sdwcheney, on 2014-October-24, 11:56, said:
Players can and do talk to each other on phones while playing BBO Tournaments. I have brought this to the attention of both ACBL and BBO,
neither is willing to do anything about it. I no longer play pair games on BBO because of this.
Open Letter to Jinksy
Dear Jinksy,
Don't pay attention to the claim by sdwcheney quoted above, but instead read the response by UDAY immediately above sdwcheney's comments. Uday is one of the major BBO programmers and principles. He speaks for BBO and is the person in position to know what the he is talking about.
Now, to address yours concerns. Does cheating happen on BBO and other online bridge sites? Yes, There is no doubt. Do people talk to each other on phone? Sure , sometime, others on Skype, or instant messenger, or sitting next to each other in one room, or one person logging in from two accounts on one or two computers. That is, there is no need to just use phones.
Does that mean don't play bridge online? Of course not. Here is a much earlier thread asking the same questions you are asking with a lot of thoughtful responses
cheats on BBO (from 2006), So everyone admits that cheating occurs online (Fred in the thread I just gave, uday in this thread). So let's accept that as a given. BBO, ACBL, and other online bridge sites don't need people like sdwcheney telling them that "cheating occurs". They know it. More useful is if they report who is cheating with some evidence to support their claim. Usually more than one hand is needed, but that is another subject.
Now let's deal with what BBO does with reports of cheating. Uday told you above, they investigate and take action when cheating is proved. Let's handle the pair you want to report for cheating (assuming it is the hand shown in this thread). First, let's demonstrate to you that even when reasonable bridge players are CERTAIN that cheating is occurring they can be wrong. I am going to state that you are a reasonable bridge player. Why, because I have read your post here in the forum. Let's start with the hand posted. The slam bidders underbid. There are easily 13 tricks in notrump. There is no way to miss it, so cheaters would bid 7NT. Second, cheaters don't have to leap to slam, they can bid as slow and confusing as they want, they know they will not be passed out until the grand slam is reached (if they are cheating). So the hand actually suggest that they ARE NOT CHEATING but are very poor players. Let's examine it a little further, if this pair was cheating in the Matchpoint game you played in, what would you think their matchpoint score would be? 80%? 75%? How about 70 or 65%? Surely someone cheating would do very well, right? At least 60%, or possibly 55%. What would you say if they only scored 50%? How about 45%? What about 40%? The pair that bid that slam against you scored 35%, and they had disaster after disaster during this event.
So what would the finding that the pair that you stated "
they couldn't have been more obviously cheating if they tried" the hand submitted is actually suggesting that they are not cheating and they did so poorly and had a lot of disaster in the event have on your conclusion that they where cheating? Could they be poor players who don't know how to bid? Is the evidence really that strong that they are cheating? IF after examining the evidence of the hand you reported and the other hands they played in the same tournament you reached a conclusion that they were not cheating, you will see one of the problems with the "these guys are cheating" reports that frequently show up and discussed somewhat in the thread I quoted above. But rest assured, BBO does spend considerable resources investigating and catching cheaters. Everyone caught cheating in ACBL are reported to ACBL, in addition to the actions uday reported above. So I will tell you that BBO and ACBL are both very interested in catching and removing cheaters from the BBO. The ACBL game on line is probably the cleanest online tournaments on BBO... certain much cleaner than the "free tournaments", team games, and the main rooms, in part because cheaters are caught and removed from these events, and in part because ACBL players don't want to risk being caught and reported to ACBL for cheating.
Players who are looking for online cheaters will see them frequently. In part because people from all over the world play on BBO and use so many different bidding systems most often without an alert, so that the auctions look unrealistic.. and the assumption is they must be cheating.., did you see how the bid? If you see obvious cheating, report it to
abuse@bridgebase.com. But, and this might be sdwcheney problem, don't expect to get a report back that says yes, you are right they are cheating, or no you are wrong they are not cheating. BBO does not provide that "satisfaction" to the people reporting cheating. BBO does keeps all it actions against members private, with the exception being reporting to ACBL if the cheating occurred in ACBL. So it likely that sdwcheney reported something and never got a pat on the back for reporting it, or a message pointing out why he was wrong as evidence BBO (and ACBL) doesn't care. He was wrong. If you think abuse is an empty, impersonal place to send a report, you can email your report to me at inquiry at bridgebase dot com. I will respond to the report, and probably tell you that I am turning it over to abuse, but I will make sure the pair is examined and not just put on the shelf somewhere. I certainly don't want to sent a lot of such reports, that is abuse's job, but should you think you have a problem with abuse, you can write to me.