There is no other version of the story. Mike told the committee that story, and they elected to convict him of these counts. those counts have some mandatory minimums like never being able to be the #1 MP holder of all time after grinding your whole life so whatevs let's do that, then the process requires a provocative small blurb (not sure if thats true but someone said so), so lets do that, what could go wrong.

Then bridgewinners snap lynch the guy (pun intended), and a mans entire reputation and legacy is ruined.

Cool process.

I am trusting you here, but I really don't think bridgewinners community is at fault here. I mean assuming that version is true, WTF is ACBL doing posting that in the last bridge bulletin? There is only one assumption you can make when you read that blurb with no other context.

According to Drodge on bridgewinners they were required to publish exactly what they published. I don't know if they have to publish it in the daily bulletin of the nationals, but proccess brah.

According to Mike they assured him that it would be made clear he was NOT convicted of cheating, but even if they publish a retraction or a letter or w/e, the damage is done because of exactly what happened.

I mean, it's not bridgewinners fault I guess, it is the fault of people in general to snap judge and gang up on people without all the facts. My reaction if I didn't know the guy would be to ask what are the details because no details were given, it was intentionally vague. If no info was given after that (and I assume it would have to come from Mike or someone who knows about it as I assume the ACBL cannot publish details for legal reasons), then fine yeah go ahead.

Written by user Jols Bronstein:

''Mike,

I'm trying to figure out how reducing your master point total fits this scenario? The punishment appears to be excessive. It reminds me of Joe Paterno – this occurrence has nothing to do with your accomplishments. Similarly, taking away Joe Pa's accomplishments did nothing other than to tarnish the great man's reputation.

I hope logic finds its way into this matter. Good luck!''

good ****ing lord

I mean obv this was posted before the 2nd thread on bridgewinners, but the general feeling right now is there are a couple of very obvious cheating pairs and it's becoming a big problem because people are seeing that nothing happens and there are now more cheating pairs coming up and trying to get hired. It has become so blatant and so talked about but it is obviously terrible for someone like me who does not cheat lol. There is a tremendous feeling that something needs to be done and a lot of pressure behind the scenes, because us non cheaters aren't so thrilled.

So, while all that is going on, for one of the few guys who is like 100 % not dirty, and I mean yeah we aren't even talking about not cheating, there is a spectrum of how shady or unethical people are even if they don't cheat, and he is known as one of the most ethical of those.... well, THAT is what makes this so sad/ironic/insane/mind blowing. I think what happened is because of the backlash of the recent cheating epidemic, ACBL did not want to be perceived as soft on it, but they ended up doing one of the most lolworthy things as usual.

Who are these obvious cheating pairs and what do we suspect they do and how come they haven't been caught yet?

How can you even cheat as a pair with table screens?

JvC: Anything else you want to share?
LF: Well yes. Something delicate. I know that there are arumours about us. That is the fate of being succesfull. I hear quite some gossips. That the main reason not going to the Bermuda Bowl is that we cheat. I feel very sad about that, because it is simply not true. We were monitored intensively by kibitzers and directors during the last years. And they found nothing.

FMK,

What's in your opinion a fair deal for what he actually did do, assuming the intent was not to cheat (but it was to not give a **** about protecting the integrity of the game in that moment)?

I ask this here rather than there because it'll get less attention; if you even want to just PM me that's cool too.

To me the most egregious error is not fouling the board, which is silly but forgivable, but to not report it and accept a better result than he would have gotten had it been reported... Is not something that I can categorize as ethical in any way. I'm willing to accept that he didn't specifically try to cheat anyone, but that is the net effect of his behavior there, no?

Probation seems totally fine. I think even Mike said he did a series of dumb things and owned up to it and was fine with accepting a punishment like that. I guess that means they have to write something about it in the daily bulletin of a national, that seems totally dumb to me but Mike was accepting of that too. He just asked that it be made clear that he was not found guilty of cheating which they agreed to.

They totally botched that one. Not everyone reads bridgewinners, it is only a small subset of people who saw what was written in the daily bulletin. I do believe they caused irrevocable harm to his reputation and legacy by botching that one. It was really a bad mistake.

And losing 20,000 masterpoints, just lol at that. That is silly.

Why do people keep asking for names to be named? This is not like in poker where people should come forward if they know others are cheating.

In bridge, if I were to publicly state that pair X was cheating, I would go before a conduct and ethics hearing and I would be suspended from the ACBL for some time period. This in turn would mean I could not work for a while, since playing bridge is my job. Also, I would not be able to represent USA in international competition, which would mean I could not even play in the trials, which would also mean I could not work in that event. And of course that one goes beyond just work, I would love to represent USA in international competition again, it is what I care about.

Now, if I could not play in the trials, perhaps I would be fired from my current all US team (the goal of clients who have all US teams formed is usually to play in the bermuda bowl for USA). Perhaps not.

The current system is in place to dissuade any public accusations of cheating. That makes sense, if there were no disincentives we might see some sour grapes accusations etc etc, and if the people were innocent it might hinder THEIR ability to get work and would definitely tarnish their reputation. Innocent before proven guilty and all that.

So what is left? Well, yeah everyone talks about it, but that does cause pairs to be monitored, for more people to file recorder forms on them when weird stuff happens, and eventually for committees to be held to check the evidence.

Unfortunately it is very hard to catch cheaters with just some # of hands. It is a long process. The other way to do it is to break their code, but some people aren't just idiots who cough.

I mean, the whole masterpoint thing IS silly, first of all. For most players it's more or less meaningless; even for the ones for whom it means something it probably shouldn't. It's a mandatory provision in the rules given what the committee found happened, which is confirmed loltastic, but not really the jury's fault per se (unless you want them to essentially exercise jury nullification). (Edit to add: on the plus side you could make mad bank crushing the Gold Rush Pairs every few years?)

The stuff that's clear to me is that more transparency would be great; ideally (IMO) these disciplinary hearings would be a matter of public record, for the good of everyone. More flexibility for the committee to set punishment seems like a good thing in this moment, but I'm also very wary of it insofar as "meh, we think these guys are dirty even though there's no actual record of it" versus "he seems like a good guy" seems like a really ****ty way to mete out discipline, y'know?

I do feel bad for my initial judgement of the situation based on what was published (I do think it would have been approximately fine if "and not guilty of charges in section D. whatever and E. whatever" had been appended, and would have solved a lot of issues).

At the same time, I now feel that the pendulum has swung waaaay too far the other way, with people saying "he did NOTHING wrong" (it's obvious that he did) and blaming the opponents who got screwed for not being the ones to call the director, and then for having them come back and ask about it later, and blaming the committee for getting stuck with a situation that could have been solved at the table in 10 seconds with no problems for anyone, or later that day in 90 seconds with like a A+/A- on the board and a 1 VP penalty or something for being a **** with the cards. I feel like if someone with a less spotless reputation (but no disciplinary record) had done exactly the same things, the situation would be different, based on nothing more than "I like him, but I don't like that guy". Which is an even ****tier way to mete out discipline.

I posted a long, semi-rambling article on BW that I'd love your answers to if you feel so inclined.

why is this so important to you?

Academic interest?

A strong personal desire to see things as fair as possible because I love the game and I want the best for it?

A nagging feeling of "if the game is sick I wish I could do something to help, even though I'm not in a great position to do so?"

Pick any four.

i mean, bob hamman doesn't announce the range of his partner's 1NT opener.

go ahead and take that to bridge winners, too, i guess. in the interest of fairness and helping the game of course.

sorry, this isn't a shot at you. it's just that endless rule nittery and lawyer-y language parsing might not actually be what's best for it.

I think the feeling of "he did nothing wrong" is a reaction to basically all of us (meaning good players) have not called the director and tried to handle it before. Here are some of the things I have done which I now think about given this as "well this could have been me."

1) We were playing vs another (very well known) pro team. Both teammates sat the same direction. It was now about 10:30 PM and I think the rules indicate that we have to replay that set of 12 boards. We decided to play 6 boards instead. So in reality we are now playing an 18 board match instead of a 24 board match (ofc you can look at it as we are playing 30 boards instead of 36, that is not true technically). This benefits the side who is leading at half, maybe they could be accused of match fixing or something else.

So, maybe I am gaining an advantage, but you can imagine that the reality is we just wanted to get the match over with and we were on tilt that our last 3 hours of bridge did not count and we are tired and want to have a drink and don't want to deal with this. The opposing team probably knew they were disadvantaging themselves but had the same thoughts.

2) We are on a 5 man team. One of our teammates (pro) is late. Our client is there talking to the opps (they are friends). I play 1 board with her, then when the pro shows up, I play with him. For starters let me say if this was reverse I wouldn't do this (nor would they agree to this) since having 1 extra board of a pro instead of a client is obviously to my advantage. However, I'm guessing I should have either played the whole set with the client, or we should have been assessed whatever penalty for late play there is. Given that it's a swiss, we are benefiting ourselves and our opps who are friends are colluding with us in order to do this.

This was a mistake, but it just seemed obvious "well client X is here and on our team we can just let her play a board while pro Z gets through traffic." I don't think any of us considered this cheating or were trying to cheat even though in retrospect it would look exactly like what mike tried to do.

3) I have wagered money on bridge matches. Pretty sure this is illegal. This is super common with fantasy pools, chinese auctions in the spingold matches, betting on yourself to win a pair game (or who finishes higher) etc.

Should I get Pete Rosed for betting 20 bucks a session with a 100 buck overall finish reward? I am pretty sure I could be brought up on pretty serious charges for this.

4) I think according to regulations I am supposed to call the director when there is a break in tempo, right then and there. I know almost nobody who does that, it is more common to call the director if their partner does something after said break in tempo, most of the times they don't so you're just wasting time 95 % of the time. Even more common is if the other person acts to then say "do you agree there was a break in tempo" since all the director does is establish the break in tempo (at that time). Most of the time the person acting after the break in tempo has their bid, if they don't you call the director back and state "we agreed on the break in tempo, and I think X is a logical alternative."

This has never been a problem and is done for the purpose of saving time. Are we cheating in some way?

Same with leads out of turn or w/e, if you are playing against a good pair and you all know your options then someone can just say what option they want instead of waiting for the director and having them explain options you all know.

Note, I would always call the director against people who might not know their options or that I don't know, but I'm just sayin if we are playing meckwell or something it's unlikely the director is going to be called and someone is just going to say which option they want.

Basically the problem is maybe the culture of handling things yourself without the director when good players are involved. You might think this means we think we are above the law or whatever, but in reality it is almost always to save time or for pro-social reasons. I see now that when the stars align this can go very badly and look very badly, but that is generally why the reaction is how it has been. FWIW I think Mike always said what he did was wrong, and was immediately willing to accept probation, it was the rest of the stuff that got this going. Being branded a cheat for this is really so disproportionate.

@ brrr: that's, um, kinda different obviously

but whatever, if the attitude is "**** it it's broken and we don't want to fix it we'd rather bitch about people cheating and how other people won't do anything about it, except for the people we like, don't you dare suggest they did anything bad ever" that's cool I guess

serious crimes itt

One of the realities of bridge is it is just too damn slow. I also don't wait 10 seconds after every skip bid in 2N p 4N p 6N. There is no reason to wait 30 seconds mandatory as the passers in that auction.

Calling the director in every situation as mandated would make it more slow and tedious. But yeah this experience has been an eye opener for sure, it's pretty amazing how it all has come to this when he coulda just asked for a director.

"Whatever they won imps on the board anyways, who cares" from both the opps and mike is more a reaction of let's not deal with telling this story to the directors, letting them figure it out, which will probably take 20 mins, in a swiss which is the slowest event, I wanna go eat!

You don't have to believe me on that one but if you can imagine playing as much bridge as is required to win 80k masterpoints, it is a grind, and mike usually plays mornings I think so thats 3 sessions a day, travelling, away from home, often for weeks at a time. Cutting out a director call when the opps won imps anyways while youre playing a swiss in PALMETTO (I hate that place), it really is not to cheat it is more to get that **** over with.

Obviously "well they won imps anyways" is pretty stupid. I am just saying that a lot of us can relate, and yes he did do something wrong and I think probation is fair, what is happening to him is just soooooo far from the crime it is shocking.

So, your example of we'd rather bitch about cheating except for the people we like, is Mike Passell? A guy who doesn't cheat who has been put through the public ringer and called a cheater multiple times? Cool story.

good post I pretty much agree with all of, I obv snipped a bunch

I don't think you think you're above the law or whatever, but at the same time, when you take matters into your own hands and it does turn out badly, it's kind of silly to blame the directors for not sorting it out, ya? If you crossed against the light the first 957 times, and the 958th time you got hit by a car, it's not the crosswalk's fault.

I'm also glad to see the "if I'm not absolutely sure who I'm playing against we do call/etc", which I hope/assume is standard practice; I'd have grave concerns that playing against lesser players it's easy enough to say "oh, that's OK, this is the rule" rather than just calling the director, and it's easy to "accidentally" take advantage of someone, and then feelings get hurt when someone realizes they were whamboozled. I also think it sets a terrible example for everyone else, who are taught that you don't need to call the director if you (think you) know what's going on and I saw jlall just sort of do blahblah one time so it's OK for me.

Yeah I have seen low level club pros try to bully their opps into not calling the director etc, that is a terrible thing.

Anyways, who is blaming the directors? I think that the equation of what mike did to cheating is bad. I think what he did is far closer to doing nothing than to cheating. However, I think he did something wrong. He has said so. I think the reaction has been to the bulletin basically saying he cheated (pre arranging a deck), then a long bridgewinners thread where many people assumed he was a cheater on a similar level to what people had been talking about earlier on bridgewinners (*I will never win a major event again* *something needs to be done to stop the cheating*).

This is not what any of those pros who wrote those comments (weinstein/kamil/etc) were talking about in the slightest. And I think everyone assumed ok here is a guy that they were talking about and was caught. This is not a cheating scandal like the germans or the racecars. I think you would agree?

I mean seriously Mike instantly admitted what he had done and owned it the whole way and didn't even ask for counsel. He expected to be put on probation I think. And he could have easily denied it at any point and there would have been no case. I believe that he felt bad. I also believe that all of us at a regional against each other have been guilty of some infraction, so this is a good wake up call.

When it comes to being ethical in the normal sense, eg having good tempo, not taking advantage of partners hesitations, stuff like that, mike is known as one of the best. He is even known for being a good sport, letting the opps take back revokes or see the last trick or whatever. I think all the testimonies by top players are good evidence that that is true. This is the opposite of the pairs people talk about that are "obviously cheating," he is obviously not cheating and on the other end of the spectrum.

His reaction of just owning up to it and taking his medicine because he was stupid in that moment I think kind of shows that. But yeah he def did something wrong dude I don't think we are disagreeing on that, it is just so minor compared to what the bulletin implied and what people were talking about initially.

I think you misunderstand me; if I've been unclear I apologize.

I don't think Mike ever intended to cheat anyone, first of all. However, there seems to be a false dichotomy between "he's a dirty cheater" (which was a reasonable thing to think based on the bulletin report, and isn't if you believe his explanation, and I do; please use whatever influence you may have to change those rules that caused that to be published) and "he did absolutely nothing wrong here, so what if he accidentally mixed up a board, clumsy fingers oops), which seems to be a prevalent enough view on BW, probably as a pure backlash against the initial overreaction.

IMO the simple right view is "based on the overall evidence Mike's a good guy, we really don't think he'll do this again; a lengthy probation to make sure we're right about that seems in order but something has to be done to make sure people understand that the behavior, even if not malicious, was wrong and caused problems and we don't want to see it from anyone".

Is there anything unreasonable about that?

Seems fine. Hopefully the ACBL will do just that.

i mean the probation thing, to me, is sort of an exaggeration. if you asked 100 of mike's peers if a 'stern talking to' was a sufficient punishment, i think you'd get a huge majority agreeing.

that probation is the prescribed punishment i guess is fine. it ignores the fact that this is just one tiny blip in the millions and millions of hands that mike has played.

Passell messed up as he acknowledged - what followed was a flawed process and a stupid result and then a crazy lynch mob - surely though you can spot the irony in making an angry allegation of blatant and widespread cheating not based on any stated facts or proper process and likely to a large extent based on what someone has told you at the same time as defending Passell who is a close friend ?

It seems to me that the choices for a well informed observer are to accept that there is an epidemic of blatant cheating that is being allowed to exist thanks to insanely incompetent and corrupt officials - or - to believe that the subject of cheating for some reason causes an indecent rush to the top of the moral high ground with a savage disregard for the consequences to those who have been accused

I just watched the later so it is a clear favourite