[Fluffy]

What I don't get is why did they use the cough system in Bali if they have been succesful many years in cheating, I cannot believe they have got away with the obvious tray signals and coughing all this years. They had to change to that, perhaps because there were screens, or because their older code was cracked, of because they couldn't get hand records, we will never know.

[helene_t]

Fluffy, on 2014-April-16, 00:23, said:

What I don't get is why did they use the cough system in Bali if they have been succesful many years in cheating, I cannot believe they have got away with the obvious tray signals and coughing all this years. They had to change to that, perhaps because there were screens, or because their older code was cracked, of because they couldn't get hand records, we will never know.

Yes, this is a bit in line with Ken Rexford's first post. Like B-L signalling a 3-card suit by putting three fingers on the arm. If you are a good cheater and you take pleasure from developing artificial bidding systems, surely you could come up with a code that was more difficult to crack.

Could it be that ...

.... cheating codes evolve in a way similar to that of a language, without anybody making conscious design decisions? Sounds bizare?

.... cheaters are psychopaths who simply can't imagine that anyone would ever be close to catching them?

.... in the B-L case it might have been improvised without any formal code, but that seems unlikely in the E-W case

.... neither B-L nor E-W were cheating, it is just that if their coughing/fingerpatterns by statistical fluke happen to coincide with something, it gets noted?

.... inverse psychology, like the "idiot coup" in defensive play: they plan on using the defense that "no real cheater could be that stupid"? B-L actually used that defense.

[nige1]

helene_t, on 2014-April-16, 02:09, said:

.... neither B-L nor E-W were cheating, it is just that if there coughing/fingerpatterns by statistical fluke happen to coincide with something, it gets noted?

You could code coughing patterns to convey any feature (Vinje parity, HCP, Aces, Keycards, Losers, Quick tricks, Lengths, Shortages, Leads...) This could be encrypted in many ways (by board number, by some bid or play in the previous deal, or by a list of numbers like world-lengths in a memorised poem...). It's relatively easy to find a plausible historical correlation. Hrothgar tells us, however, that later observations at the Cavendish showed that the Doctors' future coughing pattern was predictable.

[nullve]

Were the coughing pattern in session 5 of the finals also predictable? And from what (testable and refutable?) hypothesis? I refer you to these YouTube videos (that I guess most of you have already at least skimmed through):

"2013 Bali USA GER v2", featuring boards 1-2
"2013 Bali USA GER v4", featuring boards 5-10 and the first minutes of board 11
"2013 Bali USA GER v3", featuring boards 12-16 and roughly the remaining part of board 11