Accused -and ejected!

[nikos59]

Hi all

 

I had a puzzling or perhaps funny experience the other day. We were playing matchpoints and this hand

occurred (me sitting East):

 

[hv=d=e&v=e&n=saj75hq5dt763ck42&w=s4ha743da85caj863&e=skt98hkj92dk92c75&s=sq632ht86dqj4cqt9]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

 

West North East South

 

 -     -     Pass  Pass

 1♣    Pass  1♥    Pass

 3♥    Pass  4♥    Pass

 Pass  Pass  

 

 

South led a trump and due to the friendly lie of the cards

I was able to make 11 tricks for a shared top.

 

Next hand began and South announced that the bidding was strange.

Upon request, he/she specified that the 3H bid was strange. A bit of an

overbid, I admitted, but "you cannot argue with success". Yes, he retorted,

"but I can argue with the means used to reach this success".

And he specified that we reached this contract taking advantage of

huddles and tempo variations. Now, this seemed ridiculous to me,

but I merely answered that when playing online against people from

faraway countries tempo variations are due to bad connections and

are to be expected. In the meantime, the oppos had received another

bad score because they played an obvious slam and misguessed trumps so

lost the overtrick.

 

Question: assuming that 3H is made after a huddle (I did not perceive

any huddle, but let's assume it for the sake of argument) isn' my

4H bid totally obvious?

 

Now, South warned:

"I insist that delays and hesitations are not part of the tools of trade for bidding or play .....I'll leave this table if it happens again; make no mistake !!!"

 

The next board had began, and I held:

J 10 x x

A Q J

x

J x x x x

 

South was dealer at love all and passed. Pard opened 1D. North

overcalled 1S. What do you bid?

Well, I bid 1NT not liking very much my stopper neither the diamond

singleton but I felt I could not pass.

S bid 2D unalerted, pard doubled and this was passed out

to S who did not make a call. After a while, having already

received the sermon about huddles, I said "faster pls" whereupon

S exploded:

 

S: nikos59, please leave this table, NOW: ty

nikos59: why, pray tell?

S: because you are now not a quality bridge player, but a nuisance; so please leave

nikos59: We are a nuisance because we beat you?

 

It transpired that S had been asking privately partner

about the double, because the very next line of chat read:

S: North, I asked you for an explanation of your X; you replied "normal" ; what kind of a reply is that for a bridge player ?

S: North, will you respond to my query ?

 

whereupon I ventured:

 

nikos59: perhaps he means "natural"; perhaps he is no native english speaker

 

and pard replied:

North: i opened 1D or not?

 

but he could add no further explanation because we were

both ejected from the table simultaneously -and I wasn't

able to see what the hands were! I hasten to add that

North didn't participate at all in the proceedings and that

his/her only contribution was an occasional "glp-typ".

 

Nikos

Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[Flame]

some players are bad losers, nothing you can do about it, otehr then ignore them.

[EricK]

Your 4♥ bid was entirely normal.

 

Partner's 3♥ was aggressive, but so what? If he bids only 2♥, you will make an invitation and he will accept. Anyway, what does a huddle followed by 3♥ imply anyway? If anything it implies that it is a stretch, so the UI would suggest passing rather than bidding on.

 

It really sounds to me like they had no genuine reason to complain. As Flame says, they are probably a bad loser. Although I am wary to make any diagnosis having only heard one side of the story.

 

Eric

[Gerben47]

I cannot see why this would be funny, I would never play at the same table as South again. 4♥ was 'bleeding obvious'. Also privately ask what double is is not done. I would rather make my decision and apologize or ask why it was wrong after that. Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[helene_t]

Also privately ask what double is is not done.

Interesting point. I really hate those questions about calls that probably cary no agreed-upon meaning. In real life the problem is that whatever you reply you give pd an UI. Online it's worse.

[rona_]

Might as well post the names of South and North. It took me 2 seconds to find out who they were, since your partner's name was mentioned too. The moderating team must still be in bed. :P :ph34r: Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[pbleighton]

"Might as well post the names of the South and North. It took me 2 seconds to find out who they were, since your partner's name was mentioned too. The moderating team must still be in bed."

 

Why post the names, just because someone can find them out?

 

I think omitting the names was correct.

 

If you were to post the names, that would be gratuitous rudeness.

 

Peter

Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[Gerben47]

Misread the part about privately asking... It sort of looked like South and North asked about double, which is of course not done. Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[rona_]

Sorry PBleighton I must have not expressed myself correctly..Nikos mentioned his partner's name which made it easy for everyone to find out who their opponents were. I thought that was just as bad as mentioning the opponents' names. No names should be mentioned...Geez...I need English lessons....and bridge lessons....and and and.... :ph34r: :P i was trying to be sarcastic but obviously failed:)

[pbleighton]

No apology necessary :ph34r:

 

Peter

[nikos59]

Rona said:

<<Nikos mentioned his partner's name which made it easy for everyone to find out who their opponents were. I thought that was just as bad as mentioning the opponents' names. No names should be mentioned>>

 

Sorry, but I am not persuaded. Hiding my partner's name

would just make it a tiny bit more difficult, since on this given day

I only played one 4H+1 contract. I already gave an innocent

false clue when I wrote "the other day". Whoever wants to

play the detective and find identities can do so because

the deal is there and we only play 10-20 hands per day. It

is a matter of 3 mins to find this elusive 4H+1 contract.

 

Do you mean that I should I go out of my

way to mask the identities, ie that I should

deliberately change the data of the hand (switch suits etc.?)

 

This has two risks, a) by switching suits carelessly I might

make a mistake (and it is too hard work as well) and

b) I might be accused of inventing things that never

happened.

 

I really would like to know what is the opinion of the

moderating team.

 

Nikos

[pclayton]

After the slow 3♥ call, anything BUT 4♥ is taking advantage of partner's hitch, calls like 3N, slam tries, ............and PASS!. etc..

 

Pard probably has other options; maybe pard is jumping with 3 card support and some 1345 hand; or maybe pard has some hand that actually makes slam, or maybe pard has a 2 1/2 heart call.

 

I know who the player is and I didnt even need to look it up on myhands. Perhaps be a little more discreet here.

[Cowology]

Just outa curiosity, not because I in any way actually care who North or South players are, but how do you go abut looking up hands in this manner? I didn't even know it was possible to look up other peoples logged deals somehow. Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[Rain]

go to www.bridgebase.com/myhands

 

Type in the name of whoever's hands you want. This only keeps records for a short while, however. If you want more hand records there are softwares you can buy.

 

Yeah in bed, sorry.

 

Edited all to north/south.

 

I think Inquiry has mentioned before. No names allowed. And if you need to mask the names, giving so much clue as to who they are defeats the purpose too. For this hand (as for most others), it was a lot easier to just say North and South. This is for when you say negative things to others. I think if you want to praise someone, obviously its ok to mention names. This is general polite societal behaviour, imo (since someone asked for moderator opinion)

 

 

Rain

[Cowology]

Nifty :-) thanks

[fred]

I would not even characterize the 3H bid as aggressive - I think it was a normal good bid that I would expect well over 90% of "experts" to make.

 

As for the 4H bid, it is beyond normal. To bid anything other than 4H would be completely absurd in my view.

 

South's accusation of cheating was completely inappropriate, regardless of what he/she thought of the merits of the 3H bid (but it turns out her bridge judgment in this particular case was totally wrong in my view).

 

I don't think you would be at all out of line to report this incident to abuse@bridgebase.com.

 

 

I hope you had no regrets about being booted from this table, Nikos. You deserve better than to have to put up with crap like this.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

 

 

(Sorry Fred, edited. Anyway your story was partially wrong. It was not the north player who made accusation, but the south player. )

Edited January 9, 2005 by Rain

[nikos59]

To Rain:

As I said in my second posting, masking identities

is not without risk; for instance, in my initial post

as it stands now [after your intervention] the

final exchange is wrong; it is not North [i.e.

the star player] who says "I opened 1D, didn't I?".

My partner (i.e. West) said that.

 

To Fred: thanks for the kind words. My only regret

at being booted out at the time it happened was

that I did not have time to see all four hands

of the last deal.

 

Nikos

[Free]

To Rain:

As I said in my second posting, masking identities

is not without risk; for instance, in my initial post

as it stands now [after your intervention] the

final exchange is wrong; it is not North [i.e.

the star player] who says "I opened 1D, didn't I?".

My partner (i.e. West) said that.

 

To Fred: thanks for the kind words. My only regret

at being booted out at the time it happened was

that I did not have time to see all four hands

of the last deal.

 

Nikos

Can't you look the hand up in 'myhands' from your silly opponents? :(

[inquiry]

When people talk about hands played on BBO we have a delicate balance. It is not hard to find any hand a given player had. Some exceptions of course. Some people post here with a name that they don't use on the BBO. So unless you know their on line name, you are hopeless to find their hands. Some players post hands they kibitz, which become impossible to find (at least until the hand shows up in BridgeBrowser, where you can enter a specific hand and find it).

 

But to not allow post when such questions as this arise is hardly fair to the person wanting to raise the question or to vent. So moderators walk a delicate line here. On the plus side, there is so few who would care enough to go look up the hand.

 

What do users think. If a post like this comes along again, if we think too much information is given etc, should we simple delete the post? I think our approach is to edit out names and let it stand, but this allows potential abuse of the rules. Any opinions?

 

Ben

[Chamaco]

I think our approach is to edit out names and let it stand, but this allows potential abuse of the rules. Any opinions?

I do not expect to be original, but my opinion is that in future "myhands" engine version, one should provide also a password to access his own hands.

This would eliminate the "privacy" issue.

[inquiry]

I think our approach is to edit out names and let it stand, but this allows potential abuse of the rules. Any opinions?

I do not expect to be original, but my opinion is that in future "myhands" engine version, one should provide also a password to access his own hands.

This would eliminate the "privacy" issue.

Hmmm.. I sure would not like to see this. There is a lot of reasons, why I very much like an open myhands site. For one, many of us kibitz good players in real time, I also kibitz them virtually by looking up their hands on line. For instance, if you want to see the hands Fred played in a tourneyment this weekend with John Platt as a partner, just go to myhands and enter "fred" as the player name. Fred and Sheri also played against Rain and uday over the weekend, so if you missed that, you can go look that up too.

 

A second reason I would not like to see that is because the hands were played in public, and anyone could have kibitzed the hands at the time (well if no kibitzer options wasn't selected). But the public record is a guard against cheating. If someone is cheating on line, the record of that cheating is there for people who think cheating was going on. Without a maintained public record, cheaters would not need fear being caught. For instance, if a player never misguesses a two way finessee, this is easy to discover in the public record. Get 82 out of 82 two way finessees right (or hook when missing Qxxx when right and play for drop when right). I know you might suggest that abuse have priviledge to look at all hands, but the truth is, the only way cheaters are caught is if members report them. Abuse has a full time job just dealing with people who are extraordinarily rude to others. The public record is also a way to catch and warn/ban players who jump from table to table and bid 7NT, redbl when it comes back to them, and then leave to do this again elsewhere (or otherwise disturb the scoring for all players).

 

Another reason is that many of our members enjoy looking at all the hands in the tournment they play.. what they did, and what others holding their hands did.. the privacy guard you suggest would prevent that. If you don't want your hands to show up in the myhands site, then play total points. Those hands are not there. Most online sites allow access to all hands played online at least for a while. This is a feature I for one greatly enjoy. And it the long run, with hundreds of thousands of hands played on BBO each day, every day, does anyone really think their privacy is being violated to have the hands posted. Go online and you will find my blunders, my wacky bids, and my successes... these are all there in about the same propotions. I played Sunday in an ACBL individual. Go look, I didn't even make a 50% score, instead was in the low 40's I think (may have been even worse). Did I screw up? Sure. Do I want people seeing how I played one 3NT (rather than doubling 2♥) or my 2D preempt on J9xxx, 5332 distribtuion and not another hcp opposite a passed hand? No (well fro the record, my preempt got me 100% score, but my opponents should have doubled me in 3D as I went down four, but not vul and not doubled).

 

Since everyone knows myhands exist, the decision is easy. IF you don't want your hands to show up their, don't play in tournments or imps/matchpoint in the main room. Perhaps Fred and uday will see it your way. Perhaps they will make it where you can only see your name in the database, and all other names just come up as EAST, WEST, SOUTH, and NORTH. But I for one hope that day never comes.

 

Ben

[uday]

No plans to change anything in this area.

[hotShot]

Where should we discuss what happend at BBO, if not here?

 

I think your approach is the best possible.

 

If i realy want to know the names, i could sent a message to the poster in privat.

[mikestar]

Let me state this as strongly as possible. Were the first hand played in my club (f2f) and there really were a hesitation before 3H, 4H is the only call I wouldn't rescind.

 

My reasoning is that essentially every non-beginner on the planet will bid 4H. Now ordinarily, a player is not constrained in his choice of calls when the hesitation does not suggest a particular call, but pass or 3N or slam try is trying to guess why partner is hesistating and taking advantage of the UI that partner doesn't have a down the middle 3H bid.

 

It is fine to gamble top or bottom, but not when UI indicates that this is a good time for it.

 

So you should have bid 4H whether the 3H call took a millisecond or a month--the only penalty I would consider is a disciplinary penalty for the person who protested 4H.

[Rain]

Slightly off-topic: I think its possible to have a non-scoring option, where although the hands you play are compared against others, and you receive a score, you can't see other people's records and they can't see yours. (fair's fair)

 

Don't have to appear in myhands in that case(?)

 

Rain