I want to be polite, but are you KIDDING ME? Honestly, absent further information I would assume this post is a joke.

The easy explanation for these huddles is that the opponents are just not strong players. Period. There is no hint of an ethical quandary.

Your argument is essentially that given their experience, it is inconceivable that they are bad enough to have to think on the hands listed. Well I have news for you: experience doesn’t imply even a slight amount of skill. Neither does a masterpoint count. If you think that either makes a strong bridge player, I have an excellent selection of bridges to sell you.

I have seen you make posts complaining about what you see as the lack of proper ethics in club games. You have complained that the prevailing attitude among good players is to let hesitations slide, and you have argued that directors should be more proactive about educating players about ethics.

I think this post shows why it is totally impractical for directors to do what you’d like them to. Before a player learns that it is inappropriate to pause without a problem, they have to learn that they have no problem on either of the hands listed above. Obviously those players were not strong enough to realize that. THIS IS NOT AN ETHICS PROBLEM. THIS IS A BRIDGE SKILL PROBLEM.

The same is true for UI problems in club games. Whenever you find yourself about to complain that some club player took advantage of UI, ask yourself if that player would be able to consistently solve intermediate level bidding, declarer play, and defensive problems. The answer will almost always be no. If you look at online bridge forums, you will find some very good players who disagree about the correct approach when faced with UI. If that is the case, how can you possible expect Mr. and Mrs. Guggenheim at the club to have a chance to parse logical alternatives etc?

I read your last paragraph with interest. Please, call the director and tell them that you were mislead by the hesitation. Explain that the opponents have violated Law 73 by varying tempo when it might mislead you. Explain that the opponents didn’t have a bridge problem, as no player could possibly be bad enough at bridge to think in the positions you listed above, despite the fact that your opponents just did exactly that.

Let me offer some advice. If you haven’t figured out that weak players will hesitate out of panic when their partner jumps in their void (EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE NOWHERE TO RUN!) then you need to work on your table feel, not go on an ethics crusade against players who don’t know any better. If you haven’t figured out that weak players will hesitate with a weak notrump and length in your suit, you need to work on your table feel, not go on an ethics crusade against players who don’t know any better. If your opponents hesitate in these situations or any like them, do not put them on Ethics Lookout or any such nonsense. Make a mental note that they do this, and use it to your advantage.

That the type of bridge situation that causes a player to hesitate varies with the sophistication of the player seems irrefutable to me.

That one person can be as certain as is Jim that Players 1 and Players 2, whom he does not even know, are players who felt that the given problems required breaks in tempo, is to me unpalatable.

Let’s take the examples one by one.

Does Player 1 recognize that his partner holds at least seven, probably eight, solid or nearly solid spades for rebidding 4S opposite a passing partner? Well, I happen to know Player 1 and I would judge the answer to be “yes”. My judgment is not based upon over how many years Player 1 has accumulated master points; rather it is based upon my observations of the success Player 1 has enjoyed in tournaments over the last couple of years. That success, even in bracketed events, is not likely to be linked to a bidding judgment so impaired as to think that the subject hand has any rationale choice but to Pass. Might the timing of the chosen pass be coffeehousing, designed to suggest consideration of raising spades further and to make less attractive a double by our side? Maybe. That is why Player 1 is on my Ethics Lookout list.

Had Player 2 been dealt a different 12 count with the same heart holding, say, QT, Q973, K8, KQ982, I could be convinced that Player 2 was considering overcalling 2C. As poor a choice as I think would be the overcall, I recognize that many players are point-counters and passing an opening bid when there is an alternative to consider can be perceived as a difficult decision. But on the subject hand, where there is no five card suit to overcall and insufficient HCP to come close to a 1NT overcall, would Player 2 recognize in short time that there is no call worth making? Well, I happen to know Player 2 and again I would judge the answer to be “yes” … for similar reasons as for Player 1. That is why Player 2 is on my Ethics Lookout list to see if future actions appear to be coffeehousing actions.

Certainly we have each competed against unsophisticated players whose hesitations mean nothing: they can be thinking about bidding matters that seem incredibly straight forward to others more sophisticated, or they might not be thinking about bridge at all. That is why acting on an interpretation of the cause of their hesitations is at the risk of the interpreter. To conclude, without knowing them, that Players 1 and 2 are players of such low sophistication that they had what-were-for-them bridge reasons for the hesitations and that they are incapable of unethical coffeehousing, is without foundation. No hint of ethical quandary? Hardly.

You say:
That one person can be as certain as is Jim that Players 1 and Players 2, whom he does not even know, are players who felt that the given problems required breaks in tempo, is to me unpalatable.

I infer that Players 1 and 2 had to think about their bids in those situations because… wait for it… THEY ACTUALLY DID!!! IMAGINE! A PLAYER WHO THOUGHT THEY HAD A PROBLEM ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT IT!!! This has NOTHING whatsoever to do with making a prior judgment of the abilities of the players involved. The fact that they DID HESITATE is all the evidence I need. It is far more palatable to assume that a player is hesitating because they need to think, as opposed to making the assumption that they are intentionally trying to mislead you.

Your assertion that Player one was hesitating to fake a raise and dissuade a double is totally laughable. I am willing to bet the player in question had a zillion and one tells that indicated that they hated 4S. Furthermore, there is no possible hand that would ever have to think about raising 4S, as responder passed initially. The example hand you gave is a raise, obviously. The hesitation makes defending 4S more attractive, not less attractive, and bidding 5D with Qx of spades got what it deserved. Seriously. Take a poll. Give some players you know the auction and the hesitation and ask them to provide possible explanations. It is completely obvious to me, as it will be to everybody else, what is going on. Go ahead, post it on bridgewinners or something.

On the second hand, a similar thing is true. EVEN IF we make the assumption that they are unethical players, what POSSIBLE interest could they have in hesitating with their hand? To tell declarer they have values? I suggest reading the following excellent blog post. http://justinlall.com/2007/04/01/how-to-read-your-opponents-hesitations/

If you don’t want to bother, I will quote the relevant portion.

“How about this one, you open 1D and your LHO thinks for a while and passes at favorable vulnerability. What does LHO probably have?

It is very likely he has at least an opening bid with diamond length.”

Huh, interesting. Is it possible that when they hesitate over our 1H, the same thing is true?

I take offense at your post. I do NOT believe that these opponents are incapable of being unethical. I DO believe that if they are unethical, they are being rather stupid about it, because their hesitations don’t mislead anybody. If a competent player took their hesitations at face value, they would be MORE likely to solve the problems at the table.

Basically, you are faced between accepting that your opponents made a mistake (note that this does NOT make them bad players – I suppose you would hate to be judged by your 5D bid for instance) and had to think about something that on reflection was not a problem, or that they are intentionally trying to swindle you (and very badly at that).

I prefer not to accuse people of cheating, or put them on “ethical watch lists” unless there is evidence that CANNOT plausibly be explained away by making a mistake. For example, if a player makes an absurd bid that works out, and explains it by saying they miscounted their hand, I would not put them on “ethical watch lists” and make blog posts about it.

I believe you are so off base about your reads on these problems that I encourage you to put it to the test.

Make 2 polls on bridgewinners. Describe the hands as you did here. Ask the general public to rate their concern that the opponents may have been coffeehousing you on a scale ranging from no concern whatsoever to very concerned.

If in either of those polls, no concern whatsoever does not win a plurality of votes (discounting abstentions) I will make a large donation (we can discuss the amount) to a charity of your choice.

If no concern whatsoever DOES win a plurality of votes in both polls, you make a donation to a charity of MY choice.

Sound like a deal?

Jim, I hope your apparent certainty about all matters serves you well. My approach is to gather evidence before concluding. I note matters that appear out of character for the perceived sophistication of the subject player so as to try to determine from future evidence whether what I noted is affirmed or should be discounted: that is what the Ethics Lookout is about.

I don’t understand, or accept, your challenge as to a bidding poll. One, I am not arguing now, and did not argue in the blog, that the bidding choices of my side were good decisions. Two, to conduct a poll that deals with whether an anonymous player has coffeehoused seems fruitless: I would expect the respondents to say (as would I) “depends upon what I know about the player”.

To me this just shows how messed up masterpoints are. You can accumulate quite a lot of them while feasting on chum in I/N, bracketed, Gold Rush, and “unlimited” club games that don’t draw many good players. There are plenty of mediocre players in this category. While I suppose I will officially be a Life Master when I hit 500 MPs, it won’t feel like much of an accomplishment. Gold Life Master, now that is a fairly significant accomplishment.

Jeff,

It was not my intention to get involved in this brouhaha but I just had to speak up. All my bridge life (even before Bobby appeared), I have fought the evils of unethical practices .. regardless of the reasons behind the action/s .. and suppose I will continue till my dying breath!

The responsibility of resolving these unpleasant issues should be in the hands of qualified authorities .. the so-called Bridge Police. The closed eyes policy is not acceptable. Positive action is called for. At the club level, it is the owner/director who is responsible for putting these matters to rest.

In many cases, the failure to do so can be traced back to the money issue .. as no one wants to lose a customer .. let alone two .. or even four! As I see it, being a newbie is hardly a good enough reason to lead the opponent/s astray by hesitation/s .. deliberate or otherwise. A player should not be placed in the position of having to guess what the enemy was thinking about!

From a personal standpoint, I have seen an immense improvement in the protocol and ethics at the club level. The reason? The sort of thing you mention was happening far too frequently and had to be stopped! I found it became increasingly frustrating and at one point I called the director and in a respectful manner the unfair ramifications of hesitations were explained to the offenders. Word got around and it has made a huge difference.

However, one of the primary thorns in the field of directing (especially at the higher levels) is that many are unqulified to perform that task. Perhaps these adjudictors should have better training which reflects on Horn Lake. Bobby tried to do something about that issue on his own dime .. and as I have mentioned before .. a deaf ear was turned so it is no surprise these discussions continue.

I appreciate that this issue was brought before the bridgeblogging public as hesitations (without actions) can only lead to ugly issues!

Hi Jeff & Jim,

While both my instincts and experience favor Jeff’s insight instead of Jim’s. let us instead consider what might be necessary to improve bruised feelings to each other and most importantly to club bridge throughout ACBL land.

The ACBL should be expected to demand ethical compliance while playing tournament bridge and go out of their way to make every effort to teach whatever is necessary to acquaint newbies, novices and/or beginners to those requirements, without which bridge ceases to be able to be qualified as even a game worth playing.

Obviously, because of the partnership angle, an unusual characteristic indigenous only to bridge as a competition, strict rules need to be established, without which the game will roam around in the desert for more than even 40 years without being playable.

Instead, and probably because of the money angle (already mentioned), the ACBL allows clubs to forget about this necessary caveat in an effort to try and get bridge hooked into their to-do list, without gambling on their not thinking kind to that condition and not learn to play.

Can anyone imagine how trivial forms of competitive endeavors (all sports) or even life in general would be without necessary guidelines on what is permissible and what is not?

Bridge without ethical guidelines would be the laughable game Jim suggests when he talks about what he considers to not be a plausible reason for what Jeff considers possible.

Without ACBL’s necessary intervention not only for their home office instructions, but from their TD training, all the way down to constant reminders, with specific examples of flooding the guidelines .. it makes that knowledge a condition precedent, along with the dues, to satisfy the contract of being a member.

BTW, I do agree with Jeff, almost 100%, in his contentions of likely reasons for the controversial hesitations mainly because of the previous successes of that partnership which strongly indicates that pair knew what they do by using those questionable tactics to their advantage.

When coincidences occur in bridge, it has proven 90+% likely (during my many years in policing our beloved game) that when there is smoke, there is almost always a fire around.

Knowing the players is key. Neither is what-I-would-call a “newbie”. Quite possible that neither was playing much, or any, bridge 5 or 10 years ago. But each has played more tournament events in the last two-three years than I bet I have in the last 15 years. I hope readers remember, through all the back and forth, that my point was only that the players are on my Ethics Lookout. Based upon my perception of their skill level, I don’t think the hands merit the breaks in tempo they exhibited. If a “newbie” had broken tempo on the subject hands, my expectations would be altered.

Unless one were to count the partner of Player 2’s failure to pre-balance (which I can’t count, because I have no idea whether pre-balancing is part of the partnership’s arsenal), neither of these examples involve actions taken by the partners of Player 1 and 2 that could be attributed to Unauthorized Information. That being said, my experience at club bridge is similar to what Bobby suggests: (1) the partners or players who break tempo seem to avoid choosing Logical Alternatives that are contra-indicated by the breaks in tempo; and (2) directors seem generally to find a way to avoid disturbing the table result.

What bothers me about my club experience is that I don’t think that a director/owner would lose customers by ruling according to bridge law rather than grasping for excuses to not disturb the table result. A director who can compassionately describe the reasoning behind a change in table result — that is, a director who focuses on how the laws are generally designed to protect the opponents without casting allegations of cheating toward the pair that broke tempo — will not lose customers. Instead, what such director will produce is a cadre of players who learn that good ethics are as much a part of bridge education as are good play and good bidding. And that would be a Good Thing.

Jeff,

You are a better man than I. I faced a situation that bears some similarities to yours … but rather than attribute malice to the opposing pair (back to back hands at the same table), I went with the Napoleonic attribution of lack of experience/talent. In my case, I called the instance “Poker at the table and why I no longer play club Bridge.”

In my case, the two opponents were gentlemen I knew. One, a father of the other without much Bridge talent. The other, my RHO, was somebody I thought was an up and comer. In fact, I had paired with him in an Epson Simultaneous World Pairs and was impressed. On both hands at the table, my side opened up a spade in fourth chair and wended our ways to a game in that suit. On each hand, we had chance to make the hand, but it turns out my young buck on the right had passed an opening hand with five spades. Good counting led to losing finesses and a bad result. Twice!

Ummmm, I didn’t react that well [G]. I believe snarling was involved. Asked to explain why, my erstwhile FORMER Epson partner said, in all seriousness, that he didn’t want to open a ‘marginal’ hand playing against the two best defenders in the room. (My partner is now one of the top players in South Africa, I was along for the ride). Both Roth and Stone would have opened either hand.

Well, that’s a backhanded compliment where I come from, especially as we had had two tops turned into two bottoms because we COULD count points. I stopped playing there that night because I’d come for Bridge and a Poker game had broken out.

The same director that night was a lady who at a previous club refused to act on blatant cheating going on by a particular individual who had marvelous results on the last hand of each round, but was so bad with unauthorized info from his fennec-like hearing that he almost never placed. I asked the director to simply station herself within hearing distance of the guy’s (regular) table for a night. I assumed she’d either stop the yappy true perps at the table behind his or would actually catch him notating results in advance (or both). She refused. He was a paying customer and I didn’t attend with anywhere near his regularity. And these were the days of free play awards to winners. I didn’t pay all that often either. (Good partners). Him vs me? No chance.

Given my later heart attacks, it was probably good that I quit playing club bridge. And I thought (and proved to my own level of belief) that cheaters existed at that level. But in the end, they kept playing and I stayed home reading my Bridge books. So, who won?

Jeff, you’ve shared so much with the Bridge community that I hope you understand that this shouldn’t be taken as chastisement. I tend to believe you were coffee-housed on the first one, not on the second. Table feel truly does win out. But as Bobby and Judy has mentioned, turning Don Quixote in the battle over club Bride ethics is a tough, tough road. Continue on, if you wish. But I think you have lots of good writing ahead of you on other matters. Judge accordingly.

GM