[spwdo]

hi,

what i dont understand in your post bo is that when someone accused of cheating he /she/they admitted chaeting u coud send log chat to abuse, think if someones admits he cheated and its logged and send it there woud be a strong case for banning these players.

also i think as player it can be handy to log chats , with theses messengers beeing used for chaeting there can be a ocasionaly misclick in sending chat to the wrong programm , a couple of times players have mentioned me that but most dont log their chat, too bad, i advice all to log it for several reasons besides cheating.

i recently started looking at winners in my tourneys too like ben but this cots lots of time, cotds say to me "good luck" when i tell them i gonna look deepper into hands and my time is aldough im lots online limited like everybody elses time they coud spend on this, and there is always some posible explanation, like the 4♥ bid saying p has 6 at least cause its "goulash" tourney, i just dont understand the p, he sees p opening 1♦ then rising his hearts to 4, i have one question, why pass and not 4 nt and start investigating slam.


marc

[Booze]

all of these players were banned of course,

Bo

[Booze]

and I forget to mention all players speaking their language during play, thats important to logg, some even discus the hand that they are playing


Bo

[spwdo]

hi,

didnt understood that from first post, sorry bo:):)


yes, good thing to log chat for mutiple raesons(rudiness,cheating,whatever) wish there was a way to let director access recently chat beeing told at a table, there is off course with printscreen but most dont know and sometimes language barriers and as i said before, most players dont log chat witch its sad when u need it




marc

[bglover]

The problem isn't that people cheat-- even Ben, who at one stage was almost Pollyannish in his views of online cheating has acknowledged it's gotten out of hand. Rather, the REAL problem is the perception of BBO management's relatively lax handling of it and that they don't seem as concerned about it as they should.

Ron and Richard and Freee and others take the view that "hey, it's gonna happen online, I accept it, so I play my best and just ignore it." That's fine.. that may be a realistic view of things here... but I feel that by accepting this behavior at the MANAGEMENT level it will lead to the downfall of BBO and possibly even online bridge generally.

BBO has shown a willingness to ban people for certain types of behavior that may be aberrant but maybe isn't abhorrent, yet has on occasion allowed people that they had fairly damning evidence of cheating or other highly unethical behavior stay at BBO after pleading their case. Now, I can speculate as to why... perhaps the evidence wasn't 100% clear so they didn't care to take that drastic step. OK I guess I understand that. But, it's a private site. They can do as they wish. They don't need 100%... they can set that level wherever they want. Maybe they have set the bar too high on this issue.

People who BBO has consistent evidence of cheating or highly unethical behavior seem to get away with more than people who, say, make fun of a player. It seems out of balance is all. To me, cheating and consistent unethical behavior should be the worst imaginable offense here. To Management, it seems to fall second or third on the list. Perhaps the priorities are out of whack? I think so. Maybe others do not.

[hrothgar]

bglover, on Mar 16 2004, 04:03 PM, said:

Ron and Richard and Freee and others take the view that "hey, it's gonna happen online, I accept it, so I play my best and just ignore it." That's fine.. that may be a realistic view of things here... but I feel that by accepting this behavior at the MANAGEMENT level it will lead to the downfall of BBO and possibly even online bridge generally.

I think that you significantly over-simplify my position.

I have been participating in online bridge for a very long time, dating back to the days when you had to use Telnet to play OKBridge.

Over time, I came to a very basic conclusion:

Any Online Bridge Service can be decomposed into three basic components:

The first is the server that hosts the games
The second is the client that individuals use to interface with the servers
The third is the regulatory structure that is used to organize play.

I argue that that individuals and organizations have unique competencies. I can find any number of brilliant coders who could create a bridge client or a server. However, that doesn't guaruntee that that same individual has the necessary skills or interest required to regulate conventions, run tournaments, or deal with cheating accusations. In a similar fashion, organizations like the ACBL or EBU seem quite successful in selling masterpoints, but this doesn't mean that they can develop and create a sucessful online presence.

I published a short piece in the Bridge World about 5 years ago in which I suggested that the public would best be served if online bridge were structured along the basic demarcations that I suggested. I specifically stated that organizations like the ACBL and the EBU should refrain from creating their own bridge sites, but rather, use existing infrastructure to run ACBL sanctioned and regulated tournaments using the infrastructure owned and operated by third party providers.

I still believe that this assessment was fundamentally correct. I've seen many attempts by individuals and organizations to pursue vertically integrated plays in the online bridge space. I don't believe that they work well.

I am equally sure that I would prefer that Fred and Uday focus on coding and not try to create social and legislative structures to address cheating.

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.

Unfortunately, like most people your "solution" looks to be to sitting on your ass complaining in CAPITALS and waiting for some centralized paternalistic organization to make everything better.

[bglover]

Well firstly I in no way insulted you so how dare you insult me?

Secondly, for what it is worth, I can't state this as absolute fact, but I would guess (Uday can confirm or deny this) that I have probably been the most vigilant non-yellow outside of Inquiry in alerting BBO to odd and abusive behavior, as well as reporting incidents of cheating.

I highly suggest you apologize to me now.

[hrothgar]

bglover, on Mar 16 2004, 05:20 PM, said:

Well firstly I in no way insulted you so how dare you insult me?

Secondly, for what it is worth, I can't state this as absolute fact, but I would guess (Uday can confirm or deny this) that I have probably been the most vigilant non-yellow outside of Inquiry in alerting BBO to odd and abusive behavior, as well as reporting incidents of cheating.

I highly suggest you apologize to me now.

I am sorry if you took umbrage at my comments. I readily admit that they were provacative. At the same time, I am going to stand by my basic assessment.

I don't think that forwarding the names of suspected cheaters to Uday represents much of a contribution. As I noted in my original email, I would very much prefer it if Fred and Uday were able to focus on improving the code base rather than trying to create social and legisilative structures.

If you want to make a "real" contribution to the cheating problem, help to develop an appeals process in a public or private bridge club.

[bglover]

Apology accepted..

I have done my small part tried to make BBO as good a place as I can in whatever ways I can. Indeed, as I've stated elsewhere, I started TopFlight as a way to try and recapture some of the "good" this place had (in my opinion anyway) lost once tourneys were implemented and the feeling that "cheating was on the rise." I created a club where (1) people could come watch, see a good show and maybe learn something and (2) where it was highly unlikely the players were cheating (because they had dozens of spectators and because they had gold stars mostly so would be held to a higher standard). If I've done nothing else for BBO I have succeeded in this goal to a very large degree.

My umbrage was at your suggestion I've done nothing. I promise that of the non-yellows here I've done far more than my share to make BBO a better place for the sake of BBO and not because I was looking to raise my own personal status or whatever and I think you, as a long-timer knew that.

Look, we can all do more. I would gladly sit on a committee if one were created so long as that committee had some teeth. Going back to my earlier post, I do believe that BBO has been somewhat lax or has put the bar too high when it comes to these issues. It is my opinion only, but I fear that if this rise continues it can do nothing but hurt BBO and online generally. This means we ALL must do our part. This is not meant as an insult to you but anyone who takes the approach "online cheating is a reality and cannot be stopped" is not helping in the problem and even is enabling cheaters if they fail to note and report what they see.

[hrothgar]

bglover, on Mar 16 2004, 05:47 PM, said:

Apology accepted..

I have done my small part tried to make BBO as good a place as I can in whatever ways I can. Indeed, as I've stated elsewhere, I started TopFlight as a way to try and recapture some of the "good" this place had (in my opinion anyway) lost once tourneys were implemented and the feeling that "cheating was on the rise." I created a club where (1) people could come watch, see a good show and maybe learn something and (2) where it was highly unlikely the players were cheating (because they had dozens of spectators and because they had gold stars mostly so would be held to a higher standard). If I've done nothing else for BBO I have succeeded in this goal to a very large degree.

My umbrage was at your suggestion I've done nothing. I promise that of the non-yellows here I've done far more than my share to make BBO a better place for the sake of BBO and not because I was looking to raise my own personal status or whatever and I think you, as a long-timer knew that.

Look, we can all do more. I would gladly sit on a committee if one were created so long as that committee had some teeth. Going back to my earlier post, I do believe that BBO has been somewhat lax or has put the bar too high when it comes to these issues. It is my opinion only, but I fear that if this rise continues it can do nothing but hurt BBO and online generally. This means we ALL must do our part. This is not meant as an insult to you but anyone who takes the approach "online cheating is a reality and cannot be stopped" is not helping in the problem and even is enabling cheaters if they fail to note and report what they see.

Now I'm very sorry...

I had completely forgotten that you were part of Topflight which is precisely the type of "solution" that we need.

In response to your later comment:

>Look, we can all do more. I would gladly sit on a committee if one
>were created so long as that committee had some teeth.

Here once again, the way to ensure that committees have "teeth" is to separate them from BBO and to customize them to the unique set of requirements of your own membership.

[inquiry]

bglover, on Mar 16 2004, 09:20 AM, said:

I have probably been the most vigilant non-yellow outside of Inquiry in alerting BBO to odd and abusive behavior, as well as reporting incidents of cheating.

Well, I have only REPORT one suspected cheater to abuse@bridgebase.com ever. So I think there are probably a lot of people who have reported more. Until last week, I took a cheaters are lame, but there is nothing that can be done about them appoach (what you termed a Pollyannish view of cheating). So I can hardly be held out as a person busily alerting BBO adminstrators to possible cheaters.

My Pollyannish views have changed somewhat with the advent of possible sanctioned tournments and fee-based events.

I do, routinely, report table jumpers to whatever yellow happens to be on line at the time. I am sure they might be tired of those reports. But it gets to me when an opponent leaves in the middle of a hand (I am not talking about disconnects or joining tournments in progress... but people who leave to go play elsewhere freely). I also report abuse language from time to time, but only if it was meant to berate an opponent, a kibitzer or a partner. Someone telling an off-color joke, or complaining about their goverment or some other goverment, I don't report. And again, I just report that to whatever yellow is around. True story, I even reported myself once.... to a yellow when I inadvertently made a less than flattering remark concerning a pickup partner that went public by mistake... (it was along the lines of "I can't take this idiot partner anymore, I wiill have to leave after this hand and come back in few minutes"). You can imagine my embarrashment when this went public, so I turned myself in, and rightfully was warned.

Ben

[mikestar]

DrTodd13, on Mar 15 2004, 10:03 PM, said:

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.

This is not entirely correct. While private institutons are not bound by all the technicalities of the legal system, their internal "legal systems" are expected to provide basic fairness and due process--the failure to do so would expose the organization to litigation it would be quite likely to lose. In particular, while the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" would not be required, a "presumtion of guilt" would very likely land the organization in legal hot water.

Apart from the legal issues, to my mind a presumption of guilt also raises serious moral issues.

[bglover]

Well, how about this?

This is not a "criminal" proceeding. It's a civil process. The standard in the US for a jury is usually a preponderance of the evidence.... Let's say that's 51%. I would suggest anyone who goes over that 51% mark for the possibility of cheating or other unethical conduct be watched and even warned.

Now, if the number gets higher on this scale... say 65 or 75% (or whatever, I don't mean this to be hard and fast) then they should banned for cheating. If the number is 100% it is just too darn high in my opinion. I fully understand wanting to be hesitant about permanently staining someone's reputation with a cheating ban, but that should be weighed against the greater good of the population at large. I reiterate, it hurts the entire BBO community to allow people to stay when there is high likelihood that the person cheated and was caught, yet is allowed to stay due to some anomaly that could be a rational explanation but likely isn't the truth.

[hrothgar]

mikestar, on Mar 16 2004, 07:17 PM, said:

DrTodd13, on Mar 15 2004, 10:03 PM, said:

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.

This is not entirely correct. While private institutons are not bound by all the technicalities of the legal system, their internal "legal systems" are expected to provide basic fairness and due process--the failure to do so would expose the organization to litigation it would be quite likely to lose. In particular, while the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" would not be required, a "presumtion of guilt" would very likely land the organization in legal hot water.

Apart from the legal issues, to my mind a presumption of guilt also raises serious moral issues.

I hesitate to bring this example to light, however, it seems germane:

The ACBL has been sued many times over cheating allegations.
In the most recent of thes cases, John Blaubaugh sued the ACBL for a wide variety of reasons. From what I can tell from the judgement, the judge ruled that private membership organizations have broad discretionary powers in these sorts of affairs.

[Yzerman]

First I would like to personally thank all of the vigilant persons who consider themselves the unappointed BBO bridge ethics police. The people whose main motivation is to catch cheaters, I am sure BBO as a whole is entirely grateful for your services as I am sure your qualifications for judging and measuring others bridge play is beyond reproach.

Yes this is sarcasm.

I personally dont want loose cannons running around "protecting" everyone else. This is absolutely insane, I cherish the ability to play bridge, make friends, and enjoy casual/friendly environment and I personally dont want to be bothered with such lunacy. In general, I choose the environment in which I participate, and I choose environments in which I feel comfortable, and although my big mouth get me in trouble sometimes, I generally just shutup and do not make the issue public knowledge or with consult with "authority" unless a GROSS impropriety has occurred.

First of all, i cite my previous post on unethical play .... Unethical Play...

Each person has the CHOICE of when, where and with whom to play against. If you feel uncomfortable in an environment, change your environment. If you feel as though someone is unethical, avoid playing against them in lobby and avoid playing in tournament with them.

I tend toward Uday/Fred/BBO approach to unethical play. First of all, lets just assume that we were all part of active bridge police, I would like ONE person to stand up and say that they would be comfortable accusing ONE innocent person of unethical play. This is moral dilemma, and those that argue for "firm" stance on ethical play as a whole I believe dont understand the human element nor understand that this IS JUST A STUPID CARD GAME. So coming from someone that has active interests in running a series of organized games, it is nearly impossible to PROVE unethical play has occured, albeit sometimes you can make strong arguments.

Having said what I said above, I had a conversation with good friend, Kleek, on this subject. Kurt is a little more "firm" in his position on cheating, and argued the position of "committee" as a means to investigate. I kind of like that idea as a 3rd party to this thread, but I think the idea would require some refining and a great deal of work. First of all, empowering people to judge or measure play is VERY DANGEROUS for obvious reasons. Second of all, it is very important not to create "witchhunt" environment where ability to accuse at will is ACCEPTED for obvious reasons.

So my personal input with regards to a "commitee" is that I would make the following suggestion. Since BBO has an open door policy, and in most environments EACH player has the ability to choose his environment to play in, a committee should NOT have the ability review hands played in main bridge club, the volume/randomness would be overwhelming as well as there is NOTHING at stake in casual play in the Main Bridge Club. For private tournaments, restricted tournament, club tournaments I do not believe active commitee is require cause each "organization" has the ability/right to pursue its own policy on the issue. HOWEVER, a committee that is AVAILABLE on an AS NEEDED BASES by open tournaments OR any tournament that would request the services of committee. Open tourneys has inherently some stake (although not much) in it and the player in general has little control over the environment and hence a tourney host can "subscribe" to the service of committee and advertise in flyer to BBO that they participate in BBO Ethics Committee. Furtermore, I think committee members should have some "stake" or "interest" in the committee. For someone to volunteer to sit on committe cause he/she claims to be a good judge OR to claim that they have best interest of BBO is utterly ridiculous. As examples, I would think that members of type "spwdo" and "gweny" would be ideal candidates, they (a) have stake in the matter and ( they have proven a history of service to BBO.

Well, that is my input, and I thankful for opportunity to speak openly!

Regards,
Michael A Lucy

[csdenmark]

Thank you Mike - nice to have one to express the important ethics moments in fluent english language.

[luke warm]

for what it's worth, i think any 'committee' should be limited to the tournament structure.. let's take one club as way of example... we'll use abalucy, since i'm a member and since mike happens to be reading this thread at this time

my idea would be for mike and aba to appoint, at their discretion, 3 people to view possible unethical play... 3 might not be enough, but at least all results would be in the 66%-100% range

now once this committee has ruled *then* they email abuse@bridgebase.com with their findings, including any relevant chat logs of their deliberations... bbo can then do whatever they decide..

however, abalucy shouldn't be bound by bbo's decision... if they feel that the evidence warrants a person or pair being banned from future events, maybe they can set up an appeal process and go thru it that way.. or perhaps the appeal process could take place before emailing bbo

as far as the main bridge room goes, i think that's a place where people can assign 'friend' or 'enemy' status and avoid those they wish to avoid

does that make sense?

[Free]

It certainly does. But these people shouldn't be known ofcourse. They should be undercover

[the hog]

" But these people shouldn't be known ofcourse (sic). They should be undercover "

Free this is absolute rubbish! Why don't you get them wearing trenchcoats and dark glasses as well; maybe they should hide under your computer table. Any method of investigation MUST be transparent. I think you have been reading too much Kafka.

[luke warm]

i think 'rubbish' is maybe a tad strong... it's his opinion, that's all...

i also think the committee should be public... it might even be a good idea to put that committee in the tourney descriptions for that night

"Abalucy IMPS 9 PM Eastern
Director MAAA
Appeals Committee - X, Y, Z
Have fun!!"