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This is a translation of an article written by Jan van Cleeff. It appeared in NRC Handelsblad, one of the major Dutch newspapers. One of the reasons to translate and publish it here was the recent discussion on OKBridge on cheating. Since I completely agree with the opinion that cheating is bad for OKBridge, but covering up cheating cases (with or without proper measures taken) is even worse, I see no reason not to publish. I think the complete report of the Committee (anonymized or not) should become available on the Web also.
The article can be roughly divided in three parts:
Do you play bridge? Then I have a tip for the newest
addiction: OKBridge.
First the expenses. Well, I can't think of a cheaper addiction. Yeah,
maybe smoking, but I can't come up with something else quickly. Let's add,
a nice PC costs $1500, a modem with software $300. Write it off in four
years. OKBridge membership $70, Internet account $150, extra phone costs
in a year about $600. In brief, for less than $10 a day you can play bridge
for three, four hours each and every day. Simply sitting in front of the
screen on your desk. And when you already have a PC, it is even cheaper.
Playing bridge on the Internet. Possible with partners from all over the world. The American on-line bridge club OKBridge leads the way in these developments. Their Windows version is really a very nice piece of work, but you can play from DOS and UNIX too. When you join for the first time, OKBridge (http://www.okbridge.com/) wants to know who you are: name, address, but also your playing strength. You log in, give your password, after which you start to look for a game. You can choose: are you going to play yourself ('player mode') or are you only going to watch ('spectator mode'). Little messages appear on the screen, like 'Need one here on advanced level...' or 'Which expert pair takes us on?'. You can choose between different forms of scoring: pairs, rubber, imps, teams-of-four. On a weekly and yearly basis the scores of every individual OKBridge player are registered: his MP-percentage, his average IMP-score, the number of hands played, and with whom he played them. Talking about the information era.
Every week the computer generates a new set of 1000 hands. That same computer for that matter prevents you from playing a hand twice. Most players are from the Anglo-Saxon part of the world, but you can end up as easily with a Chinese and an Argentine at your table. Bridge fraternizes, doesn't it? Apparently this is what bridge is going to look like in the next century. Up until now everything that was related to Internet and computer games was described as 'virtual', an imitation of reality. This is going further, it is a new reality. The addictive effect is that you can play or watch at every hour of the day. Even better than existing reality. Smoky rooms and annoying behaviour of partners or opponents do not count anymore.
"You are all alone in front of that screen. But isn't bridge also a social event?" you will object. It is better than you think. Just take a look how things work in practice.
Tuesday, 20 februari 1996. Ten o'clock in the evening. Too early to go to bed. So I surf on the net for a while. Log in on OKBridge. Not in the mood for a session of play. But wait. There is a table with four good players. Their names are the same as their login codes. West is Masa from Japan, North an American named God. Hmm, not troubled by false modesty. East is Watchdog, someone from Tilburg, and South is Onno from Leiden. I go to spectator mode and follow the play as kibitzer. "You are just in time" I hear someone say to me. "I wonder if NS can get out of these difficulties here.". Kibitzers can talk to each other. The players can't hear that. Expert tables sometimes attract twenty or more kibitzers, exchanging comments. A cosy meeting.
This hand is on the screen:
| West | North | East | South |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masa | God | Watchdog | Onno |
| - | - | 1 |
pass |
| 4 |
dbl | pass | 4 |
| pass | pass | dbl | pass |
| pass | pass |
K.
The kibitzers are chatting: "Typical Eastern lead, a mysterious trump king".
Someone remarks that the contract will be down, because East will be be
in the lead with 
A or 
in time, and he will reach his partner by leading a low heart to
get his club ruff. Let's see how Onno handles this. He takes the first
trick with the ace of trumps and continues with a heart (!). East takes
and plays a heart back, ruffed by declarer. He continues with J
to the ace of Watchdog, who has no winning option left now, so 4
is made. Well played by Onno. By his manoeuvre in hearts ( a Scissors Coup)
he cut the communications between Tokio and Tilburg. I check the menu-option
with the scores. It is IMPs, and the hand has been played 30 times. Most
tables played 4 in EW just
made; +590 means 15 imps for NS. So it was nice timing after all
by this God fellow.
In America OKBridge flourishes. They organize Knockout Teams Tournaments, in which very strong teams with professionals participate. In your study you suddenly find yourself playing against a world champ. Very exciting. But recently some problems occurred.
First a little question. You hold 64 KJ543 A73 A87.
Left opponent passes, partner opens 1,
right opponent passes. What is your bid? I'll come back on this later.
End last year the problems arose. A team consisting of two Americans and two European players joined the Knockouts. Despite their non-expert level the team succeeded in reaching the final stages of the tournament. They had to play a team of reknowned experts in the semi-finals. And the latter lost the match to everybody's surprise. "I had a very unpleasant feeling about the match", said one of the experts afterwards. "They didn't play great, but at the critical moments they made some remarkable good decisions. Their play was sometimes so unlikely, that it literally made me sick.". The hands were analysed one by one, while in the meantime similar experiences from previous matches were reported. Rumours started to go round. The organization had a big problem. Very quickly an international Conducts & Ethics Committe was formed. Soon it turned out that the investigations pointed at one of the European players. An analysis of a few hundred hands showed regular strange bids and plays by this person, call her mrs. Smith. A characteristic example was the above mentioned hand. She managed to pass her partner's opening bid with an opening of her own! It turned out to be the winning bid, because her partner had a psychic opening on only eigth HCP. The committee encountered quite a few (20+) of these highly remarkable play- and bid-decisions. Their decision was unanimous: guilty. But guilty of what? Guilty of playing with U.I., was the official statement. U.I. stands for Unauthorized information. Mrs. Smith would have had, in one way or antoher, unauthorized information on the hands she was playing. The committee didn't want to go as far as proving that. For the possibilities to cheating are unlimited, thanks to for instance the option to log in as spectator on OKBridge. Maybe mrs. Smith had two computers at her disposal. The first one she uses to log in as a player, the second to log in as a spectator. That would allow her to see all the hands of the deal she is playing at the same time. Or she makes a phone call to a friend who has a computer and logs in as spectator...
Will these kind of practices affect the fun of playing OKBridge? I don't think so. Among the thousands of players on the network, there will always be a few lunatics who can't resist the temptation, but the majority will play strictly according to the rules and ethics. It is a lot more exciting to play with only 13 cards, isn't it? Besides, you will be caught quickly as you can learn from the case of mrs. Smith. She will probably, as first-time offender, get away with a severe warning, but the next time she can forget about playing on-line Bridge any longer.
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