The Turkish Bridge Federation (TBF – Türkíye Bríç Federasyonu) posted an interesting statement about online cheating. We report here an English summary from the original Turkish text you can read on TBF official page.
Online bridge which has been very popular and only place to continue bridge with the current conditions is suffering from cheaters. Some of those are top level world champions who confessed their cheatings on some bridge sites. None of those confessions came due to regret bur rather being detected, investigated and confronted with evidence.
How did they get caught?
1-Especially in recent couple months, BBO administration started to make very serious works and investments. BBO integrated new technology in their system and started to monitor under their microscope the top-level events that are mostly played by top players .
2- Nicolas Hammond is a programmer who published a book named ” Detecting Cheating at Bridge” in 2009. Hammond obtained the patent for the system he created which basically works by using statistics and math and algorithm. The results of his system have given amazing results. System has shown some players and their results does not reflect their real bridge level and skills and these results had been shared by event organizers. After this point investigating the names that system alerts and flags became much easier.
Turkish Bridge Federation started to work with Mr. Hammond.
All the board details (bidding, lead, declarer play and defense) of last 1 month of TBF events are sent to Mr. Hammond. Hands are analyzed by his system and first results are received now.
A lot of players have been started to be monitored and investigated since then. TBF decided to use this program in all of its events from now on. From now on there is no requirement to be complained by another player or pair in order to be investigated for cheating.
After all of this TBF decided to have a committee which will monitor and investigate the players or pairs which are flagged by this program. Which may or may not lead to send these players to the discipline committee depending on the result of their work. TBF is committed to follow these cases closely and make sure that perpetrators are punished without leniency.
Our hope is that our players are not in habit of doing things that will harm our game.
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[English translation by Timuçin “Timo” Erkoç for Neapolitan Club]