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can you say any more about how cheating is prevented? I always wondered about that as the incentive is high and since teams enter as a team, it seems there is a

by pge 8y ago

can you say any more about how cheating is prevented? I always wondered about that as the incentive is high and since teams enter as a team, it seems there is a lot of opportunity for planning communication. I guess I always assumed there was some kind of mixing of partners to prevent collusion (and judge the contribution of a particular individual rather than a team), but it doesn’t seem like that is the case.

adw 8y ago
During the auction, the players are screened from each other – no eye contact, and the screens extend to the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_(bridge)#/media/File:BridgeScreen.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_(bridge)#/media/File:Br... Also, verbal communication is banned. All bidding is communicated through the use of bidding boxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_box which both provide an unambiguous record of the auction and remove the need for players to say anything.
rajandatta 8y ago
Cheating prevention is a serious issue at the highest level of Bridge. The basic tenet is to have screens that prevent a player from being able to see their partner's face and torso and rules that seriously limit speaking. The screens have just enough space at the bottom to be able to see cards played and nothing else. Eliminating voice, body language, hand and feet action reduces ability to pass signals.
rm445 8y ago
In the historic world of high-stakes rubber bridge, you're right - players would cut for partners after each 'rubber' game so your partner in crime might soon be your opponent. I'm sure there were occasional big-money scams like all situations involving gamblers and money generally. Roald Dahl wrote an amusing short story about one possibility. In the modern world of competitive duplicate bridge, there are occasional collusion-based cheating scandals - the most recent one I'm aware of involved a communication system via position of the pencils with which the pair involved kept track of their score. By far the most famous scandal was a pair of English players back in the sixties communicating the number of hearts in their hand (enough to give a winning edge) with hand signals. Nowadays good records are kept and cheating tends to come to light eventually. The apparatus used in top tournaments is different from a casual game and meant to prevent collusion, and also, with the diagonal screen, make it harder to tell whether any hesitation came from your partner (reducing deliberate or unintentional inferences). In big tournaments with lots of players, because hands are duplicated to be played lots of times, it's not uncommon for players to be on a 'wire' i.e. deliberately or by overhearing learn some features of a hand they haven't played yet. It causes a lot of outrage and controversy but it doesn't ultimately matter that much. The most important matches are between two teams and things are arranged to reduce the opportunity for the pairs in a team to communicate with one another. Since I'm writing a pretty long post here, I'll also mention that computers still don't play bridge especially well, so the problem of players getting computer assistance, such a concern in chess, doesn't feature. All in all, preventing cheating in bridge is kind of an ongoing but not particularly high-profile activity. There's an obvious solution to make cheating even harder - keep players physically separate and make them do everything from a monitored computer terminal, which could also do things like introduce delays to make everything happen in tempo. But the administrators obviously think that would be pretty unpopular and prefer to keep it a card game.
femto113 8y ago
In most formats partners play as a team of two (or as part of a team of four or six) and are not mixed. Cheating at bridge has some interesting information theory elements. Communication between partners is explicitly allowed during the bidding phase of bridge via bids (e.g. a bid of "2 clubs" may imply a lot about the cards the bidder holds) but must follow a convention which is known to your opponents (so they learn just as much from that bid as your partner does). Communication during the playing phase of bridge is explicitly forbidden, e.g. you are not supposed to take a long time making a decision about which card to play, from which your partner could infer which cards you are probably choosing between. Most cheating schemes occur between the two phases, after the bidding but before the play starts where the defenders try to tell each other some critical feature(s) of their hands (e.g. that they hold the queen of trumps). Because a tiny amount of data can make a difference (a single bit could communicate the above fact) cheating strategies come in many forms. Making a noise (e.g. coughing or tapping) were classics, but can be overheard and may be obvious in review. The position of a body part, the choice of which hand to touch something with, the angle that a pencil or the bidding tray are placed at can all communicate information. If you want to see some analysis of a relatively recent cheating scandal (and some of the anti-cheat devices that are used at top tournaments) YouTube has a few videos on the Israeli pair Fisher & Schwartz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831tJ4EHLBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831tJ4EHLBY
aidenn0 8y ago
It is prevented through a number of mechanisms Bids are no longer spoken, but signaled through cards At higher levels there is a screen across the table (as I mentioned in my original post). Players are not allowed to vary the tempo of their bids (to allow for longer thought in certain situations, some bids are defined as "surprising" and the next player is required to pause longer). In terms of detection: Records are kept both officially and by other players looking to improve their own game. Players are required to define their bidding system ahead of time, so any pattern of "psychic" bids will be noticed very quickly. Defense play is considerably harder, but a single win after making the "wrong" (i.e. not playing the odds) decision will be memorable for the opponents, so in any given circle of players you can only do it so many times (particularly when it's just enough to win the match) before suspicions get raised. In several years of my working at sectional, regional, and national tournaments there were two times total that players were caught cheating, and in both cases it was at smaller games (one was at a regional tournament, but not at a particularly competitive level; the partnership at that regional tournament weren't just cheats though, they were really bad cheats and the motivation is still unclear since they were nowhere near professional level).

by pge 8y ago

adw 8y ago

During the auction, the players are screened from each other – no eye contact, and the screens extend to the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_(bridge)#/media/File:BridgeScreen.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_(bridge)#/media/File:Br... Also, verbal communication is banned. All bidding is communicated through the use of bidding boxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_box which both provide an unambiguous record of the auction and remove the need for players to say anything.

rajandatta 8y ago

Cheating prevention is a serious issue at the highest level of Bridge. The basic tenet is to have screens that prevent a player from being able to see their partner's face and torso and rules that seriously limit speaking. The screens have just enough space at the bottom to be able to see cards played and nothing else. Eliminating voice, body language, hand and feet action reduces ability to pass signals.

rm445 8y ago

In the historic world of high-stakes rubber bridge, you're right - players would cut for partners after each 'rubber' game so your partner in crime might soon be your opponent. I'm sure there were occasional big-money scams like all situations involving gamblers and money generally. Roald Dahl wrote an amusing short story about one possibility. In the modern world of competitive duplicate bridge, there are occasional collusion-based cheating scandals - the most recent one I'm aware of involved a communication system via position of the pencils with which the pair involved kept track of their score. By far the most famous scandal was a pair of English players back in the sixties communicating the number of hearts in their hand (enough to give a winning edge) with hand signals. Nowadays good records are kept and cheating tends to come to light eventually. The apparatus used in top tournaments is different from a casual game and meant to prevent collusion, and also, with the diagonal screen, make it harder to tell whether any hesitation came from your partner (reducing deliberate or unintentional inferences). In big tournaments with lots of players, because hands are duplicated to be played lots of times, it's not uncommon for players to be on a 'wire' i.e. deliberately or by overhearing learn some features of a hand they haven't played yet. It causes a lot of outrage and controversy but it doesn't ultimately matter that much. The most important matches are between two teams and things are arranged to reduce the opportunity for the pairs in a team to communicate with one another. Since I'm writing a pretty long post here, I'll also mention that computers still don't play bridge especially well, so the problem of players getting computer assistance, such a concern in chess, doesn't feature. All in all, preventing cheating in bridge is kind of an ongoing but not particularly high-profile activity. There's an obvious solution to make cheating even harder - keep players physically separate and make them do everything from a monitored computer terminal, which could also do things like introduce delays to make everything happen in tempo. But the administrators obviously think that would be pretty unpopular and prefer to keep it a card game.

femto113 8y ago

In most formats partners play as a team of two (or as part of a team of four or six) and are not mixed. Cheating at bridge has some interesting information theory elements. Communication between partners is explicitly allowed during the bidding phase of bridge via bids (e.g. a bid of "2 clubs" may imply a lot about the cards the bidder holds) but must follow a convention which is known to your opponents (so they learn just as much from that bid as your partner does). Communication during the playing phase of bridge is explicitly forbidden, e.g. you are not supposed to take a long time making a decision about which card to play, from which your partner could infer which cards you are probably choosing between. Most cheating schemes occur between the two phases, after the bidding but before the play starts where the defenders try to tell each other some critical feature(s) of their hands (e.g. that they hold the queen of trumps). Because a tiny amount of data can make a difference (a single bit could communicate the above fact) cheating strategies come in many forms. Making a noise (e.g. coughing or tapping) were classics, but can be overheard and may be obvious in review. The position of a body part, the choice of which hand to touch something with, the angle that a pencil or the bidding tray are placed at can all communicate information. If you want to see some analysis of a relatively recent cheating scandal (and some of the anti-cheat devices that are used at top tournaments) YouTube has a few videos on the Israeli pair Fisher & Schwartz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831tJ4EHLBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831tJ4EHLBY

aidenn0 8y ago

It is prevented through a number of mechanisms Bids are no longer spoken, but signaled through cards At higher levels there is a screen across the table (as I mentioned in my original post). Players are not allowed to vary the tempo of their bids (to allow for longer thought in certain situations, some bids are defined as "surprising" and the next player is required to pause longer). In terms of detection: Records are kept both officially and by other players looking to improve their own game. Players are required to define their bidding system ahead of time, so any pattern of "psychic" bids will be noticed very quickly. Defense play is considerably harder, but a single win after making the "wrong" (i.e. not playing the odds) decision will be memorable for the opponents, so in any given circle of players you can only do it so many times (particularly when it's just enough to win the match) before suspicions get raised. In several years of my working at sectional, regional, and national tournaments there were two times total that players were caught cheating, and in both cases it was at smaller games (one was at a regional tournament, but not at a particularly competitive level; the partnership at that regional tournament weren't just cheats though, they were really bad cheats and the motivation is still unclear since they were nowhere near professional level).