The Bulgarians are playing, it seems. It Balicki-Zmud were cheating I don't see why Poland should be allowed to play. That said I don't envy the guys who are playing four handed, pretty brutal schedule.

Pretty terrible that five of seven European qualifiers turn out to be tainted. (so far)

On BW a lot of people are suggesting that this means cheating is more common in Europe; I suppose it might be, but to me it suggests only that more videotapes of big events were available to the guys who started doing detailed analyses. In ACBL land the relatively few videos they have haven't been available to the public; I have little doubt that if they ere on the same scale as the European events, some American pairs could be caught too.

Looks like we're heading toward a game-wide catharsis on the order of that that hit cycling. Or at least we should be; maybe believing we are is just wishful thinking.

FWIW I know much of the England setup and I'd be shocked, totally shocked if they were cheating.

atak, i think pro culture in the US does a fine job of policing itself. these guys play at regionals with each other like 30 weeks a year. you don't even hear rumors of cheaters at the top of US bridge, and so far it seems safe to bank on smoke=fire.

it's hilarious that the euros are so butthurt that their best players are scumbag trash, tho.

brrrr, I can believe that too, and you'd know better than I. Of course we know how lousy ACBL is at policing the game (and just about everything else), but that doesn't mean that cheating is necessarily common, I realize. (I mean at the top level — I believe that at lower levels, coffehouse-level cheating is damn near universal but FN/FS-level stuff almost unknown.) If the community doesn't tolerate it that makes it hard for a cheating pair to get hired, which may ultimate;y drive things.

Still seems likely there has to be at least some of this going on, and if there isn't yet there will be, so ACBL still needs to get its **** in order.

If I had to guess, if the ACBL national level events were taped like the EBU trials were, the percentage of American pairs cheating would be:

1) lower than the percentage of European pairs, and
2) definitely higher than zero

i'm definitely the first to take a dump on the acbl for their utter incompetence, but is there any reason to think the acbl is worse than ibf, dbv, and (only half seriously) the monaco bridge federation? we don't really have a standard for comparison here given the failure of the whole bridge world until now.

no, there's no reason to think they're any worse

I'm kind of torqued off at people taking random shots at the ACBL for being the people who were not catching these guys when they play here 1/12 of the year or whatever it is

On an organizational level I think ANY national-level bridge body is going to be rather poorly equipped to actually catch cheaters. ACBL, EBU, ZimmermanBF, whatever. Monitors at tables aren't going to be able to see anything ever, and trying to staff world class players on a full time basis isn't going to work because they aren't taking a massive pay and enjoyment cut to do that instead of playing bridge.

I think the only thing it's reasonable to ask of them is to put procedures in place to make it easy to analyze plays after the fact to catch people more effectively.

Those things pretty much include:

• as much video as possible, of suitable quality
• hand records in as much detail as possible ideally including complete play records
• duplicated boards wherever possible for maximum comparison purposes -- I'm aware there are potential security issues with having the same boards in play but those really really don't seem that hard to cover
• making as much of the above publicly available as humanly possible

64 video cameras that can record like 3 hours at a time and store data are what, I'm going to guess generously $150 each? And that covers the entire round of 64 of a KO event, or 128 pairs worth of a national pair game. Then you just need enough data storage and a Youtube account. And then the play records. I know they were testing the machines that deal the cards out and record everything -- which helps with duplicated boards as well.

Do all that, put it all out there (as a bonus: fans can review stuff and learn more), and then really the only think you have to worry deeply about is the electronic shoe vibrators or whatever. Everything else, the good news is if they're trying to communicate with partner during the hand, it'll be audible or visible, and with video and audio evidence, if their partner can see it, the eye and ear in the sky will too. They'll get caught.

yes to all those things, but i think more importantly there needs to be a whole shift in philosophy when approaching the topic of cheating from now on. it seems very clear in hindsight that bridge federations wanted to avoid the topic at all costs rather than try to do something about it.

One side effect of this: at-the-table accusations of cheating are sure to increase now. NBOs will need to figure out how to deal with that swiftly.

Well, unfortunately it was somewhat justified on their part -- they didn't want to do a lot about it because they were afraid of getting sued out of business. And probably justifiably so. Which would you rather take to court:

"We're banning this guy from all our competitions that he was getting paid $150k/year for, because a couple of people saw them placing their pencils funny on a bunch of hands and say they were cheating, we think it correlated with XYZ"

or

"We're banning this guy from all our competitions that he was getting paid $150k/year for; Fantoni/Nunes: The Videos Speak"

The organizations themselves have to feel about 1000 times more secure with the second.

I agree that there's no real reason to think ACBL is worse at this than any other NBO. But there's no reason to think they're better either. And my "random shot" isn't random, as clearly this is at least partly ACBL's fault. (maybe those guys don't play here very often but how many NABC+ events have they taken?) Moreover, ACBL has a history of being ridiculously slow and inefficient at catching people and of letting some get away relatively unscathed even when they do get caught. And again, no, I don't think this makes them worse than other organizing bodies and they're probably a lot better than some (Italy comes to mind; Monaco is, I assume, essentially nonexistent except as a rubber stamp); they're just bad.

i totally agree, and I know I'm using results-oriented thinking, but these guys weren't exactly disguising their signals, nor is there any indication that they ever even changed them up. i realize some truly bizarre **** comes out of courtrooms that defies any sort of logic or reason, but if The Videos Speak is the ace of spades, it's hard to argue that it was difficult to find once one started looking.

That's ... not an unreasonable view.

Part of the problem, frankly, is that since there are international stars, it's super easy for the individual NBOs to all say "well they only play here 10% of the time, it's someone else's problem" ... just as a lot of individuals probably didn't record stuff against these guys for years because they were never going to have to play against them again.

The other thing that is needed, if NBOs aren't just going to publish videos, is coordination of evidence between the various NBOs. I have no idea whose responsibility that would be -- I would assume the WBF, but good luck with that I fear.


It was only easy to find because they took the rare step of having stuff on video.

"It doesn't matter what I believe. It only matters what I can prove" comes to mind re: the lawsuits.

I am a bit shocked about Zmudzinski/Balicki - I got to know these guys about a dozen years ago - would of smoked a packet or more of cigarettes with Zmudzinski outside bridge events - they were good guys - humble winners and generous when they lost - I guess it is what I would like to think but assuming they have been cheating maybe they turned to that in light of the widespread nature of the problem in Europe in particular ?

I have a couple of good mates who are well connected in cycling circles - it is certainly the case according to them that maybe 50%+ of pro's were on the juice at one point or another not that long ago which kinda corroborates my speculation about Z/B - cheating at cycling just became the norm after it wasn't policed as well as it should have been

BTW - "i realise some truly bizarre **** comes out of US courtrooms" - FYP

This, to me, really should be the end of the discussion. You made a good post about all the things that should be in place at every table at every major event. Bridge lends itself perfectly to stats and digital content. A PFF of bridge seems pretty easy to me, and let's be honest it would be pretty cool.

I won't get into the discussion about using tablets or whatever, but bridge at the top needs to step into 2015 for sure. This cheating chapter notwithstanding, there is no reason at all that every card played at every major event shouldn't be available to the entire world.

just saw the post re: acbl on bw. good for them.

i heard this morning carolyn lynch passed away last night, but i don't see it mentioned anywhere and i have no way to verify the source.

if it's true she was really great for bridge and will be missed

Hoping it's not true. I've only ever had good experiences playing against her.

I hope that's not true I used to speak to her quite a bit on BBO - very friendly lady. Twitter doesn't mention anything.

Yeah it is worrisome that I can't find any information on it. When I say 'I heard this morning...' I mean someone had a phone conversation right in front of me to get some more information about cause, etc. Maybe my posting this was a mistake.

http://bridgewinners.com/article/vie...carolyn-lynch/

It's rare to meet someone who demonstrates both class and passion in bridge. One almost certainly precludes the other. Carolyn epitomized both.

A friend has offered to get me, as a birthday present, any bridge book I want. The problem, of course, is that I have a habit of buying bridge books, so at the moment there's none that I'm craving. Any ideas for a book I'd like, but probably don't have?