Cheating Allegations

[Fluffy]

Multon's allegations against Boye for playing with cheats on his team for long without saying a word are now epic.

[gwnn]

We called it "Cuadrado" (Squeare) here, but as we grow up it was so easy to count cards and notice when someone got 4 of a kind without any signal unless he started with a pair in hand.

That's avoided by exchanging cards a lot.

[cherdano]

I suspect, from your post, that you have no idea what a real cross-examination is like. I am not talking about the scripted nonsense you see on television or the movies. I am not talking about any media interviews you have seen. I am talking about the work that people like me do for a living. Trust me, if you take the stand to defend work that is actually flawed, I don't care how much better you think you know your subject than does the lawyer...if the lawyer is good, you'll be destroyed if you don't admit the flaws.

I think it's worth pointing out once more how ridiculous this statement is (leaving aside the fact that what I know about cross-examination - which is very little - is from lawyers posting about it, and from reading excerpts of a few trial transcripts. I have literally never seen cross-examination on TV or in a movie).

 

The following types of "forensic science" has held up on cross-examination for years or decades, even though in retrospect much of it is completely flawed and unrealiable:

 

• Gunshot residue analysis
  
• Arson "science"
  
• location tracking via cell-phone pings
  
• microscopic hair analysis
  

 

And this only lists methods that were at some point used and accepted widely.

 

I think the one thing Mike's posts prove is that if you have to hire a lawyer, you never want to hire one who is in some way emotionally invested into the case.

[rhm]

As hrothgar wrote after the Doctors incident, we haven't found the clever cheats yet. It seems obvious to me to encode cheat signals based on board number or vulnerability and I suspect there are some pairs doing something along those lines. If you also take the trouble to avoid obviously anti-percentage actions you are practically untraceable in the game at present.

Apparently such statements do not need to be accompanied by any sort of evidence.

I am old fashioned enough to believe that those who make such claims have to substantiate them, not the ones who doubt them.

Frankly I am tired of this paranoia.

You can design all sorts of clever illegal signals.

But in the end you must be able to apply and decipher them correctly at the table to get any "benefit" from them.

This practical aspect reduces the possibility for designing complex clever codes.

Humans are not computers.

 

Hopefully some additional measures can be brought in to clean things up a little. An electronic environment with partners in separate rooms would be one such idea. The social element is certainly relevant for club bridge but at WC level I think we should be putting the sport above such considerations.

I am against putting each player of a Bridge session in a different room behind a terminal, hopefully with a human monitor and video cameras behind each player.

Big brother is watching you.

Even if I qualified I doubt I would go under those conditions to a big event.

Some cures are simply worse than the illness.

 

Rainer Herrmann

[cherdano]

Wait, in the old times "Watch out for pickpockets in Rio de Janeiro" had to be accompanied by solid proof?

[rhm]

Wait, in the old times "Watch out for pickpockets in Rio de Janeiro" had to be accompanied by solid proof?

You think there was no supporting evidence?

 

You must live in a different world than I do

 

Rainer Herrmann

[billw55]

I feel the same. Bridge bidding is a game of coding messages (with the opponents knowing the code). If you would have to pick someone in the world come up with a good code for cheating, a bridge champion would be at the top of your list.

 

If I were a cheater I would be thoroughly embarrassed to be caught using a plain straight unencrypted code such as "1 cough is clubs", "board in the middle is diamonds" or "vertical means honor or singleton".

 

As hrothgar wrote after the Doctors incident, we haven't found the clever cheats yet. It seems obvious to me to encode cheat signals based on board number or vulnerability and I suspect there are some pairs doing something along those lines. If you also take the trouble to avoid obviously anti-percentage actions you are practically untraceable in the game at present.

Perhaps there are some doing this already. And the next generation of cheaters certainly will be. They do learn. Compare sports cheating: it is a never ending cycle of advancements by the cheaters that the authorities must catch up to.

 

Yes, greater isolation of partners is a solution, for now. What they will come up with after that, I can't imagine, but one thing I know is they won't stop trying.

 

 

 

 

[mikeh]

I think it's worth pointing out once more how ridiculous this statement is (leaving aside the fact that what I know about cross-examination - which is very little - is from lawyers posting about it, and from reading excerpts of a few trial transcripts. I have literally never seen cross-examination on TV or in a movie).

 

The following types of "forensic science" has held up on cross-examination for years or decades, even though in retrospect much of it is completely flawed and unrealiable:

 

• Gunshot residue analysis
  
• Arson "science"
  
• location tracking via cell-phone pings
  
• microscopic hair analysis
  

 

And this only lists methods that were at some point used and accepted widely.

 

I think the one thing Mike's posts prove is that if you have to hire a lawyer, you never want to hire one who is in some way emotionally invested into the case.

Hey, if the science is wrong, as sometimes happens, then no cross can expose that, since the problem isn't soluble by cross examination. The lawyer relies upon the state of the art as accepted by the experts. What I was referring to was evidence based on a flawed presentation of the state of the art as understood in the relevant scientific community. Few, if any, lawyers are also scientific experts in any field of science. In addition, in criminal matters one if the biggest problems is economic. The state has lots of resources, but the vast majority of criminal defendants cannot afford to hire top experts to brief their lawyers, and most defendants cannot afford to pay their lawyers enough to allow them to put in the time. In addition, while there are some exceptional criminal defence lawyers, doing low- level criminal defence, usually on legal aid, doesn't, in NA, attract the best lawyers on average. Civil litigation pays far better, and one tends to deal with nicer people as clients :D

 

Your criticisms should be addressed mostly at the forensic science community. However, bear in mind that the vast bulk of funding for the matters you raise is from the state, and one of the major problems identified with this now discredited matters was confirmation bias. The scientists or technologists involved became convinced of the guilt of the accused and twisted either the science or the data to 'prove' their desired outcome. Often the 'defence' experts are retired state experts, btw.

 

What your posts show is that you are emotionally invested in criticizing me :P I really don't understand your entrenched antipathy towards me, but I have the data to prove its existence, lol.

[Zelandakh]

You can design all sorts of clever illegal signals.

But in the end you must be able to apply and decipher them correctly at the table to get any "benefit" from them.

This practical aspect reduces the possibility for designing complex clever codes.

Take the alleged Fantunes code. Do you really think it would take a computer mind to change this to vertical shows an unknown honour (or singleton) vulnerable, horizontal shows it when non-vulnerable? Or horizontal on odd-numbered boards and vertical on even ones? These are trivial to implement and vastly complicate the decoding. And I am fairly confident they could easily decode much more than this. Sure you do not want to be bringing an enigma machine with you to the table; but simple solutions are available that would be extremely difficult to break. And without breaking a code it appears to be extremely difficult at present to reach the required level of proof.

[LinusO]

I think that Fisher, Schwartz , Fantoni and Nunes all should lose their BBO Stars.

[mgoetze]

I think that Fisher, Schwartz , Fantoni and Nunes all should lose their BBO Stars.

Finally someone has figured out why we should discuss this on the BBO forums. ;)

 

I have spent quite some time on BridgeWinners in the past 2 weeks and it is, frankly, awful compared to the BBO Forums (in terms of technology). So sad that lack of active moderation and someone actually invested in building a community here has led to BridgeWinners rather than BBF becoming the venue of choice for top-level bridge discussion.

[cherdano]

Hey, if the science is wrong, as sometimes happens, then no cross can expose that, since the problem isn't soluble by cross examination. The lawyer relies upon the state of the art as accepted by the experts. What I was referring to was evidence based on a flawed presentation of the state of the art as understood in the relevant scientific community.

 

(...)

 

Your criticisms should be addressed mostly at the forensic science community.

 

But there was never a scientific community that had accepted these methods. The science wasn't wrong. The only place where these sorts of claims were made was in the courtroom. The "experts" testifying did make a flawed presentation of the state of the art.

[MrAce]

Finally someone has figured out why we should discuss this on the BBO forums. ;)

 

I have spent quite some time on BridgeWinners in the past 2 weeks and it is, frankly, awful compared to the BBO Forums (in terms of technology). So sad that lack of active moderation and someone actually invested in building a community here has led to BridgeWinners rather than BBF becoming the venue of choice for top-level bridge discussion.

 

LMAO!

[Fluffy]

Take the alleged Fantunes code. Do you really think it would take a computer mind to change this to vertical shows an unknown honour (or singleton) vulnerable, horizontal shows it when non-vulnerable? Or horizontal on odd-numbered boards and vertical on even ones? These are trivial to implement and vastly complicate the decoding. And I am fairly confident they could easily decode much more than this. Sure you do not want to be bringing an enigma machine with you to the table; but simple solutions are available that would be extremely difficult to break. And without breaking a code it appears to be extremely difficult at present to reach the required level of proof.

 

It will be a bit tougher when you mix all the signals they had in place, wich I assume were several.

[mikeh]

But there was never a scientific community that had accepted these methods. The science wasn't wrong. The only place where these sorts of claims were made was in the courtroom. The "experts" testifying did make a flawed presentation of the state of the art.

you are right, but also wrong, at least as best as I know. The problem with the areas you identified is that they are not, generally, topics that are in the area of pure science or, if they are, not the sort of subject that garners a lot of pure academic research. They are areas of interest to people who are, often, looking not merely to publish but also to be retained as expert consultants by insurance companies or lawyers, or (for many) state (I am speaking of 'government', not individual US states) agencies involved in the prosecution of crimes. Thus there is some element of bias built into the system and the work product will, at least in the early stages, rarely be reviewed by 'experts' who don't share the same agenda. Then you have the funding problem I mentioned, which prevents the defence lawyers from learning the real science or hiring the objective scientists, to the extent that they exist, so the cross is uninformed and therefore rarely effective, especially if the defence can't afford to hire its own experts to testify.

 

That's a systemic problem and not directly relevant to the arguments I made, which were premised on a level playing field. As an example, I have litigated two relatively esoteric areas of science. One is the use of something known as quantitative electroencephalography to identify traumatic brain injury. qEEG, as it is known, is a recognized, legitimate diagnostic assist when trying to differentiate between certain neurological conditions. A researcher in the US came up with a software package that he claimed, and I believe still claims, allows this to be used in litigation to identify brain damage. It has been successfully used in the US by death penalty defence lawyers (where funding is usually more generous than in most cases) to argue for a lesser sentence on the grounds that the defendant, tho sane, was handicapped by being brain damaged.

 

The developer marketed his product to neuropsychologists, who don't have the technical expertise to do the job properly, and so we started getting these long very impressive-looking papers, replete with all kinds of journal citations. I was given the funding to hire and speak and/or meet with two of the world's leading experts on electroencephalography, and read approximately 60 peer-reviewed articles on qEEG, and then had a 5 day hearing before a judge, 3 of which were me cross-examining their experts. The court rejected the plaintiff's efforts as 'junk science'. I can provide a link to the decision if you doubt me. On another case we had to deal with the link, if any, between trauma and the progression of MS. In the 50's and 60's, and even to some degree the 70's, MS experts believed there to be a link. More recently, the overwhelming consensus is that there isn't but a few lawyers tried to persuade the courts here that there was. On the defence side, we were in essence given unlimited funding and access to the world's leading experts. I wasn't counsel in the case that decided the issue in the jurisdiction where I work, but I was working on a parallel case that went to trial a little later, and the plaintiff dropped that aspect of the claim at trial. Again, I can send you links if you want.

 

Those are the kinds of cases, and cross examinations, of which I spoke. And, believe me, when the resources are available, and there really is a scientific consensus against the opinion of a hired gun expert, it is usually demonstrated. When the resources aren't there, or the science hasn't yet got it right, then of course cross examination won't be effective.

 

All I was saying was that if I were to cross Kit on his initial video-analysis posts I would have a field day with him. He has since backed down, or clarified, so even if there were opportunity, there'd be no point, other than perhaps to persuade the more open-minded bandwagon passengers to think more carefully about uncritical endorsement of desired outcomes. Which was all I was ever protesting. I have trouble believing that you, Arend, are a big fan of uncritical endorsements of desired outcomes. So I don't know why you are so dedicated to attacking almost every post I make. Of course, in fairness, that attitude extends to just about every post I make on any topic :P

 

It seems your problems aren't with what I say but with the fact that it is me saying it. Weird, but I guess it gives you something to do.

[MrAce]

on Bridgewinners lately been a whole load of boring nonsense about alleged cheating but the recent developments are kinda intriguing. Anyone ITK have any insight :P

 

Eagles

 

Here is the culprit who started all of this in BBF! http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif (Idk if I need to state this was a joke, Rowland, but I am doing it anyway so that you won't hate me http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[PhantomSac]

These are just the super obvious well known cheaters. It would be naive to think there aren't others out there who are not being super obvious and are cheating a little that have not even been detected.

[ggwhiz]

These are just the super obvious well known cheaters. It would be naive to think there aren't others out there who are not being super obvious and are cheating a little that have not even been detected.

 

And I can't think of anything more important to our future than this kick in the A$$ to the NBO's to live up to their responsibility to police the game.

[mikeh]

These are just the super obvious well known cheaters. It would be naive to think there aren't others out there who are not being super obvious and are cheating a little that have not even been detected.

It may be naïve, but in my opinion we need to live life as if it isn't happening, at least until we have reason to be concerned. You are way too young to remember The Buffalo Springfield (Neil Young's first successful group. Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid'

 

Lyrics to their best song.

 

Not a good way to live.

[eagles123]

so whose this "third pair" then :P

[diana_eva]

Monaco's answer:

 

 

http://neapolitanclub.altervista.org/eng/message-from-monaco-bridge-federation.html

[diana_eva]

I unapproved a few posts in this thread leaking info about who the 3rd pair might be. Until the names are published on BW or somewhere official, mentioning just a country hurts all top pairs in that specific country.

[Aardv]

so whose this "third pair" then :P

 

Try reading the facebook group "facebridge". Which is in Norwegian.

[phil_20686]

I think it's worth pointing out once more how ridiculous this statement is (leaving aside the fact that what I know about cross-examination - which is very little - is from lawyers posting about it, and from reading excerpts of a few trial transcripts. I have literally never seen cross-examination on TV or in a movie).

 

The following types of "forensic science" has held up on cross-examination for years or decades, even though in retrospect much of it is completely flawed and unrealiable:

 

• Gunshot residue analysis
• Arson "science"
• location tracking via cell-phone pings
• microscopic hair analysis

 

You forgot the elephant in the room: the cot deaths. For years in the UK having two cot deaths in a family was basically treated as evidence that the parents were murdering their children, on the grounds that it was so unlikely. It was years before anyone pointed out that:

1) By the birthday problem, its actually pretty likely in that the UK has a bunch of families with two cot deaths in them.

2) And, more importantly, they aren't independent events, and there is a chance some environmental or genetic factor means that having one cot death makes you more likely to have two.

 

It ended up with some expert witnesses being struck off the medical register. Even absent the wrongful convictions, a lot of parents who had just lost two children to cot death had to face suspicion from authorities, and in some cases the indignantly of a murder investigation.

 

I expect that trial lawyers these days are a bit more up to date with statistics than they were in the 70s-90s when most of the really bad stuff seems to have happened.

[Zelandakh]

This is the well-known prosecutor's fallacy and it still occurs in court rooms all over the world. That is sometimes deliberate but often a mistake, such as in a judge's summing up.