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A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

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Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#41

Post by RickHull »

eric_h wrote: post #37
RickHull wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just do not understand people who cheat on games. I think they have a fundamentally different personality type: sportsman vs. gamesman. Sportsmanship values honor and conduct; gamesmanship values winning. It seems that the highest levels of competition reward gamesmanship over sportsmanship, perhaps unsurprisingly. There is a culture of gamesmanship, and gamesmen have better outcomes. Competitions where this seem…

That's a fair point. In the game of pool gamesmanship has a long history, though in that context it's called hustling. Of course, the game of pool has always had a history of gambling; the fact that we even call it pool is a reference to the betting pool. Still, even when I play a set for money I won't cheat because it makes me feel dirty. I guess I just can't reconcile the fact that when I win without cheating, I fe…

Regarding hustle, I see:

> late 17th century (originally in the sense ‘shake, toss’): from Middle Dutch hutselen

So I think it splits into the dice and gambling sense, where deception becomes a valuable skill. And also the "hustle and bustle" sense, as in a football coach yelling at his player to hustle.

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#43

Post by DrScump »

eric_h wrote: post #31

I really have never understood the cheater's mentality, at least when it comes to these silly, artificial games we play. Yes, at the highest level of professional sports, etc. I see a clear financial motive to cheat (cue reference to the amorality of corporations), but some subset of people cheat all the way down that hierarchy in sports/cards/etc. /slightly OT, but thematically in line, I think: I'm a rather avid am…

In this particular case, the incentive seemed to be that better performance resulted in recruitment to higher-compensated teams.

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#44

Post by cdr »

eric_h wrote: post #31

I really have never understood the cheater's mentality, at least when it comes to these silly, artificial games we play. Yes, at the highest level of professional sports, etc. I see a clear financial motive to cheat (cue reference to the amorality of corporations), but some subset of people cheat all the way down that hierarchy in sports/cards/etc. /slightly OT, but thematically in line, I think: I'm a rather avid am…

There's as many motivations for cheating as there are for anything, though they do tend to fall in broad categories. Some enjoy the thrill of seeing how much they can get away with, some just want to win. Some like to feel smarter than everyone else in the room. Many repeat cheaters are habitual, they have a compulsion and couldn't stop no matter what the consequences were.

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#45

Post by aidenn0 »

eric_h wrote: post #31

I really have never understood the cheater's mentality, at least when it comes to these silly, artificial games we play. Yes, at the highest level of professional sports, etc. I see a clear financial motive to cheat (cue reference to the amorality of corporations), but some subset of people cheat all the way down that hierarchy in sports/cards/etc. /slightly OT, but thematically in line, I think: I'm a rather avid am…

What surprises me is how prevalent their cheating was; most of the cheaters described in this article are quite good even without cheating; if they cheated on say a single hand per round, they might easily get away with it while still getting a significant competitive advantage (in particular if they randomly arranged things some of the time that they weren't signaling), but this sounds like they cheated every single time they were North/South and the opponent was Declarer.

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#46

Post by epx »

laxatives wrote: post #30
sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

I enjoy bridge, but high level competitive bridge sounds like a nightmare. "Expert poker players often take advantage of a skill they call table feel: an ability to read the facial expressions and other unconscious “tells” exhibited by their opponents. Bridge players rely on table feel, too, but in bridge not all tells can be exploited legally by all players. If one of my opponents hesitates during the bidding or the…

Seems very arbitrary. There's a very similar card game in Spain called Truco (and in Italy called Briscola). Truco accepts communication and even bluffing as a core component. There are very standard system for hidden communication, like a wink representating a particular strong card and pursing the lips means another. Because these are so well known, its common to either wait for the right moment to share info, or i…

In some Brazilian variants of Truco, the communication must not be noted. If the adversary can tell that gesture X means Y, you lose a point.

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#47

Post by cbd1984 »

toyg wrote: post #40
laxatives wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems very arbitrary. There's a very similar card game in Spain called Truco (and in Italy called Briscola). Truco accepts communication and even bluffing as a core component. There are very standard system for hidden communication, like a wink representating a particular strong card and pursing the lips means another. Because these are so well known, its common to either wait for the right moment to share info, or i…

In a similar way, another Italian card game, "tressette", has a set of formalized signals which you are forced to use (and are limited to) when opening a round, without lying - "i have other cards of this type", "this is my last card of this type" and "I want your strongest card" (I know them as striscio/volo/busso, but they change regionally). So you have a situation where card and signal technically mean one thing…

Something that leads to fights and loud arguments sounds like a pretty unsavory vice...

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#48

Post by cbd1984 »

k_sze wrote: post #29

I have never played bridge so my opinion is of a complete outsider's. You can also see me as the devil's advocate. What if we just accepted "cheating" to be part of the game? Such that every team is allowed to devise their own way to communicate in subtle manners (barring the use of electronic devices). And so part of the game would be to figure out the opposing team's code. There is really no way to prevent communic…

If you take that to a logical extreme (and humans do take things to logical extremes... ) it becomes a game more about electronics intelligence (jamming, jam evasion, cryptography, steganography... ) which, don't get me wrong, would be amazingly amusing to watch if you even could watch it, but would devalue the relative contributions of the card players and would put more emphasis on having money for equipment and the salaries of specialists.

You could fix that by making sure every team has the same budget and watching the financials closely to ensure nobody goes even one cent over, which should once again move the competition into the realm of being mind against mind instead of checkbook against checkbook. For added fun, make all purchases and hiring decisions (and make sure all team members are hired and salaried out of the total budget) public information, so each team can fret about what every other team just spent money on and why and how all those things can be used and which are decoys and which decoys are actually useful and we should buy that decoy and...

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#49

Post by machinshin_ »

toyg wrote: post #40
laxatives wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems very arbitrary. There's a very similar card game in Spain called Truco (and in Italy called Briscola). Truco accepts communication and even bluffing as a core component. There are very standard system for hidden communication, like a wink representating a particular strong card and pursing the lips means another. Because these are so well known, its common to either wait for the right moment to share info, or i…

In a similar way, another Italian card game, "tressette", has a set of formalized signals which you are forced to use (and are limited to) when opening a round, without lying - "i have other cards of this type", "this is my last card of this type" and "I want your strongest card" (I know them as striscio/volo/busso, but they change regionally). So you have a situation where card and signal technically mean one thing…

Ah there's an Indian card game called 904 "nine nought four" that's the same way. It's great fun :)

Re: A cheating scandal in the world of professional bridge

#50

Post by analog31 »

k_sze wrote: post #29

I have never played bridge so my opinion is of a complete outsider's. You can also see me as the devil's advocate. What if we just accepted "cheating" to be part of the game? Such that every team is allowed to devise their own way to communicate in subtle manners (barring the use of electronic devices). And so part of the game would be to figure out the opposing team's code. There is really no way to prevent communic…

I don't know about bridge either, but I think that all rules of sports and games are conventions, which I suspect evolve to optimize enjoyment for players and fans.

In a sport with "offensive" and "defensive" sides, a poorly thought out set of rules could give a compelling advantage to one side or the other, making the sport un-interesting to watch. Rules will evolve over time as new techniques are developed, that give a particular style of play too much of an advantage.

If you don't know what's actually occurring in the game, because it's happening in a trailer next to the arena, then your interest in watching the game may wane.

In some sports, the suspicion of widespread cheating (such as doping and financial shenanigans) at the elite level dampens public enthusiasm, which becomes a marketing issue.

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