Thomas Hanlon and Rory Boland gradually turned up the volume thru Session 1 to Session 3. Placed 6th of the 40 pairs in the first session and despite going thru a dodgy patch on Saturday night the top seed emerged on Sunday morning with about 61% session to overtake the puffing Onisulk and deRaeymaker.
Results can be found at
http://www.bridgewebs.com/joemurray/
Well most of them .. I could only see 10 boards of session 1 but such is my life.
Hanlon and Boland done them like Seabiscuit as my mate in the pub says when he wins a game of DON.
I think Seabiscuit is a horse from the 50s.
...........................................
A message on coughing I received last week
Eamonn,
What
baffles me the most is the following ......
These
are 2 very intelligent men - medical doctors of some repute, and world class
bridge experts.
So
- If they were going to devise a cheating system - such as the alleged "coughing
code" - SURELY THE F*** they could have come up with something more complex than
1 cough for clubs, 2 for diamonds etc.
This
is so bloody simple an approach that a serious potential cheater should be
embarrassed for trying something so easy to decipher. (An Italian would
CERTAINLY blush).
There
was a company I worked for a few years ago - the operators used passwords such
as "johnny", "mick", "tommy" etc - The CIA would have had a hard job hacking
into their computers !
What
I'm saying - is that if I (or anyone of sound mind) was going to invent a
cheating system based on coded coughs - I would certainly make the effort to
make the code a little bit difficult to crack.
e.g.:-
Would use different cough numbers according to Board Numbers, vulnerability,
time of session etc.
So
maybe 3 coughs would show club shortage when we were non-vul on an even-numbered
board, and it would show spade shortage at game all between 1 and 2 hours into
the session etc etc.
Now
- try and decipher that Donna and Eddie !
Now
- if a simple lad like Tommy Cardplayer. can come up with a code like above - how come
our 2 German geniuses come up with something that a jack russell pup could solve
in half an hour ?
What
do you think yourself.
(Should
I write up a new weasel cough system and market it ?).
..............
Above is Eddie Wolds article on the detection from bridgewinners.com
and there is lots more discussion and comments on
.................
Above is some of the other side of the story
...............
Personally I don't care one way or the other if these chaps cheated. It was always unlikely that I would ever play against them. Probably 90% of bridge players "cheat" without even knowing it. 20% of bridge players would be termed sharp or cute.
A friend of mine told a story once about playing against two elderly folk who stopped in 3NT and then one of them indicated she meant to bid 4H but forgot. Our man indicated they could change back as he had a Heart stack or whatever.
The opponents after going down in 4H were heard talking about the nice man who let them change their bid from 3NT (cold) to 4H (going down)
Would this be termed cheating or just sharp or perfectly normal.
Folk know the count by the speed of their partners play but mostly its not on purpose.
Folk hesitate and pass regularly as they don't realise this is tranmitting information.
Most folk don't even notice their partners hesitations anyway.
Then you have the chap whose hand does not fit his conventions exactly . Some of the time he quickly shapes his hand and bids anyway
Other times he hims and haws a little and eventually passes ..
..........
Myself and James tried the coughing system on BBO the other night against two friends of ours. They knew straight away where our shortages were.
The interesting question is if you play Cough Cough what do you use the normal splinter bids to show. You abviously don't need them for shortages.
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