[McBruce]

Bravo kleek! That is an excellent summary.

At the risk of substituting my opinions for consensus, let me suggest a few additions and add a few comments for discussion:

8. In any Ethics Committee process, the protection of all of the rights of the individual(s) against whom a complaint is brought (particularly their anonymity) is of paramount importance.

I think we need to add that the EC gets only the facts and no names, ever. The main functions of the reporting software (see #11 below) is to strip the names, assign a subset of the full EC to view the facts without names, and collect the opinions and the verdicts. Consider the difference:

a: "Look at this hand. Don't you think that East must have had a peek at the other hands?"

b: "Look at this hand. Do you see any evidence that one or more of the players has illegal knowledge about what another player holds?"

Which is more likely to lead to a fair result?

To clarify: if you complain specifically about player X, the software gets the name of the person you are complaining about, to decide when to launch an investigation. If you send a deal without specifying who you feel is suspicious, nothing happens. But the members of the committee just get compass positions.

10. The Ethics Committee should never be asked, or undertake, to review any problem that should properly have been disposed of by a tournament director or other internal tournament appeal process.

By this we mean that the only thing the EC deals with is allegations that a player had illegal information about someone else's hand AND acted on this information. Behavior issues, adjustment issues, language barrier misunderstandings, hesitation allegations, alert or explanation problems, and anything not related to the issue of "did this player have and make use of illegal information?" should be quickly discarded. Because of this, maybe we should rethink the name of the committee, since many will send complaints of the types listed above based on the name alone.

11. BBO software can be developed to facilitate the procedures involved in bringing a complaint to the Ethics Committee, as well as in making a finding and reporting it to the appropriate entities.

Let's be clear here: there is no reason that the software developed needs to be a part of the BBO software, and good reasons that it shouldn't. It could be as simple as a Web Site with a form that triggers a program which launches an investigation by sending out case info to members of the EC when the complaints threshold is reached. I think it would be better if there were a separation. F2F bridge is extremely insistent that allegations of cheating should be made IN PRIVATE and only to TOURNAMENT OFFICIALS. We should follow the same guideline. To make a complaint, you must log off, make a small effort to collect the appropriate .lin file, then go to a specific and separate place online to register the complaint.

12. Neither the Ethics Committee, nor any of the members who sit on it at any given time, has either the ability to bring a complaint, or the authority to make the final disposition of it. Its sole role is to analyze the evidence, come to a finding, and make a recommendation. What is ultimately done with its findings and recommendations is strictly beyond the purview of the Ethics Committee.

What do we think about this: Should the members of the EC make decisions separately or should they be allowed to consult? I think it is best to simply keep a public list of the people on the EC, but for each case nominate 5 people from the list at random (or almost random to avoid overloading anyone) to look at the evidence separately. If the consensus says make a formal complaint, now the evidence can be sent to the next level: to the accused for a defense and to BBO for punitive action.

[keylime]

Kurt,

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. And ditto. <again>

[slothy]

Funny that you wrote all that Kurt...it was on the tip of my tongue

....and i second it. <á la Dwayne ditto>

[dogsbreath]

dog has read all 11 pages ..very interesting but tiring I have no sympathy for cheaters nor any understanding of why they do it on a not-for-money site , but I am concerned about the complexity of the proposed solutions.
Working on these committees will be tiresome work ..so the cheaters are likely to eventually drain the volunteers of any enthusiasm for their task. Additionally, an almost equal effort is required to deter the accusers.. I have had 2 unpleasant incidents recently where a silly comment about bids/leads has seriously upset an inexperienced partener. It has also been pointed out to me that we have many bridge teachers playing on BBO who regard such accusations against them as potentially very damaging.
The effort required of these volunteers would be much more productively spent in mentoring or other development activities.

This inclines me towards Lois' attitude that we must learn to live with the limitations of on-line bridge. If Fred,Uday etc feel that 'cheating' is adversely affecting the reputation or viability of the BBO site then they will be driven to find a workable solution. It seems to me that we are moving to a situation where you only play with people you trust, or in a club, or accept the conditions you find at other 'random' tables with as much good grace as you can muster

The cheaters will eventually go away.. they dont really like bridge anyway and will find another stream to pollute.. Rgds Dogsbreath.

[kleek]

Thanks all. To McBruce's detailed reply, I agree with the some of the specific points made, disagree with others:

8. Agree that the EC never gets the names of the accused. Thought that was implied by my statement, but it doesn't hurt to state it in so many words.
Of course, the committee should get only the relevant facts, and no extraneous comments that might prejudice a review. You may be going a bit too far here, though, in not even wanting to divulge which anonymous compass direction is the "subject" of the complaint. Please remember that, at the point a complaint is brought to the EC, there will (by way of requirement) already be quite a number of deals involved in the allegation, all of which will have to be analyzed, in order to arrive at some conclusion, and the "subject" in question could have been sitting at any compass direction on different deals. Do we really want the EC wasting its time simply identifying which compass direction might be the "subject" of the complaint? After all, there might be more than one unusual, or questionable, action on any particular deal, and the committee wouldn't want inadvertently to attribute the wrong "action" to the wrong "subject".

10. Again, all of the items you delineated, and many more, should properly be handled by a tournament director. The EC should only become involved with the most egregious examples of unethical behavior, not the ordinary violations of rules, laws, and conduct. Also, for your information, the "illegal" knowledge of hands other than one's own during the bidding and one's own and dummy's during the play is NOT the ONLY possible form of cheating (or highly unethical activity) which can occur, and therefore become the subject of an EC review. Lest I give anybody any bright ideas, I will leave it to you to figure out what they might be. The name of the committee should not be a problem in this process, one way or the other, but if there is a "better" name, that's fine.

11. I am not a programmer, and I wouldn't presume to argue what can and can't, or what should or shouldn't, be done with any software that might be used to help in this process. Since various BBO officials are going to be the end users of the EC's work product and will make the ultimate determination of how a complaint is disposed of (either directly or via controlled procedure), I don't quite understand why the need for separation of the software. The salient point is that the EC PROCEDURE should be separate and confidential, not the software.

12. I like the idea of having the EC composed of a rotating group of different people (from a compiled master list of those who qualify and offer to serve), who serve for a limited, and defined, period of time, before they are replaced by another random group selected from the list. I don't understand the point of why it would somehow be "better" for each member of the EC to do his own analysis, make his own finding, and make his own recommendation, without any contact with the other EC members who are reviewing the same complaint. Not only would this approach lead to a great amount of duplicated work, but also one of the main reasons to have a "committee" is so that different work can be delegated to different individuals, and so that the committee can benefit from the knowledge and insight of all of its members, each of whom may bring different aptitudes and strengths to the analysis being done. I am for a collaborative committee effort. Not just the sum of individual efforts, the majority opinion of which is put out under the "name" of a committee.

Perhaps, as a more detailed outline of how all of this is actually going to work in practice is developed, many of these questions will be answered more fully. Thanks for the input.

[rona_]

This might have been mentioned already in the 11 pages of comments on the subject, and if I have missed it I apologise. If dummy can only see his own hand and if players have the option to block kibs from viewing their hand, won't it help towards solving part of the problem?

[inquiry]

rona_, on Mar 25 2004, 01:16 AM, said:

This might have been mentioned already in the 11 pages of comments on the subject, and if I have missed it I apologise. If dummy can only see his own hand and if players have the option to block kibs from viewing their hand, won't it help towards solving part of the problem?

Hi Rona,

I think your solutions will do very, very little to solve the "problem." First, if a pair is going to cheat, seeing the hands during play is of modest value at best.... sure partner can tell you which way to finessee or to play for drop...etc... but the big culprit is bidding. And even if you block kibitzer if a and b are going to cheat, they can communicate during the bidding.

Second, lots of people enjoy kibitizing, count me chief amoung them. i would hate to see all kibitizing blocked, but that is what it would take. Blocking a kibitizer at your table does no good if a person logs on with two computers or uses a friendly (?!) kibitzer to share info about the hand... the kibitzer (eihter real or virtual... 2nd log in of the player) can go to any table in a tournment and send info back to the player.

I think the final solution is to do as others suggested here... find some friendly, card players at or above your skill level who play fairly, and play with them. Let the cheaters go play with each other, and let them figure out which ones can pick the best double dummy contract given double dummy defense while playing in their own sandbox. Eventually, a true zero tolerance anti-cheating private club will start with their own ethics police and you will be able to find a tournment where the results are studied to be sure that blantant cheaters are excluded...Abalucy is trying to reach something like this... but there is still room to grow that type initiative.... Another WONDERFUL solution is to play in team matches with groups of your trusted friends and trusted opponents...

But just as I enjoy kibitizing, while dummy, I enjoy looking at the hands and seeing what the defense is trhying to do and trying to guess if partner will find the best percentage line, the 100% secure line or the wrong line that oddly works on a particular hand... If I can't see anything but my own hand 25% of the time (more because I tend to raise my parnters with support but they seem to rebid their suit or bid NT when they support me)....I will be very bored.

Ben

[aisha759]

You can do all sorts of blocking on BBO (which would be extremely disappointing) then there is no more fun in kibbing.... i think OKbridge has solved that problem (up to a point) they have defined the difference between a kibber and a specatator... a spec can see all hands, therefore cannot talk to anyone , where as a kibber only sees dummy like everyone else.... (the terminology is a bit different, and i can't quite remember it) that still doesnt stop specs from using messenger or some other form of communication....
I enjoy kibbing, and seing all hands (learning experience) So please don't do anything to change that
It seems to me, that you can stop some from cheating, but you will always get new cheaters! If cheating is most rampant in the bidding, then blocking kibbers wont help...... 70% of good a good contract is in correct bidding ( so i'm told he he )
Dont know where i'm getting at with this actually, but maybe one day, someone will come up with a brilliant idea to make it more difficult to cheat, but stopping it completely, seems like an impossible task.

Aisha

[inquiry]

aisha759, on Mar 27 2004, 03:01 PM, said:

Dont know where i'm getting at with this actually, but maybe one day, someone will come up with a brilliant idea to make it more difficult to cheat, but stopping it completely, seems like an impossible task.

Aisha

Yes we all hope that blocking kibitzer is never deemed the solution...this punishes the innocent as well as the guilty. And you are correct, stopping all cheating is going to be impossible.. heck stopping even some of it is going to be difficult.

The best solution if you are really worried about cheating is to find ethical people and play with and against them. But bbo wants to start eventually tournments that you have to pay to enter. I will not join these tournments until and unless some form of anti-cheating policy is started. I am just happy to play on lilne with my friends and people I know who are very ethical players, and of course the gold stars.

ben

[aisha759]

Hi Ben;
I wouldnt join paid tourneys either, especially that there are so many free ones, and with all that cheating you all are talking about, it sort of takes the fun out of it (unless of course i decide to take up cheating and get my money's worth ))
For paid tourneys to be successful, they would have to have a certain benefit... now dont get me wrong; there is a lot of pleasure in doing well in a free tourney, and i don't necessarily mean winning; but a paid tourney, well.....thats a bit more serious, so maybe winning a Tshirt might make me wanna cheat....watch out!!!
Especially if it has my name on it

A tourney i have to pay for, should have some benefits, other than just a "bit of winning satisfaction".... IMHO

Yours truly
Aisha

[luke warm]

inquiry, on Mar 27 2004, 10:09 PM, said:

aisha759, on Mar 27 2004, 03:01 PM, said:

Dont know where i'm getting at with this actually, but maybe one day, someone will come up with a brilliant idea to make it more difficult to cheat, but stopping it completely, seems like an impossible task.

Aisha

Yes we all hope that blocking kibitzer is never deemed the solution...this punishes the innocent as well as the guilty. And you are correct, stopping all cheating is going to be impossible.. heck stopping even some of it is going to be difficult.

The best solution if you are really worried about cheating is to find ethical people and play with and against them. But bbo wants to start eventually tournments that you have to pay to enter. I will not join these tournments until and unless some form of anti-cheating policy is started. I am just happy to play on lilne with my friends and people I know who are very ethical players, and of course the gold stars.

ben

i guess i'm a little more fatalistic... since i'm pretty sure that cheaters will always find a way, i'll just play (even the paid tourneys) and trust that those in charge are doing and have done all they can to limit it...

i'll *never* have total peace of mind that cheating isn't going on, so i'll just choose to do my best and that's that

[aisha759]

I belive Luke Warm has the right attitude.... play and enjoy! We can't get paranoid over every well bid and well played board even if suspicious sometimes...

[etherwiz]

Hi - this replay is more to the point of the last few pages then my other posts have been

1st - I have not only been a programmer working in the "trenches" as Fred and UDay are (doing the design, programming, testing, error tracking and fixing on a day to day basis simply because we are the only ones in the computer department) - I have also been a Project Manager many times and System person on International Insurane Company's Main Frame.

I GUARENTEE YOU that there are many more practical, User-Wanted, and Comercial Aspects they they both could be working on then customizing the software to record charges about the ethical of users!

I am also sure that if we could come up with someting that had more then a slim hope of success they would do it. But several factors lead me to the conclusion that this may not happen.

a) There is NO WAY that from a recording of the bidding and play anyone except an All-Knowing GOD could tell the cheaters from the talented, from the Lucky, or even from the UnLucky but Once In A BLue Moon ....................
This is simply imposiible. Even it LOOKS LIKE, even if 5 TRillon Master Point Winner says "It SURE LOOKS LIKE CHEATING", there is no way anyone can ever say 100% certainty.

An investigation about someone would have to record EVERY HAND THEY PLAY (at least in Tournament play) just to be sure that they do not react the same ALL THE TIME and got complaints only when they "lucked out". And worse yet - perhaps they only play that way with a certain partner (I myself make bids with novices I would never try with my betters - but that is because I know my betters would open hands of less then 13 pts or only 4 major suit).

c) for such an Ethics Committie to be created both UDay and Fred would have to have totally implicit trust in (most) committy members. Because if the Committy ever left the cause - THEY THEMSELFS would have to run it. If anyone thinks it is bad now, what would it be like if an Ethics Committy got up and running for only 3 or 4 months then disbanded ?

2nd - no time for a second right now, but I have other problems that might come up with the other topics presented here - Be Back Soon

_*_Dave

[rona_]

North is declarer in 4 after west opened and alerted 1C

---

4♥ led by east , small from dummy ,8♥ by west taken with Ace by declarer. Spades led by declarer, Ace taken by west and a small diamond lead by west from AKQx to the J in his partner's hand to lead a heart again. Can you tell for sure that this is cheating? I kibbed this hand in a tournament.

[jtfanclub]

etherwiz, on Aug 29 2004, 12:00 AM, said:

An investigation about someone would have to record EVERY HAND THEY PLAY (at least in Tournament play)

You are already aware that happens, right?

On August 17th, you played 10 boards. The last four were with mridd627. You got...well, see for yourself what you got.

http://online.bridgebase.com/cgi-bin/history.pl?...00&p=2004-08-17

[etherwiz]

[QUOTE]QUOTE (etherwiz @ Aug 29 2004, 12:00 AM)
An investigation about someone would have to record EVERY HAND THEY PLAY (at least in Tournament play)



You are already aware that happens, right?

On August 17th, you played 10 boards. The last four were with mridd627. You got...well, see for yourself what you got.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

And Your Point is ???

Are you refering to the 4!h board that we set ???

I do not understand, and I do really not understand why you posted ALL hands I played that day.

I am far from a perfect player.

So What is Your Point ???

[etherwiz]

rona_, on Aug 29 2004, 07:02 AM, said:

4♥ led by east , small from dummy ,8♥ by west taken with Ace by declarer. Spades led by declarer, Ace taken by west and a small  diamond lead by west from AKQx to the J  in his partner's hand to lead a heart again. Can you tell for sure that this is cheating? I kibbed this hand in a tournament. 

First off the low heart follow to the heart lead is perfectly resonable and one that I could figuare out for myself!

The defensive Lead of a low ♦ was very gutsy but also could probably be figuared out (but not by me).

SO is this what you would consider PROOF that cheating had occured
-GEE I thought I bad of other players sometimes.
I would never even consider that (one play of one card (the ♦) a cheat.

I am talking about a lot more then that.

One time the dummy told his partner to claim when we had more then enough time to play it out (9 cards left and 5 mins on the clock).

When his partner claimed and I rejected (it was no where close to certainly theirs) he then told his partner in CHAT which TWO of Three Possible finnesses to take that would get them thier contract ! And he had told his partner to CLAIM with TWO OVERS they did not make !

Backed up by the chat records - this is the proof I am talking about, what is needed to farward to ABUSE and what the TD should consider when making rule-ings.

_*_Dave

[jtfanclub]

etherwiz, on Aug 29 2004, 02:20 AM, said:

And Your Point is ???

Are you refering to the 4!h board that we set ???

I do not understand, and I do really not understand why you posted ALL hands I played that day.

I am far from a perfect player.

So What is Your Point ???

My point was that you said in order to catch cheaters, we would have to log every board played in tournaments. This is already done- you can look up anybody's ID and see every game they've played, and since you were the one who posted, I used you as an example. I posted ALL the hands you played that day to show that I, or anybody else, could see ALL the hands youplayed that day.

EDIT: The reason why I picked that day was because it happened to be the furthest back for you that was logged. I didn't look at your other days.

Nothing else was meant or implied.

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Mar 16 2004, 09:07 AM, said:

If you have a big problem with cheating, then do something about it YOURSELF. Get a group of like minded individuals, create a public or private club, and build the mechanisms that you feel are appropriate to deal with this issue. I'll wish you every success in the world.

Absolutely. This seems to be the only practical way to go.

[TimG]

bglover, on Sep 5 2003, 02:00 PM, said:

I personally have witnessed contracts that were made by taking virtually impossible lines at least twice, and I am sure everyone else has witnessed one or two as well.

I've witnessed many nearly cold contracts which failed due to virtually hopeless lines. I went down in an absolutely cold contract recently when I made a silly mistake.

There is lots of bad play (and bidding) on BBO. Given the nature of bridge, some percentage of it will turn out good for the perpetrators. This makes any decision to suspend a player based upon one hand (or even a couple) a very bad decision.

Anti-percentage plays and bids in a 12 board tournament? If the aim is to win, I'm not so sure but what anti-percentage plays are called for from time to time. Taking a wild shot at a grand slam? Might be the best way to create a top board. And, to win in such a short tournament you need a lot of top boards.

As has been pointed out by someone, I think it was Inquiry, sometimes odd looking plays are the technically right plays. The investigators ought to be very good players indeed. Better than just about anyone posting here.

Like Richard, I've been playing online bridge since the days of OKbridge telnet. I have never felt like I was being cheated. Never. Now, I'm sure that somewhere along the way, over the 1000's of hands I've played, there must have been some opponent who was cheating. But, I'm sure my online experience has been injured more by the witch hunts than by the actual cheating.