Its not looking good for Poland

[benlessard]

http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/the-videos-speak-balicki-zmudzinski/?cj=252745#c252745

 

Previously there was an hypothesis that was made by Cornelia Yoder that an open hand on the table with 5 fingers show a 5 card suit.

 

Kit W did test this hypothesis and as I write this its 17 hands with no false positive that satisfy this condition. Even if we remove 3-4 hands that were before the hypothesis (you cannot rely on hands that were use to make your hypothesis) its really not looking good for B-Z and Poland.

 

Exactly a 5 card suit is a 44% occurence. So 0.44x0.44x0.44 ... is like picking head and win 13-15 times in a row. Since the hypothesis is choosen out of an ensemble of hypothesis (but only one hypothesis was tested seriously) and there is some case that were before the hypothesis was made we cannot count all the 17 cases.

 

But even 0.44 exp 13 is 1/43000.

[helene_t]

But it looks as if he does this also when he is declarer. So it might be some kind of nervous tick rather than a consciously made signal.

[Vampyr]

But it looks as if he does this also when he is declarer. So it might be some kind of nervous tick rather than a consciously made signal.

 

Or the logical way to,camouflage?

[aguahombre]

But it looks as if he does this also when he is declarer. So it might be some kind of nervous tick rather than a consciously made signal.

That would be awesome. Does he actually touch dummy when he is declarer with hand/finger signals which match his holding in the suit he touches? We should investigate whether he prearranged this with his opponents.

 

Perhaps Z and the rest of the team have actually been B's victims all this time, and when he was on defense the Declarers were his partners in collusion.

[lamford]

For me, this is enough:

"On the 12 times the gesture occurred after the dummy came down, Balicki always had a 5-card (and no longer) suit."

[aguahombre]

For me, this is enough:

"On the 12 times the gesture occurred after the dummy came down, Balicki always had a 5-card (and no longer) suit."

And this has something to do with what I said?

 

Edit: Actually what I said was silly enough that nothing anyone says should have anything to do with it.

[lamford]

And this has something to do with what I said?

 

Edit: Actually Edit: Actually what I said was silly enough that nothing anyone says should have anything to do with it.

I inadvertently "replied to post", rather than put up a new post. It did have something to do with the heading, and your post should also have had something to do with the heading.

[aguahombre]

Well, my alternative hypothesis does have something to do with the heading.

 

If it is found that the signals B sends are the same when he is Declarer as when he is a defender, we then compare those signals as well with his actual holdings. If the comparison is spot on, we can then conclude:

 

1) He is OCD compelled to signal his holdings. OR

2) He was actually in collusion with the opponents to dump and Z is an innocent dupe.

3) Either of the above, and Z discovered it but didn't expose his discovery.

 

Either way, it is applicable to the heading...It's not looking good for Poland.

[1eyedjack]

I'd be inclined to distrust the methodology, if that were the resulting conclusion, rather than the conclusion.

[biggerclub]

But it looks as if he does this also when he is declarer. So it might be some kind of nervous tick rather than a consciously made signal.

 

Intentional or non-intentional is not the issue.

 

Does his partner have UI and is he acting on it is.

[Trinidad]

Intentional or non-intentional is not the issue.

 

Does his partner have UI and is he acting on it is.

Not really. The question is whether the signals are prearranged (law 73B2).

 

Using UI (Law 73C) is an infraction that will be penalized with PPs, not with expulsion or disqualification.

 

Rik

[Vampyr]

Not really. The question is whether the signals are prearranged (law 73B2).

 

Using UI (Law 73C) is an infraction that will be penalized with PPs, not with expulsion or disqualification.

 

A signal that you have come to rely on quickly becomes the equivalent of a pre-arranged signal.

[1eyedjack]

Intentional or non-intentional is not the issue.

 

Does his partner have UI and is he acting on it is.

 

Whether partner has UI and is acting on it is certainly an issue.

 

But that does not imply that the distinction between intentional and non-intentional is not an issue. That is central to the distinction between cheating and a "mere" infraction, which distinction carries sanctions of differing severity.

[nige1]

More convincing evidence about bidding card gaps from BridgeWinners

 

Kit and Co have done a great job but I still think it should be the WBF that instigaties and audits such investigations.

[campboy]

The analysis in the linked article isn't great. The article says

To put this in perspective, assume the gaps have no meaning. If the gaps have no meaning, then the expert panel should have no correlation with the gaps. The experts’ choice of spacing would be completely independent of the observed bid spacing and, in theory, would match about 50% of the time by pure chance. What is the probability of 56 out of 65 matches? Or 38 out of 40? With a 50% chance of being right for each bid, the probability of this occurring by chance is minuscule.

This is not accurate. Looking into the appendices, narrow gaps are much more likely than wide gaps; 43 of the 65 hands included have a narrow gap. The panel are also much more likely to go for narrow than wide, and perhaps that is genuinely because you are more likely to hold a narrow-gap-suitable hand. In fact, the panel were explicitly biased towards narrow gaps.

In general, if the decision looks borderline it is probably right to choose the narrow bid-spacing.

So, some proper figures. We have 65 hands. The experts pick 23 of these as "wide" hands. The video analysts pick 22 of them as "wide" hands. If the two groups make their choices completely independently, what is the chance of at least as good a match? The answer is: 1 in 16,788,770. That's a large number, but also a lot smaller than the 1 in 975,969,054 you would get with the flawed 50% analysis above.

[PhantomSac]

oh it's 1 in 17 million and not 1 in a billion OMG

[PhantomSac]

More convincing evidence about bidding card gaps from BridgeWinners

 

Kit and Co have done a great job but I still think it should be the WBF that instigaties and audits such investigations.

 

Yeah cuz that has worked totally awesome so far!

[campboy]

oh it's 1 in 17 million and not 1 in a billion OMG

The point is, until you actually do the calculation you have no idea how far out the 1,000,000,000 figure is, just that it's too high. That's not useful information.

 

If you're going to make assumptions that aren't justified and will inevitably inflate your figure as much as possible, it's not difficult to end up with a very big number. The question is whether you can do an accurate calculation that gives them the benefit of the doubt and still get a big number. And the answer, in this case, seems to be yes.

[PhantomSac]

Yep thats totally the point

[gwnn]

It's not difficult to inflate your figure? Could you have got such a figure for a random honest pair as well? I understand that 1 in 1B hypotheses will have a p-value of 10^(-9) for example, but do you really think we have that many (reasonably simple) hypotheses?

[billw55]

So, some proper figures. We have 65 hands. The experts pick 23 of these as "wide" hands. The video analysts pick 22 of them as "wide" hands.

Just to be clear, were they mostly the same hands? How many correlated?

[gwnn]

Just to be clear, were they mostly the same hands? How many correlated?

38 out of the 40 where the experts were unanimous matched the signal. 18 out of the 25 where the experts were split (4:1 or 3:2, doesn't matter) also matched the signal (this makes for a total of 56/65). The 65 hands out of the original total 200 were the ones in which the wide/narrow question was unanimous from the observers.

 

edit: clarified/corrected the numbers.

Edited November 3, 2015 by gwnn

[campboy]

It's not difficult to inflate your figure? Could you have got such a figure for a random honest pair as well? I understand that 1 in 1B hypotheses will have a p-value of 10^(-9) for example, but do you really think we have that many (reasonably simple) hypotheses?

Of course it's trivial to inflate your figure. Just pick some thing that the pair does occasionally but not often, pick a piece of information that you'd want to show occasionally but not often, notice that on a lot of hands these things coincide (which they will, because most hands will be no for both), assume that both these things are actually 50% and there you go.

[billw55]

38 out of the 40 where the experts were unanimous matched the signal. 18 out of the 25 where the experts were split (4:1 or 3:2, doesn't matter) also matched the signal (this makes for a total of 56/65). The 65 hands out of the original total 200 were the ones in which the wide/narrow question was unanimous from the observers.

 

edit: clarified/corrected the numbers.

That sounds pretty convincing. Personally I would discard all the cases where the experts were split 3:2, but that is peanuts compared to the unanimous cases.

[Trinidad]

oh it's 1 in 17 million and not 1 in a billion OMG

The size of the numbers is important. Say that it would be the still large number of 1 in 100. That means that if you would video tape all the bridge hands that are played at the WC, you will find this good a correlation between the bidding card gap and the strength of the hand (in context) for several of the participants. That is because a large amount of hands are played.

 

So, the question is not "are the odds large?". The question is: "Are the odds much larger than the amount of times this could occur?". And now you are comparing two very large numbers to each other. This is something that is difficult to do without a good understanding of the underlying math.

 

If I spin a roulette wheel, it is only a very small probability that it comes up with '7' (1 in 37). If I put my money on '7' 3 times in a row and I win three times, people might look at me with some suspicion. "OMG! What are the odds?" (The answer is: 1 in 50 653). But I am sure that in a large casino this happens several times a year... because roulette wheels are spun over and over and over again... Many more times than 50 653.

 

This is a similar case. Bridge hands are played over and over and over again. That means that a number that seems very high may actually be small in comparison. And that means that it is important to know how high this number really is.

 

This all doesn't mean anything about B-Z's guilt or innocence. It means that the correct math is important.

 

Rik