" CHEATING DOGS ARE OUT THERE....SOMEWHERE ? ".... ( First of a series of articles by Dr. Sigmund T. Schukelgruber )

Sadly, cards and cheating go hand in hand. This probably stems from the fact that the spoils of card games are wealth and fame, which many are prepared to sell their soul for. With much to be gained from winning at cards, certain win-at-all-cost players will resort to desperate and underhand tactics to turn the tide of results their way. Sadly, the opportunities for cheating at bridge are endless, which means the authorities in charge of the game have got to be viligant at all times, and committed to cracking down hard on those who are found to be guilty.

Cheating in bridge is defined as any behaviour outside those Laws, which are aimed to ensure players do not gain an unfair advantage over others. This may involve the actions of a sole player ( say, peeking at an opponent's cards ), partnerships, and even teams, Indeed, the gravest offence is for a partnership to exchange information through pre-arranged methods of communication other than those sanctioned by such Laws.

Linda Lee in one of her recent blogs ( Jan 14th) made a passing reference to players who have been known to signal by means of a pencil, hand and foot movements. Two days earlier Judy Kay-Wolff made two observations about crimes committed at the bridge table; (1) blatant pre-arranged cheating, (2) frequent unethical conduct via tell-tale hesitations, intonations or latent body movements. Well, I have looked long and hard into how cheating manifests itself in the world of bridge. And in this first article I shall be focussing on "hard" cheating, before moving onto the more subtle and perhaps inadvertant forms of soft cheating.

Hard cheating is clearly a direct and most obnoxious form of cheating in that it is blatant, unscruplous, and outrageous by any measure or application of ethical standards. One thing is for certain : the behaviour is both intentional and deliberate. Often planned from the outset, the perpetrators seek to create a permanent flow of opportunities, maximising their chances to secure an unfair advantage on each and every hand. Usually, the focus centres upon pre-arranged signalling methods and undisclosed bidding systems. These secret-coded messages and signals can be sent by a multitude of subtle facial/body language movements, which may involve highly significant time-delays, finger movements and/or positions, foot-touching, pencil and/or bidding card placements.......... to name but a few of the methods used. Developing a system where bids have a hidden but different meaning enables only one half of the table to obtain information, which should be made available to all. That degree of unfair knowledge can lead to significant unfair advantages, where winning becomesfar more likely given the reduced need to guess or play blind.

Other blatant forms of hard cheating include players deliberately peeking at opponents' cards, and eavesdropping on discussions elsewhere about hands just played. I can't help recall the time when an honest team-mate of mine jokingly said during an intercity match, that he was seriously disadvantaged when asked to play in the room with just a solitary table in play: he commented on the fact that he had no opportunity to hear what was being said about the boards on other tables. Peeking at the opponents' scorecards for earlier board results, or the way they sort their hand and the precise position of a card withdrawn from it, both add up to the same thing.........dishonest attempts to obtain information they are not entitled to, which of course provides them with an unfair advantage in relation to the rest of the field. Moreover, body language can easily be employed by defenders to signal for a particular lead or switch, which might not otherwise be made.

Some cruder forms of hard cheating involve score-keepers deliberately entering incorrect scores in the hope that unsuspecting opponents fail to notice. Similarily, if the opposition believe they have taken less tricks then they have, and this error was deliberately not pointed out to them, then dishonesty by omission can be established. Token shuffles can be a dishonest attempt to generate flat boards by a team, who by being well up at half-time are desperately seek to minimise the risk of big-swinging boards. But what is for sure is that man's ingenuity for cheating knows no bounds, and the determined cheat will always find new ways if old ones become too obvious or risky. One can only marvel ( in a perverse way ) at the cunning and inventiveness of the professional cheat.