xcurt, on Mar 30 2008, 06:12 PM, said:
I will simplify it to bullet-point form:
a ) some people in bridge cheat
b ) it's easier to catch and evict cheaters when one eliminates legitimate reasons for their (non-bridge) actions
and furthermore that
c ) one should try hard to avoid the appearance of impropriety
d ) if you unexpectedly win something big, do you want people questioning your ethics?*
* This is basically what happened to the women's BAM winners in the last SF NABC.
I worked for many years doing security assessments, and developing software to identify security vulnerabilities (my software is now used by the departments of defense and energy).. From that I have two observations:
People make the following FALSE claims:
Claim 1. If you remove a security vulnerability (eliminate or make less effective some method that people use to break into a facility, to cheat, or whatever), that the overall security becomes better.
This is totally false. If I triple lock my front door, people can still enter through the back door. This totally depends on if there are equally effective alternatives to the vulnerability that was patched.
Claim 2: If I remove my most significant vulnerability, security gets measurably better.
This is occasionally true, but usually there is something else that is almost as effective.
Claim 3: Even if what I do doesn't help much, it doesn't hurt, and it makes it appear that secuirty is improved, and that reduces crime.
Often putting in a new fence, has no measurable effect on the overall security effectiveness, but does make it look like security is taken seriously, so that probably reduces unplanned attacks (I have not seen the evidence, but I believe its true). It has hardly any effect on planned attacks. More seriously, there are always costs, so the "it doesn't hurt claim" is tenuous at best.
In bridge, people can cheat by:
a. talking to other people between rounds
b. seeing hands (in pairs events) while walking around the room, either while the hands are being made, or during the session
and many other ways.
You would be hard pressed to convince me that eliminating cellphone cheating, without eliminating a and b above as well, will have any effect on the overall cheating rate. The "cheating by cellphone rate" is just irrelevent. Systems (such as security protocols) should be measured only in terms of its overall effectiveness.
So I dispute the claim that eliminating cellphones decreases
a. cheating
b. accusations of cheating
c. occurances of someones reputation being tarnished.
Now on to the costs. First, unless they establish a method for collecting or checking cellphones the costs are asymmetric. If you happen to be staying at the host hotel, the costs are assocaited with the 20 minutes you lose going to your room and coming back
1. before the first session
2. after the first session
3. before the second session
(which is still significant)
If you are at another hotel, and don't have a rental car, the costs (time) are much higher.
One wise ass here (I am paraphrasing), said poor babies, no cell phone for 3 hours. Actually it becomes no cell phones for 15 hours if your hotel is nowhere near the facility.
My normal schedule at nationals is I wake up around 8. I go and be a tourist from 9 to 12, grab a quick lunch and I go play bridge. If its the first day of a national event, I will go out to dinner between sessions (and often see friends from the town nationals are held in), otherwise I go back to the room and rest. Then I play the second session.
Both my morning and evening break are pretty tight, and I generally need my cellphone to make logistics work. Sometimes I have business to deal with, so I definitely need my cellphone.
Without the cell phone I would not be able to do as many things in my off bridge hours, so would rationally decide to go to less nationals. I think its certainly clear that people select nationals to go to in part based on what else there is to do in that city (just look at attendnce numbers, and if you want you can restrict yourself to national events, even there people care about things other than just those events). Alternatively, I have to pay an extra $75 a night to stay in the host hotel.
I am all for improving security, but ineffectual rules with significant costs, whose costs are mostly born not by the folks on the boards who are all staying at the host hotel is a serious mistake.
I personally do not like the choices in the poll, since my vote would be I would (try to) follow the rules, but I would attend nationals much less often, since I could not
"go see Pearl Harbour or such and such museum or this great bookstore and catch a cab back for the bridge event", since I could not get the logistics to work. I also could not decide to go to nationals at the last second counting on my ability to find a partner by calling people up, and when they bump into somone who is also looking connecting us (ok, I don't usually do this, but many players do, but my plans might fall apart when a partner does too well in another event....). I also could not spend my free day kibbutzing nationals for a few hours and then being a tourist awterwords, since it will require a trip to and from my hotel....
Anyway, thats my scoop...
Help
