Cheating?

[xx1943]

Hi all

 

In many threads folks discuss about cheating.

I can't imagine, that many people are cheating. :)

 

It must be so boring sitting at two computers ore while playing calling partner by phone. You don't need your brain, there is no challenge at all. You know the outcome of every board. This can't be fun. :D

 

You have nothing to gain in BBO (no money, no qualifikation for the Beruda-Bowl, no reputation).

 

IMO there are much more discussion about cheaters than cheaters herselves.

 

Cheers

 

Al

[inquiry]

Hi.. the wording of your answers is not correct imho. The correct answer is more then 0% and less than 10% if you exclude "innocent" cheating. What is innocent cheating? By that I mean people who don't know it is unethical (cheating) to take advantage of UI obtained by speed or lack there of in partner's bidding.... that is, serious breaks in tempo. If you include those, it might rise up to close to 10%, maybe slightly higher. But the clear cut, cheaters, is well less than 10%.

 

ben

[TimG]

It must be so boring sitting at two computers ore while playing calling partner by phone. You don't need your brain, there is no challenge at all. You know the outcome of every board. This can't be fun.  :)

While I agree with you from a bridge standpoint, I don't think bridge results are the primary motivation of someone who cheats at bridge. Cheating is itself a game of sorts; the challenge of cheating is not to get good scores, but to cheat effectively without being caught.

 

Also, any cheat who makes use of information to the extent that they know the outcome of every board will raise immediate warning flags. No one is good enough to make the right play all the time. What you need to worry about is the cheater who uses information sparingly so as not to create obvious patterns. Fortunately, cheats are seldom content with subtlety, they will want to push the envelope to see if they can get away with more and more. Otherwise, the game loses its appeal.

 

This all is a generalization from someone who is not trained in psychology. I could be way off base and even if I am right, there will be disciplined cheats who always stay under the radar.

 

I imagine we agree on one important point: there is far too much made of cheating at online bridge.

 

Tim

[guggie]

My private statistics: I make someone an enemy if he is rude, (yelling at p or opp, refusing undo etc), if i do not want to play with him/here because i do not like their way of playing, and when I suspect cheating (i also note the name of the p and the name of the kibitzer(s)). So far i have 73 enemies .. wow. 4 of them for suspicion of cheating, 20 because I want never to play with them anymore, and all the others are rude.

So rudeness is 10x more common than cheating in my perception.

 

I am very happy to say i have a lot more friends, by the way.

[jtfanclub]

Hi.. the wording of your answers is not correct imho. The correct answer is more then 0% and less than 10% if you exclude "innocent" cheating. What is innocent cheating? By that I mean people who don't know it is unethical (cheating) to take advantage of UI obtained by speed or lack there of in partner's bidding.... that is, serious breaks in tempo. If you include those, it might rise up to close to 10%, maybe slightly higher. But the clear cut, cheaters, is well less than 10%.

 

ben

I think that happens less here than in an ordinary club, or even a tournement.

 

After all, if your partner pauses, what did it mean? Slow connection, ordered another beer, wandered off to a girlie site? And if your LHO pauses and your partner bids quickly...maybe that was actually your LHO bidding quickly and your partner pausing, and you had a hiccup in your connection.

 

I don't play the pay stuff, so maybe it's different there. But so far, I've called the TD on suspicion of cheating once. And they weren't- they just had a freaky style of bidding (the system was normal, just one player tended to massively overbid while the other tended to massively underbid).

 

I chose 10%, but if you'd had a choice for 2% I would have taken it.

[inquiry]

I think Guggle is correct. As a yellow I deal more with rudeness and bad table manners (leaving in middle of hand, refusing to explain bids, offensive or controversial material in profile) than I ever do with cheating.

 

It is amazing how difficult it is for people to be civil towards one and another on line. People who would never be rude in real life become demons when typing a facelss partners and oppoenents within the BBO. There would be an interesting socialogical study if anyone is interested.

 

Ben

[TimG]

It is amazing how difficult it is for people to be civil towards one and another on line. People who would never be rude in real life become demons when typing a facelss partners and oppoenents within the BBO.

I find that happens even more often in newsgroups and bulletin boards than it does at the online bridge table. Of course, I am sometimes guilty of such behavior.

[paulhar]

It is amazing how difficult it is for people to be civil towards one and another on line. People who would never be rude in real life become demons when typing a facelss partners and oppoenents within the BBO.

I find that happens even more often in newsgroups and bulletin boards than it does at the online bridge table. Of course, I am sometimes guilty of such behavior.

IMO most of the rudeness that happens in the forum happens because someone misunderstands somebody else's post - which is usually rectified quickly in F2F dealings or at a bridge table where misunderstandings are quickly cleared up.

 

But cast my vote for less than 1%. Obviously it exists but I have seen very little evidence of it. The mere fact that my occasional 68-70% games come in 1st or 2nd is evidence that there weren't many (if any) cheaters entered in these tournaments. Heck, you let me (and nobody else) look at all the cards and I'd be hard pressed to score less than 75%, especially in an individual when I was privy to the information that partner wasn't bidding correctly.

 

I would also think that with communicating with partner only, at least 70% should almost always be had - since you'll always defend perfectly, play double dummy when partner can see all the cards, and can successfully pick off the opponent's best suit in any auction where they have the high cards with a psyche, and bid suits you don't have to get the best lead for your side.

 

So, IMO, the amount of cheating can be determined by comparing the percentage of big games to the expected percentage of big games using the same number of boards.

[1eyedjack]

I voted for 0%. It is more than that, for sure. But I think it is closer to 0% than it is to 10%. Just based on my personal experience of when I feel that I have been conned. Some of them may be much cleverer at it than others, of course.

 

And 100% is not an invalid vote, by the way, however ridiculous, even if the voter doesn't himself cheat. If by some bizarre chance you reckon that the true percentage is 96% then 100% is a closer approximation than 90%

 

I think it depressing to think that 10 voters (so far) think that at a conservative estimate there are currently 107 cheaters online (5% of those online).

[TimG]

And 100% is not an invalid vote, by the way, however ridiculous, even if the voter doesn't himself cheat.

Certainly possible. For instance, the auction remains visible during play which is in violation of the Laws: a player is not entitled to a review after he has played to teh first trick, nor is he supposed to use any memory aids. We're all cheating.

 

Tim

[1eyedjack]

And 100% is not an invalid vote, by the way, however ridiculous, even if the voter doesn't himself cheat.

Certainly possible. For instance, the auction remains visible during play which is in violation of the Laws: a player is not entitled to a review after he has played to teh first trick, nor is he supposed to use any memory aids. We're all cheating.

 

Tim

Disagree. I do not equate a forced violation of the laws for no gain as cheating.

To my mind, cheating is a culpable (and avoidable) violation of the laws for gain.

[Free]

This is quite a useless poll, cause you KNOW at least 9 choices are impossible. It's a choice between 10% and 20%, and imo it's more around 10% than 20%. However, it's closer to 10% than Ben thinks imo, in tourneys that is. In the main bridge club cheating is a lot less i think.

 

What is the rush in cheating? I dunno, perhaps the thrill of winning, IF they win... The still have to play their contracts right, and I don't think cheaters are able to do that (unless a kibber tells them what to do).

I'm much happier when I win a tourney tnx to me and my partner's capabilties, than because of cheating. But we all know people think differently about everything. Unless you're a cheater you can't understand what the fun is imo...

[Cascade]

While I agree with you from a bridge standpoint, I don't think bridge results are the primary motivation of someone who cheats at bridge.

You might be right in some and perhaps even many cases. However I am sure there are a number of cheats whose prime motivation is to get their own name in lights.

 

I imagine we agree on one important point: there is far too much made of cheating at online bridge.

 

I agree with this.

 

In a way there are forms of cheating that are not so readily available online. Unless the UI "cheat" is deliberate then information from body language and even tempo is not so readily available online. And in my experience with local players who I know some of those players are less inclined to play online.

[Cascade]

IMO most of the rudeness that happens in the forum happens because someone misunderstands somebody else's post - which is usually rectified quickly in F2F dealings or at a bridge table where misunderstandings are quickly cleared up.

Online dealings are notoriously bad for miscommunication. We communicate so much via non-verbal means that text is insufficient.

 

I think people make the mistake of 'imagining' that non-verbal communication sometime when online or of just interpreting a word in a different way.

 

I had one yesterday that I had to deal with as a Yellow where someone said "behead" the other person interpreted this as slang for "butthead" but it was intended as the dictionary definition of "behead" and was based on translation of a local way of saying something into English.

 

Of course we will have misunderstandings.

[hotShot]

Is it cheating if one:

 

- notes all tricks played to help his memory

- looks at his own CC

- looks up a convention at a bridgesite

 

I guess that is not what we are talking about.

 

- missing an alert here and there

- incompleat disclosure of partnership agreement

- highly unusual agreements

 

Probably we are talking about that

 

Or even:

- phone/chat with yout P

- be your own kib

- things that should not be published

 

I think the last kind of cheats are much less that 10%.

But playing turneys with only few boards make average scores very unatractive.

So some players try their luck with high risk bids. If the are succesful their opps feel cheated.

If they are not succesful they push their opps to the the top and everyone else is wondering how on earth they could get that result.

 

I guess that causes a lot of cheating rumors.

 

have a nice day

[TimG]

Is it cheating if one:

 

- notes all tricks played to help his memory

- looks at his own CC

- looks up a convention at a bridgesite

I would say in "yes" in the strict sense of the Laws. I would suggest that looking at a CC or a description of a convention is acceptable violation of the Laws, if it is disclosed to the opponents or if it is so common in an environment of pick-up partners that everyone expects it.

 

Writing down all the tricks played would not seem to be acceptable to me.

[xx1943]

There would be an interesting socialogical study if anyone is interested.

 

Ben

Hi Ben

 

I'm very interested in this study.

 

Sincerly

 

Al

[pclayton]

I looked for a 1%, 2% or 5% choice on the poll. Seeing none, I rounded to zero.

 

My main concern about cheating would be a phone line or ICQ when playing in tournaments. You say these events aren't important enough to make people want to cheat?

 

At OKB, there was a full blown scandal about teams cheating in ladder matches. Not even Lehmans were involved. The only real way they stopped the offenders was going through the play records. Jeff Goldsmith has a link on his site about this incident; I'm too lazy to provide a link :rolleyes:

 

At one of the clubs I played in a husband and wife couple were permanently banned by the league from ever playing together again. They offered to show the league 'how' they cheated in exchange for being able to play together again. The league refused. One of the famous hands was a lead away from Kx against 6N when pard held the cashing Ace. Don't ask me why they did it, I'm not a psychologist.

 

Now your talking about masterpoints in BBO tourneys, and (hopefully) some swiss and KO's awarding (a lot more) points.

 

I'm not concerned about memory aides (keeping track of tricks, etc.) while playing on line. You can't stop it, and a decent player doesn't need it anyway. I'm not worried about references to convention cards or notes either.

 

Hesitations, incomplete disclosures, etc., are easily handled by a director at the table.

 

The 1% are out there, and policing will have to be a priority if online bridge for anything but fun is taken seriously.

[skorchev]

10%:

 

20% - Poles

30% - Turkish

30% - Bulgaians :)

10% - Americans

10% - Others

 

That's what show my enemy list.

 

Stefan :)

[badderzboy]

Interesting poll, but I would have preferred a 2-5% option as this is probably a fairer guess in my opinion.

 

In terms of memory aides etc I think this is quite legitimate - I use BBO to some degree as a learning tool and learned to play Benji Acol, RCKB, splinters and other useful conventions on the site so the responses etc stuck so I can now use them in a f2f environment when you are playing competitively!

 

In terms of looking up conventions etc on other sites - I think this is legitimate as it helps (i) to understand what the bid means and (ii) learn to defend against it if people use it against you in f2f.

 

I also think as you can play against any system in the world online and not just the national favourites then virtually everyone needs some help against some system.

 

How many people post CC's when playing I do as I spent the 20-30 minutes to create a Benji Acol CC card but to date NO-ONE has ever posted a card in opposition even in tourneys (Is this cheating! - not really in my opinion )

 

Also the notes of cards played - I believe everyone can do it by running mouse over the tricks played bit on lower LH screen under East? (unless using ASCII format) (or is it only for Kibs?)

 

I find it bizarre still that people feel the need to cheat - online we're not playing for glory or money well maybe glory...

 

If someone cheats to beat me well done - I hope u enjoy the hollow victory!!!

[Gerardo]

Also the notes of cards played - I believe everyone can do it by running mouse over the tricks played bit on lower LH screen under East? (unless using ASCII format) (or is it only for Kibs?)

Players can see only the last trick that way