[fred]

JoAnneM, on Jul 2 2009, 11:37 PM, said:

fred, on Jul 2 2009, 08:20 PM, said:

JoAnneM, on Jul 2 2009, 08:14 PM, said:

Many years ago on an early site I briefly had a partner who wanted me to send my hand on whatever messenger program that was in use at the time.  He was quite a good player but had an ego that wouldn't quit.  I have no idea whatever happened to him.   The point is that since it was online bridge he just thought it was "fun bridge" and didn't matter.

Did you think it mattered?

How did you react?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well, I immediately stopped playing with him. He was also an abusive partner.

Of course it mattered. But then even though I know online bridge is flawed I still play it to win, honestly. That is my character, and I think that is sometimes what comes out in these situations.

Good for you (seriously). Hopefully you will never be placed in this position again, but if it does happen again perhaps you should consider reporting the person in question to the people who run the ACBL games on the site in question.

A while ago we made the difficult decision to disallow kibitzing in our ACBL games (it was difficult because many of our regular ACBL players like to kibitz when they are not playing). As far as we can tell, this greatly reduced the amount of cheating going on.

I believe this is because it was no longer possible for an individual to cheat on his/her own and it takes a certain amount of "bravery" for a person to approach his/her partner and suggest "let's cheat". This is because you don't know how your partner might react.

I like to think that most bridge players, like you, would not want to have any part of this and would no longer want to play with the person in question. Therefore the very act of suggesting "let's cheat" entails some risk. It would entail considerably more risk if the potential cheat thought there was a chance that he/she might get reported to the authorities.

Perhaps this is a case of "if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[JoAnneM]

If you look at the list posted on the ACBL site for game owners/managers you will see very little activity in recent years for expelling members or even probabtion, other than for bad checks, behavior, etc. The two most recent cases that I know of aren't online players but well known ftf people. So I don't know what ACBL does with them. I do know that the one case I had to deal with in my District ACBL actually added to the punishment that we meted out after a hearing, so they do look at stuff that is sent in.

[TimG]

fred, on Jul 2 2009, 06:29 PM, said:

TimG, on Jul 2 2009, 11:05 PM, said:

Phil, on Jul 2 2009, 04:23 PM, said:

10 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of masterpoints online, and now its being suggested to have major tournaments? Maybe we should have an online NABC?

I don't think regionals, and especially sectionals, qualify as "major tournaments".

It is all relative.

I meant from an organizational standpoint. The online sectional or regional will not be one of ACBL's major events.

It could well be a major BBO event. And, it could be a major event on the calendar of some of the participants. I don't mean to put down anyone who thinks of an online sectional, or local face-to-face event, as a major event to them. I think of the Maine State Championship as a major event in my bridge year, but don't think it comes close to major status as far as ACBL is concerned.

[fred]

Phil, on Jul 2 2009, 09:23 PM, said:

I think for a lot of these players that can only play online, they don't care about the number of points they get, however, it already feels weird that people are racking up 500-600 points a year online. How would you feel if the Barry Crane Top 500 winner never left their home?

Whatever you do, I think the league should clamp down on the significance of online awards.

I think the point that you (and many other people) are missing is that the people who win this many masterpoints playing online put in a LOT of hours. The fact that they don't have to leave home may seem strange, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they earn the points they win (according to the masterpoint scheme that all clubs are subject to).

The most successful real life club players also win a lot of points and I suspect that most of them play could not play any more than 6 hours per day (ie 2 3-hour sessions) even if they wanted to.

On BBO it is possible to play to play ACBL-sanctioned tournaments for upwards of 18 hours per day 365 days per year.

Of course most people do not have anywhere near that much stamina or dedication, but keep in mind that online and offline clubs are subject to very similar rules regarding masterpoints. If a real life club wanted to run 18 hours worth of 1 hour 12-board speedballs per day, they could certainly do so.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[matmat]

There are a couple of system-level issues that I think would need to be sorted out for a larger/more meaningful tournament.

1) a more accessible convention card. perhaps something as simple as a scanned partnership acbl card on a server somewhere
2) an appeals process.
3) is there an official policy to deal with disconnects? could a "ping" feature be added?

(i'm sure there are some others that I can't think of atm).

From watching some of the play (before kibitzing was banned @ the BBO ACBL games) I felt like there was a lot more random stuff going on online than irl., i.e. people have a little less respect and a little less fear of partner's reaction when not facing them in a live game.

[awm]

fred, on Jul 2 2009, 07:22 PM, said:

I think the point that you (and many other people) are missing is that the people who win this many masterpoints playing online put in a LOT of hours. The fact that they don't have to leave home may seem strange, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they earn the points they win (according to the masterpoint scheme that all clubs are subject to).

While this is true, at some point I performed the following calculations:

(1) Playing in online ACBL speedball tourneys, my masterpoints per dollar spent is better than any other bridge playing activity I could undertake.

(2) Playing in online ACBL speedball tourneys, my masterpoints per hour is better than I would get in a club game or local sectional, and is only slightly worse than I'd get in a regional or nationals. Factoring in the time requirement for traveling to/from the regional tournament, the online ACBL speedballs are comparable time-wise to regionals.

Obviously this exact computation will be different for different people depending on skill level, but it seems like these results will roughly hold except for those elite few who can consistently win bracket one knockouts at strong regionals or place in the very high overalls in national events. Even for those people the "points/dollar" tradeoffs continue to favor the online ACBL games. And for the vast majority of bridge players the ACBL tourneys are substantially more efficient in terms of both masterpoints per money and masterpoints per time than anything else.

[mike777]

Yes, the internet/digital world is recking havoc with many older business models across the spectrum.


Creative Destructionism can be painful, adapting will be full of fits and starts, errors and successes.

[JoAnneM]

Thanks for the advice, Fred. I was actually an administrator at the site at the time, I just didn't tell the rest of the story.

One of the problems with "reporting to management" is that the players don't see instant results. Usually punishments are private between the site and the offender. Players want a letter back saying "We kicked him out". And, like you have said, it often takes many complaints before a pattern is established.

Word of mouth works great, especially online. People know that a pair is cheating, they have been reported but they are still in the game, at least if you are warned you are more on guard.

Case in point - for at least two years we have known that a pair was cheating, just because they were each terrible players but together they got good results in bidding and defense, with long pauses. Finally, after many complaints, they have not been kicked out but they are not allowed to play together in tournaments. Why won't management just believe the players? This is not at BBO.

[fred]

JoAnneM, on Jul 3 2009, 05:08 PM, said:

Case in point - for at least two years we have known that a pair was cheating, just because they were each terrible players but together they got good results in bidding and defense, with long pauses.  Finally, after many complaints, they have not been kicked out but they are not allowed to play together in tournaments.   Why won't management just believe the players?  This is not at BBO.

"Just believing the players" is unfortunately not a good idea because:

1) There are players who seemingly cry foul every time one of their opponents finds a successful bid or play that they don't understand. Far more often than not the explanation was that either the person who made the bid or play was a strong player who did something smart or a weak player who did something dumb that just happened to work. In some cases the people who frequently complain about their opponents cheating are reasonable players who don't want to understand - they are simply poor sports who scream "cheater!" whenever they think they have received an undeserved bad result.

2) In order to convict a player of cheating, we require an overwhelming amount of evidence. Frequently other players are able to present sufficient evidence for us to realize that we should investigate further, but in practice they never provide us anywhere close to enough evidence that we feel comfortable about "just believing them". Please note that I am not complaining - I would very much prefer that our players not get heavily involved in such investigations on their own.

3) The members of our staff who investigate cheating on BBO are professionals. By and large they have much greater experience in this area, much stronger bridge skills, and much better tools and data at their disposal than the "average BBO member". Naturally we feel more comfortable "just believing" these members of our staff (who are almost always right IMO) rather than "the players" (who usually turn out to be wrong).

That being said, the case we have been discussing (your partner inviting you to cheat) is rather different from (say) a strange opening lead that happens to work. A single hand proves nothing. But if we are informed that a known potential cheat is looking for a partner in crime, then that raises a very red flag. It is only a matter of time before such a person finds his/her dream partner to cheat with. If we know that such a person is looking for such a partner, we have a much better chance of quickly minimizing the damage to the integrity of our ACBL games that might otherwise be caused.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[waubrey]

In addition to everything else I would think the time constraints of the speedball tournaments would make it harder to cheat.

There is no club where I live so getting black points is tough for me. My points are almost all either red, silver or unpigmented. I would NOT want people to stay away from in person sectionals and regionals but it woiuld be nice to have a way to earn pigmented points outside of sectionals and regionals.

I have only been asked to cheat once by a partner and she threw a fit when I refused. Needless to say I never played with her again. And although occasionally I get suspicous of opponents when they are slow or have nearly identical profiles I really don't think many people cheat.

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

[Elianna]

waubrey, on Jul 4 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO.

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

[matmat]

Elianna, on Jul 5 2009, 02:39 AM, said:

waubrey, on Jul 4 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO.

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

certainly not.

I'm kinda wondering whether the right approach isn't "people cheat; so what?"

after all, isn't the whole point of playing this game to derive satisfaction from the act of playing?

I mean, if there is money on the line, then that's one thing -- but when all that's to play for are masterpoints (or less!) isn't the satisfaction of knowing that you had played well or that you have improved sufficient?

[TimG]

matmat, on Jul 5 2009, 03:11 AM, said:

I'm kinda wondering whether the right approach isn't "people cheat; so what?"

after all, isn't the whole point of playing this game to derive satisfaction from the act of playing?

I mean, if there is money on the line, then that's one thing -- but when all that's to play for are masterpoints (or less!) isn't the satisfaction of knowing that you had played well or that you have improved sufficient?

To some people, the entry fee constitutes "money on the line".

[TimG]

waubrey, on Jul 4 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

That doesn't mean that you can tell when they IM each other, it just means you can tell when they have another application open (and on top).

Elianna, on Jul 5 2009, 02:39 AM, said:

I'm so bad: I play solitaire ALL the time while on BBO. 

I would imagine I'm not the only one who likes to do something as dummy besides try to find partner's mistakes.

Of course you are not the only one. But, I'd be willing to shut down those other apps during a "serious" tournament.

[matmat]

TimG, on Jul 5 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

Of course you are not the only one. But, I'd be willing to shut down those other apps during a "serious" tournament.

I wouldn't. especially while dummy.

[matmat]

TimG, on Jul 5 2009, 10:52 AM, said:

To some people, the entry fee constitutes "money on the line".

and maybe that is the wrong approach, then.

[TimG]

matmat, on Jul 5 2009, 11:07 AM, said:

TimG, on Jul 5 2009, 10:52 AM, said:

To some people, the entry fee constitutes "money on the line".

and maybe that is the wrong approach, then.

I wasn't endorsing the attitude, just saying that it is the reality for some.

[JoAnneM]

waubrey, on Jul 5 2009, 05:02 AM, said:

In addition to everything else I would think the time constraints of the speedball tournaments would make it harder to cheat.

There is no club where I live so getting black points is tough for me. My points are almost all either red, silver or unpigmented. I would NOT want people to stay away from in person sectionals and regionals but it woiuld be nice to have a way to earn pigmented points outside of sectionals and regionals.

I have only been asked to cheat once by a partner and she threw a fit when I refused. Needless to say I never played with her again. And although occasionally I get suspicous of opponents when they are slow or have nearly identical profiles I really don't think many people cheat.

I have played at a site called Kurnik.org and they have an interesting feature. If you pop up another program on top of the bridge page your name grays out for everyone to see. So you can tell when people IM each other. Perhaps that's something BBO should consider?

ACBL has announced a very nice new feature on their website. On their Find-A-Club page you can put in a town or zipcode and it will show you a map with the ten closest bridge clubs. You might find one within 21 miles of your town, which really isn't very far, or you might find one 45 miles away. If you are traveling it would especially handy because you don't always know the names of the outlying places to look for a club.