[EricK]

Imagine this scenario:
Twelve world class players who have all played with or against each other frequently play an individual tournament on BBO. They have all been sent the same system to use, and it is a basic system which leaves a lot of scope for improvisation and eg "bashing" vs a more scientific approach. And they are given the same defensive carding system to use, but again they have scope eg about whether or not to signal in various. They are not allowed to communicate with any of the other players. They all have code names eg A, B, C, D etc so they know when they are playing with or against someone they have previously played in the Indy.

Assume they know the identity of the other eleven players, how quickly (if at all) would they be able to identify which one was A, which one was B etc?

Assume they didn't know the identity of the other eleven players (just that they were eleven world class players who they had played with or against frequently), how quickly, if at all, could they identify the other players?

[hrothgar]

Miles would be recognizable.
Zia.
Roth as well.

[mikeh]

I think that given the conditions, there are two factors that might help to a degree: pace of play and degree of aggression.

On defence and on declarer play, and on much constructive bidding, I don't think there would be any discernable difference amongst 12 of the truly wc players from the same period.

However, some players are simply more aggressive at the table than others, and I suspect members of the top 12 would know each other's style to a considerable degree. And some players are more, shall we say, methodical in their declarer play than others.

I don't know that these differences would help identify any one person specifically, but I think it might be easy to say, of one player, he is one of A, E, H, or J....nobody else plays that fast. Etc.

At the highest level, and this has been the topic of other threads, the very best play 99% of hands identically, given the same information from the auction and the defence, so approach to declarer play or defence won't help. Thus I think we are left with tempo and degree of aggression.

This means that maybe an outlier or two might be readily identifiable, but that I'd not expect more than one or two to be identified over the course of a short event, other than maybe being able to identify membership in a short list for some of them, or exclude them...thus a player who takes a long time to play a fairly routine hand won't be Sontag A player who doesn't pre-empt with a piece of crap hand won't be Granovetter (tho he wouldn't be playing if we limited the field to the top 12, imo...I mention him because he is a well-known player with a well-known propensity for conservative pre-empts).

[aguahombre]

hrothgar, on 2014-September-21, 12:00, said:

Miles would be recognizable.
Zia.
Roth as well.

Zia would smell better, f2f.