Posted 2006-February-07, 13:22
I dont like the direction this thread is going. I doubt I will do much to slow it down, but here is my attempt. First there is no easy, quick way to investigate cheating. Not with myhands, not with records or first place finishes, not with BridgeBrowser. Even uday mentions that high Imp/MP% averages is only a red flag. If you want to catch someone at cheating, there is only one reliable way. Have a team of experts examine the hands, sometimes as Uday says, hundreds of hands. There is no short cut, nor quick and easy software solution.
As for online cheating, SIGH, it seems this is a favorite topic of some people. Lets start with a few assumptions, personally I am certain that each of these assumptions are correct.
1 Online cheating at bridge occurs, pretty much at all online sites
2 Online cheating is no where as frequent as many people assume
3 People caught cheating online at BBO (and other gaming sites) are sanctioned, upto and most frequently including, permanent banishment.
Ok, does admitting cheating occurs mean online bridge can not be fun or challenging for honest players? No it doesnt. We all play online (or we wouldnt be here), and we all enjoy the game online. Bridge is a game where you challenge yourself, and can seek enjoyment simply by playing. We have this enjoyment despite the assumption that cheating occurs at all online sites. If one buys into the fact that online cheating might occur, but that it is fairly rare, I can assure you that you can still have fun playing, and while doing so, you can help slow down online cheating while doing it. On the otherhand, some players see cheaters in their minds eye at every table. Let me talk to the first group of players (those who see cheaters everywhere are hopeless I am afraid).
How can we slow down online cheating? First, realize that the BBO polices cheating with the help of user like you, who reports possible cheating to Abuse. Having said that, reporting a suspected cheater with just a message that says so-and-so is cheating does will probably just end up with the suspects name logged and no real investigation. However, reporting someone with a link to several hands in the BBOs myhand database (especially with a few words why you think this is evidence of cheating) will get them looked at as these hands will surely be reviewed at least once. If these several hands seem suspicious, abuse will then assign a group of people to investigate further.
In most reported cheating cases, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that the players in question are not cheating. It is VERY SURPRIZING to me how many times a pair that comes in DEAD LAST in an event will be reported to us for cheating by someone because out a 12 board tournament, the bad pair fixed them once with a stupid bid or play that worked. The other 11 times their poor bridge skills resulted in bad boards. Sometimes somebody does something stupid against you that works because, well, they are very poor bridge players but this was their lucky hand.
It is also surprising how many people will write in and say, so-and-so is a horrible player and yet they just won ACBL event or some other event with a 78% score so they must be cheating. Often when we look, we find that their opponents threw them gift-after-gift-after-gift, and other than this one tournament, their other performances are well below average. Then there are people who turn in every single husband/wife pair who have the same name in their profiles. This is a regular occurrence
look Betty Flip and Bob Flip played together and bid 3NT on board 1 and 4H on board two
they must be using a home network and cheating. They say this despite on board one Betty and Bob have 1NT opener opposite a balanced 12 hcp with no four card major, and on board two they have two openers opposite each other and a 5-4 fit. A poster in this thread went as far as saying no two players from the same ISP should be allowed to play together (forget presumed innocent to guilty theories, this is cast them all out. This would include people like Fred and Sheri who share a lan).
Does the BBO issue sanctions if people are found to have been cheating? Absolutely. Can people cheat with impunity on BBO? Absolutely not. The myhands database is there for anyone to check up on players if they are interested, and as Uday has pointed out, there are other tools available as well, things like using myhands to calculate average imps and MP%, records of high place finishes, and yes, bridgebrowser can be used for a lot of things, including examining hands played by anyone in the database. When abuse catches someone cheating, she acts. When abuse and her experts are not certain someone is cheating, but highly suspect it, she either acts immediately, or orders more study to be sure.
It is already risky (well, really how much punishment can BBO really give out? Ban from the site, and perhaps report to ACBL) to cheat in high profile events on the BBO. Players have long been pouring over hands from ACBL and cash-prize tournaments by using myhands and turning in suspected cheaters this way. Cheating investigations is a time consuming task and people willing to do this (find the initial incriminating hands) help overworked abuse out. But MOST OFTEN these volunteers are not the best judges of the question of guilt or innocence, simply because if they are looking at someone on myhands, it is because they ALREADY assumed the person was cheating in the first place (pre-conceived opinions often shade the assumptions drawn).
The good news is it continues to grow more risky to cheat in such events. For example, HomeBase Club will have all its tournaments hand reviewed routinely by experts and advanced players to find examples of great bids or plays for their twice monthly newsletter. Perhpas other clubs will follow suit. In such an environment, where review of all good boards is certain and automatic, cheating would be too risky for most cheaters simply because the experts while looking for the great bids and plays would pick up on things so unusual as to suggest cheating and then they would report those hands to abuse. Add to that these hands were found during a general review of play rather than a witch-hunt, that is the expert had no pre-conceived ideas about the player found doing odd stuff, their review might (at abuses discretion) carry more weight in the review process (certainly abuse would have additional review). Further, Homebase Club is making a version of Bridgebrowser available for their members which can access all hands ever played in any HomeBase events, and for one class of members, for all hands played on the BBO. While this program is not a tool designed to catch cheaters its use by HomeBase members should act as a general deterrent to cheating on BBO itself. Because all the hands will be there for anyone willing to do the hard work and actually EXAMINE the hands, bid-by-bid and card-by-card. BBO members can do the same with the myhands database.
--Ben--
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