[Cascade]

Kurt your signature is ironical given the nature of your post.

I would have thought you should play fairly when you have losing cards.

[keylime]

Kurt,

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. And, ditto.

[kleek]

Wayne/Cascade:

I'm sorry that you don't understand the meaning of the word irony (a figure of speech in which the literal meaning of a locution is the opposite of that intended...employed playfully) or appreciate the dry wit of Oscar Wilde. Lest some reader of my post get the wrong impression or take offense, I will immediately remove the Wilde quotation from the area below my closing signature.

I ALWAYS play fairly, whatever cards I'm dealt, and would never suggest that anyone else should do otherwise, despite what you implied by your comment.

What I find more interesting is that, after your having apparently read my post, the only thing you could find to make a comment about was the (intended as) humorous quotation below my name. This seems to be the fairly typical reaction of the yellows and administrators of BBO to any reasonable discussion of this subject, i.e., if possible, ignore it.

Ignore it, say as little as possible, do as little as possible, and try to hush up anybody who speaks out on the issue with your explicit and implied "warnings". Isn't this the real, unstated policy at BBO?

[inquiry]

I am glad kurt has agreed with my view that cheating should not be ignored anymore in the BBO by the players. I am sorry his view is that yellows and administrators ignore the problem. But the truth of the matter is it takes a lot of man-hours to investigate alleged cheating, the evidence isn't allways that clear cut, and the safest view is to assume innocent until proven guilty.

Let's take your examples, kurt, as how an investigation might go. First, is opening 2♠ on "basically King sixth and out?" strongly, or even weakly indicative of cheating? The hand in question is far from being a cheating one, in fact, it suggest the possibility that they were not cheating. First 6 out of 16 players opened that hand 2♠. Second, they are laydown for 4♥, and were going to languish in 2♠ or 3♠, and third 3♠ is down on a ♥ lead as your side scores 2♠+ 1♥ ruff, 1♦ and 1♣. And something you forgot to mention, is that the hand with a singleton ♠ had not some scatttered honors, but 16 hcp including 3.5 quick tricks, passed 2♠ initially and you guys gave him a choice of defending 3♦ or trying for 3♠s. So if you report this hand, I am sue nothing will come of it.

The next example, you are on much firmer ground. I will point out, in case you missed it, the last two hands were a different set of opponents than the hand above. On this hand your partner opened 1♥ and RHO "psyched" a vulnerable preemptive 2♠ overcall on...

Scoring: IMP

---

Ok, this one is extremely odd. But, some people bid "crazy," his partner was a passed hand, and he could be trying to induce some "action". I would classify this as bid as highly suspecious, but wouldn't do much more than that yet. You next bid wasn't 3♥, but rather a 3♠ cue-bid. and the next hand as you said
"NEVER did anything but PASS for the entire auction, holding Kxxxx, Ax, xx, Axxx". That is, he didn't take the 4♠ save/make bid with a presumed 11 card fit (and this wasn't out of fear of pushing you to slam since he had two side aces. At the very worse your RHO is a frequent wacky psycher and his partner "caught" the pscyhe (which in itself is a form of cheating if you make this kind of psyche so frequently your partner can catch it).

So I would not report the first hand, I would report the second one. For the third one, the double. There is nothing I can say. Your LHO doesn't have a double for a couple of reasons. First it would ask for a spade lead and he is looking at xx in ♠ and a ♠ lead could easily give up a trick. Second, he has no reason to think his hand can win even one trick. Add to this his partner got off to an odd looking lead (any lead would have worked) of a low club from Ax.

So if I was in charge of investigating "cheating" allegations, and you reported these three hands, here is what I would do. I would ignore the allegations on the first hand and that would be the end of it. After looking at the two other hands, I would look at a selected group of furhter hands this played, I would suspend their log-in rights to the BBO until they answered questions about their bidding/play. But we must not throw people out for being "bad bidders". The evidence has to be stronger than just that.

Imagine you hear the following auction...

Scoring: IMP

---

1♦-(Pass)-1♥-(2♣)
4♥-(Pass)-?

What do you bid. You have 9 tricks in your hand and your partner jumped to game, so must have the other four hearts and a good hand (double void in opponents hand). Anything from pass to a bunch of ♥s can be right. But let's agree nothing is too suspecious. IF this hand passes and the limit is 4♥s (off two clubs for instance) is that evidence of cheating? If he bids 6♥ without blackwood and that turns out to be cold, is that evidence of cheating? Of course not, blackwood would not help, and to cue-bid 5♦ here would not be safer approach than bidding 6♥. So there is no evidence of any funny business on this hand, right? Well, not if your the 4♥ bidder had the missing 4♥'s. But what if he had 3♥'s? What if he had 2♥'s? What if the 4♥ bidder had a singleton or void in ♥'s and 4♠s? or singleton or void in ♥, 6 good diamonds, and four good ♠? Would that be evidence of cheating. I think so. Look at both hands before you decide.

I say report what you think looks like obvious cheating, but in some cases (like kurts first example), you will probably be wrong. In other cases, it maybe too close to tell for sure. Others are fairly obvious cheating. Let's give uday a chance to deal with them and not make assumptions that the yellows and the administrators turn a blind eye to this stuff. They are bridge players too after all, and they hate this crap as much as the rest of us. However, I think uday's time has been much more productively spent improving the software (hard to believe, but it keeps getting better and better), than exhaustively checking reports of cheating. If the feeling is that no one is looking into cheating allegations, maybe a group of experienced yellows, or others, could be formed to investigate cheating allegations that look believable.

Ben

[csdenmark]

and the safest view is to assume innocent until proven guilty.
So we do in societies based on law and order Ben. Not in this way:
After looking at the two other hands, I would look at a selected group of furhter hands this played, I would suspend their log-in rights to the BBO until they answered questions about their bidding/play.

The nature of cheating is invisibility. You have earlier in this thread given an unlucky example of accusation of a pair with a simple misclick for cheating. They simply suffered one the many non-serious tournament set-ups. Nothing else!

If you want to detect cheating - you will need to be fairly good handling the tricks yourselves. A lot of lucky punches might be suspicious - number 1 on that list will therefore be Meckwell(Eric Rodwell/Jeff Meckstroth). You can see absolutely nothing from 1, 2 , 3 or even 4 hands. You will just be violating normal rules for protection of innocent people.

[uday]

Quote

Ignore it, say as little as possible, do as little as possible, and try to hush up anybody who speaks out on the issue with your explicit and implied "warnings". Isn't this the real, unstated policy at BBO?

I trust this is more bitter than serious.

I live in a country where innocence is presumed, and where guilt must be established beyond reasonable doubt before the "gov'mint" can take action. No jokes, please.

I handle the vast majority of cheating accusations. It is my belief that it is better to allow many suspected cheaters to play, unmolested, than to kick out people for cheating when there is insufficient evidence to prove that the perp is cheating.

This philosophy is not up for debate, not here and not now.

It is extremely difficult to prove that cheating has occurred. Yes, it is far easier to prove that cheating is likely to have happened. The latter is not sufficient.

Think about how you'd prove cheating occurred. Only the truly dumb cheaters can be detected. Any cheat with the least bit of sophistication will be difficult to pin down.

Think about our resources in this context. We have two nearly-full-time developers. One develops for the PC, the other for the servers. In our spare time, we deal with some customer support, and all the abuse cases. A pair that is accused of cheating needs to be investigated. System logs need to be dragged out, hands need to be analyzed by someone competent to make the determination that cheating might have occurred. Yes, we could charge a BBO entry fee, and use that to pay the people who handle abuse. Each serious case of suspected abuse takes many man hours to process. And in the end, you can almost never *know* that cheating occurred. You might suspect it, you might be willing to bet on it, but there is almost always room for doubt.

There is no need to suffer unstated policies. We don't have too many policies, but I make a practice of suspending people who make public accusations of cheating. I make a practice of cautioning people against making veiled accusations of cheating. We make a practice of preventing names from being used in the context of possible cheating. I make a practice of shutting down secondary PCs that might be used to abet cheating. I very rarely suspend permanently for cheating. I occasionally suspend a player to to get him to email me so that the player can offer an explanation for an action which I do not understand.

Only Fred and I can speak with the full weight of "BBO" behind us. Our yellows (long may they live) are a tremendous help. We have a lot of them, each with his/her own slant on things. A yellow name is a player, like yourself, who has demonstrated the willingness to spend a lot of time on BBO, helping players and helping select our direction. Yellows have direct access to us, and we take them very seriously. We give them a lot of leeway.

You may discuss cheating and cheating issues in these forums with no fear of official sanctions as long as you do not accuse anyone of cheating by name. You may feel free to offer solutions to the issue of "proof".

[inquiry]

csdenmark, on Mar 15 2004, 11:29 AM, said:

and the safest view is to assume innocent until proven guilty.
So we do in societies based on law and order Ben. Not in this way:
After looking at the two other hands, I would look at a selected group of furhter hands this played, I would suspend their log-in rights to the BBO until they answered questions about their bidding/play.

The nature of cheating is invisibility. You have earlier in this thread given an unlucky example of accusation of a pair with a simple misclick for cheating. They simply suffered one the many non-serious tournament set-ups. Nothing else!

If you want to detect cheating - you will need to be fairly good handling the tricks yourselves. A lot of lucky punches might be suspicious - number 1 on that list will therefore be Meckwell(Eric Rodwell/Jeff Meckstroth). You can see absolutely nothing from 1, 2 , 3 or even 4 hands. You will just be violating normal rules for protection of innocent people.

Claus,

I STRONGLY, and empahatically disagree with your "misclick" theory. The reason being, to have misclicked 4NT instead of 4♠. This is for three very clear reasons.

First, he doesn't have a rebid at all, much less a jump to 4♠... what did he do, misclick a 4 and NT instead of pass.

Second, at the very most if he was going to rebid his anemic suit vulnerable on his massive 8 count, would he rebid 2♠, not 4♠. So on a 2♠ rebid are we to believe he double misclicked on 4 instead of 2 as well as NT instead of ♠?

Third, and most importantly, even in the wildly unlikely event that he 1) meant to bid 4♠ with this flat, subminimum at imps, and 2) in the process of bidding 4♠ he accidentally hit 4NT instead of 4♠.... there is no justification, or explaination, for his remarkable decision to remove 6♠ to 7♠.

Quite frankly, that auction, even with the "explaination" of a misclick with the bid of 4NT, simple is not defendable. This really isn't close, and your repeat defense of this auction mind boggling to me.

As far as the idea of looking at some other boards if a pair or player seems to have taken advantage of some form of unathorized information? What the heck can be wrong with that. If there is reason to believe that a pair is cheating, what would you do... rule on just one or two hands and be done, or investigate further? Your defense of NOT LOOKING deeper makes no sense at all to me. It is, in fact, undefindable given your view that "You can see absolutely nothing from 1, 2 , 3 or even 4 hands" In fact, my view actually agreed with this for most cases, which is why said an investigation of other hands (from the myhands database) be looked at. But as I said in my earlier post, the amount of effort to look into online cheating by examing hand records is very time consuming. I have looked back at one pair someone told me they "where clearly cheating", and after 250 hands, I could find zero evidence of cheating... in fact, I found a lot of evidence (too much for their own good), to show that they not only where not cheating, they could not have any knowledge of what was going on and bid/play like they did. Another player, I thought I found evidence of cheating and I sent it to abuse@bridgebase.com. And another player, after extensive searching I think he is cheating, but it is not sure in my own mind. I certainly don't think reporting him would be useful, because I know no one else is as crazy as I to look at so many hands. Now for "fun" (curiosity actually), I look at the winners and second place finishers in come tournments, and then look at their hand records to see what is happening. When you do that, you occassionaly run across a hand like this
(a hand I quoted in my last post)....

Scoring: IMP

---

West    North   East    South
1♦      Pass    1♥      2♣      
4♥      Pass    Pass    Pass    

If I was uday, I would say the EAST-WEST pair here exactly what Ricky use to say to Lucy...."Lucy, you got some explaining to do...." Now in your world, WEST was going to bid 4♦ and misclicked... and east with nine tricks in his hand and reasons to expect the opponents are both void in hearts decided to pass... Ok, possible. But I would look at a few more hands. And take my word for it, the pair that bid this way had six more highly suspesious auctions from this very same tournment, and each one turned to gold for them (6 misclicks, should cause a bad outcome at least some of the time, I would say more than half the time, not 6 perfect results).

But I am sure you will defend 4♥ as a misclick, as that is your view. But to perfectly honest with you Claus, your views seem out-of-touch with the majority of the people posting here. For instance, you don't mind cheaters.... .but you get mad if people forget their parts of their own system. Here is the quote....

Quote

"This also means - cheaters can only ruin the fun for themselves - not for others.  I like to see actions to be taken against those who are spoiling my fun of the game. That is those who cannot master their own system"

I hate to break the news to you, but you are going to be out on island by yourself on this one. Cheaters spoil the fun for everyone (but you of course), and the rest of us realize that even experts forget their system. I remember the famous case where in the world championship a pair bid grand slam off all four aces....Forgetting is sadly part of the game, we all expect to happen to us and against us.

Second, you seem to confuse "social bridge" from "serious bridge" in your arguments. First, I play serious bridge even in social settings, but what I am getting at here are these, imho, direct opposite views you express about tournment bridge....

Quote

There are so many tournaments and really many with no serious set-up.
Tournaments are just an alternative set-up of social bridge play.

And in a different thread you attacked JRG, without any good reason, over the lack of use of convention cards and you repeatedly advocate the force use of convention cards in tournment play... In your thread with JRG, you asked him about playing in championship play without convention cards.

Well, while I play in social settings without convention cards all the time, as I supect most people do. If, you claim online tournments are "social" and not "serious", why do you advocate use of convention cards in all tournments. The two positions ... social so cheating is ok (which I don't accept either), or serious and they are...

[csdenmark]

Ben you are very welcome to give me my words back. I enjoy a good exchange of views on a friendly basis - even the words sometimes may touch the walls. From that I think something positive has a chance to arise instead of just repeating standard attitudes.

I will here comment about alert box/convention cards. I hope and think John Goold didnt took it so. I still remember the first think session in B/I-lounge. As well Fred/Wayne and you/John Goold played acc. to convention cards. I also remember a comment from Fred that a certain standard bid for him was not possible because convention card, I assume Wayne's, stated some other meaning. So it has to be - so is standard - so is good standard. Thats what I think we all ought to try to be better pursuing.

There have been several threads about alert box. I am not against improving performance of that but not on the cost of no improvement of convention cards. Thats the message from me - and in John's reply I read his agreement to that.

The rest Ben - later or private. English is not that easy for me to handle - you know that!

[inquiry]

uday, on Mar 15 2004, 12:33 PM, said:

You may feel free to offer solutions to the issue of "proof".

I don't think anyone has THE solution.

But pehaps the BBO adminstrators should establish committees of volunteers people who have experience, knowledge, and the necessary desire to see cheating decreased on line to investigate allegations of cheating.

These ethics committee members should be annonoymous, to avoid lobbying by either side of an allegation. They should not investigate the allegation if made by one of their "friends" or against one of their "enemies." They should not have the power to make any final verdit of guilt, but they are allowed to exonerate the wrongfully accussed. The committee should probably include someone who is assigned the task of specifically finding and expressing bridge logic WHY the accused was not cheating (like a public defender). The committee should pass on allegations of cheating where they find true merit in the allegation.

Maybe each serious allegation that gets one committee to agree it has merit could be given to yet a differerent committee to see what they say (without telling them it was reviewed before). If two committees agree, then and only then would uday have to spend his valuable time looking at it. The committees could be made of three to five people. In three people committees, two votes is enough, in four or five, three votes are needed.

To get around legal and ethical issues, it might be possible to send the hands in question wihtout player identification, but then the committee members will not be able to look at other hands the person played. OR, maybe the software could send the hands in question, and maybe 100 other hands by that pair, without player identification. Also, without player identification, no way to ask the appropriate questions (system, agreements, why this bid or play).

It is a thought at least. 1) No wasting of important and critical programmer time with silly complaints, 2) an original review, and 3) an instant appeal process, and 4) uday and/or fred will still have final say. And neither committee will know how the second committee ruled (it may never have even got to uday or fred). Repeat offenders can be treated differently than first timers.

Perfect? Probably not. Can you find enough people with sufficient experience to serve on these committees for free? Probably. Will there judgement always be right? Probably not. But, remember, even after the committee rules, nothing other than forwarding it on to uday would occur.

Something to think about at least. These may need fine tuning, or maybe someone has a completely different, but better solution.

Ben

[uday]

Even the cited hand, where one player raised 1H to 4 on stiff K, had an innocent explanation. The tourney was a 'goulash' tourney, where the hands were preloaded. According to the 4H bidder, his P was known to have at least 7. I didnt follow all of his reasoning, but I did grasp that P was guaranteed to hold a 6 card suit at a minimum.

I think this goes to show only that we have to be careful when assuming cheating.

[hrothgar]

Comment 1:

Cheating is a fact of life in online gaming. Its not unique to Bridge Base Online. its certainly not unique to Bridge base Online. I'm sorry that it happens, however, I don't really get too bent out of shape about it. There are other fish in the sea and other tables in the lobby.

Comment 2:

I don't think that Ben's suggestion that BBO should adopt a "centralized model" to deal with cheating is feasible in the long term. The membership list is already very large and continues to grow very rapidly.

From my own perspective, the best solution to deal with cheating related issues is a decentralized model based on private membership organizations like Abalucy and Topflight. I believe that these smaller subgroups are better positioned to provide this type of service to their members.

[csdenmark]

First, he doesn't have a rebid at all, much less a jump to 4♠... what did he do, misclick a 4 and NT instead of pass.

Second, at the very most if he was going to rebid his anemic suit vulnerable on his massive 8 count, would he rebid 2♠, not 4♠. So on a 2♠ rebid are we to believe he double misclicked on 4 instead of 2 as well as NT instead of ♠?

Third, and most importantly, even in the wildly unlikely event that he 1) meant to bid 4♠ with this flat, subminimum at imps, and 2) in the process of bidding 4♠ he accidentally hit 4NT instead of 4♠.... there is no justification, or explaination, for his remarkable decision to remove 6♠ to 7♠.


With respect I dont understand the word 'anemic' - I cannot find in dictionary - I think you will still stand to your statement below a few days ago. The overcall was good based on 9HcP + 3cP =12cP. No problem there. The RDBL informs you that WEST is an experienced player taking care of his option for an un-beatable top-contract. He can count a slam in spades now. East cannot let 2♥ stand - especially after a positive response by partner. His odd distribution tells him to save in 4♠ or to cue his ♥ace. I think the latter would be for me to do(3♥).

If this pair are cheaters - they are pure amateurs. And amateurs they are not - and due to that - sorry Ben - no cheaters either.

For sure 4NT is a misclick - I think for 4♠ but might have been for 3♥ or 4♥ too. They cannot correct as the tournaments normally dont accept ability to correct technical problems. When partner goes to 6♠ he simply add his ♥ace for 7♠. Rest is hot air!


Fourth, for the record, the NS pair correctly reported this auction to the TD at the time it occured. What would you have done as the TD?
Dealer: North
Vul: E/W
Scoring: IMP

North
♠
♥ QJ43
♦ KQJ987654
♣

West
♠ AQ5432
♥ 2
♦ A32
♣ AKQ

East
♠ KJ876
♥ A5
♦ T
♣ J5432

South
♠ T9
♥ KT9876
♦
♣ T9876



West North East South
1♦! 1♠ Dbl
Rdbl 2♥ 4N 5♥
6♠ Pass 7♠ Pass
Pass Pass

As you can see, East 1♠ overcall was fine, but after his parnter's redouble, he essentially bid 7♠ on his own. He may as well just have overcalled 7♠ with his absolute minimum hand for a vulnerable overcall.

I like the statements by Uday here safeguarding rights for innocent people. Ben you are aware of the principle in that - but when it comes into practice - the wheel seems just running off the track.

[DrTodd13]

Just a quick note, only the United States' LEGAL system has a presumption of
innocence. Outside of the legal system, no one has to presume that someone is innocent. Getting convicted by the court system is not proof of guilt nor is getting acquitted proof of innocence. We can each evaluate the evidence for ourselves before or after a trial.

For private institutions though, if they have internal legal systems, they can mandate whatever they like. Nobody has to join BBO and if they wanted to have a guilty until proven innocent doctrine that would be within their rights.

[the hog]

"These ethics committee members should be anonoymous, to avoid lobbying by either side of an allegation. "

I am not posting anything about this issue, as my views anyway on cheating are known anyway. However I would have a major issue if the members were anonymous. By all means set up such a group if you like, but really the members have to be named. Otherwise this smacks too much of the bad old days of HUAC in US history. lol. Seriously it is Kafkaesque. Would you really wish to be judged and perhaps convicted by a group of individuals you don't even know?

One slightly different point, Ben the hand on which you show the raise to 4H on the stiff K. I will admit this is really weird. What I don't understand here is that a 4H contract will be reached by any pair without the machinations of the peculiar raise. And if they've got someone telling them all 4 hands would you not try to suck your opponents into a 5C sac? As you can see this goes 4 off. Why on earth would you want to draw suspicion to yourself by such a weird bid. If this is cheating, these guys are dumb and dumber.

[McBruce]

I have to admit that I am baffled by the argument seen often in this thread that (paraphrased) goes like this:

If they are cheating they are doing it very badly. Ergo, no cheating is taking place, since if they really wanted to cheat they could make it much harder to detect or suspect.

Cheating is cheating. It doesn't matter if you do it well or if you do it poorly. We certainly should not be ignoring bad cheaters to concentrate on the good ones. Both effect the results of innocent players. One could even make an argument that the bad cheaters gain MORE than those who know enough to make their bids and plays look normal. If they know enough to do so they must be good players, so how much are they gaining? Not as much as the bad players who make wild bids that never fail.

[the hog]

I have to admit that I am baffled by the argument seen often in this thread that {sic} (paraphrased) goes like this:

If they are cheating they are doing it very badly. Ergo, no cheating is taking place .

No one is saying that "no" cheating is taking place. I have to admit that I am baffled why so many people are getting their knickers in a knot. I didn't realise that we were playing for sheep stations. Surely achieving a rapport with your partner and playing to the best of your ability is what is of utmost importance - well it is to me anyway; it would appear that winning is of more importance to some - and I am not just talking about the perceived cheaters either.

[inquiry]

First, I will not revisit the hand claus is so adament there was no cheating on... it was imho.

Second, to Ron, I don't think the same three people should review each allegation. Groups of three put together on demand, in mix-and-match. And these guys have no power to adjucate anyone guilty. They simply take the research, etc off of uday and/or others. Then even if two groups reach the conclusion something funny was happening then uday or fred or whoever is apporinted by them have the right to over-rule them. So final analysis, the "responsible" person under this plan is exaclty the responsible person that exist today. Just hopefully, the man-man hours has been spread out... so that programmers can do what they do best... program and play bridge.

Third, the concept of "Good cheaters" (meaning hard to catch) verus "bad cheaters" (easy to catch) has an aspect some of you don't understand. Imagine theat the partnership is not cheating, but rather one parnter is cheating. He is kibitizing at the current table, or in a tournement, at any other table (making it really hard to "see" them doing it). This person, sees all four hands, knows where he wants the bidding to go, but has a problem. What if he knows the hand beloings if 4♥? IF he jumps to 4♥, his partner might play him for more points and keep bidding. What if he makes an invintational bid, his partner may pass. This situation causes a lot of problems for the lone cheater.These guys are obviously much easier to catch than the partnership that co-operates on cheating. I suspect that there are more single-handed cheaters than partnership cheaters.

ben

[keylime]

I can handle an independent panel looking over suspected cases. It's asking A LOT of Uday to have to shoulder so much work. We need to police ourselves in this matter. As long as the scope is limited and well-defined, I'm all for it.

[Azzkikr]

If people want to Cheat then they are going to find a way. The problems with Cheaters is that they will get the defense right and usually get to the right contract.
As for Declarer play well in tournies they are only going to get this right if there are three of them and well good luck to them. If people need to resort to cheating for an online game well there is something to be said for the people that do it arent there. Directors and players in the main club have options to bar kabitzers so that can cut down some, as for the others well they arent worth peoples time, as they get discovered it will get around and people just wont let them play...

If you focus to much on the cheating you are going to become to paranoid when someone takes an anti percentage line, and that is just not right. Just play bridge you know your not cheating so why should you care if someone else is. One thing that arises from this is that people dont like to get bad results and some people when they get them when someone has found a great lead or play will say they must have cheated. things get out of hand when you start questioning someones line bidding or def, beginners luck out sometimes and pull the wrong card which is the right one, and better players have an inspired moment and try something...

For my 2 cents people try to work out how to stop cheating when you really cant and when you are to focused on it then you see cheaters more often then there really are.

[Booze]

I guess guilt can be proven not only by evidence but from indications 2, I admit I make stupid bids like everyone else , but mostly I get bad results from them , but I dont like to see pairs bid like idiots and get very good scores, I saw a player bid slam vuln vs nonvuln with 6 loosers a couple of days ago , his P didnt bid at all !!!! , but slam was cold because of a superfit, maybe it was just crazy bidding I dont know, but when I see same pair do this repeatedly and win a tourney, it stinks IMO

I have given up on this, its the main reason why I dont want to be a Yellow anymore, lots of good and respectable players I know complains to me about all cheating, and IMO its much more then we think it is, and I have no good answers to give these players.

I have seen players asking for P ICQ or messenger name when they agreed to play ??? Online bridge has a long history of cheating, maybe we should consider it as a new game??

I have accused some pairs for cheating , as I know all of them did, lots of them admitted cheating after confrontation. But I could not prove it in any case. Only indiciums !!

Bo