[bid_em_up]

vul vs. not
IMP

---

Ok, so I was kibbing a star friend of mine last night, and in first seat, he (as East) preempts 3♥. E/W were silent after that. The following auction ensues:

(3♥)-x-p-?

After some hesitation, North finds a 3N bid?! and the auction continues:

3N-p-?

Now its South's turn to hesitate, and he finally finds what bid?

You got it, 4♦ !?!?

Then the auction continued:

4♦-5♦-6♦

The star asks after hand is over, whats 3N to which south replies, "my pard has strong hand".

He then asked why 4♦ if making a move off of 3N instead of 4♣, to which he never got an answer......

Now, does it affect your vote if I also add that for the last month, South has played with 95 different partners for 360 boards and has a 1.67 IMP rating?

And the month before that he played with 32 different partners and had a 2.22 IMP rating over 125 boards?

South also never appears to play with the same person more than once, so no regular partnerships, and usually only plays 1-5 boards with the same partner.

So......

Is it just me?

Is it blatantly obvious South is, ummm, well, you know?

Is South the Worlds Best Player?

Or are there logical explanations/bridge logic that I am missing regarding these bids?

[inquiry]

Ok, so you have discovered the amazing Kreskin plays bridge. For what it is worth, a yellow was called to the table and South was very busy talking to the yellow about his 4♦ bid, which might explain why the table got less of an explaination at that point.

I would not lose a lot of sleep over this. This entire post would have been deleted, except that not one of the players at the table was identified (so the hand will be very hard to find in myhands without the name of one player).

A hand. such as this will assuredly get South and perhaps north a look. South for the creative 4♦ bid, north for bidding 3NT without a hint of a heart stopper. For all we know from looking at the hand, this pair might play 3NT as "lebenhsol" and 4♦ as super accept if partner has clubs and willing to play 4♦ if that is his suit. In such an highly unlikely scenario, after 5♦ showing real diamonds, south would have to bid 6♦. Unless someone explores the meaning of the bids, such an agreement could explain the auction and nothing unpleasant happened.

However, I don't suggest this is what the bidding means -- after all I know for a fact that neither 3NT or 4D was alerted (as kibitzers know), and I know the explaination that South gave to the yellow who was called to the table, perhaps by you (but was by a kibitzer). Seeing this incident was report, and this was a main room hand, a yellow came to the table and questioned the players, I am not exactly sure where you are going with this post.

Finally, I want to correct a minor factual error in your post. Over the past 1.5 months, this player has played 7 or more boards with 25 different partners. This NS partnership was new, so it is doubtful they have much of an agreement.

[pclayton]

I hope the yellows have some sort of recorder system for issues like this. Personally, I don't care if NS are a new partnership or not.

I am less bothered by 3N than I am 4♦. 3N is a bad call, but there's some logic behind it. 4♦ can't be rationally explained.

[hrothgar]

I have some sympathy for the 3NT call.

Your shape and the lack of a raise suggests that partner's double was based on a strong balanced hand. You have at least one and probably two entries to hand. If partner has a double heart stop, 3NT could be a great contract.

4♦ stirkes me as a lot more suspicious...

[inquiry]

pclayton, on Nov 20 2006, 12:13 PM, said:

I hope the yellows have some sort of recorder system for issues like this. Personally, I don't care if NS are a new partnership or not.

I am less bothered by 3N than I am 4♦. 3N is a bad call, but there's some logic behind it. 4♦ can't be rationally explained.

Phil, don't you think the fact that I know a yellow was called to the table by a kibitzer and what south said to the yellow that we do in fact have a way for recording such actions? Don;t you think that the fact that I already knew that south and north were a new partnership and souths partnership history with other players support such a view that we have such a system?

If one was going to suppose, for the sake of argument, that this was an innocent pair, what evidence in their bidding.play would you need to find? IF one was going to suppose it was cheating, what would you want to look for?
I would argue that if they were innocent, you would find evidence of some sort of 3NT is takeout aka lebehnsol as I suggested above (and of course, they should alert). If one was going to speculate that cheating was going on, you would want to find out if it was a lone-ranger cheating (just south by kibitzing himself) or if NS were sharing information. This is why the question if this was a new partnership or not. The question of partners involvment or innocence is always important. As Fred has posted on this forum before, most recently in the post about banning kibitzers from the ACBL.. part of which he said...

Quote from Fred on cheaters on BBO said:

Something else that should scare any potential cheats out there who might be reading this: You will almost certainly get caught.

It is a lot easier to identify near-certain cheats than many people think (for obvious reasons I will not go into the details as to why this is the case). The hard part is going from "near-certain" to "certain". This is something we take very seriously and such investigations almost always take considerable time and effort.

As a result, sometimes our honest members get annoyed with us at the length of time it takes for us to deal with a person that "everyone knows" is cheating. The reason for this is that, for us, there is a big difference between "strongly suspecting" and "knowing".

Let's assume for a minute from your response (and that of bid_em_uo) that you take this hand as evidence of "near-ceartin" cheating. Fine, to get to Fred's certain (the standard the BBO uses), we have to rule out misclicks (did south mean to cue-bid 4H or bid 4C), funny bidding agreement or really, really poor bidding/player (player bids more or less at random). I can tell you that one hand is never enough (some dumping to give results to friend being an obvious exception). In fact, abuse ask for 3 to 6 questionalbe hands when you turn a player in for possible cheating. But sometimes, one hand will be enough to get abuse or any yellow to open an investigation. This is an example of one hand that would be enough to open an investigation.

As far as "rationale explainations" for 4♦, here are a few...

• 4♦ in response to lebehnshol 3NT shows I was not willing to pass 4♣ if you were trying to sign off in clbus, but am willing to play 4♦] if you are trying to sign off in that suit
  
• 4♦ is tranfer to 4♥, thus a cue-bid, showing a herat control and a big hand. 4♥ over 3NT would "obviosuly" be transfer to 4♠
  
• 4♣ would be gerber, so I just bid 4♦ as new minor forcing
  
• 4♦ was TExas transfer to 4♠ and 4♣ would have been transfer to 4♥

Ok, we don't play transfer cue-bids or texas on auctions like this. Sure 4♦ as NMF doesn't make a lot of sense, and who ever heard of lebehnsol 3NT. But just because we don't bid this way, doesn't mean someone might. I happen to use some bids that will take some explaining if just held up without alerts myself (of course, I alert my bids).

An extremely mild aurgement against cheating is if south could see all four hands, why not bid 6NT? And the answer might be the heart king is offsides and since partner bid NT first, a heart lead will beat it. Or the answer might be, South really likes playing the hand, and if he bid 6NT his partner gets the fun of playing it. (The heart king WAS NOT offside).

If south was self kibitzing, and was careless enough to bid like this, he will be extremely easy to nail.

[glen]

A yellow was called to the table and the hand has been reported - so no further concern here except for the players in question.

As to your friend, if this type of thing occurs in a non-tourney, and the opposing player is unable to explain the 4♦ call, both during auction and afterwards, then add a player note, explain you have to walk your cat so must leave now, find new opponents after a 10 second cat walk, and report hand via email to bbo. I would not even waste a yellow's time on this, as the kibitzer who called him/her did.

The great thing about this hand is actually the 6♦ bid - 4♦ might be one of those wonderful "misclicks" we sometimes see, but then 6♦ was ? - would be fun to see the explain for that one.

[pclayton]

inquiry, on Nov 20 2006, 09:56 AM, said:

pclayton, on Nov 20 2006, 12:13 PM, said:

I hope the yellows have some sort of recorder system for issues like this. Personally, I don't care if NS are a new partnership or not.

I am less bothered by 3N than I am 4♦. 3N is a bad call, but there's some logic behind it. 4♦ can't be rationally explained.

Phil, don't you think the fact that I know a yellow was called to the table by a kibitzer and what south said to the yellow that we do in fact have a way for recording such actions? Don;t you think that the fact that I already knew that south and north were a new partnership and souths partnership history with other players support such a view that we have such a system?

If one was going to suppose, for the sake of argument, that this was an innocent pair, what evidence in their bidding.play would you need to find? IF one was going to suppose it was cheating, what would you want to look for?
I would argue that if they were innocent, you would find evidence of some sort of 3NT is takeout aka lebehnsol as I suggested above (and of course, they should alert). If one was going to speculate that cheating was going on, you would want to find out if it was a lone-ranger cheating (just south by kibitzing himself) or if NS were sharing information. This is why the question if this was a new partnership or not. The question of partners involvment or innocence is always important. As Fred has posted on this forum before, most recently in the post about banning kibitzers from the ACBL.. part of which he said...

Quote from Fred on cheaters on BBO said:

Something else that should scare any potential cheats out there who might be reading this: You will almost certainly get caught.

It is a lot easier to identify near-certain cheats than many people think (for obvious reasons I will not go into the details as to why this is the case). The hard part is going from "near-certain" to "certain". This is something we take very seriously and such investigations almost always take considerable time and effort.

As a result, sometimes our honest members get annoyed with us at the length of time it takes for us to deal with a person that "everyone knows" is cheating. The reason for this is that, for us, there is a big difference between "strongly suspecting" and "knowing".

Let's assume for a minute from your response (and that of bid_em_uo) that you take this hand as evidence of "near-ceartin" cheating. Fine, to get to Fred's certain (the standard the BBO uses), we have to rule out misclicks (did south mean to cue-bid 4H or bid 4C), funny bidding agreement or really, really poor bidding/player (player bids more or less at random). I can tell you that one hand is never enough (some dumping to give results to friend being an obvious exception). In fact, abuse ask for 3 to 6 questionalbe hands when you turn a player in for possible cheating. But sometimes, one hand will be enough to get abuse or any yellow to open an investigation. This is an example of one hand that would be enough to open an investigation.

As far as "rationale explainations" for 4♦, here are a few...

• 4♦ in response to lebehnshol 3NT shows I was not willing to pass 4♣ if you were trying to sign off in clbus, but am willing to play 4♦] if you are trying to sign off in that suit
  
• 4♦ is tranfer to 4♥, thus a cue-bid, showing a herat control and a big hand. 4♥ over 3NT would "obviosuly" be transfer to 4♠
  
• 4♣ would be gerber, so I just bid 4♦ as new minor forcing
  
• 4♦ was TExas transfer to 4♠ and 4♣ would have been transfer to 4♥

Ok, we don't play transfer cue-bids or texas on auctions like this. Sure 4♦ as NMF doesn't make a lot of sense, and who ever heard of lebehnsol 3NT. But just because we don't bid this way, doesn't mean someone might. I happen to use some bids that will take some explaining if just held up without alerts myself (of course, I alert my bids).

An extremely mild aurgement against cheating is if south could see all four hands, why not bid 6NT? And the answer might be the heart king is offsides and since partner bid NT first, a heart lead will beat it. Or the answer might be, South really likes playing the hand, and if he bid 6NT his partner gets the fun of playing it. (The heart king WAS NOT offside).

If south was self kibitzing, and was careless enough to bid like this, he will be extremely easy to nail.

Ben please lighten up

There is nothing in your original post that infers that yellows have a formal recording system. There is also no indication that North or South are prior offenders.

Your post seems to indicate that yellows have files on players and thats great.

As far as I'm concerned, all of North's actions are defensible and within reason. If I were a suspicious person, I would think South has two accounts in different IP's or has a friend in the kib gallery.

[inquiry]

pclayton, on Nov 20 2006, 01:23 PM, said:

There is nothing in your original post that infers that yellows have a formal recording system. There is also no indication that North or South are prior offenders.

Your post seems to indicate that yellows have files on players and thats great.

Sorry Phil, I thought that this statement would give away that we shared info about this hand well before it was posted here....

after all I know for a fact that neither 3NT or 4D was alerted (as kibitzers know), and I know the explaination that South gave to the yellow who was called to the table, perhaps by you (but was by a kibitzer). Seeing this incident was report, and this was a main room hand, a yellow came to the table and questioned the players, I am not exactly sure where you are going with this post.

The fact that I knew a kibitzer called a yellow to the table, but not which kibitzer called the yellow clearly would indicate that it wasn't me who was called. The fact that I knew no bids were alerted and alluded to south giving the yellow an explaination that was not shared at least with Bid_em_up and other kibitzers gives further evidence of the information sharing.

Most of the information we keep on players is info related to stern warnings for misbehavior -- and short bans for the same. So that repeat offenders can be dealt with differently from first-time offenders. And of course, cheating investigations documented as they are undertaken.

BTW, I really like Glen's response.. that is exactly what I would have done.

[bid_em_up]

Ben,

Yes, I called the yellow to the table.

Why? No alerts on any bid, and no rational bridge explanation that I could think of for the bidding sequence. I was unsure of methods to report this type thing and called the yellow to the table to determine what steps (if any) I should take next. The yellow said he would notate the hand elsewhere (in the yellow's recording system, I would assume), so I wasnt going to waste more of abuse@bbo.com time by reporting it a second time.

I deliberately posted this without any player info so that hopefully the post would not be deleted since the hand (and therefore, the players in question) would be almost impossible to identify unless you happened to be at the table at the time (I know that at least one other forum poster besides the yellow was present when this occured). Hopefully, they will not reveal who the players were either, making deletion unnecessary.

However, I also dont like accusing anyone of such misgivings without stronger evidence and/or knowledge. I do not know what was said between the yellow and South. I also wanted to learn if it is possible that these bids had ANY possible rationale behind them in an appararently random partnership. I dont think there is, but I could be mistaken. Both Richard and Phil have offered at least some explanation for the 3N bid, even though it is not a call that I would ever consider making at the table. Bad bidding on both players parts could also account for some of this. I have not been able to actually review other auctions and/or play by South at this time, since I cannot read lin files when at work. From some of the results I have seen listed, I suspect that there are several other hands that need closer review..

This led me to check both North's and South's scores over the last two months. Norths overall averages would give me no cause for concern, but come on, be realistic......you know who the players are, look at South's results.

1.67 Imps over 360 hands with 95 different partners?

2.22 Imps over 125 hands with 32 different partners?

And yes, he may have played more than 5 hands with several of those partners, but still.....I dont have bridgebrowser available to me to check the number of actual hands played with each partner, I am simply doing a visual count and inspection of hands via the myhands viewer and noting the fact that the player in question does not have anything close to what would appear to be a REGULAR partnership that might explain this sort of discrepancy. The maximum number of hands with any partner that I can see appears to be 17 or 18 tops, and in the majority of instances, it appears to be fewer than 10 boards with the average being about 6-8. I dont know of anyone who could pick up that many random BBO partners and be able to successfully maintain that sort of IMP score over that many boards.

Do you?

In reality, South doesnt appear to be playing anywhere other than the MBC, so tournament results arent being affected by this sort of thing, so it doesnt concern me or alarm me all that much. I just fail to understand the need that anyone would have to do this quite so blatantly when there is absolutely nothing to gain.

Is there any real reason to report hands of this nature? If so, what are the proper methods to do so? Call a yellow to table if one is available (as I did)? Send it to abuse@bbo.com?

Seriously, I dont recall ever seeing any information posted on the site regarding this sort of issue. The good thing is that due to the great job all of you do, I also have never actually encountered a hand of this nature.

[inquiry]

Calling a yellow is fine, but it is very easy to go to myhands, copy a link to the hand, and email it to abuse..... generally try a few of these (like this one and the 3NT hand that followed it doubled). But one like this is usually enough to get abuse interested.

We have a very high standard for convicting some one, so don't worry about accusing someone if you send it in. The BBO bans people all the time for things like this (when it is determined after an investigation) that cheating occurs. You just don't see it posted publically like this. Now will we every say whether this person was found to have cheated or not? The answer is no. Beacause if we say not cheating, then the fact we didn't say anything would be de facto that we found that they were. Thus, wee simply will not comment on such things.

Do other people have such high averages playing with essentially pickup partners? The answer is few. But a coincidence doesn't mean anything in itself. But I will say this, if myhands or bridgebrowser suggested this guys average was -2.0 imps instead of +2.0 imps, it is doubtful there would ever be an investigation.

Sadly I have seen a fair number of hands of this nature. But the way we "see" them is when someone takes the minute to report them. Calling a yellow is somewhat overkill because a yellow is highly unlikley to do much based on a single ahnds. As fred said in the quote above, we have the ability to look at hundreds of hands before drawing a firm conclusion. So all the yellow is likely to do is to try to keep public cheating accusations down at the table, and then report the same hand to abuse.

[Apollo81]

Looks like cheating to me, at least by South. North could just be an idiot.

-Noble