[cherdano]

I think it is easy to miss the trees because of all the forest in this incident.

Consider just this one tree: the Spanish team captain intentionally interrupted play in the middle of the hand, after the start of an auction that was obviously good for the Americans (a slam hand starting with an uninterrupted strong club opening 1C-1H-1S). This is corroborated by several accounts (including Fluffy's). Edit: here is the traveller for this board - 8/12 tables in the open reached slam - http://www.worldbrid....1240&qphase=16
That alone should arguably lead to a severe penalty for the entire team; at the very least it should lead to the Spanish team captain being expelled from the entire tournament.

Gonzalo may well have had nothing to do with the entire affair. But nevertheless after such an action I would never want the Spanish team to win, regardless of whether I root for Fluffy personally. (I guess the only upside of a Spanish win would be that it improves the odds of the WBF being upended - a(nother) title won by a team that should have been disqualified could well help this cause.)
Anyone still rooting for the Spanish team hasn't thought this through, or doesn't care about the integrity of the game IMO.

[quiddity]

I don't know how severe the penalty ought to have been since I don't know the rules governing what a captain can/cannot do and I haven't seen any account describing the conversation between the captain and the tournament director. I am pretty sure that, given the state of the match, a slam swing hand was not "obviously good for the Americans" regardless of whether they were playing a strong club.

[Phil]

Thought about it more,and what Spain did was very unsporting. See my post on BW if interested.

Sorry Gonzalo I can't get behind this.

[hrothgar]

Phil, on 2016-September-13, 20:08, said:

Thought about it more,and what Spain did was very unsporting. See my post on BW if interested.

Sorry Gonzalo I can't get behind this.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The US teams pull all sorts of *****.
This time, they are on the receiving end.

I feel bad for Justin and his team (I don't know of any cases where they've pulled the type of ***** that Meckwell and Martel are known for)
Still, I'm not going to get too worked up over this.

[Phil]

hrothgar, on 2016-September-14, 07:15, said:

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The US teams pull all sorts of *****.
This time, they are on the receiving end.

I feel bad for Justin and his team (I don't know of any cases where they've pulled the type of ***** that Meckwell and Martel are known for)
Still, I'm not going to get too worked up over this.

Yeah there's a certain amount of karma here but it doesn't involve the USA players at hand.

[nige1]

I accept that Justin Lall and Gonzalo Goded are ethical and above criticism. Please treat these opinions, in that context.

The problem is over-sophisticated Bridge rules and sloppy enforcement,.

The WBF have a regulation forbidding an undisclosed agreement to open a 1-bid with a king below average. Many pairs regularly open 3rd in hand, with such hands. If this occurs often enough in a regular partnership, they are likely to have an implicit agreement.

The rule seems to be widely broken and almost never enforced. So what's the problem? Here are some concerns:

A few players masochistically comply with this rule and suffer significant handicap. Also, authorities surrender a hostage to fortune, when they allow players to pick which rules to obey; and permit directors to ignore certain infractions.

The regulation on "refusing to play" is also woolly and rarely enforced. In the past, international teams (mainly American) have initially refused to play against alleged "cheats" but escaped penalty. This has the appearance of a crude "gamesmanship" ploy that often seems to have been effective.

Players will suffer unnecessarily until regulators simplify/clarify the rules, and directors try to enforce them, consistently.

[helene_t]

nige1, on 2016-September-14, 08:40, said:

The WBF have a regulation forbidding an undisclosed agreement to open a 1-bid with a king below average.

FYP. All undisclosed agreements are against the laws. Certain (disclosed) agreements are against certain regulations.

[Aberlour10]

nige1, on 2016-September-14, 08:40, said:

I accept that Justin Lall and Gonzales Goded are ethical and above criticism. Please treat these opinions, in that context.

so as my opinions please.

First, the action taken by the spanish captain should never happen. Here ...we all agree.

But I dont agree with tries to construct some kind of "Winning-ugly" story due to this incident. Team Spain has been penalized by 10 imps for it., lost 2 imps on the interrupted hand.: No score damage for the USA.

There were no further incidents at the tables, Spain won clear. No reason for statements like.."they desere not..... etc etc.

They deserve....showing for example, just in this moment great perforrmance vs Monaco.

[nige1]

helene_t, on 2016-September-14, 09:07, said:

FYP. All undisclosed agreements are against the laws. Certain (disclosed) agreements are against certain regulations.

I take your point Helene_T.

Many top players appear to have this understanding, legal or not. Years ago, Cascade reported relevant observations on legal websites but nothing was ever done, as far as I know.

IMO, you are allowed to play such methods, if disclosed, at some World Championship level events; but they are classified as HUMs , so are subject to horrendous restrictions.

[Fluffy]

I just found this thread that I missed completely. I want to thank everyone who supported us.

I have mixed feelings because we did great, but we could ad done much better. In 2012 I cried when we failed to qualify by 2 VPs, not because of me, but because I felt it was my father's last chance. It is hard to explain how much has been stolen from my dad during this years of cheating.

According to unoficial third party works Lantaron Goded qualfied 1st, 3rd and 1st on the butler of 3 consecutive european championships in the early 90s, it was Giorgio Belladona himself who lectured another italian comentator on vugraph for talking as if Lantarón-Goded were "lucky" when they were the best European pair.

Sadly they were kind of alone and didn't even qualify for BB once.

Then they stopped winning, and it was not because they started to play worse, others started to do magic. Now that things have leveled back they were the best pair of the play offs by a large margin, and we finally had an option and we almost got it, but missed by an inch. Will we have another?.

I also suspect that directors were lenient with my team because of their history of 40 years of flawless conduct. As well as the rest of the team.

[hrothgar]

Fluffy, on 2016-October-01, 07:24, said:

According to unoficial third party works Lantaron Goded qualfied 1st, 3rd and 1st on the butler of 3 consecutive european championships in the early 90s, it was Giorgio Belladona himself who lectured another italian comentator on vugraph for talking as if Lantarón-Goded were "lucky" when they were the best European pair.

Sadly they were kind of alone and didn't even qualify for BB once.

Then they stopped winning, and it was not because they started to play worse, others started to do magic. Now that things have leveled back they were the best pair of the play offs by a large margin, and we finally had an option and we almost got it, but missed by an inch. Will we have another?.

You'd think after your team became a near laughing stock for the piss poor nature of the analysis that underlay the charges you brought against Bathurst and Lall you might have learned something...

But no. Here you are essentially claiming that all the pairs that outscored Lantaron-Goded were cheating...

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the pairs who were scoring well WERE cheating, but this isn't how you deal with this sort of thing.
You do real analysis, make specific claims, and back this with real data.

So let's hear it...
Who were the pairs in Wroclaw whose performance suddenly didn't measure up to what they were achieving before?

[Phil]

hrothgar, on 2016-October-01, 08:28, said:

You'd think after your team became a near laughing stock for the piss poor nature of the analysis that underlay the charges you brought against Bathurst and Lall you might have learned something...

But no. Here you are essentially claiming that all the pairs that outscored Lantaron-Goded were cheating...

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the pairs who were scoring well WERE cheating, but this isn't how you deal with this sort of thing.
You do real analysis, make specific claims, and back this with real data.

So let's hear it...
Who were the pairs in Wroclaw whose performance suddenly didn't measure up to what they were achieving before?

Additionally, winners do not conduct themselves the way Spain did.

Contrast to what the US Seniors did in Bali. They were playing against the dirtiest known pair at the time, and they were essentially asked to 'play on'. They figured out a way to break their code - and they did.

Gonzo, I am happy you got as deep as you did, but it would have been better to focus on bridge and not extreme gamesmanship.

[Fluffy]

I expected way better from you and others Phil, I don't know if it is more insulting for me or for you to even suggest that after missing qualify finishing 5th in 2004, 2008, and 2012, we would retire in 2016 in a close match just by the offchance of influencing concentration of.... Lall-Bathust and Hamson-Greco!

It is quite laughable that you can even think this would affect them more than us.


About Bali comparison... what the *****? are you really comparing Justin with the doctors? I was going to explain something, but just comparing both of them is revolting.

[Fluffy]

Sorry Richard will have to answer that privately only.

[Phil]

Fluffy, on 2016-October-01, 14:09, said:

I expected way better from you and others Phil, I don't know if it is more insulting for me or for you to even suggest that after missing qualify finishing 5th in 2004, 2008, and 2012, we would retire in 2016 in a close match just by the offchance of influencing concentration of.... Lall-Bathust and Hamson-Greco!

It is quite laughable that you can even think this would affect them more than us.


About Bali comparison... what the *****? are you really comparing Justin with the doctors? I was going to explain something, but just comparing both of them is revolting.

1. And I expected better from you and your teammates Gonzo. I don't know what you mean by 'retire'. I hope it doesn't mean, "we will win at all costs which includes creating a diversion".

2. Of course its going to affect them. Imagine if JLall would have stood up in the last segment and said to the WBF and your captain, "Jordi and Gonzalo are playing some sort of encrypted carding (illegal), and Im not sitting down until you review the hand history". Of course, you can take out this pair and play his Dad or the other pair. To not see the fallout of this is really amazing. As Bathurst left the table in the last segment, he said, "you guys should be ashamed of yourself". And he's totally right.

3. No of course I'm not comparing Justin with the doctors, but the situations are similar. In both cases, Spain (USA seniors) thought their opponents were doing something illegal. The USA Seniors played on in spite of ...cough...hack...cough being a huge distraction. Your team threw a tantrum and left!

[Phil]

Fluffy, on 2016-October-01, 14:09, said:

... after missing qualify finishing 5th in 2004, 2008, and 2012...

Gonzo - I like you too much to get overly negative here, and I am really happy you guys went as far as you did. I think this will give you some momentum for the next cycle of the Europeans. Clearly you have established yourselves as a world-class team and competitive and I hope you can build on it. Plus you and Jordi play really well together and I hope that you have the opportunity to come to the US for some nationals.

Dude, a few months ago you posted about what a rough draw for the first few matches you had in your GROUP. And you crushed!

But I hope that in a few months you look back on this and listen to what most of the world was saying after the incident and realize there was a better way to handle the situation.

[Fluffy]

There were better ways to handle the situation, I told you, I shouldn't had sit back and should had played a role as I knew Justin while my team didn't. But I didn't, I found an excuse not to act*. Still the directors have more to be ashamed than us.

The voices you hear all say the same, but there are some I hear that applaud what we did, they don't convince me, but they tell me things aren't as clear as they seem to be for anyone who thinks psyching in 3rd position is "just bridge", A team-mate overheard a director saying after we won that it didn't matter, USA was going home one way or another. It probably was just the personal opinion of one of many directors, but hints that they were taking the thing more seriously than you'd think.


As I told Richard, we didn't play great, my partnership performed better than in 2012, but the others slighly underperformed. The real difference was that the others played worse. And it also happened in Budapest, everyone is making more mistakes with the cameras than they used to do 3 years ago. It is hard to explain but the feeling is very real. Now there is a window of clean game cheater free, I don't know how long will it remain open before someone develops a method encrypted enough to warrant not being catched, but I am glad we could get use of it this time.

[barmar]

Do we really need to hash this out here? Wasn't there enough arguing on Bridge Winners about it?

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2016-October-04, 08:16, said:

Do we really need to hash this out here? Wasn't there enough arguing on Bridge Winners about it?

Your the one necroing a thread that hasn't seen a post in four days

[Phil]

barmar, on 2016-October-04, 08:16, said:

Do we really need to hash this out here? Wasn't there enough arguing on Bridge Winners about it?

I cannot think of a more perfect place since Gonzalo is a very frequent BBF contributor and can probably speak more openly about it here.

I think this conversation has run its course, however, and I hope it ended on a positive note.