ChCh Chicanery

[mycroft]

But I believe that is Lamford's point with this exercise; that it is very possible to do "ethically suspect" (straight up cheating) things in bridge, IRL or online, and not even be ruled against at the table.

 

Given the "could have known, (but we're explicitly not saying you did know)" ruling structure and the "any cheating at all REQUIRES a lifetime ban from the game, for MY safety" attitude shown by a fair number of high-level players (who, frankly, have been pushed there by the "now, now, don't worry your pretty little heads about this, it's Being Taken Care Of" attitude of certain regulators for decades, and constant having to play against people they *knew* were cheating, but couldn't *prove*) - there's no middle ground between "we're not accusing you of cheating, we're just ruling you did something a cheater would also do" and "this had better be lawyer-proof, because it's going to the lawyers".

 

That means that all the things that would be in that middle ground, players will continue to get away with, because

landsharks trump ethics, even when you're in the right *and* you win.

 

Now if there was a way to do the kind of things the ACBL allows clubs to do (and, I'm sure, BBO allows itself to do) and say "sorry, you're not welcome here for three months. I assume you understand it's just suspicion, but that suspicion in our players is causing them to not show up if they would have to play you. When you come back, not only will you have to *be* ethical (which of course you are, right?), you will have to take care to *look* ethical as well" - which is currently not possible at the NBO level for at least three reasons - we could see if actual slaps on the wrist would help the problem.

[lamford]

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that ChCh would be "disappointed" if he couldn't find the Q play in the Camrose *in tempo*

There is no need to play or not play the queen of hearts "in tempo". Thinking of playing the queen of hearts is a demonstrable bridge reason, and one can think as long as one wants with a demonstrable bridge reason. Whether you play low or the queen gives UI to RR if you break tempo, but it cannot deceive SB as he draws the inference at his peril. There is no evidence that RR used UI, or any other I for that matter. He never does.

[mycroft]

Nice circular.

 

First you're telling us that the chimp realized that taking a bunch of time here would make it more likely that the rabbit would work out what to do, and now you're saying that taking the time won't pass any thought to the rabbit at all.

 

The latter, of course, is hogswaddle. Of course giving any player, even the Rabbit, time to think, especially seeing that his partner believes there's something to think about, might trigger said thought. UI sent, UI received. Proving it is a whole different kettle of fish, of course; luckily we don't have to. Being able to do what we must to give an adverse ruling is also difficult, and as I said, congratulations on finding a cute cheating method that will be hard to penalize (if the cheater only does it rarely. One of the things that make bridge policing work at all, of course, is that they never "only do it rarely", not when it works and they don't get caught).

 

I reiterate that I haven't made a ruling on the UI in this thread, nor have I even given my opinion to the director-consulting. Nor will I - that's a nasty trap I don't need to go down.

 

Having said that, if "working out if the Q is the right play opposite Lamford" is a demonstrable bridge reason, "working out if the Q is the right play opposite Mycroft", or "the Rabbit" is an identical demonstrable bridge reason. And deciding "yes" in the Camrose and "no" at the Griffins (or "no" partnering RR and "yes" partnering Papa) doesn't change anything. But as you said, and as I said, that's irrelevant, because SB can't be deceived by the pause (not even "at his peril", there's nothing to deceive. No matter what SB does, either RR returns the right suit and sets the contract; or not, and lets it make.)

[pilowsky]

Interesting problem.

Can I think about it?

For how long?

If the TD takes too long to think does that mean s/he favours one pair over another?

Is there a maximum/minimum amount of TD thinking time?