[1eyedjack]

movingon, on 2015-August-26, 07:27, said:

Let me tell you, throughout the years I have been here and reported players, not ONE pair continued to play *under their previous names* after my reports except for the pair (actually threesome) that I have been complaining about here.

FYP

[diana_eva]

1eyedjack, on 2015-August-26, 08:26, said:

FYP

She's talking about ACBL events. Players are usually identified by ACBL# there, so it's not that easy to return under a new username *and* get to keep your masterpoints too. Unless someone likes to pay and play without winning the points, they're not coming back most of the times.

[1eyedjack]

diana_eva, on 2015-August-26, 10:26, said:

She's talking about ACBL events. Players are usually identified by ACBL# there, so it's not that easy to return under a new username *and* get to keep your masterpoints too. Unless someone likes to pay and play without winning the points, they're not coming back most of the times.

I appreciated that she referred to ACBL events. I was not clear that she was referring exclusively to them. Furthermore you do not have to be an ACBL member to play in them. I am not an ACBL member and I have played in a few. Granted it is quite an expensive way to play if you are not buying ACBL masterpoints for your buck, so I expect that most of them are members. Whether the cheaters are randomly distributed between member and non-member players is more questionable.

But it does raise an interesting observation and/or query. The principal friend to the cheater on BBO is anonymity, coupled with an opportunity to create a new (likewise anonymous) account free of charge and free of delay, either as a replacement of or in addition to existing accounts. OK the shared IP address can counteract it perhaps - but red herring.

The validity of movingon's point presumably hinges on ACBL members entering ACBL tournaments, disclosing their ACBL membership, and then cheating and getting caught. I would be interested to know if the sanctions imposed by ACBL in those cases extend to live F2F tournaments. If so, given what they risk I find the alleged frequency of cheating (in that environment) to be surprising. If not, then why not?

[1eyedjack]

Developing my earlier point above, I think that it would be sensible for ACBL tournaments on BBO to be restricted to players who are ACBL members, and for participation to be contingent on disclosing your ACBL membership number. If the non-ACBL players who currently enter the tournaments are only a tiny minority (I have no access to the stats on that), then this suggested policy change would have very little impact on their revenue stream (or that of BBO) and the potential benefit of cleaning up the tournaments would be profound.

I do see a problem, however: If you are a cheater, and not particularly interested in amassing ACBL masterpoints, you could enter an ACBL tournament on BBO and enter some random ACBL membership ID. If you win and don't get caught, some unknown player in South Carolina may get a pleasant surprise, but you get the glowing satisfaction that your cheating has pulled one over on the world (oh, and you pick up some BBO masterpoints). If you get caught, some poor bastard in South Carolina gets slapped with the sanctions.

Given that you effectively surrender your anonymity when you enter your ACBL ID in a tournament, perhaps there should be an additional level of authentication.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2015-August-27, 01:46, said:

Developing my earlier point above, I think that it would be sensible for ACBL tournaments on BBO to be restricted to players who are ACBL members, and for participation to be contingent on disclosing your ACBL membership number. If the non-ACBL players who currently enter the tournaments are only a tiny minority (I have no access to the stats on that), then this suggested policy change would have very little impact on their revenue stream (or that of BBO) and the potential benefit of cleaning up the tournaments would be profound.

I don't think ACBL permits that restriction -- f2f ACBL clubs aren't allowed to turn away non-members. Even ACBL sectional, regional, and national tournaments cannot do this, except in certain events (like North American Pairs and Grand National Teams), although they're allowed to charge an extra fee to non-members. And it's hardly in ACBL's or BBO's interest to turn these players away, since we get their money whether or not they're members.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on 2015-August-27, 09:31, said:

And it's hardly in ACBL's or BBO's interest to turn these players away, since we get their money whether or not they're members.

If the enhanced reputation of the event, derived from fewer cheaters, was sufficiently attractive, you might find an increased uptake in ACBL member attendance which more than compensates for the non-ACBL drop-off.
And it is possible as I said earlier that the current non-ACBL member attendance is so trivial that the revenue loss of that tranche is likewise trivial - but you would know the sums of that better than I. Even if there was a noticeable decline in revenue, it is arguable that the enhanced enjoyment of the remaining players is worth something intangible to BBO.

But as you say the entire question could be futile if ACBL have no powers to restrict entry.

Incidentally, if the loss of revenue would be that noticeable, due to large numbers of non ACBL members playing in those events, then my earlier FYP has restored relevance.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2015-August-27, 09:57, said:

If the enhanced reputation of the event, derived from fewer cheaters, was sufficiently attractive, you might find an increased uptake in ACBL member attendance which more than compensates for the non-ACBL drop-off.

You're making quite an assumption that a significant number of non-members are cheaters, and members are almost all honest. It's not obvious to me that blocking all the non-members would significantly enhance the reputation of the events.

And if we do block them, they'll just go to our other games. So the ACBL games might get better, but the non-ACBL games will get worse, and the organizations who run those games might not appreciate that they have to deal with our refugees (but maybe they'll welcome the additional revenue).

[1eyedjack]

Earlier I wrote

1eyedjack said:

It's justification would probably be enhanced if we were assured that ACBL sanctions against convicted online cheaters spilled over into their F2F membership (which I assume should be the case).

To which I received the response

Barmar said:

You know what they say about when you assume....

Well, not really, apart from the obvious that assumptions can be flawed, along with derived conclusions. I interpret (assume?) the response to mean that Barmar disagrees with the validity of my assumption. Well, he may be right. It is a question of fact that should be trivial for those in the know to confirm. Does the ACBL extend F2F sanctions to online convicted cheaters, or does it not? And if not, why not?

EDIT:

This was supposed to be a new post, but instead overwrote one of my earlier posts. sorry about that. Lost the original now. Mistake

[barmar]

You know what they say about when you assume....

[movingon]

"The validity of movingon's point presumably hinges on ACBL members entering ACBL tournaments, disclosing their ACBL membership, and then cheating and getting caught. I would be interested to know if the sanctions imposed by ACBL in those cases extend to live F2F tournaments. If so, given what they risk I find the alleged frequency of cheating (in that environment) to be surprising. If not, then why not? "

Unfortunately I do not believe that the sanctions imposed here by BBO on ACBL apply to ACBL in general. I doubt that those banned from the site are ever reported to ACBL. I am thinking though that nothing would prevent any player on the site from making a report to ACBL on another player (not carrying much weight, perhaps?)

The person that I am still reporting hands on is a big time ACBL point getter (over 27,000 points, in fact--earned both here on BBO and in live ACBL tournaments throughout the country) and even if he is ever eliminated from the BBO ACBL site, I doubt he will lose the massive points he has gleaned here.

I only play ACBL tournaments, and my posts here apply solely to them.
Most players who cheat are not good enough to cheat well, I believe, and they don't last long on the strictly ACBL site here. This fellow and his partners are very fine players, however....

[movingon]

I would like to see the ACBL tournament software include the opening leads in each contract. (I believe OK Bridge does this). One hallmark of pairs that "collaborate" are consistently good/great leads. It would be good to be able to see anti-field leads at a glance.

[1eyedjack]

MyHands data does include the opening leads. Indeed it includes the full play history. What is this "ACBL tournament software" to which you refer?

[steve2005]

johnu, on 2015-August-17, 18:16, said:

I have no idea how many cheating reports are filed each day/week/month, but an acknowledgment email that BBO is doing something would be good customer relations IMHO.

Could be simple form letter responses like:

We looked at your report and have not found anything suspicious
We looked at your report and are conducting further investigations
We looked at your report and suspended XXX for xxx days.
We looked at your report and you are an idiot for reporting these hands (just joking to see if you read my entire post )

ACBL recorder system currently has nothing like this. I don't see why BBO should.

[1eyedjack]

steve2005, on 2016-February-03, 19:28, said:

ACBL recorder system currently has nothing like this. I don't see why BBO should.

After all, ACBL is perfect so BBO should emulate it as closely as possible.

[steve2005]

1eyedjack, on 2016-February-03, 23:58, said:

After all, ACBL is perfect so BBO should emulate it as closely as possible.

BBO is essentially a club as far as the ACBL is concerned. No club I know of does anything close to what BBO does. to combat cheating. They should be commended not condemned.
Hopefully the ACBL will revamp the recorder system or replace it, we will see.

[jnichols]

steve2005, on 2016-February-04, 15:57, said:

BBO is essentially a club as far as the ACBL is concerned. No club I know of does anything close to what BBO does. to combat cheating. They should be commended not condemned.
Hopefully the ACBL will revamp the recorder system or replace it, we will see.

Every club that I have an association with, as a player or a director, investigates every allegation of cheating that is brought to the director or to club management and takes appropriate action. What more do you suggest that we do?

[barmar]

jnichols, on 2016-February-06, 12:20, said:

Every club that I have an association with, as a player or a director, investigates every allegation of cheating that is brought to the director or to club management and takes appropriate action. What more do you suggest that we do?

I don't think he was saying that clubs don't investigate cheating. But they don't have to deal with multiple cheating allegations every day, and when they receive accusations there's not usually much they can do to investigate, since they don't have a detailed history of all the hands like we do. So what we do is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from what most f2f bridge clubs do.

[movingon]

1eyedjack, on 2016-January-30, 18:02, said:

MyHands data does include the opening leads. Indeed it includes the full play history. What is this "ACBL tournament software" to which you refer?

Yes, if you look up each hand individually, you can find out what the opening lead is.
What I refer to is the ability to look at the Traveller for a tournament and see not only all of the final contracts at each table at a glance but to also see all of the opening leads at each table. Lead anomalies might be quite evident.

For example, say that 25 of the pairs end up in a 3nt contract played by North and only one of the defending pairs makes the "killing" lead, one is invited to now look at this hand to see if there was some sort of an indication for it. OK bridge software added this feature to its software.....

Noreen (movingon)

[barmar]

I can see how this might be useful for our cheating investigator, but he hasn't asked for it. I think that 99.9% of the time it would be wasted space for ordinary users.

[barmar]

I just realized why he hasn't asked for it. He downloads the myhands data, which includes the play of each hand, into a spreadsheet. I assume he has macros that help him look for anomalous leads like this.