[zasanya]

Fred
I am a bridge lover and organizer.As a bridge lover I love to watch vu-graph .As an organizer however I cannot afford to spend a huge amount (by my standards) on security gadgets. I do not mind watching the vugraph after 30 minutes delay.I believe a significant number of people will be of the same opinion.So please consider arranging delayed vugraph for organisations which cannot afford the security arrangements and instant vugraphs for those who can.

[helene_t]

fred, on Jun 25 2009, 03:54 PM, said:

[to Richard]Do you know anything about technologies that block the signals that such devices send and receive?

Jamming and detecting are both infeasible. You don't know what signals to look for (you would basically have to jam/scan all EM frequencies plus uwb and maybe ultrasound. If I sit with the back to the window someone can beam a maser signal to a receiver in my neck and it won't give you any ambient EM to detect), you don't know when they will be transmitted, and you want the players' pacemakers, the vugraph operators mobile internet, the bridgemates and the TDs' cell phones to be unaffected. Also you don't want all the electronic devices in the hotel room or on the corridor to cause false alarms.

Consider that airlines (who claim their electronics may be affected by passenger's phones) don't scan but just trust passengers to switch their phones off.

If playing against QuantumCat, gwnn, Gerben, Whereagles or other phycisists you can be sure they would communicate through quantum entanglement which is 100% impossible to detect or jam

I don't think this shoe trick (or other body parts as suggested by Richard) is practical. If I were a tournament organizer I wouldn't worry about it. My priorities would be:
First choice: Allow live vugraph and trust players to be honest. Maybe search jackets and handbags for cell phones in case someone needs to go to the toilet. If they manage to hide a smartphone in a body cavage, congrats, may they enjoy their deserved victory. Hopefully the stress induced by cheating outweighs the gain.

Second choice: Delay vugraph and other reporting, i.e. everything is secret until say 10 minutes before the end of the set. I think this would eliminate most cheating since you need another player or kibber to transmit the information.

Third choice: No toilet visits unless accompanied by a security officer. But that is a joke.

PS: If the boards are played in the same order in both rooms, there is little scope for cheating since when you go to the toilet and check vugraph, you will see mostly or entirely boards you have already played.

[fred]

zasanya, on Jun 26 2009, 06:15 AM, said:

Fred
I am a bridge lover and organizer.As a bridge lover I love to watch vu-graph .As an organizer however I cannot afford to spend a huge amount (by my standards) on security gadgets. I do not mind watching the vugraph after 30 minutes delay.I believe a significant number of people will be of the same opinion.So please consider arranging delayed vugraph for organisations which cannot afford the security arrangements and instant vugraphs for those who can.

Hi Zasanya,

Of course I appreciate it that tournament organizers like you are willing to produce BBO vugraph broadcasts of your tournaments. I am sympathic to the fact that this costs money, that additional security costs more money, and that many tournaments do not have a lot of extra money to work with.

But can you please explain, as a tournament organizer, why you are concerned about live vugraph?

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

Thanks,

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hotShot]

fred, on Jun 26 2009, 03:36 PM, said:

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

Player A and his Partner B are part of a top team. Player A expects that winning the tourney will bring him some sort of financial advantage. Player B is completely unaware of what A does.

Player A is familiar with the tournament location and manages to get a room that is visible from most parts of the playing area. He asks his wife who shares his financial interest to watch the life vugraph from his match from the hotel room, and change the window status (open/close) if he should bid more aggressive next board.

A notices that his wife has opened the window. Next board partner opens 3m and he looks at some sort of Yarborough and would usually have passed. But with the extra information he bids a confident 5m over RHOs pass. Partner goes down 4 dbled non vul., but Opponents miss their slam/grand because of this.
A few board later he notices that the windows is closed again. Next board partner opens 1M and he upgrades his close to maximum single raise to some sort of invitational hand. His partner would have passed 2M, but now risks to bid 4M. The other table had 2M+2.

These 2 board should produce a significant IMP advantage for A's team probably enough to win and since their opponents will feel they are behind, they might start making mistakes.

Does this sound realistic enough for you?
Of cause his wife could also sit outside on a park bench or walk through the hall as a signal.

[zasanya]

fred, on Jun 26 2009, 09:36 AM, said:

But can you please explain, as a tournament organizer, why you are concerned about live vugraph?

In other words, what realistic method(s) do you think that players in your tournaments might utilize in order to cheat with the help of live vugraph?

Thanks,

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Fred
Personally I am not at all worried about security aspect.I do not think any players i know of will have access to electronic gadgets which seem straight out of James Bond Movies.
However some of the paranoid players themselves have apprehensions of the 'signals-from-kibs' or 'washroom/smoking breaks' variety.This used to happen in pre-vugraph era also.Vugraph has added an extra dimension.Organizers try to keep players happy.
Personally I prefer instant vu-graph to delayed vugraph and delayed vu-graph to no vu-graph.

[McBruce]

I had my first experience at being an operator a few weeks ago at the Canadian Championships.

(Actually, I only did it for about 8 boards of the 128 board final after a session of practice during the semis; we had two great people -- with a total of 7 ACBL masterpoints!! -- who enjoyed the job so much they covered both tables for most of the two days. Having preduplicated 2,858 boards by hand for the event over the past week and the month before, I was happy to watch most of the match in the hospitality room.)

I don't recall a single delay resulting from any of the players leaving the table during any of the 16-board segments. In fact, we had two sessions of 16 boards where one table got only 15 boards in, so there wasn't a lot of time to take breaks. There were some lengthy breaks in the play and bidding on several occasions. (As an operator you quickly learn that these breaks are inevitably followed by some superfast tricks -- given thinking time, the cards and options become clear once the play resumes...)

While I understand the concern about cheating and the hope that things can be done to eliminate the possibility, the one thing that occurs to me that doesn't seem to have gotten much airtime on this thread is this:

Persistent cheating creates a footprint. If a player wins a significant number of IMPs by making anti-percentage plays, or guessing right often, or getting to miracle contracts, the trend might well be noticed--especially if there are a lot of people watching on VG. This has been the traditional way of catching cheaters, and it is not perfect, but it usually gets the job done--eventually. The Italian pair that were caught in Tenerife won the 2005 Cavendish a short time before that.

My opinion is this: introducing security methods to combat cheating actually increases the awareness of potential cheating among the players and spectators. I don't think that this is a good thing at all. I certainly wouldn't want to see commentators remarking with innuendo that Bobby is certainly having a very, uh, lucky day. But I think that is almost a given if we continue to ratchet up the presence of tight security measures.

Even worse is this: I suppose that the current method may not catch all cheaters, but the ones it does catch are not victims of circumstance. I have the impression that with all these extra security measures that there is a danger that somebody innocent is going to be investigated or even disqualified: and whichever one is the result, their reputation will be tarnished. Even worse, the process of reporting possible breaches of security (even privately) may become a tactic to throw an opponent off his game. You win 10 IMPs by taking a slightly antipercentage line in a contract. One of your opponents, perhaps someone who has a history with you, spends the next break talking to the TD and you have a TD or tournament official kibitzing you for the rest of the tournament. Good luck with that.

A better option, I think, would be to downplay the security, but ensure that more matches are recorded on VG so that the decisions taken by players can be a matter of public record. If someone amasses a huge number of IMPs in 50-50 situations, a full record can be built up and if necessary an investigation can take place for transmission methods. The accused player will have every right to defend himself with the database of hands played from VG.

As for live vs delayed vugraph, it seems obvious that delayed vugraph is not the answer. Cheaters will simply find other, more difficult to detect methods if live VG is removed. Simple procedures like piling a bunch of chairs and signs to either side of the VG operator to keep kibitzers away will work reasonably well to prevent anyone getting a view of the operator's screen. I can tell you firsthand that the instructions Roland and Fred gave to me for our team of newbie operators worked out very well.

But if delayed vugraph is not the answer, what on earth is the question? Is there a feeling out there that there has been cheating going on? If you feel this way, please do the right thing and inform your NCBO (or the Director in Charge) about your suspicions, noting the boards you suspect and any other information you are aware of. And having done so, let them do what they think best, and trust in their judgment: in other words, drop it. Even worse than cheating is the grapevine of innuendo about some poor player who has no way to defend himself.

[barmar]

TimG, on Jun 25 2009, 11:44 PM, said:

barmar, on Jun 25 2009, 07:15 PM, said:

The operator often needs to communicate with the players, usually to request information he missed: how many tricks were claimed, what was the explanation of the alert, etc.

Maybe we could get players to provide this information more clearly, but I doubt it.

It has always been my impression that the vugraph operators do not bother the players with this sort of thing, that the vugraph operator enters as best he can what he sees, but does not disrupt the game by asking any questions of the players. Same as any other kibitzer.

I've been a VG operator a number of times. I don't usually interrupt them to get alert explanations (occasionally I can see what they've written on the little slips of paper), I hope that some of the commentators know the system. But I usually try to confirm what the final result of the board is if it's not totally clear to me; claims or the last few tricks often go by in a flurry. This is the level of competition where claims are made and accepted on squeezes, which they can see but I can't.

[hackenbush]

From my experience as operator, entering the correct number of tricks claimed is arguably the most important information to get right. If you are wrong the first time, changing it in the movie erases bidding/play of the board. This would be annoying for the audience as well as for record-keeping.

[awm]

Pretty much every form of cheating we've seen discussed involves a transmitter of information and a receiver of information. The receiver is necessarily a player who can act upon the additional information to improve his results. The transmitter doesn't have to be a player.

The main problem with Vugraph is that it opens up a number of opportunities for non-players to do the transmitting which would not otherwise exist. In an extreme case, Vugraph itself can act as the transmitter (player goes to restroom, takes out iphone, watches vugraph for a few minutes, returns and takes advantage of the information). There are also cases where the existence of Vugraph makes a human transmitter harder to observe -- for example instead of the human transmitter needing to be present at one of the two tables, the transmitter can be watching Vugraph at some undisclosed location.

Delaying Vugraph potentially helps to deal with these problems. It will not prevent all cheating of course, but without Vugraph as a tool it seems that the transmitter needs to be physically present at one of the tables. This means that cheating requires more than one person to implement, and also creates another avenue for detecting cheating by observing the transmitter. Detecting the receiver is typically difficult except through laborious observation of his bids and plays (and even then there is a possibility of false accusations). For example, a player could arrive with a radio receiver disguised as a hearing aid and probably would not even be questioned.

One thing I'm surprised that ACBL hasn't implemented is shorter "segments" for matches. Many of the cheating suspicions revolve around what players do when they are "taking breaks" (bathroom breaks, smoking breaks, etc). It's possible that players could communicate during these breaks, either electronically or by talking to other players in the smoking area or leaving notes in the bathroom. The obvious solution to this is to have everyone play the same boards at the same time and have no breaks during a session.

Of course, many people can't go for 3.5 hours (or 5 hours in the case of spingold sessions, for whatever reason) without a break. The obvious way around this is to play more short sessions; say in the big events you would play eight boards and then have a break, and synchronize the start of the next eight-board segment with the other table. Likely almost everyone can go eight boards (about an hour) without a break -- we have to do this during swiss teams anyway and this is much less time than watching a movie (for example). A rare "emergency break" of some sort would of course be allowed, but any individual who has a lot of these emergencies would automatically be suspect.

This sort of synchronization seems to prevent a lot of cheating opportunities without resorting to delaying vugraph, or banning electronic devices, or requiring that players be followed to the rest room.

[Dwingo]

Agree with Adam, Short sessions. No breaks. Simultaneous starts. Play boards in same order in both tables. 15 min Vugraph delay. By the time Vugraph Audience sees the deals, they would have been played out at both the tables.

[JanM]

A problem with shorter segments is that the entire day ends up being longer. Not only are there more breaks, but it is less likely that the time for a slow board will be made up by the end of the segment - and although sometimes the same boards are slow at both tables, that is not always the case (one table bids a difficult slam and so takes a long time in the play; the other table doesn't bid slam or bids a different one and so is faster). Also, when the bathroom is in the playing room, so that the dummy can go to the bathroom, that saves time over waiting until a break (whether at the end of 8 or 16 boards) for everyone to go. When we play behind screens, the day is already very long, adding more time is not a good option.
In Vugraph matches, when all matches are using the same boards, we can't start the Vugraph of any match until all matches are ready to start. This means that we either have to make the "faster" match wait for the slower match to catch up, or we have to let the faster match start and begin the Vugraph broadcast partway through the segment, or we have to use a different set of boards for the slower match. None of these alternatives is ideal, and adding two more times when we'd have to deal with disparity in timing of different matches would be worse.

[awm]

If time is really such a concern, why not consider following the published conditions of contest and requiring players to complete eight boards in an hour? The fact that this is ignored (and that bridge in the Spingold is effectively not a timed event) certainly creates a substantial advantage for some teams (and disadvantage for others).

And if cheating is really a concern, why not consider this style of simultaneous play, a simple approach which costs nothing, and imposes minimal inconvenience on either players or spectators, and stops a wide range of cheating possibilities cold in their tracks... before banning electronic devices, delaying vugraph, and purchasing expensive video cameras and potentially cell-phone scanning devices all of which do very little to stop well-known low-tech cheating tactics (like exchanging notes in the restroom or discussing hands in the smoking area)?

[NickRW]

awm, on Jul 2 2009, 01:19 AM, said:

If time is really such a concern, why not consider following the published conditions of contest and requiring players to complete eight boards in an hour?

I think there is a lot to be said for that. I know decent players who won't play in some high level competitions simply because there is no enforcement of rules like these.

Nick

[JanM]

I don't know what "published conditions of contest" you're looking at. But if you look at the actual Conditions of Contest for the Vanderbilt and Spingold, you will see that the playing time for matches with screens is two and a half hours for 16 boards. That means that if everyone plays on schedule, a 64 board match takes ten hours of playing time, plus time between segments to compare and a dinner break. The late rounds of the NABC KOs take something like 13 hours from start to finish - that's more than enough!

I have no idea what you mean by "simultaneous play" - in most serious Knockout matches, the boards are played in the same order at both tables. If you're suggesting that both tables (or all tables playing the same boards?) should wait to start board 2 until board 1 is over, that really doesn't make sense. We'd have to allow even more playing time in that scenario because a board that happens to take a long time at one table would slow all the other tables down.

[qwery_hi]

JanM, on Jul 1 2009, 08:40 PM, said:

I don't know what "published conditions of contest" you're looking at. But if you look at the actual Conditions of Contest for the Vanderbilt and Spingold, you will see that the playing time for matches with screens is two and a half hours for 16 boards. That means that if everyone plays on schedule, a 64 board match takes ten hours of playing time, plus time between segments to compare and a dinner break. The late rounds of the NABC KOs take something like 13 hours from start to finish - that's more than enough!

I have no idea what you mean by "simultaneous play" - in most serious Knockout matches, the boards are played in the same order at both tables. If you're suggesting that both tables (or all tables playing the same boards?) should wait to start board 2 until board 1 is over, that really doesn't make sense. We'd have to allow even more playing time in that scenario because a board that happens to take a long time at one table would slow all the other tables down.

The tables need not wait, just the publication of the results of the boards to the outside world.

[rbouskila]

I am with Fred here. I think vugraph can be an excellent spectator event, especially if well-commentated, but 75% of the interest is gone if it's not live. If you know who won with half an hour left to play, are you really going to watch the rest? I mean, you may, but the suspense is gone. There's no comeback to be rooting for anymore.

Last year's sports games might have been great, but who's watching the reruns today?

[eyhung]

hrothgar, on Jun 25 2009, 06:02 AM, said:

I'll note in passing that one of the competitors during this years Scripps spelling bee was using the spell check functions on his iPhone during the contest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowit...i_b_209013.html

He made it quite a ways through before getting noticed.

This was just some random kid cheating in a fairly transparent manner.  Imagine just what someone could do if they were willing to invest $20-30K on some custom hardware.

Did you check the author of this report? The spelling bee report you are citing is written by Andy Borowitz, a famous comedian who makes his living writing cutting sendups of current events. Examples of his humor can be found at the Borowitz Report website online, including such recent articles as "Sanford : I'm Too Sexy For My State" and "Madoff to share Cell with OJ -- who promises to find the real swindlers". So I don't think this "source" helps your point that transparent cheating via an electronic device is hard to detect.

[TimG]

eyhung, on Jul 6 2009, 02:56 AM, said:

hrothgar, on Jun 25 2009, 06:02 AM, said:

I'll note in passing that one of the competitors during this years Scripps spelling bee was using the spell check functions on his iPhone during the contest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowit...i_b_209013.html

He made it quite a ways through before getting noticed.

This was just some random kid cheating in a fairly transparent manner.  Imagine just what someone could do if they were willing to invest $20-30K on some custom hardware.

Did you check the author of this report? The spelling bee report you are citing is written by Andy Borowitz, a famous comedian who makes his living writing cutting sendups of current events. Examples of his humor can be found at the Borowitz Report website online, including such recent articles as "Sanford : I'm Too Sexy For My State" and "Madoff to share Cell with OJ -- who promises to find the real swindlers". So I don't think this "source" helps your point that transparent cheating via an electronic device is hard to detect.

I thought the loss of millions of dollars in endorsement deals was a tipoff. I'm sure Richard was just playing with us.

[hrothgar]

TimG, on Jul 6 2009, 03:52 PM, said:

eyhung, on Jul 6 2009, 02:56 AM, said:

hrothgar, on Jun 25 2009, 06:02 AM, said:

I'll note in passing that one of the competitors during this years Scripps spelling bee was using the spell check functions on his iPhone during the contest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowit...i_b_209013.html

He made it quite a ways through before getting noticed.

This was just some random kid cheating in a fairly transparent manner.  Imagine just what someone could do if they were willing to invest $20-30K on some custom hardware.

Did you check the author of this report? The spelling bee report you are citing is written by Andy Borowitz, a famous comedian who makes his living writing cutting sendups of current events. Examples of his humor can be found at the Borowitz Report website online, including such recent articles as "Sanford : I'm Too Sexy For My State" and "Madoff to share Cell with OJ -- who promises to find the real swindlers". So I don't think this "source" helps your point that transparent cheating via an electronic device is hard to detect.

I thought the loss of millions of dollars in endorsement deals was a tipoff. I'm sure Richard was just playing with us.

Actually, I fell for the gag...