[ArtK78]

rhm, on 2014-April-18, 11:02, said:

You need not agree with that opinion, but why was that opinion biased by anti-americanism?

Rainer Herrmann

That is not what he said. But that was one of the available options.

[johnu]

bianca21, on 2014-April-18, 01:00, said:

This entire cheating business is rubbish. The american team was simply outplayed in the final. They lost because they missed a grand and a slam. It is probably hard to digest that for a team of professionals who are payed to play and receive large bonuses for winning, while their opponents are amateurs, none of them making a living out of bridge. There is a financial interest involved here. And there is something to be said about sad losers.....

So, basically you are calling the Americans and WBF observers who witnessed the coughing and matched the number of coughs to suit distributions liars. I suppose this must also also apply to the WBF observer at the Cavendish tournament who witnessed the same pattern of coughs. Strong talk from someone who joined this forums just to make to make an inflammatory post. Have you watched the videos from Bali? Do you have any relationship with the German doctors?

[nullve]

Have YOU watched the videos from Bali?

[cherdano]

cherdano, on 2014-April-18, 06:01, said:

Of course they are allowed to agree, and every reader can decide for themselves whether that's a wise opinion, or an opinion biased by anti-americanism, or a useful advocatus diaboli counter-point. They clearly wanted everyone to know about their opinion, and I am just helping them spread it.

rhm, on 2014-April-18, 11:02, said:

You need not agree with that opinion, but why was that opinion biased by anti-americanism?

Rainer Herrmann

You are welcome to find a more charitable explanation. It's not completely irrational (but still very wrong) to think that the evidence does not prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they cheated. But if you think it's likely that they didn't cheat, you must have approached the evidence with some prior bias...

[diana_eva]

nullve, on 2014-April-18, 12:51, said:

Have YOU watched the videos from Bali?

The 4 videos posted by Traian are not all the videos analyzed during the investigation. Traian published those videos for viewers' "entertainment" - not as full and compelling evidence of anything. FWIW I trust the WBF conducted a thorough investigation and wouldn't have risked such a scandal without solid evidence.

[MrAce]

That is why I like BW. You can not go there and use a nick to post nonsense. It has to be your name and they verify it before they let you post.

[diana_eva]

MrAce, on 2014-April-18, 13:30, said:

That is why I like BW. You can not go there and use a nick to post nonsense. It has to be your name and they verify it before they let you post.

bianca21 and nullve are long time BBOers - actually they have been on BBO well before BW was created.

[MrAce]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-18, 13:53, said:

bianca21 and nullve are long time BBOers - actually they have been on BBO well before BW was created.

I was talking about BBF and BW

[diana_eva]

If they managed to be on BBO for over 5 years and over 5000 logins they certainly aren't evil trouble makers, no? They shd be able to post without prior proofing.

[the hog]

When you have a preconceived opinion about something, it is easy to put any interpretation you want on what you supposedly see. Read the errant nonsense on the latest BW thread started by Sapire. His conclusions are childlike for their lack of logical thought and bias. Then you get some idiots posting hands that never even existed. Many of the posters know nothing and yet just post for the sake of posting. Wait for a properly held Inquiry to be conducted.

[the hog]

By the way I find it amusing and more than a little ironic that some people I have played against ftf have posted on Bw on a cheating thread and posted videos. You can interpret that comment anyway you like.

[MrAce]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-18, 14:15, said:

If they managed to be on BBO for over 5 years and over 5000 logins they certainly aren't evil trouble makers, no? They shd be able to post without prior proofing.

I never said they are"Evil" trouble makers. I just wanted to know the person who made a nonsense comment, simple as it is

Of course they have the right to post what they want to post. And I have the right to call it a "nonsense" when I detect one. I never said "they should be telling us their names" I was merely expressing my preference to know the person who can come up with such a nonsense.

Btw, here is the butler scale for Bali. Eddie Wold and Mike Passel actually played much better in that event overall, despite the cheat. They did not have anything to prove due to jealousy. Obviously bianca21 has no clue that American team actually wanted to give up on catching them, accepted all the rounds played before, and just asked TD to tell doctors not to cough in the last set and they believed (I do too) that they will hand ***** of the doctors back to themselves in a cheat free set. But WBF forced them to do otherwise.

http://www.worldbrid...te/ButlerDO.htm

[johnu]

the hog, on 2014-April-18, 17:32, said:

Many of the posters know nothing and yet just post for the sake of posting. Wait for a properly held Inquiry to be conducted.

Of course you know that the WBF investigated them and found them guilty of using unauthorized information (cheating). If you don't agree with the decision, it really doesn't make any difference since your opinion (or mine for that matter) doesn't make any difference to the WBF.

[johnu]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-18, 14:15, said:

If they managed to be on BBO for over 5 years and over 5000 logins they certainly aren't evil trouble makers, no? They shd be able to post without prior proofing.

Presumably they have some association with bridge or they wouldn't be making bridge related posts in a bridge forum. The only conclusion you can take from that is you can call them bridge players. They may or may not be evil trouble makers (in your words), but that can't be determined from their BBO login history.

[jjbrr]

johnu, fyi you keep responding to trolls. your posts are very reasonable, but you shouldn't expect reasonable responses.

perhaps you're already aware, but with 300 posts in 5 and a half years maybe you aren't.

[the hog]

And there you have it. Anyone who posts a contrarian opinion to the local sheep gets labelled a troll. Don't be an ass!

[the hog]

johnu, on 2014-April-18, 21:28, said:

Of course you know that the WBF investigated them and found them guilty of using unauthorized information (cheating). If you don't agree with the decision, it really doesn't make any difference since your opinion (or mine for that matter) doesn't make any difference to the WBF.

Do you know that the inquiry was not properly conducted?.

[diana_eva]

johnu, on 2014-April-18, 21:35, said:

Presumably they have some association with bridge or they wouldn't be making bridge related posts in a bridge forum. The only conclusion you can take from that is you can call them bridge players. They may or may not be evil trouble makers (in your words), but that can't be determined from their BBO login history.

I was replying to Timo who said he likes BW who don't let anyone post without checking them. Being a legit BBO user shd be enough to let them post without having their posts eyeballed by a moderator first. That's all there is to it, not saying there's some extraordinary achievement to having a lot of logins or that it makes them smarter.

[nullve]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-18, 13:10, said:

The 4 videos posted by Traian are not all the videos analyzed during the investigation. Traian published those videos for viewers' "entertainment" - not as full and compelling evidence of anything. FWIW I trust the WBF conducted a thorough investigation and wouldn't have risked such a scandal without solid evidence.

Traian may have published the videos on YouTube for our entertainment only, but thanks to them we are potentially in as good a position as anybody else to judge what W-E were doing on boards 1-2 and 5-16 in session 5 of the final. The only problem is that we may not know exactly what to look for. For instance, if the hypothesis was that W-E were signalling according to he following code,

"Coughs at the beginning of auction indicate shortness
i.e 1 cough is clubs, 2 coughs is diamonds etc.
No cough is balanced hand or semi balanced hand
Coughs at the end of auction indicate which suit to lead i.e 1 cough is clubs, 2 coughs, diamonds etc.",
(From Exhibit B)

we would like to know such things as

* what an 'auction' is (Does it start when someone is having a first look at his cards? Or does it start with the first call?)
* what the 'beginning' and 'end' of an auction are (Are there other stages of the auction as well, perhaps during which a number of coughs has no meaning?)
* whether they were asumed to signal on EVERY board (If not, how could the hypothesis still be refutable? - Statisticians, help!)
etc.

or else our observations would likely disagree. To some extent we might also be able to "see what we want to see".

[matmat]

nullve, on 2014-April-19, 04:42, said:

* what an 'auction' is (Does it start when someone is having a first look at his cards? Or does it start with the first call?)
* what the 'beginning' and 'end' of an auction are (Are there other stages of the auction as well, perhaps during which a number of coughs has no meaning?)
* whether they were asumed to signal on EVERY board (If not, how could the hypothesis still be refutable? - Statisticians, help!)
etc.

or else our observations would likely disagree. To some extent we might also be able to "see what we want to see".

and, most importantly, what did it mean when they turned their heads and coughed?