cheating experiment at the local club

[helene_t]

Yesterday we had the anual Sint Nicholas drive with silly rules. This year the rules were that every pair had to have one illegal communication agreement which they had to describe in a sealed envelope and give to the TD. Players were encouraged to accuse others of cheating and would get a bonus if the accusation turned out to be correct (in a broad sense, i.e. "it is something with the way they space the bidding cards" would be sufficient, even if they can't say what information it conveys).

 

18 pairs, 25 boards. One pair was trapped: they played a pass in first/second as something like "15-17 balanced OR a normal pass" and had some illegal way of showing which it was.

 

Of course this was without screens, only five boards against each opponent, and it was known apriori that everybody was cheating. So it is not quite comparable to the cheating investigations at high level. Anyway, I thought it was a funny experiment to see how easy/difficult it is to catch cheats.

 

We had the agreement that a double is penalty if you place the handle of the X card towards yourself. I thought it was very noticable how my partner took time to figure out how to rotate the X card, and several times opps asked for the meaning of the double and I could confidently describe it as some non-standard meaning, which must seem unlikely given that we were a first time partnership. But it apparently didn't occur to any of the opps that we were signalling the meaning of the double. Nor did we ever have a clue about how opps were cheating.

[nige1]

Our Mahjong school sometimes played a variant where cheating was encouraged but if you were found out, you paid out a double-limit to the other players. As a kibitzer, I noticed that cheating was rife -- but never discovered.

[lorserker]

Haha, great!

 

Maybe a large number of pairs learned an important lesson, and their performance will increase significantly in 2016 :)

[billw55]

Bridge is a skill that requires studious attention to perform well: to cards held, played, bids made or not made, inferences, figuring odds, and many other things. Detecting cheating is a skill that requires studious attention to an entirely different set of things: opponents gestures, mannerism, placement and orientation of objects, etc. It is not really surprising that attending closely to one (playing bridge) precludes attending closely to the other (detecting cheating). This is exactly why cheat-detection needs to be conducted by noncontestants.

 

I would have tried a cheat system based on posture. Lean on left arm of chair or right? Chin down or up? Basically intentionally choosing something that will be very observable, if they are looking for the right things. Also something that we would use on every hand - Helene's shady double might only come up 2-3 times in a 5 board set, that is tough to catch no matter what.

[helene_t]

Internationals Joris van Lankveld / Laura Dekker played that a double is penalty if they look at the X card while playing it, but t/o if they look at partner's bidding cards. That is probably more difficult to detect.

[Fluffy]

Doing osmething unnusual with 15-1 balanced was a bit naive

[gwnn]

A weak no trump signalling whether you have a 4-card major could be a great weapon, actually. Loads of ways you could be showing it and very hard to detect. Remember Jinksy staymanned on 4333 without any UI, so it's plausible one would stayman on all sorts of hands with 4 card majors.

[Fluffy]

If you have 1 bit you can send tons of info.

 

Before bidding starts you signal if you have shortness or not

During bidding you signal if you have 4 card major if you are balanced, or which major you have after opening multi or in general if you are max/mix

During play I can think of a thousand, but for BILs you could tell if you are giving attitude or count signal.

[Balrog49]

I would never play in that game. You reap what you sow. I know of at least one major cheating incident that was the result of players experimenting at a club game just to see if they could get away with it.

[kuhchung]

I would never play in that game. You reap what you sow. I know of at least one major cheating incident that was the result of players experimenting at a club game just to see if they could get away with it.

 

Perhaps you should read the second sentence of the opening post.

[helene_t]

I would never play in that game. You reap what you sow. I know of at least one major cheating incident that was the result of players experimenting at a club game just to see if they could get away with it.

Yes, next time I play with the same partner I think I will make an effort to place the double card very consistently. I am afraid I won't be able to avoid noticing how he places his double card. Should I, then, feel constrained by UI? If my answer is yes I am actually saying that I believe my p might be trying to give me a wire which is almost certainly not true. The chance that such a wire is given subconsciously should be small now that we have had an explicit agreement to use it.

[cherdano]

I would never play in that game. You reap what you sow. I know of at least one major cheating incident that was the result of players experimenting at a club game just to see if they could get away with it.

I thought about this, too. It breaks the barrier of having to have the conversation "So how about we think about ways to cheat."

 

However, I think it's ok as long as the cheating codes are made public afterwards. Helene couldn't just continue to orient her double cards if every opponent at her regular club knows, too, that that's what they had agreed to do at the "cheating experiment game".

[eagles123]

my cheat = swig of drink means i have some singleton

 

hypothetical obviously :)

[mycroft]

Yeah, eagles, *nobody* gets dealt that many singletons in a night...

[manudude03]

my cheat = swig of drink means i have some singleton

 

hypothetical obviously :)

 

Lame. You should take 1 swig with a club singleton, 2 with a diamond singleton, 3 with a heart singleton, and 4 with a spade singleton :) Just remember to bring a second bottle.

[cherdano]

Lame. You should take 1 swig with a club singleton, 2 with a diamond singleton, 3 with a heart singleton, and 4 with a spade singleton :) Just remember to bring a second bottle.

This gives a completely new meaning to "goulash" tournaments...

[manudude03]

This gives a completely new meaning to "goulash" tournaments...

 

'Tis the season to be jolly.

[Jinksy]

Lame. You should take 1 swig with a club singleton, 2 with a diamond singleton, 3 with a heart singleton, and 4 with a spade singleton :) Just remember to bring a second bottle.

 

And down your drink with a stiff beer card.

[steve2005]

The penalty double in some ways has gone the way of the dodo. Everything is takeout.

I always thought it would be good to make change to the rules to allow 3 separate bids: takeout double, penalty double and other doubles.

[mgoetze]

I always thought it would be good to make change to the rules to allow 3 separate bids: takeout double, penalty double and other doubles.

Why then wouldn't you also allow a business redouble and a SOS redouble? Or, for that matter, a weak 2♥ and a strong 2♥? A weak 2♣, a strong natural 2♣, and a strong artificial 2♣? Bidding could become so easy...

 

(But would that make Bridge a better game?)

[mycroft]

One of the hands I played in my crazy bridge game was "Adjective bridge" or "Winter rules bridge", where you could, if you chose, use a "single word" (exceptions were made for "fourteen-thirty" or "South African Texas" or the like) in your call. Whether it made it easier or not was an interesting proposition. At our table it went:

 

• Two subminimum diamonds (playing EHAA, that could be *really* subminimum!)
  
• happy pass
  
• reluctant pass
  
• balancing double
  
• reasonable pass
  
• two required hearts
  
• confident double...
  

[mikestar13]

The penalty double in some ways has gone the way of the dodo. Everything is takeout.

I always thought it would be good to make change to the rules to allow 3 separate bids: takeout double, penalty double and other doubles.

 

Echoes of Sidney Lenz and the "challenge" this is deliciously ancient.