[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2024-September-30, 12:34, said:

We had the Bridge+More boxes demonstrated to us a month ago or so. One of the nice features is that if you don't shuffle your hand, just put them on top of each other after play, the box will work out the play for you (not sure about claims, but I'm sure there's something that can determine that). And present that in the results (along with the auction, if done on the phones/tablets).

We don't have explanations or Alerts (unless that's also done in the tablets) but clubs that use this could very easily be able to amass the kind of statistical information from FtF play that we're getting on BBO and elsewhere.

I think that would be interesting (FCVOInteresting), don't you?

Sure. I was enthralled when I first read about Bridge+More and immediately thought that the best advantage of many was in being able to read the play.
But then I thought "why not go a step further and virtualise the cards altogether?".
And then I realised I no longer really wanted even this.
That was an important trigger to recongnising that we really were at the end of one paradigm and the start of another destined to supplant it.
It's typical of such scenarios that the old paradigm has a furious reaction, pulling out audacious projects long hidden in the closet in a stubborn but vain attempt to avoid the inevitable. We saw it in intelligent typewriters, in the death throes of valve amplifiers when they suddenly doubled in power, in VHS and Blu-Ray, now in complicated hybrid cars and the improbable 6-stroke Porsche engine.
No pushing back the tide.

[mycroft]

I don't think the "death of cards" is inevitable. MTGO (and MTGA) are heavily set up and used, but MTGL is still chugging along.

There are those who will say that "if we bid and play on tablets, why do we have to be at the same table?" and those who "need the cards for feel/concentration" will be joined by "one of our strengths is our table feel, don't take that away" (and the "but how can we tell they're not cheating if we're not at the table to intimidate them ensure they're not?")

There ae those who will say that "if we don't have a table to sit at, why come to the club?" And there will be those of that set who will go farther and say "and that's a good thing, given the 90 minute commute to the bridge club at 1600 on a Tuesday afternoon we don't have to have" (yes, there are those clubs. I had most of one of them at my tournament last week). And the people who panic about online cheating - at club games, no less - will panic about online cheating in club games.

And everybody who currently is happy playing in their FtF club games will be happy playing in their club games, among other things knowing that "it's safe here, unlike all that cheating taking place online." And they'll be just as right as the clubroom poker players who were laughing at all the cheating and fixing that was happening in online poker - until they went looking for the same kinds of things that math made obvious with "all the records".

I don't know where the line is of "inevitable progress" vs "too far, losing the soul of the game". We'll see, I guess.

And yes, there are ways of cheating online that don't exist FtF, and vice versa. Absolutely. And people who will take advantage of them. Or at least go as close to the line as possible without actually triggering the C word. Or maybe even "have good table feel" and not put any effort into working out *why*.

[johnu]

mycroft, on 2024-September-29, 18:31, said:

1% of players online are cheating, at least according to Edgar Hammond.

For the record, it was Nicolas Hammond who was the first one who datamined the BBO tournament hands to detect cheating by various statistics.

How effective was his program? During the first years of Covid, I was looking at a website that ranked ACBL players based on their results, online and face to face. To my astonishment, I saw a pair, who had played on the same team with me a couple of times when my partner lined them up, and one of the team occasionally played with that partner of mine. I would have rated them as very friendly, pleasant people, but no better than average club players in the average club setting.

what caught my eye was that this average club pair was ranked in the top 200 or so out of the 30,000 pairs ranked. Then I looked at some of their BBO results, and they were averaging around 65% in some of the big unified online games, usually finishing in the top 3. This is not the results of the pair I knew. I wrote Nicolas and asked if they were on his list, and he said there were several other inquiries about that pair, and since I had already reviewed a couple of other pairs on his list, asked if I could review their hands.

At the time, the main indicator used by Nicolas was underleads of aces against suit contracts. This pair underlead aces a lot, and occasionally AK and even AKQ. They were successful in all but one or two cases, but that could have been due to a misclick. They stopped on a dime when other pairs would have bid at least one more, and when they balanced, they always found a good fit. When one player made a very aggressive overcall, partner with a very good hand would make a minimum response. When one of them misclicked a bid, they always landed on their feet in miraculous ways. Sadly, I reviewed a couple of other pairs who cheated just as well as these two.

EDGAR is a computer program building on the inspiration of Hammond that was designed by a different group of programmers. EDGAR is currently being used to screen for cheaters by the ACBL.

[mycroft]

That story is very interesting.

If you think I didn't know what I was doing with "Edgar Hammond", though, you should review my history some :-) .

[barmar]

What do we really think of that 1% figure?

Of course, any cheating is bad, but human endeavors are always messy.

Cheating in online games is really easy. So perhaps we should be happy that it's only 1%.

And if you compare with other parts of life, it may not be so bad. Think about how many politicians and judges you don't really trust to take the best interests of the country in mind when they make their decisions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it, but we can at least put it into perspective.

[jillybean]

After reading the first appeals case regards ACBL online cheating , I retract my comments upthread.

I now agree with Richard, Nail their hides to the wall!

5 years suspension, 5 year probabtion, we should have seen the last of them.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2024-October-03, 08:44, said:

What do we really think of that 1% figure?

Of course, any cheating is bad, but human endeavors are always messy.

Cheating in online games is really easy. So perhaps we should be happy that it's only 1%.

And if you compare with other parts of life, it may not be so bad. Think about how many politicians and judges you don't really trust to take the best interests of the country in mind when they make their decisions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about it, but we can at least put it into perspective.

I'm skeptical of that 1% figure, FWIW.
Maybe it refers to pairs detected as possibly cheating and proven beyond reasonable dount to have cheated.
In which case the actual figure for pairs cheating is likely to be at least double.
My experience in other sports (where detection of cheating is often easier) suggests 2-6%, according to level of policing more than level of competition.

[pilowsky]

pescetom, on 2024-October-03, 15:20, said:

I'm skeptical of that 1% figure, FWIW.
Maybe it refers to pairs detected as possibly cheating and proven beyond reasonable dount to have cheated.
In which case the actual figure for pairs cheating is likely to be at least double.
My experience in other sports (where detection of cheating is often easier) suggests 2-6%, according to level of policing more than level of competition.

The 5-10% number is apparently true for chess also.
The estimates are confounded by a number of factors.
I'd expect cheating to be more likely in situations where regular partners are involved - ACBL, EBL, ABF etc.
You might expect it to be worse when entry fees are higher - Parkinson's law would suggest the smaller the stake the more likely cheating is to occur.

Online is a whole different problem because: phones, smurfing, anonymity etc.

There are also some people that seem to loosen their ethical standards where robot tournaments are involved because they're just robots - forgetting that they're playing vs other people.

In bridge it's even harder to detect since it's entirely possible for a weak pair to occasionally defeat extremely strong players so it doesn't seem odd when it happens.