[jillybean]

Rather than die waiting for pescetom to post the 6-5 hand, I am thinking of how we would breathe new life into the game on this side of the world.

Following the EDGAR, Zuckerberg thread on that other site, and from reading other threads on the suspensions of ACBL players, it appears that EDGAR is capturing only the very egregious cheats.
I imagine that there are many more players who cheat on some boards but not a sufficient number to set off the ADGAR alarm, yet.

Will the EDGAR threshold be lowered at some stage? With the number of players already suspended, where is this going to leave the game in North America?
Fewer cheats but noone to play against.

Bridge seems to be alive, well, and fun in other parts of the world. Is cheating not so rampant or simply tolerated and undetected?

[Cyberyeti]

They've caught a few here, one was a husband and wife pair I've teamed up with before although not recently. Not sure what methodology they're using

[mikeh]

There has historically been very little discussion here or on BW about cheating outside of NA. I very much doubt that this is because cheating is a uniquely NA problem. After all, many of the WC cheats outed in 2015-2019 were European pairs, some of whom long regarded as amongst the very best pairs in the world….indeed Fantunes were ranked number one for several years.

I don’t know much, if anything, about the internal politics of European NBOs. There may be a reluctance, in organizations far smaller than the ACBL, to crackdown on cheating, for a variety of reasons. For example, the Italian organization was extremely reluctant to do anything about the notorious Blue Team cheating that went on for decades, and they weren’t exactly first out of the gate where Fantunes were outed…even though it seems reasonable to infer that they were kicked off the Italian team, years before being outed, precisely because of suspicions around their behaviour.

I may be being unfair, and of course there may be different people running the Italian NBO these days.

Also, and I’m sure this is a big part of things, few NBO’s have either the depth of staff, the budget, or the IT capabilities of the ACBL. Catching cheats takes time and resources.

Finally, Edgar is aimed, primarily if not exclusively, at online cheating and I’m not sure that Europeans play as much online bridge as do NAs. Do other NBOs offer masterpoints (or their equivalent) on the scale that the ACBL does? There are players ‘earning’ a thousand or more masterpoints per year on BBO. Now, I’m definitely not hinting that those players cheat….im just pointing out that any game that offers inducements for play is also, as collateral damage, offering an inducement to cheat.

[P_Marlowe]

There is online monitoring of cheating of BBO tournaments sponsored by the German Bridge Organisation.
As was said, it takes time, and you need the hand records.

[awm]

My experience is that ACBL players care about masterpoints a lot more than European players. This is in part because of the way the ACBL masterpoint program works (which is very well optimized to encourage people to play, but rather a joke if used for seeding and the like).

For comparison, in Switzerland the points reset every year (so there is a yearly race and players are classified based on points in the last year) but there isn’t really an accumulation over time.

In Germany, the points are scaled down by a percentage (I think 20%) each year.

And in the UK, they have the National Grading Scheme (sort of like a chess rating or the now-defunct “power ratings”) and people care about that more than masterpoints.

I’m not sure to what extent this relates to cheating though, and people do play online here (Swiss bridge federation runs a bunch of games on funbridge for example). I think if a cheating pair were brought to their attention the Swiss (or German) league would do something, but they do not have nearly the size of ACBL (German federation has about 17k members I think, making it like 8x smaller than ACBL).

[akwoo]

awm, on 2025-July-03, 11:49, said:

(German federation has about 17k members I think, making it like 8x smaller than ACBL).

So bridge is not so healthy in other parts of the world after all. Including Mexico, ACBL territory has about 480 million people. Germany is a little less than 85 million. This means Germany should be about 6x smaller than ACBL, not 8x.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2025-July-03, 11:12, said:

I don’t know much, if anything, about the internal politics of European NBOs. There may be a reluctance, in organizations far smaller than the ACBL, to crackdown on cheating, for a variety of reasons. For example, the Italian organization was extremely reluctant to do anything about the notorious Blue Team cheating that went on for decades, and they weren’t exactly first out of the gate where Fantunes were outed…even though it seems reasonable to infer that they were kicked off the Italian team, years before being outed, precisely because of suspicions around their behaviour.

I may be being unfair, and of course there may be different people running the Italian NBO these days.

Not sure what this has to do with bridge in North America.
The Italians do not IMO have an impeccable history after Blue Team: see the amnesty granted in 2000.
But "weren’t exactly first out of the gate where Fantunes were outed" is grossly unfair, they banned them immediately although they did backtrack (perhaps wisely) when it looked possible that this line might become costly.

[mike777]

pescetom, on 2025-July-03, 15:53, said:

But "weren’t exactly first out of the gate where Fantunes were outed" is grossly unfair, they banned them immediately although they did backtrack (perhaps wisely) when it looked possible that this line might become costly.

I am concerned this entire EDGAR process will consume the miniscule assets and resources of the ACBL.

Add to that the median age of membership is almost 75. We are not young.

[jillybean]

A quick search of wikipedia reveals a number of international bridge scandals. Some of the earliest and what I found entertaining include;

* Karn (American) 1933. Sleight of hand dealing
* Schneider (Austrian) 1937. Illegal signaling, opening leads
* Bodier and Figeac (French) 1954. Opening leads
* Bermuda Bowl 1958 First accusation of cheating against Italy. Analysis by Goren, Kaplan and Steinwold, inconclusive
* Delmouly and Bourchtoff (French) 1960 World Team Olympiad accused of using the "the elevator" where a player holds his card opposite his cheat to indicate maximum values, opposite belt with minimum values and in between when in between. No conclusion
* Bermuda Bowl 1963 (Italian) accused of signaling by cigarette positioning.
* Itkin and Rhodes (American) 1970 Illegal exchange of information at a Washington Sectional. expelled for 5 years, Have these same guys now been caught by EDGAR?

The list goes on, Bermuda Bowl foot tapping 1975, Bermuda Bowl the Burgay tapes' 1976 , Sion and Cokin pencil placement 1979, Buratti and Lanzarotti finger signals 2005,
Elinescu and Wiadow coughing 2013, Fisher and Schwartz board placement 2015 and numerous other well known and not so well known convictions. Boye Brogeland's 2015 campaign to eliminate cheating has revealed many top level cases.

Late in 2022 EDGAR was deployed to detect suspicious online behaviour resulting in numerous suspensions of players whom appear to be ACBL Club players. I'd love to see some statistics on masterpoints held. Perhaps in other parts of the world cheating is just as prevalent, but simply undetected.

Whether cheating is human nature or a conscious decision, can we really clean up the game without killing it, or for the game to survive do we just learn to live with it.

[akwoo]

EDGAR is having a fairly minimal impact. ACBL can survive losing the 1-2% that are caught by EDGAR. Also, EDGAR is not going to get a lot better, because a pair that is cheating a little bit looks identical to a pair that is just a little luckier than average. (The pairs that are being caught by EDGAR now look like pairs that are lucky enough to win the lottery 10 times in a row.)

It used to be that people could learn a simple, natural bidding system and play a social game. (That you still can do.) The people in the social game who could take a finesse, keep track of which high cards had been played, and count the trump suit could show up at the game and be competitive. Now these players show up at the club and are automatically 10% (if not more) behind a pair that plays a basic 2/1 system (Jacoby 2N and new minor forcing can be hard to remember!), understands that -100 is better than -110, and can reverse dummy or ruff out a side suit. In turn, a good club player in the 1950s could show up at a regional and be competitive - now good club players show up at regionals and average 45% because all their competition plays Lebensohl, never lets you play 2 of a fit unless it's right, knows basic squeezes, and catches their partner's signals on defense.

You just need to learn so much more as well as count and calculate better to be competitive at any given level, which discourages the casual player, which in turn makes the remaining player pool stronger and further discourages the casual player. (Remember that many people who don't care much about winning are still discouraged by consistently finishing near the bottom.)

There is one aspect related to cheating that also discourages newer players, and that is much stricter attitudes about use of unintentional UI. Back in the 1950s, no one really noticed or cared if you used partner's tempo or mannerisms to help you bid, particularly if it was done unconsciously. Bridge is hard enough - it's practically impossible if you also have to watch yourself to make sure you haven't been influenced by partner's hesitations, particularly if your partner (and maybe you also, but that's irrelevant) is a beginner who is hesitating all the time and transmitting lots of UI.

[awm]

akwoo, on 2025-July-03, 23:26, said:

EDGAR is having a fairly minimal impact. ACBL can survive losing the 1-2% that are caught by EDGAR. Also, EDGAR is not going to get a lot better, because a pair that is cheating a little bit looks identical to a pair that is just a little luckier than average. (The pairs that are being caught by EDGAR now look like pairs that are lucky enough to win the lottery 10 times in a row.)

It used to be that people could learn a simple, natural bidding system and play a social game. (That you still can do.) The people in the social game who could take a finesse, keep track of which high cards had been played, and count the trump suit could show up at the game and be competitive. Now these players show up at the club and are automatically 10% (if not more) behind a pair that plays a basic 2/1 system (Jacoby 2N and new minor forcing can be hard to remember!), understands that -100 is better than -110, and can reverse dummy or ruff out a side suit. In turn, a good club player in the 1950s could show up at a regional and be competitive - now good club players show up at regionals and average 45% because all their competition plays Lebensohl, never lets you play 2 of a fit unless it's right, knows basic squeezes, and catches their partner's signals on defense.

You just need to learn so much more as well as count and calculate better to be competitive at any given level, which discourages the casual player, which in turn makes the remaining player pool stronger and further discourages the casual player. (Remember that many people who don't care much about winning are still discouraged by consistently finishing near the bottom.)

There is one aspect related to cheating that also discourages newer players, and that is much stricter attitudes about use of unintentional UI. Back in the 1950s, no one really noticed or cared if you used partner's tempo or mannerisms to help you bid, particularly if it was done unconsciously. Bridge is hard enough - it's practically impossible if you also have to watch yourself to make sure you haven't been influenced by partner's hesitations, particularly if your partner (and maybe you also, but that's irrelevant) is a beginner who is hesitating all the time and transmitting lots of UI.

I suspect that you somewhat overrate both the acumen of club players and the number of matchpoints you can win based on system. In my experience many club players (including regular winners at the club) do not have particularly solid agreements. If anything the level of play and defense seems to have deteriorated at many clubs in recent years (as the experienced players get older and are perhaps replaced with players who learned bridge for the first time in their 60s). System is an obstacle to learning bridge, but to be honest not an obstacle to scoring well (especially at matchpoints, consistently not making stupid mistakes on defense can win you more than all the conventions in the world).

[johnu]

akwoo, on 2025-July-03, 23:26, said:

Also, EDGAR is not going to get a lot better, because a pair that is cheating a little bit looks identical to a pair that is just a little luckier than average. (The pairs that are being caught by EDGAR now look like pairs that are lucky enough to win the lottery 10 times in a row.)

I'm guessing that most pairs don't start out planning to cheat online. I expect they ramp up their cheating step by step, as cheating creates better results, and better results is an incentive to cheat even more.

I investigated 3 pairs in the early days of Covid in one of the early cheating detection projects, and all 3 cheated every way possible, in every possible bidding situation, in unopposed auctions, in contested auctions, and in the opponent auctions where they never stepped in on misfits. In play, they made the best leads just knowing partner's hands, made switches at the right time, made unlikely doubles of the opponents in fairly normal contracts, had auctions when one player would underbid, and the other player would overbid to get to the right contract, and flawlessly, but with incredible auctions, recovered from misclicks. Actually, they don't look like players that got lucky, they looked like players that weree cheating by looking at partner's hands.

One pair I actually knew from local club and tournament games as they were friends with one of my regular partners. I had played a club swiss event with them as the other pair, as well as a sectional event. Talking with them during and after the games, it was clear that they were an intermediate pair that was not strong on bidding theory and not great players. I would expect that they would score in the mid 40% range in typical club game.

What brought them to my attention was that there used to be a player rating site and they were rated in the top few percent of all ACBL players for online games. Obviously to me, this was absolutely impossible for a pair at their level to be rated that high, so I contacted the guy running the cheating detection project and got their hands.

Oh my. Just looking at their results, they were playing in these big consolidated ACBL games on BBO and were averaging in the mid 60% range, frequently winning or placing in the top 3 or so. Honestly, I don't think they were capable of getting into the upper 50% range in a game with a decent number of advanced/expert players.

[hrothgar]

One thing that folks might want to think about are the second order effects of the EDGAR prosecutions.

I am hearing claims that in some areas at least, significant numbers of ACBL club games are dropping their sanctions rather than giving cheats the boot.

Some people are claiming that this impacts roughly a third of the games in locations such as Cincinnati, Dallas, and parts of Florida.

From what I can tell, this typically involves situations in which a popular local figure or teacher gets the boot

In the case of Cincinnati the individual who was running the games was the one who was convicted of cheating.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that these games are already on their last legs and there is no one to take over.

Single points of failure are bad...

[awm]

Perhaps one issue is that the ACBL membership numbers are a bit misleading. Put simply, there are a lot of members who do not play very much, and a small number of members who play a LOT. The cheaters tend to come from the latter subgroup (perhaps simply because they are the ones we have enough data to catch). So even though the cheaters are only 1-2% of membership, they represent a much higher fraction of the "total hands played" and losing them could easily be impactful especially in smaller clubs.

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2025-July-03, 17:33, said:

A quick search of wikipedia reveals a number of international bridge scandals. Some of the earliest and what I found entertaining include;

You somehow missed Reese-Schapiro(England), finger signals?

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2025-July-04, 06:53, said:

You somehow missed Reese-Schapiro(England), finger signals?

They were on my list

edit; I meant oh! they were on my list, I don't know how the line was erased

The decades of cheating at the high levels of bridge makes for fascinating reading and study of human behaviour.

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2025-July-04, 07:37, said:

They were on my list

Not according to Search.

[jillybean]

akwoo, on 2025-July-03, 23:26, said:

EDGAR is having a fairly minimal impact. ACBL can survive losing the 1-2% that are caught by EDGAR. Also, EDGAR is not going to get a lot better, because a pair that is cheating a little bit looks identical to a pair that is just a little luckier than average. (The pairs that are being caught by EDGAR now look like pairs that are lucky enough to win the lottery 10 times in a row.)

It used to be that people could learn a simple, natural bidding system and play a social game. (That you still can do.) The people in the social game who could take a finesse, keep track of which high cards had been played, and count the trump suit could show up at the game and be competitive. Now these players show up at the club and are automatically 10% (if not more) behind a pair that plays a basic 2/1 system (Jacoby 2N and new minor forcing can be hard to remember!), understands that -100 is better than -110, and can reverse dummy or ruff out a side suit. In turn, a good club player in the 1950s could show up at a regional and be competitive - now good club players show up at regionals and average 45% because all their competition plays Lebensohl, never lets you play 2 of a fit unless it's right, knows basic squeezes, and catches their partner's signals on defense.

You just need to learn so much more as well as count and calculate better to be competitive at any given level, which discourages the casual player, which in turn makes the remaining player pool stronger and further discourages the casual player. (Remember that many people who don't care much about winning are still discouraged by consistently finishing near the bottom.)

There is one aspect related to cheating that also discourages newer players, and that is much stricter attitudes about use of unintentional UI. Back in the 1950s, no one really noticed or cared if you used partner's tempo or mannerisms to help you bid, particularly if it was done unconsciously. Bridge is hard enough - it's practically impossible if you also have to watch yourself to make sure you haven't been influenced by partner's hesitations, particularly if your partner (and maybe you also, but that's irrelevant) is a beginner who is hesitating all the time and transmitting lots of UI.

While the EDGAR algorithm to detect suspicious hands may not improve, the ACBL may lower threshold before a player is flagged for further investigation. Hundreds of players have been suspended for online cheating, if the threshold was lowered I would not be surprised to see this number raise exponentially. I know some of the players who have been suspended, as I'm sure many North Americans here do. Noone has stood out as an obvious cheat at the table and we could get into a debate about how easy it is to cheat online, it's not real bridge and these players could not cheat to the same extent at the club, some wouldn't try, others may have a more questionable ethics but these players would not stand out in a game. There is no foot tapping, coughs and cigarette positioning, just the largely condoned use of sighs, stares and finger taps on the bidding card.

Of course the game has progressed, social players stepping up to Duplicate have to improve their game or return to social play, or play for fun at the club because they like the club and having fun is more important than masterpoints. There is a definite line between social players and Duplicate players.

I am unaware of stricter enforcement of unintentional UI. (Intentional or unintentional the onus is on you to take the correct action.) IME, people are very tolerant and welcoming of new players and there is no enforcement of Law16 at the club. By the time these players progress to tournament bridge they should be knowledgeable of UI and not be at all surprised if the Law is enforced.

Suspending players who cheat online may go some way in "cleaning up" the online game. For the club game, these suspensions are causing anger, disbelief, fractions within the club and clubs to drop sanctions or close. Bridge seems to be headed down this path of suspensions to "clean up the online game" without a clear understanding or concern how it will impact clubs and with no plans to resurrect what's left.

edited

[hrothgar]

jillybean, on 2025-July-04, 08:43, said:

Bridge seems to be headed down this path of suspensions to "clean up the online game" without a clear understanding of how it will impact clubs and with no plans to resurrect what's left.

Like it or not, the F2F clubs are dead
They just don't know it quite yet

Some will carry on for a few years, especially in areas with a relatively high density of players (think retirement communities in Florida or Arizona). But in the rest of the country, its but over.

And, with the collapse of the clubs, so die the regionals and the sectionals and the like.

Bridge is going to need to transform at a fundamental level.

What's most critical for the ACBL is determining whether the Nationals can be saved and whether there is going to be any kind of feeder program from the online platforms to the few remaining F2F events that survive. (A few Nationals, maybe some destination regionals)

[mikeh]

hrothgar, on 2025-July-04, 09:11, said:

Like it or not, the F2F clubs are dead
They just don't know it quite yet

Some will carry on for a few years, especially in areas with a relatively high density of players (think retirement communities in Florida or Arizona). But in the rest of the country, its but over.

And, with the collapse of the clubs, so die the regionals and the sectionals and the like.

Bridge is going to need to transform at a fundamental level.

What's most critical for the ACBL is determining whether the Nationals can be saved and whether there is going to be any kind of feeder program from the online platforms to the few remaining F2F events that survive. (A few Nationals, maybe some destination regionals)

I wish I could state that you are wrong, but anecdotal evidence here in Canada suggests that yiu are correct. Here in Victoria the two surviving club owners collaborate rather than compete and we have four games a week plus a monthly team game, and the club games usually run 16-18 tables, more in the winter. So we’re doing ok. But a friend of mine from Ottawa, a city roughly three times our population, has a fragmented club scene where each competes with the others, and they get around 5 tables a game. That itself is a big turnoff for many…I have zero interest in a five table game.

Plus around three years ago I was in London, in the UK, en route to a tournament in Italy. I got a partner for the Young Chelsea’s ‘big’ game…imp pairs on Friday evening. Iirc we had 7 tables! In what was historically a very successful club. Indeed, when my wife and I visited in 2006, again en route to a tournament in Italy, there was a full house…I don’t recall the table count but it was at least 15 tables.

It’s really too bad because we’re losing the social aspect of the game. I’m a very intense player, but even I enjoy the social aspect. Sites such as RealBridge bring a little of that back, with video and audio so one sees and can interact with at least one opp, but it’s not the same

I really think you’re correct in that FTF bridge is essential for building local and regional bridge communities. Online, your opps…indeed perhaps your partners…may be people you’ve never met and won’t likely ever meet. Go to a local sectional and one sees friends and acquaintances. Go to a nearby Regional, ditto but on a much larger scale. Play online….and it’s just too anonymous. We are social animals. Remove much of the social aspect and the game just won’t have the same feel. While players 40+ years younger than I (not that there are many such in NA) may be better adjusted to that sort of thing, living far more online than us old codgers, but I think human nature isn’t so mutable that younger players don’t enjoy the social aspect of being physically present while enjoying interactions with others.