Should the "bidding, play and defense thread stay closed?

[inquiry]

In another thread, one user posted a series of hands which is clearly a veiled accusation of cheating against an unnamed player. This skirted the issue of the rules of the site by carefully avoiding hands where the poster played (if he plays) and no identification of the player was provided. This allowed the original poster to vent his frustration about a potential cheater (and for members here to educated the poster that not all the hands he/she posted provided any evidence of cheating). But wyman raised a good point when he said....

 

No, no one has anything to learn from this thread, other than that if you want to accuse someone of cheating, you can just post the set of hands and say tongue-in-cheek that they have the best system ever!

 

Which in a way agreed with an earlier comment I made in the same thread when I said...

Let's have an understanding that no new hands will be posted in this thread. If anyone wants to discuss the 10 already posted, fine. It is possible a very strong, even overwelming case, might be constructed with these hands and other supporting evidence. However, I suspect that few of our posters will be interested in pursing this general topic anyway. We know some people cheat on BBO, and we report them to abuse when obvious and forget about it.

 

I will be watching to see if this thread needs to be closed and locked, or even deleted. So lets all bear in mind the rules for posting on the forum.

 

With the post attacking the original poster, with request by wyman and aguahombre asking for the thread to be closed, and my own feeling that this type action is not useful -- even if it doesn't violate forum rules, I decided to close the topic. Which gets us to this poll. Should we allow such vieled attacks on the forum? Should the post stayed closed? Should the forum rules be modified to prevent this in the future? Vote above. Voting is public.

 

This isn't exactly a democracy, so majority rule maynot apply, so if you have strong feeling, explain your views in reply.

 

Thanks

[matmat]

Honestly, I am a little bit torn on this. I think the thread is inappropriate, malicious, and the dozens of hands posted in it really slow down my browser :S

 

I do think that it is not unreasonable to post a hand from time to time where you suspect something icky is going on. Doing this with the intention of having the forum posters either reinforce your suspicion or debunk it, i.e. posting with an open mind rather than with a foregone conclusion of the suspect's guilt (not naming any names, of course). Basically, this is like using the forum as an appeals committee of sorts.

 

In view of this, I am actually not sure where I stand on Ben's yes/no rainbow. I think that perhaps such threads should be judged on a case-by-case basis, the intent and approach of the OP is nearly immediately evident. You can tell whether the OP is convinced of the cheating and just trying to expose (in which case it is a case for abuse@) or whether they're trying to make sure that there isn't another explanation that somehow eluded them because of their limited bridge knowledge.

 

---

guess I chose "no, but..."

Edited July 26, 2011 by matmat

[Hanoi5]

Most of the things that happen on BBO are public. Most of the important tournaments have some kind of records of hands played (and sometimes of bidding and play of the hand). Some Directors or plain players usually want to know the opinion of this crowd about what to do with a hand which happened to occur in a not so immaculate environment. So I think posting about this should be allowed.

 

What I think is wrong is accusing someone even in a veiled way (like by stating what happened in a hand and saying which tournament and which round, information that can lead to an easy internet research to discover the bad guy) or posting a huge amount of hands that could be traced in the myhands feature of BBO. This is where the line should be drawn I think.

 

The topic in question had (as mentioned before) a couple of hands that could be explained without recurring to cheating as a possibility BUT when thrown together smelled quite badly.

[diana_eva]

I think it depends on the intention of the poster. There are ways to post hands and get opinions without implying anything at all. Just post the hand (without the names obv) and a poll, or a question. If the poster seems to just whine and accuse it should not be allowed. Tough job for the moderators :(

[wyman]

I think mods can and should use their judgment.

 

My general opinion is that I think discussing a particular hand or hands is fine without an accusation of cheating. I also think it's fine to post a thread with names redacted (and that you didn't play, so it can't be traced back via MyHands) and ask about an auction, including possible bidding conventions that might explain some unusual bidding. People can (and do) learn from such things. They learn that some auctions aren't as fishy as they might seem, and they learn that accusations of cheating are incredibly serious.

 

As to the particular thread, there was not discussion, other than a few posters defending some auctions as bad but plausible. That thread was one poster posting 10 examples of hands where opponents make some incredible guesses and landed in the right contracts or with the right cardplay. And the poster mocked them -- CLEARLY making implicit cheating accusations by saying: Look, we can learn from this. It's the best system ever!

 

This particular case should have been handled by abuse@; they're reasonable and will look at the entire hand histories and come to some conclusion. There's absolutely nothing to discuss in the thread, so my votes are:

 

[x] Yes, and it should be deleted

[x] No, other.

 

If mods think nothing good can come of the thread, they can and should nuke it.

[qwery_hi]

I voted No and No.

 

. Posting 1 or 10 or 100 hands proves nothing, if these hands are carefully selected such that the anti-percentage action taken struck gold.

. Posting 1 or 10 or 100000 hands proves nothing, if these hands are carefully selected such that the anti-percentage action taken struck gold.

 

. Most useful lesson I got from the "amazing 6D bid in New Orleans" thread last year - some bids can look outrageous and 100% cheating on first glance, but this forum will usually help point out the more subtle bridge reasons for the bid, back it up with simulations and this whole process is much better than a spot judgement from gut reaction.

 

 

 

In another thread, one user posted a series of hands which is clearly a veiled accusation of cheating against an unnamed player. This skirted the issue of the rules of the site by carefully avoiding hands where the poster played (if he plays) and no identification of the player was provided. This allowed the original poster to vent his frustration about a potential cheater (and for members here to educated the poster that not all the hands he/she posted provided any evidence of cheating). But wyman raised a good point when he said....

 

 

 

Which in a way agreed with an earlier comment I made in the same thread when I said...

 

 

With the post attacking the original poster, with request by wyman and aguahombre asking for the thread to be closed, and my own feeling that this type action is not useful -- even if it doesn't violate forum rules, I decided to close the topic. Which gets us to this poll. Should we allow such vieled attacks on the forum? Should the post stayed closed? Should the forum rules be modified to prevent this in the future? Vote above. Voting is public.

 

This isn't exactly a democracy, so majority rule maynot apply, so if you have strong feeling, explain your views in reply.

 

Thanks

[jjbrr]

Keep hands about cheaters out of BBF entirely imo. Nuke the actual thread in question. It's clearly just a "look how smart I am, I caught some cheaters" thread, which is a waste of time.

 

It can't possibly be constructive to encourage discussion where the only result is a bunch of people with tinfoil hats who think everyone on BBO is a cheater and online bridge is rigged.

 

Even in the face of a lot of evidence we can't prove definitively the users cheated, and even if we do we really can't do anything anyway, so what purpose would it serve?

 

Make sure people are aware that they can send hands to abuse@ and let that be enough.

[jjbrr]

No matter how many times the BBF regs say "sorry, but this hand alone is not conclusive enough," the tinfoil hatters will still think they've been cheated. They will still suspect every time something weird happens that the opponents must have a wire. They will still make a lot of noise about how everything is rigged and everyone from Country X is a cheater. They will still complain that 99% of experts are actually novices.

 

This is why I think even a single containment thread where posters can post suspicious hands is a big waste of time. Matmat's post about a thread where people can post suspicious hands just isn't practical, because the evidence will never be strong enough to answer definitively.

[nigel_k]

I voted no.

 

If there is some legal liability issue for BBO then obviously they shouldn't allow it. If BBO judges it is bad to have this kind of thing for business reasons, then that is their call and I accept that. But I don't think these posts should be made illegal just because mods or a majority of posters don't want them. It's not freedom of speech in the classic sense because the forums are private property, but it's still important for a minority, or even just one person, to be able to express views that most of the rest of us disagree with.

[wyman]

It can't possibly be constructive to encourage discussion where the only result is a bunch of people with tinfoil hats who think everyone on BBO is a cheater and online bridge is rigged.

 

True. But I did think the 6D thread sparked a good discussion, so I'm wary of a policy being written down about it.

[vianu2]

I repeat: the hands posted in my thread were not basically intended to accuse of cheating .

There is a special case where in the both places is same person, playing him with himself.

So i only intended here to show what a beginner is him, biding so bad while knows both hands and often all 4 hands!

About cheating, that's other job and if not 10 boards posted here, 40 sent to abuse, then perhaps 200 will be enough to prove it.

Strange that none of u didn't say how can a pair know both hands and cheat with such ignorance..i meant to make fun of that.

[diana_eva]

I repeat: the hands posted in my thread were not basically intended to accuse of cheating .

There is a special case where in the both places is same person, playing him with himself.

So i only intended here to show what a beginner is him, biding so bad while knows both hands and often all 4 hands!

About cheating, that's other job and if not 10 boards posted here, 40 sent to abuse, then perhaps 200 will be enough to prove it.

Strange that none of u didn't say how can a pair know both hands and cheat with such ignorance..i meant to make fun of that.

 

The people who took the time to look thru your hands and give you some thoughtful replies have better things to do than waste their time on your 200 hands, especially since you don't give a damn about their opinion anyway

[jjbrr]

True. But I did think the 6D thread sparked a good discussion, so I'm wary of a policy being written down about it.

 

I might be in the minority, but I find a big difference between random hands played in the main bridge club on BBO, for which the results are completely meaningless, and hands played in a major live team tournament like the Spingold or the World Championships.

 

I agree the 6D hand generated decent discussion even if it's not always appropriate to throw the C word around without the whole story, but I didn't think this thread was about that type of thing.

 

Also, vianu is really started to sound sort of creepy. You have collected 400 hands from this pair? You knew they had been banned yesterday and are back today? Do they know you're stalking them?

[semeai]

Sadly many of the votes in the poll are by members who joined today.

[jillybean]

Yes, delete the thread and prevent the posting of 'cheating' allegations. I see no benefit at all in letting people make veiled public accusations here, let Abuse deal with it.

You may need to delete this thread also.

 

 

Oops, I want to change my vote in "Should the BBF site rules be modified to prevent such posting of "suspected" cheating hands? (mulitple votes allowed)" from option 1 to option 2.

[matmat]

Sadly many of the votes in the poll are by members who joined today.

 

 

And most of them voting to delete the thread. Wonder why that is, or who it might actually be? Seems obvious to me that it's a single person generating lots and lots of accounts.

[jjbrr]

True. But I did think the 6D thread sparked a good discussion, so I'm wary of a policy being written down about it.

 

Wyman, if I can sort of compare this to 2p2, I think threads about random suspicious hands from random players is like "The great "Poker is rigged" debate - Collected threads edition" with 37,000 posts and a million and a half views.

 

The 6D hand is more like the UB scandal, which imo should be open to public discussion, and the facts should be made public so that people can form educated opinions.

 

Is that a fair analogy?

[inquiry]

And most of them voting to delete the thread. Wonder why that is, or who it might actually be? Seems obvious to me that it's a single person generating lots and lots of accounts.

 

This is a good observation. As we all know, you are suppose to have one and only one aliases that you use to come to this site, so surely anyone violating that rule will face immediate consequences.

 

We had a rush of new members today, everyone one of them created a minute or two apart (in two different clusters), and all of the new members deciding to vote in this poll (and apparently nothing else) and they all voted to either delete the thread or to keep the thread in question locked. One cluster of four new members who created new memberships here within 4 minutes or so of each, fly BBO flags from pakistan, Romania, Turkey, and USA, despite shared computers to create their account here, so I have to admit this makes me considerably angry. I was going to delete the thread in question because it offends my sensibilities and it serves no purpose, random hands can pulled on almost anybody and posted and out of context could look highly suspicious (was it a swing, was the player drunk, what was said at the table before the bid/play, was game for "fun" and players acting crazy, was it a random anti-percentage thing that worked). However, I have to admit the underhanded way some of the voting is going in this thread means that I will not be deleting the thread... as the action of these new members (sic) makes me mad. But rest assured, new members and older members who never post here can vote all they like, I will simply ignore their votes in deciding what to do in the long run about such threads being posted in the future.

 

In addition, I will offer to provide support to abuse if the player(s) in question in the thread that thread is talking about are turned in for a cheating investigation. Not because I believe that the "cheating" exposed in the thread was so overwhelming, but because I dislike the way someone is trying to jerk around the forum, and my topic I created. I take that quite personally. In addition, those members (new and otherwise) involved in the voting here that appear to be only one person will be banished from posting on the forum, starting as soon as I can implement the bans. .

[wyman]

Wyman, if I can sort of compare this to 2p2, I think threads about random suspicious hands from random players is like "The great "Poker is rigged" debate - Collected threads edition" with 37,000 posts and a million and a half views.

 

The 6D hand is more like the UB scandal, which imo should be open to public discussion, and the facts should be made public so that people can form educated opinions.

 

Is that a fair analogy?

 

Of course. As always, some sort of reason must be applied, and that's why I'm suggesting that we not make a blanket rule about threads that use the c-word.

 

I think we're on the same page, just viewing it from different angles.

[hotShot]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

,

"Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

English physicist & science fiction author (1917 - 2008 )

 

I would conclude that:

 

Any sufficiently advanced bridge is indistinguishable from cheating.

 

Note that advanced is relative to the observer.

 

( Any sufficiently bad bridge is indistinguishable from cheating too.)

 

Bridge is a game where you benefit from experience. Since every player has different experiences, they might make different decisions.

This is experience is not only about hands is is also about opponents.

 

So if you don't know, if people at the table know each other, you might nto know that one of then has a tendency to bluff or false card.

Others at the table (esp. in the MBC) might already know.

This could lead to decisions others can't understand.

[Free]

For me the thread can be closed and deleted. I find it extremely hypocrite from vianu2 to keep claiming these hands are posted for us to enjoy the bidding system, while vianu2 even put in a play problem (nr9). It's clear vianu2 wants us to comment on some weird looking actions (although not all of them are as weird as vianu2 thinks) and wants us to point out that this player/pair is probably cheating. Like been said by others, there's an email address available for cheating accusations.

 

About future cases, I think it's best to look at it case by case. One board should be acceptable, several boards/threads is already over the top imo. This is similar to UI questions, appeals,... We don't want to ban these as well. But as long as the poster is honest about his intentions, the amount of boards are limited and there's no chance the accused player can be identified, there's no problem for me. But don't be a hypocrite about it!

[inquiry]

Free's response above convinces me. I will delete the thread in question, even though I said I wouldn't after getting angry over one person jerking the poll around, but the forum bans mentioned stay in place for that individual.

 

In the future, Such public attempts to expose online cheating will be reviewed by adminstrators individually with a decision to delete them or leave them in our hands. A new forum rule will be written to try to explain this policy. I actually correctly judged the forum's opinion on this matter when I ordered the OP to stop posting hands and explained why, I wanted to delete the entire thread then, but couldn't find the "legal" (forum rules) to do so. I try to follow the established rules and hope everyone else does as well. So we just established a new rule.

[rduran1216]

The point is that its so easy to cheat online you either have a legitimate way to enforce no cheating, or you be foolish and allow reasonable doubt.

 

The abuse stuff doesn't work at all. If there are 50 hands cited where the pair took an anti-percentage or unusual play that worked because of the layout, and that pair is otherwise by the book and solid, its obvious cheating. Its one thing when a consistently bad player strikes gold by doing something dumb, but the times I've complained in the past it was by consistent winners who only stepped off the road when it worked. To me there is no more obvious form of cheating. Using this forum to see if other good players smell something fishy should be allowed. Obviously the wording and tact of the accusations is one thing, but I dont see anything wrong with looking for opinions from forum people.

 

Look, if it offends you and you think it doesn't belong, how hard is it to not click on the thread or not post in it? I can't understand wanting to "clean it up". Just dont post in the thread and it'll die.

[Free]

Look, if it offends you and you think it doesn't belong, how hard is it to not click on the thread or not post in it? I can't understand wanting to "clean it up". Just dont post in the thread and it'll die.

Not clicking on the thread is actually quite difficult because there's no reference at all that this thread was about a cheating accusation. And you can't know if you'll be offended unless you read the content - in which case it's already too late... ;)

[jjbrr]

The point is that its so easy to cheat online you either have a legitimate way to enforce no cheating, or you be foolish and allow reasonable doubt.

 

The abuse stuff doesn't work at all. If there are 50 hands cited where the pair took an anti-percentage or unusual play that worked because of the layout, and that pair is otherwise by the book and solid, its obvious cheating. Its one thing when a consistently bad player strikes gold by doing something dumb, but the times I've complained in the past it was by consistent winners who only stepped off the road when it worked. To me there is no more obvious form of cheating. Using this forum to see if other good players smell something fishy should be allowed. Obviously the wording and tact of the accusations is one thing, but I dont see anything wrong with looking for opinions from forum people.

 

Look, if it offends you and you think it doesn't belong, how hard is it to not click on the thread or not post in it? I can't understand wanting to "clean it up". Just dont post in the thread and it'll die.

 

You seem to assume that threads about cheaters are offensive. That's not true. In my opinion, threads about random BBO cheaters are just terrible and do nothing but pollute the forums. They don't generate constructive discussion for new players to learn from. They do make people paranoid.

 

This isn't necessarily a rhetorical question: what purpose exactly does discussion about possible cheaters serve? We all understand that cheating on BBO is relatively easy. We don't need proof to support that hypothesis. The good news, though, is that it doesn't matter! Your precious imp results in the main bridge club are completely meaningless. Whether you win by 50 or lose by 200 to cheaters, there is no net effect whatsoever. Obviously in tournaments for which you've paid to enter this isn't true, but I hope and assume that abuse@ takes cheaters in real tournaments more seriously than in the main bridge club. If your problem really is paid tournaments, do your homework and send the info to abuse@, but don't post it for public scrutiny. We can't do anything but speculate anyway, and we certainly can't change your tournament result.

 

There are much better things to squander our time speculating about, like global warming.