[nige1]

A gang of cheats can easily collude to perform well in daylong and weekend BBO competitions. Money, master-points, and kudos are at stake.

Typically, players encounter different sets of boards, but there's a lot of overlap. The gang can stagger their play, over the course of the day, comparing their experience. Before half-way, at least one gang-member is likely to have previously encountered each new board. Hence the rest of the gang can bid and play that board, double-dummy.

Detecting such cheats is a difficult challenge. Suggestions...

• Look for a pattern of successful anti-odds calls and plays. e.g. slam on 3 finesses. Dropping doubleton queen off-side.
• Gang-members performance should improve as the tournament progresses and more board-information is available to share.
• If you suspect a particular group, then examine how their performance varies, depending on who plays a board first.
• Compare the performance of suspects in tournaments without cronies.

[hrothgar]

nige1, on 2021-September-07, 15:04, said:

A gang of cheats can easily collude to perform well in daylong and weekend BBO competitions. Money, master-points, and kudos are at stake.

Typically, players encounter different sets of boards, but there's a lot of overlap. The gang can stagger their play, over the course of the day, comparing their experience. Before half-way, at least one gang-member is likely to have previously encountered each new board. Hence the rest of the gang can bid and play that board, double-dummy.

Detecting such cheats is a difficult challenge. Suggestions...

• Look for a pattern of successful anti-odds bids and plays. e.g. slam on 3 finesses. Dropping doubleton queen off-side.
• Gang-members performance should improve as the tournament progresses and more board-information is available to share.
• If you suspect a particular group, then examine how their performance varies, depending on who plays a board first.
• Compare the performance of suspects in tournaments without cronies.

Over the history of the BBO forums, we've seen enormous numbers of accusations around cheating.

And a whole bunch of them have been incredibly ill informed / stupid.
Now, you propose a whole bunch more degrees of freedom to the process.

If this is a significant problem (and I truly doubt that it is) then it needs to be addressed systematically by BBO (which means having a comprehensive database) rather than some poorly conceived attempt at crowdsourcing...

But, go ahead, feel free to try to prove me wrong...

Let me know if / when you have a database of hands for folks to look at...

[johnu]

hrothgar, on 2021-September-07, 15:50, said:

Over the history of the BBO forums, we've seen enormous numbers of accusations around cheating.

And a whole bunch of them have been incredibly ill informed / stupid.
Now, you propose a whole bunch more degrees of freedom to the process.

If this is a significant problem (and I truly doubt that it is) then it needs to be addressed systematically by BBO (which means having a comprehensive database) rather than some poorly conceived attempt at crowdsourcing...

But, go ahead, feel free to try to prove me wrong...

Let me know if / when you have a database of hands for folks to look at...

I suspect nige1 has more than a couple of hands of anecdotal evidence.

[nige1]

johnu, on 2021-September-07, 16:26, said:

I suspect nige1 has more than a couple of hands of anecdotal evidence.

No evidence of such shenanigans. Nevertheless, I hope BBO/NBOs investigate. Crowd-sourcing seems inappropriate.

[thepossum]

nige1, on 2021-September-07, 15:04, said:

A gang of cheats can easily collude to perform well in daylong and weekend BBO competitions. Money, master-points, and kudos are at stake.

Typically, players encounter different sets of boards, but there's a lot of overlap. The gang can stagger their play, over the course of the day, comparing their experience. Before half-way, at least one gang-member is likely to have previously encountered each new board. Hence the rest of the gang can bid and play that board, double-dummy.

Detecting such cheats is a difficult challenge. Suggestions...

• Look for a pattern of successful anti-odds calls and plays. e.g. slam on 3 finesses. Dropping doubleton queen off-side.
• Gang-members performance should improve as the tournament progresses and more board-information is available to share.
• If you suspect a particular group, then examine how their performance varies, depending on who plays a board first.
• Compare the performance of suspects in tournaments without cronies.

It seems a lot of trouble for a gang to go to.

Not exactly Breaking Bad or huge crypto scams is it?

People laundering their BB dollars too

[Huibertus]

On a different forum I've been accused of cheating, dropping a stiff K offside with 7 cards in the suit missing.

Those accusers were just very poor players who didn't have a clue I just pulled of a show up squeeze and therefor I KNEW the fines was not on, and just was lucky the K was stiff all along, my only chance worked out.

That's the story you'll see time and time again when not everybody has the same level of play.

[aawk]

In any game or sport are cheaters and sad to say also in bridge. Even the best bridge pair in the world did it. But it always comes out and then what is left from their reputation.

So if you suspect a cheat report it to BBO and trust they will take action (I know they do).

Just have fun in playing bridge and don't worry about cheaters they love to win but not the game they play and admit the suck at it.

[GrahamJson]

aawk, on 2021-September-08, 13:09, said:

In any game or sport are cheaters and sad to say also in bridge. Even the best bridge pair in the world did it. But it always comes out and then what is left from their reputation.

So if you suspect a cheat report it to BBO and trust they will take action (I know they do).

Just have fun in playing bridge and don't worry about cheaters they love to win but not the game they play and admit the suck at it.

I wish I shared your confidence in BBO taking action. In the past I have made several reports of players cheating with little evidence that there has been any action taken. Perhaps this is because the cheating took place in casual play, not tournaments.

Incidentally one person whom I have reported several times previously I see is still up to his tricks. He always plays with the same partner, who is almost certainly the same player logged in twice. And there can be no question of him/them cheating. Over the last month they have played 900 imp hands with an average score of 6.36 imps per board. Of the 900 boards only 24 have a negative score greater then one imp. One example of their cheating is one board where one overcalls 4S on 1073 AKJ6 J10972 7 then finds partner (who had passed throughout) with AJ9642 Q5 K63 98. 4SX then rolls home when both spade honours and QD are all onside.

[barmar]

nige1, on 2021-September-07, 15:04, said:

A gang of cheats can easily collude to perform well in daylong and weekend BBO competitions. Money, master-points, and kudos are at stake.

Typically, players encounter different sets of boards, but there's a lot of overlap. The gang can stagger their play, over the course of the day, comparing their experience. Before half-way, at least one gang-member is likely to have previously encountered each new board. Hence the rest of the gang can bid and play that board, double-dummy.

Most daylong tournaments have a pool of 25 deals for each board. So you'd need a pretty big gang to see most of them.

[diana_eva]

We use extra security checks in pay tournaments and other events with significant rewards.

The free weekend events are free and for fun. We bump up the number of deal pools occasionally, but in the end there is nothing at stake. Just a bit of weekend fun against a massive field.

As a bit of semantics, not sure someone replaying a tourney 25 times qualifies as collusive cheating.