Clever Hans

[barmar]

A way in which I could imagine the Clever Hans effect applying could be in how a player holds their cards. Many of us naturally fidget between holding the cards fanned out or folded together, sometimes leaning forward or back. It's not implausible that these could be influenced by your emotional reaction to your hand -- if your hand is very weak, you might not keep it fanned as much, because there's nothing to see there. And other players may pick up on this kind of tell.

 

And like Clever Hans's handler, you're very likely to have different visible reactions to bids and plays by the other players. Hans noticed that his handler's posture and facial expressions changed slightly when he was at the correct answer to a question, and stopped tapping. These reactions are probably related to the kinds of unconscious physiological changes that lie detectors detect.

[cherdano]

May I make the modest proposal that any action that is, for an outside observer, indistinguishable from cheating shall be considered cheating?

[nullve]

if your hand is very weak, you might not keep it fanned as much, because there's nothing to see there.

I caught myself doing exactly that the last time I played offline.

[gwnn]

The hidden game of "rock-paper-scissors" in a game of bridge with bidding boxes:

 

Players: the two members of a bridge partnership

 

Moves: gaps between consecutive bids by one player that are either

 

* 'small' (plays the role of, say, 'rock')

* 'mid-sized' (plays the role of, say, 'paper')

* 'large' (plays the role of, say, 'scissors')

 

Since the players take turns to bid and thereby make a physical move in this game, it's not at first sight a simultaneous game like "real" rock-paper-scissors. But as long as the players focus on the bids instead of the gaps, the last player to move will have no advantage except possibly due to subconscious effects. So at least we can pretend it's a simultaneous game, albeit one played unwittingly.

I still have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean and I have read it four times already.

 

In RPS you have an advantage if you can predict your opponent's next move. In bridge, what advantage could I possibly get from knowing whether my partner's next move is small, mid-sized, or large? Are you saying that at some point one partner may start to mirror, counteract, or otherwise predictably respond to his/her partner's bidding gaps? That is not the allegation. What are you talking about? I have no doubt that you understand what your post means but I think a lot of other people have a difficulty understanding. Why can't you explain what your point is in plain English?

[nullve]

Why can't you explain what your point is in plain English?

Sorry for being cryptic.

 

I was just trying to rebut the view that

 

"If someone is cheating, do we have to disclose their full method to prove guilty? No, we don't.Since B-Z use 3 ways to bid(small, normal, large gaps), so if they are innocent they are doing it unconsciously, and it will be quite random. If evidence show that randomness is violated then it is serious, regardless of the exact meaning." (http://bridgewinners...ng-gap-issue-3/)

 

by likening this bidding gap thing to a game of RPS played unwittingly, i.e. not played in order to win or anything. The whole point of the comparison was to suggest that since humans suck at RPS, any bridge player must also suck at randomly choosing a move from the set [small gap, normal gap, large gap}. Hence by the poster's own argument, every bridge player must be cheating, something we know isn't true.

[gwnn]

Sorry for being cryptic.

 

I was just trying to rebut the view that

 

"If someone is cheating, do we have to disclose their full method to prove guilty? No, we don't.Since B-Z use 3 ways to bid(small, normal, large gaps), so if they are innocent they are doing it unconsciously, and it will be quite random. If evidence show that randomness is violated then it is serious, regardless of the exact meaning." (http://bridgewinners...ng-gap-issue-3/)

 

by likening this bidding gap thing to a game of RPS played unwittingly, i.e. not played in order to win or anything. The whole point of the comparison was to suggest that since humans suck at RPS, any bridge player must also suck at randomly choosing a move from the set [small gap, normal gap, large gap}. Hence by the poster's own argument, every bridge player must be cheating, something we know isn't true.

This sounds like "people suck at choosing truly random numbers of cereals they pour at a bowl" or "people are terrible at choosing how many times to wipe their shoes during polishing." There are reasonable values in both cases (1 is too little, 1000 is too much), and we "choose" within this set, but we don't consciously try to make them random. In RPS, people are actively trying to come up with random variables and that is probably why they fail to do so. I don't know why getting some data with natural variance would suffer from this. Also, sorry for the outburst before, I was moody.

[nullve]

While almost anything is possible (there's lots we still don't know about human psychology), I suspect that the signals that relate to specific suits are more likely to be deliberate. It seems like subconscious thoughts would more likely be about qualitative aspects ("good hand" versus "bad hand") than specific quantitative features (e.g. the number of hearts).

Agree. But if a bridge-playing environment is anything like a Skinner box with e.g. good boards as positive reinforcers, I can't see why suit-specific tells couldn't emerge in principle, or even be expected to emerge, over thousands of boards. (Not that I know a lot about operant conditioning, but...)

[Zelandakh]

Sorry nullve but you are not making any sense in this thread at all. Everyone here must have met club players that place their first bid far to the left when they have a big hand (and therefore expect to bid a lot) or those that just throw their pass on the table when they expect the auction to finish. Most are not doing it consciously but it is most certainly not random either. It should not happen at international level where there is greater awareness but non-random is not automatically the same as cheating. Nor do I understand where RPS comes into things. The analogy seems to be completely bogus as far as I can tell.

[barmar]

I caught myself doing exactly that the last time I played offline.

Just don't do it when playing online, you'll crack the screen. :)

[barmar]

May I make the modest proposal that any action that is, for an outside observer, indistinguishable from cheating shall be considered cheating?

This is similar to the philosophy behind a "Probst cheater". If someone does something that's apparently the same as something a deliberate cheater would do, and they gain as a result, we have to rule as if they were cheating, even if it was actually inadvertent, because we aren't mind readers and can't tell the difference.

[nullve]

Everyone here must have met club players that place their first bid far to the left when they have a big hand (and therefore expect to bid a lot) or those that just throw their pass on the table when they expect the auction to finish. Most are not doing it consciously but it is most certainly not random either.

Agree.

It should not happen at international level where there is greater awareness

No, but does it or does it not? Is bridge different from poker in this respect?

but non-random is not automatically the same as cheating.

Of course not. But several posters on Bridgewinners have implied that. That's why I came up with the RPS analogy.

Nor do I understand where RPS comes into things. The analogy seems to be completely bogus as far as I can tell.

Consider the RPS analogy slightly off-topic.

[nullve]

Of course, it is possible that there is some sort of evolutionary mechanism where I scratch my head every time I have 5 hearts, and I play with a lot of bridge with a lot of partners, and the ones who unconsciously always play me for 5 hearts when I scratch my head unconsciously, I score a tiny bit better with those partners so I will tend to those partners, and so on. But do you really think this is a plausible scenario?

If operant conditioning is going on on both sides of the screen, it might explain both how tells and Clever Hans-like effects emerge over thousands of boards. So I'm not suggesting that certain players, the von Ostens, need to hook up with certain players, the Clever Hanses, for von Osten-Clever Hans-like partnerships to develop.

[gwnn]

It might. It probably doesn't. Have you seen the videos? Do you consider it plausible that Fischer-Schwartz unconsciously developed the habit of putting the boards on their own side of the table when they have strong spades and they want their partners to play it? Honestly?

 

You keep saying things like "For all I know..." "It might" "There is no reason it couldn't" etc. But do you really, really consider all these conjectures likely? It is an interesting theory but don't you think it is far-fetched? At least a little bit?

[gwnn]

We are not talking about splitting the Oreo when you have the nuts but carefully taking the board and placing in specific parts under the screen, taking the board from your opponents' hands too to put it where you want, and sitting NS on purpose.

[nullve]

Have you seen the videos?

Enough to know what people mean when they say that some of the behaviour looks unnatural.

 

Do you consider it plausible that Fischer-Schwartz unconsciously developed the habit of putting the boards on their own side of the table when they have strong spades and they want their partners to play it? Honestly?

I honestly don't know, although I don't see anything wrong with exercising a bit of Cartesian doubt here. For example, am I supposed to equate unnatural-looking behaviour with cheating? Here's Skinner's description of superstitous behavour in pidgeons:

 

"One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner)

 

You keep saying things like "For all I know..." "It might" "There is no reason it couldn't" etc. But do you really, really consider all these conjectures likely? It is an interesting theory but don't you think it is far-fetched? At least a little bit?

I'm just pointing to what appears to be a logical possibility here.

[gwnn]

I'm just pointing to what appears to be a logical possibility here.

OK. I grant you that (I never contested that, or if I did, I misspoke). I think others in this thread also granted you that without comment.

 

It is logically possible for people (even all of the accused) to behave like this way from unconscious causes, in an analogous way to how pigeons become superstitious, horses learn to respond to microcues from their owners, and how poker players drink water. It is all logically possible. In fact, even Piekarek-Smirnov (who have come forward and confessed) could be innocent, they might have internalized some blame at an unconscious level, perhaps rationalizing the lynch mob's behaviour (why else would they be coming for us if we were innocent?), perhaps accepting that if Wladow-Elinescu were guilty, all Germans must be cheating, perhaps from some residual guilt for World War II.

 

And what about the doctors? Coughing a given amount of times is by no means an unnatural gesture. I can't see why it couldn't be the result of operant conditioning. Once you realize that you use slightly different parts of your brain during bidding and during play, it suddenly becomes clear why they were only coughing during the auction period -- there could have been simply an unconscious physical link being formed between the "bidding" part and the coughing gag reflex. What else? The accusers are just victims of mass hysteria for suspecting that 1 cough=clubs, 2 coughs=diamonds, ... could not have evolved over thousands of boards. Then again, we should apply the same analysis for the behaviour of the accusers, who are conditioned from the media (perhaps from super-hero movies) to fight for justice and look for supervillains.

 

I am not even being facetious. I feel pretty confident that all of these logical possibilities exist. I just think they are a little bit silly. Especially as you see evidence that a lot of the behaviour is conscious (I mentioned already the adjustments in my post #24 that you have carefully ignored) -- evidence, not logical certainty.

 

Anyway, any other logical possibilities you would like me to entertain? How about the logical possibility that the moon landing was faked? That Charlemagne is a hoax? How about the possibility that cancer (any cancer, of course) can be cured by an overdose of vitamin C? Do you see any way we could go about proving that these are not logically possible? I certainly cannot. I cannot see any logical way to do it, and certainly not for the superstitious pigeons that we are, drifting between our animal instincts and social conditioning.

[nullve]

I think there's plenty incentive to cheat at bridge and I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to doubt that P-S are guilty when they've already confessed. The case of W-E is interesting to me, because it seemed to me that I was one of the few that actually bothered to look at the video evidence to see if Woolsey's "verdicts" in this thread

 

http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/the-opening-leads-conclusion/

 

matched what was going on at the table. (And please take a careful look at the methodology and apply it to a pair using Bird-Anthias leads or something else that the world isn't yet familiar with. You could even apply it to Woolsey-Stewart, who seldom lead from a 4-card suit vs. NT, but do not disclose that on their CC. (I'm not saying that they should; it's just that it's a pretty unusual agreement.))

 

you see evidence that a lot of the behaviour is conscious (I mentioned already the adjustments in my post #24 that you have carefully ignored) -- evidence, not logical certainty.

I think you've missed the point here. Drinking from a bottle at poker may well be conscious behaviour and a tell at the same time, since the player isn't aware that he's revealing anything about his hand. Adjusting the tray may be similar, although it even to me looks like pointless behaviour unless the intention is indeed to signal something.

 

Anyway, any other logical possibilities you would like me to entertain?

Yes. Please entertain the logical possibility that the alleged cheating methods of W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z were all devised by your proverbial 5-year old.

[gwnn]

I think you've missed the point here. Drinking from a bottle at poker may well be conscious behaviour and a tell at the same time, since the player isn't aware that he's revealing anything about his hand. Adjusting the tray may be similar, although it even to me looks like pointless behaviour unless the intention is indeed to signal something.

I think you've still failed to read my post on this. In it, you will have read that I understand that adjusting the bids/the tray could just be a question of "it doesn't feel right that the bids are far apart" - sort of like a victim of OCD, where the patient feels that (say) unless they don't wipe their shoes exactly 12 times before entering the house, they have failed somehow and they will be accompanied by this weird feeling (not dissimilar to the feeling we get when we ride a bike without a helmet), despite the fact that they rationally see no reason to do so (there are even more bizarre behaviours such as wiping the doorframe with their hands on either side, and so on). All of this might have evolved unconsciously, as I said already. I do not buy it, as I said already. I do not think a few thousand boards are sample enough.

 

Yes. Please entertain the logical possibility that the alleged cheating methods of W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z were all devised by your proverbial 5-year old.

Is your point that their methods are too embarrassingly simple to have been devised? I have thought of these issues before and there are at least five different explanations for it:

1. Cheaters are simply stupider than non-cheaters, so they come up with something embarrassingly simple
   
2. These methods look so innocent that people will never suspect them (or so they think). I can't say they were wrong
   
3. You need some very simple signal that is easy to interpret. You could obviously encode stuff in hexadecimal but that is a lot more error prone. For example, A=1010 would be cough-pause-cough-pause but you would need a certain amount of concentration/training making proper length pauses (otherwise maybe he thinks you meant 9=1001), both in making it and in interpreting it
   
4. (many people made this point already) we are simply catching the bad cheaters. the good cheaters have better methods, perhaps even ones that are impossible to find.
   
5. Cheating and counting to 13 both take a certain amount of energy. The cheaters are simply taking a wise choice in favouring the counting to take up most of their brains.
   
6. am I at 5 yet? if not, how about this? having a long discussion about possible cheating methods/random seeds/encryption keys is not feasible. For one, what if someone walks in the room? But most importantly, nobody wants to feel like they are this evil genius in a smoke-filled dark room coming up with cheating methods. The shorter these discussions, the better -> it is much more likely to come up with something very simple.
   
7. One for the road: even a tiny edge can help you a lot, and you don't need kilobytes of data transmission to give you that tiny edge.
   
8. OK I promise this is the last one: perhaps if they gave themselves more than a tiny edge, they'd feel it impossible to rationalize (the famous justification of "everybody is doing it, we are just levelling the playing field").
   

[gwnn]

One more thing: for FS and FN, both players apparently evolved the same unconscious tells and the same interpretations independently. Of course it is not independent in the strictest sense, but I don't see why they could not have evolved completely different codes for the two sides, if it is all unconscious.

[barmar]

If the standard for reasonable belief were "logical certainty", our prisons would be practically empty. While we may occasionally fall afoul of fallacies because we don't realize how many unconscious behaviors we have, or we base decisions on statistical intuitions that are known to be poor, some things are so blatant that it seems hard to attribute them to anything other than deliberate action. We have to draw the line somewhere, because the alternative is never knowing what's true or false. You simply can't wait for certainty.

[nullve]

Is your point that their methods are too embarrassingly simple to have been devised?

No, all of your points 1.-8. are logical possibilities and I'm also aware of the (controversial) R-S case: very clever man (Reese), stupid method. But commenting on 1.-8. whith only W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z (who, if 7. is true, must all be WC or nearly WC) in mind:

 

1. Stupider than WC non-cheaters, maybe, but hardly so stupid they couldn't all have come up with something vastly better in every way.

2. Hardly risk assessment of the same quality that they routinely make at bridge table.

3.-7. Probably true. But 'simple' doesn't imply 'easy to crack'.

8. Probably true, but has to do with the decision to cheat to begin with, not the choice of method.

[nullve]

One more thing: for FS and FN, both players apparently evolved the same unconscious tells and the same interpretations independently. Of course it is not independent in the strictest sense, but I don't see why they could not have evolved completely different codes for the two sides, if it is all unconscious.

I stumbled across this when reading about RPS:

 

A previous experiment found that players unconsciously mimic the actions of their opponents - a surprising result because advantage is usually gained by acting

differently. (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27228416)

So if we can unconsciously mimic the actions of our opponents at RPS, maybe we can also unconsciously mimic our partners' actions at bridge. I don't know.

 

EDIT: It seems like phenomenon of "mirroring" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_%28psychology%29) is what I'm looking for.

[Thiros]

OT:

[yunling]

I admit that I did not consider the consciousness of the behaviour when posting my thread on BW, but I don't think it is a useful defense against cheating allegations.

1. I agree that when people cannot really generate "random" numbers——even computers use seed to form them so it is not trully random, but using an important charateristic of one's hand as seed is suspicious, since it is something you are quite aware of during the bidding.

2. Different people have different uncommon behaviours at the table, but for a pair of players, the chance for two of them to make gestures with a similar pattern unconsciously, is very small.

3. If us, after going through a few hundred of hands, can find out that a player's gesture is related to some features of the hand, I believe his partner, after playing for years with him, can find it out as well. So when you have noticed it but still taking advantage of that instead of telling your partner to stop the behaviour, then it is a serious ethical problem even if it is not full collusive cheating.

[nullve]

2. Different people have different uncommon behaviours at the table, but for a pair of players, the chance for two of them to make gestures with a similar pattern unconsciously, is very small.

If mirroring (i.e. subconscious imitation) takes place, that chance might depend on how many boards they've played together.