks, etc). It's possible that players could communicate during these breaks, either electronically or by talking to other players in the smoking area or leaving notes in the bathroom. The obvious solution to this is to have everyone play the same boards at the same time and have no breaks during a session.

 

Of course, many people can't go for 3.5 hours (or 5 hours in the case of spingold sessions, for whatever reason) without a break. The obvious way around this is to play more short sessions; say in the big events you would play eight boards and then have a break, and synchronize the start of the next eight-board segment with the other table. Likely almost everyone can go eight boards (about an hour) without a break -- we have to do this during swiss teams anyway and this is much less time than watching a movie (for example). A rare "emergency break" of some sort would of course be allowed, but any individual who has a lot of these emergencies would automatically be suspect.

 

This sort of synchronization seems to prevent a lot of cheating opportunities without resorting to delaying vugraph, or banning electronic devices, or requiring that players be followed to the rest room.

[Dwingo]

Agree with Adam, Short sessions. No breaks. Simultaneous starts. Play boards in same order in both tables. 15 min Vugraph delay. By the time Vugraph Audience sees the deals, they would have been played out at both the tables.