[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2024-September-30, 12:34, said:

We had the Bridge+More boxes demonstrated to us a month ago or so. One of the nice features is that if you don't shuffle your hand, just put them on top of each other after play, the box will work out the play for you (not sure about claims, but I'm sure there's something that can determine that). And present that in the results (along with the auction, if done on the phones/tablets).

We don't have explanations or Alerts (unless that's also done in the tablets) but clubs that use this could very easily be able to amass the kind of statistical information from FtF play that we're getting on BBO and elsewhere.

I think that would be interesting (FCVOInteresting), don't you?

Sure. I was enthralled when I first read about Bridge+More and immediately thought that the best advantage of many was in being able to read the play.
But then I thought "why not go a step further and virtualise the cards altogether?".
And then I realised I no longer really wanted even this.
That was an important trigger to recongnising that we really were at the end of one paradigm and the start of another destined to supplant it.
It's typical of such scenarios that the old paradigm has a furious reaction, pulling out audacious projects long hidden in the closet in a stubborn but vain attempt to avoid the inevitable. We saw it in intelligent typewriters, in the death throes of valve amplifiers when they suddenly doubled in power, in VHS and Blu-Ray, now in complicated hybrid cars and the improbable 6-stroke Porsche engine.
No pushing back the tide.

[mycroft]

I don't think the "death of cards" is inevitable. MTGO (and MTGA) are heavily set up and used, but MTGL is still chugging along.

There are those who will say that "if we bid and play on tablets, why do we have to be at the same table?" and those who "need the cards for feel/concentration" will be joined by "one of our strengths is our table feel, don't take that away" (and the "but how can we tell they're not cheating if we're not at the table to intimidate them ensure they're not?")

There ae those who will say that "if we don't have a table to sit at, why come to the club?" And there will be those of that set who will go farther and say "and that's a good thing, given the 90 minute commute to the bridge club at 1600 on a Tuesday afternoon we don't have to have" (yes, there are those clubs. I had most of one of them at my tournament last week). And the people who panic about online cheating - at club games, no less - will panic about online cheating in club games.

And everybody who currently is happy playing in their FtF club games will be happy playing in their club games, among other things knowing that "it's safe here, unlike all that cheating taking place online." And they'll be just as right as the clubroom poker players who were laughing at all the cheating and fixing that was happening in online poker - until they went looking for the same kinds of things that math made obvious with "all the records".

I don't know where the line is of "inevitable progress" vs "too far, losing the soul of the game". We'll see, I guess.

And yes, there are ways of cheating online that don't exist FtF, and vice versa. Absolutely. And people who will take advantage of them. Or at least go as close to the line as possible without actually triggering the C word. Or maybe even "have good table feel" and not put any effort into working out *why*.

[johnu]

mycroft, on 2024-September-29, 18:31, said:

1% of players online are cheating, at least according to Edgar Hammond.

For the record, it was Nicolas Hammond who was the first one who datamined the BBO tournament hands to detect cheating by various statistics.

How effective was his program? During the first years of Covid, I was looking at a website that ranked ACBL players based on their results, online and face to face. To my astonishment, I saw a pair, who had played on the same team with me a couple of times when my partner lined them up, and one of the team occasionally played with that partner of mine. I would have rated them as very friendly, pleasant people, but no better than average club players in the average club setting.

what caught my eye was that this average club pair was ranked in the top 200 or so out of the 30,000 pairs ranked. Then I looked at some of their BBO results, and they were averaging around 65% in some of the big unified online games, usually finishing in the top 3. This is not the results of the pair I knew. I wrote Nicolas and asked if they were on his list, and he said there were several other inquiries about that pair, and since I had already reviewed a couple of other pairs on his list, asked if I could review their hands.

At the time, the main indicator used by Nicolas was underleads of aces against suit contracts. This pair underlead aces a lot, and occasionally AK and even AKQ. They were successful in all but one or two cases, but that could have been due to a misclick. They stopped on a dime when other pairs would have bid at least one more, and when they balanced, they always found a good fit. When one player made a very aggressive overcall, partner with a very good hand would make a minimum response. When one of them misclicked a bid, they always landed on their feet in miraculous ways. Sadly, I reviewed a couple of other pairs who cheated just as well as these two.

EDGAR is a computer program building on the inspiration of Hammond that was designed by a different group of programmers. EDGAR is currently being used to screen for cheaters by the ACBL.

[mycroft]

That story is very interesting.

If you think I didn't know what I was doing with "Edgar Hammond", though, you should review my history some :-) .

[barmar]

What do we really think of that 1% figure?

Of course, any cheating is bad, but human endeavors are always messy.

Cheating in online games is really easy. So perhaps we should be happy that it's only 1%.

And if you compare with other parts of life, it may not be so bad. Think about how many politicians and judges you don't really trust to take the best interests of the country in mind when they make their decisions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it, but we can at least put it into perspective.

[jillybean]

After reading the first appeals case regards ACBL online cheating , I retract my comments upthread.

I now agree with Richard, Nail their hides to the wall!

5 years suspension, 5 year probabtion, we should have seen the last of them.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2024-October-03, 08:44, said:

What do we really think of that 1% figure?

Of course, any cheating is bad, but human endeavors are always messy.

Cheating in online games is really easy. So perhaps we should be happy that it's only 1%.

And if you compare with other parts of life, it may not be so bad. Think about how many politicians and judges you don't really trust to take the best interests of the country in mind when they make their decisions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it, but we can at least put it into perspective.

I'm skeptical of that 1% figure, FWIW.
Maybe it refers to pairs detected as possibly cheating and proven beyond reasonable dount to have cheated.
In which case the actual figure for pairs cheating is likely to be at least double.
My experience in other sports (where detection of cheating is often easier) suggests 2-6%, according to level of policing more than level of competition.

[pilowsky]

pescetom, on 2024-October-03, 15:20, said:

I'm skeptical of that 1% figure, FWIW.
Maybe it refers to pairs detected as possibly cheating and proven beyond reasonable dount to have cheated.
In which case the actual figure for pairs cheating is likely to be at least double.
My experience in other sports (where detection of cheating is often easier) suggests 2-6%, according to level of policing more than level of competition.

The 5-10% number is apparently true for chess also.
The estimates are confounded by a number of factors.
I'd expect cheating to be more likely in situations where regular partners are involved - ACBL, EBL, ABF etc.
You might expect it to be worse when entry fees are higher - Parkinson's law would suggest the smaller the stake the more likely cheating is to occur.

Online is a whole different problem because: phones, smurfing, anonymity etc.

There are also some people that seem to loosen their ethical standards where robot tournaments are involved because they're just robots - forgetting that they're playing vs other people.

In bridge it's even harder to detect since it's entirely possible for a weak pair to occasionally defeat extremely strong players so it doesn't seem odd when it happens.

[barmar]

pilowsky, on 2024-October-03, 17:50, said:

In bridge it's even harder to detect since it's entirely possible for a weak pair to occasionally defeat extremely strong players so it doesn't seem odd when it happens.

That's why tools like EDGAR look for numerous instances of unusual plays that turn out to be successful. The designers know that there can be occasional successful flukes.

So the outlying actions have to be statistically significant.

[pilowsky]

barmar, on 2024-October-04, 16:26, said:

That's why tools like EDGAR look for numerous instances of unusual plays that turn out to be successful. The designers know that there can be occasional successful flukes.

So the outlying actions have to be statistically significant.

Which strengthens my original point that cheating FTF is likely to be more rampant than in online play - especially in clubs.

[jillybean]

pilowsky, on 2024-October-04, 16:36, said:

Which strengthens my original point that cheating FTF is likely to be more rampant than in online play - especially in clubs.

I agree.
My assumptions are that online cheating was rampant but detectable with the analysis of hand records. ACBL/BBO must have a significant income stream from these online games that award ACBL MP's. They want to protect the percieved "value" of these MP's, and protect the related income stream. Players would stop paying to play in these online games, or join the cheaters.

I do believe cheating in clubs could be more widespread. Either by intent or due to the lack of awareness, enforcement and so on.
There seems to be a tolerance for this at clubs, it's social and until the players will no longer tolerate it, and walk away, nothing will change.

[phoenixmj]

 0 carbon, on 2024-September-26, 18:56, said:

GlobalClub uses these metrics to detect cheats:

• Cheaters play/bid absurdly well based on seeing their partner's cards -- or playing both hands.
• Monthly history is usually above 60%.
• They do better defending than declaring. Check defence for psychic plays.
• Check 80‑100% successes for odd bidding/alerts/plays. Alerts may be accurate, but differ for the same hand/situation, or be VERY odd.

Check past month using www.bridgebase.com/myhands/ and check some hands.
Check also their "partners". When I find cheaters, I go thru their tourneys over the last month.
Some rings of cheaters have 55‑60% ‑ but the lower results are playing with players outside the ring. When playing with Ps inside the ring, results are >60%
Notice that they are "withdrawn" from many tourneys, no doubt by TDs - or when their cheating does not work well enough.

Love the pic of Kili. My husband and I also "summited" Kili about 18 years ago. It was great fun. We did Shira Plateau route and truly enjoyed the experience, followed by a relaxing week on safari.

[pescetom]

 pilowsky, on 2024-October-03, 17:50, said:

The 5-10% number is apparently true for chess also.

One of the few hard numbers available derives from an initiative of the medical sport community in Bologna at the end of last century, quite probably illegal even then and certainly unthinkable these days. Italy imposes thorough annual health checks on anyone participating in organized sport and these include a urine test. Unknown to the athletes, the urine samples were subjected to basic antidoping tests similar to those performed on winners and random participants of important events. 6% of all samples were positive, with a peak of 8% for cyclists. This seems to imply that 6% of a population will cheat if they are certain of being undetected.

[pescetom]

 jillybean, on 2024-October-04, 16:49, said:

I do believe cheating in clubs could be more widespread. Either by intent or due to the lack of awareness, enforcement and so on.
There seems to be a tolerance for this at clubs, it's social and until the players will no longer tolerate it, and walk away, nothing will change.

It's not just awareness, but also willingness to violate the "social tolerance" blackmail.
Declarer leads to the Q in dummy, LHO pauses 10 seconds and then plays low, RHO covers with K and leads same suit to partner's A.
Nobody calls the Director.
But people are what they are, and games are what they are.
Bridge would be a much better and more realistic game if the pause of LHO was hidden from RHO as far as possible and penalized beyond that.

[pilowsky]

 pescetom, on 2024-October-05, 14:51, said:

One of the few hard numbers available derives from an initiative of the medical sport community in Bologna at the end of last century, quite probably illegal even then and certainly unthinkable these days. Italy imposes thorough annual health checks on anyone participating in organized sport and these include a urine test. Unknown to the athletes, the urine samples were subjected to basic antidoping tests similar to those performed on winners and random participants of important events. 6% of all samples were positive, with a peak of 8% for cyclists. This seems to imply that 6% of a population will cheat if they are certain of being undetected.

Interesting, do you have a reference?

[pescetom]

 pilowsky, on 2024-October-05, 15:33, said:

Interesting, do you have a reference?

Just my (fairly reliable) memory, I'm afraid.
I'll check if I saved anything, however.

Obviously those were individuals and this says little about what happens in in a pair, where collusive cheating and even unilateral cheating may well be less frequent.

[jillybean]

 pescetom, on 2024-October-05, 15:05, said:

It's not just awareness, but also willingness to violate the "social tolerance" blackmail.
Declarer leads to the Q in dummy, LHO pauses 10 seconds and then plays low, RHO covers with K and leads same suit to partner's A.
Nobody calls the Director.
But people are what they are, and games are what they are.
Bridge would be a much better and more realistic game if the pause of LHO was hidden from RHO as far as possible and penalized beyond that.

Social tolerance blackmail, well said.

[sanst]

 pescetom, on 2024-October-05, 14:51, said:

One of the few hard numbers available derives from an initiative of the medical sport community in Bologna at the end of last century ... 6% of all samples were positive, with a peak of 8% for cyclists. This seems to imply that 6% of a population will cheat if they are certain of being undetected.

Not at all. It might show that at that moment 6% of the participants in organised sports in Bologna cheated by using performace enhancing drugs, but no way you can extrapolate this to the whole population of Bologna or Italy, let alone the whole world or to mind sports. For starters, the majority of these investigated will have been male, young to youngish middle-aged, from all economic classes and particpating in physical sports. Here, and I'm pretty sure elsewhere too, the average bridge player is female, elderly, white, middle class and past competitive physical sports. Maybe some golf, tennis, cycling and walking. I don't want to go into local, regional or national charateristics, if only because these are mainly based on prejudices.

[StevenG]

Tournament bridge is a mind sport. Most club bridge is not a mind sport; it is just some old people getting out of their house to enjoy a game of cards. I understand that the zealots amongst you would like it to be something different, but it isn't and it never will be. Just accept that it has a valuable social function and let it be. If you don't like it, you don't have to play there.

[blackshoe]

"Judge, when you play bridge, it's a game of chance. When I play bridge it's a game of skill". -- Eric Murray