This page is updated periodically from that. I occasionally make some additions/deletions to the wording here. I do not include any discussion - see the Facebook page for that. I do not necessarily include all posts.
List of posts:
I currently have over 2000 pairs that played in the recent regional (not all data processed yet). There are over 500 pairs that have played 1000 or more boards in ACBL BBO events. Looking at all data, including pairs with 500-1000 total boards played, reasonable to assume between at least 25 pairs are cheating. Probably in the 40-50 range of the number of pairs that have been cheating in ACBL events.
The latest ACBL regional started yesterday (Thursday).
My computer has now processed more events.
Currently, there are over 1200 pairs that have played in this Regional. There are over 460 pairs that have played 500 boards or more in ACBL BBO events in the last 18 months. Of these 460 pairs, 14 are almost certainly cheating pairs; that is pairs that have cheated in ACBL on-line events and there is sufficient evidence to prove they have been cheating.
I rank pairs based on likelihood of cheating. From this Regional (so far),
1 in top 100 (the #2 ranked cheating pair is playing!!)
5 in top 200
10 in top 300
11 in top 400
14 in top 500
ACBL have convicted 7 pairs in my top 500. There are two pairs that I currently have ranked #507 and #667 that ACBL have convicted. Based on my current numbers, ACBL have convicted
3 in top 100 (#70, #72, #85)
6 in top 200
7 in top 500.
This shows how bad the cheating problem is.
There are twice as many cheating players in this one day of a Regional than ACBL has convicted in the last 18 months (for players with 1000+ total boards played).
The latest ACBL regional started yesterday (Thursday).
My computer has only processed about half of the events so far.
Currently, there are over 800 pairs that played. There were over 160 pairs that had played 1000 boards or more in ACBL BBO events in the last 18 months. Of these 160 pairs, 11 are almost certainly cheating pairs; that is pairs that have cheated in ACBL on-line events and there is sufficient evidence to prove they have been cheating.
ACBL continues to rank among the worst of all NBOs that I track in terms of the percentage of cheating players. In this instance, about 7% of the pairs that can be easily tested (those with 1000+ total) boards are cheating.
I recently played in an ACBL 18 board matchpoint game. There were 420 pairs. 203 pairs have played 1,000+ boards in ACBL BBO events. I looked up the pairs in my cheating database. There were at least 10 cheating pairs, probably more. These ten pairs are ranked 47, 56, 63, 133, 137, 166, 198, 315, 325, 359 in my ranked list of cheating pairs with 1,000+ boards played.
I have 11,600 pairs in this database. Over 3% of these pairs are cheating. These pairs are generally weaker players. For this event with 18 boards, none of these 10 pairs showed up in the overalls, but most won masterpoints. But some of the leads and defense are unbelievable.
The recent ACBL NAOBC was one of the cleaner on-line events.
There was only one pair that played that had clearly been cheating in the past. Compare this to the previous regional when there were many.
There is typically not enough data from just the NAOBC events to see if a pair is cheating beyond some reasonable doubt. For a tournament, I take a list of all the events, find a list of all of the partnerships, then look up the partnerships in my database of cheating pairs. For the one pair, I then manually looked at some of the boards and can be quite confident that they have cheated online in the past in ACBL BBO events.
There was one other pair, a couple, that were probably cheating. My two thresholds are, "Are they cheating?", "Would an NBO convict?". The answer to those two questions is Yes, "not sure". As there are so many cheating players, I generally only report the most egregious and obvious cases.
There were at least two US-based world class pros that were cheating last year in online events. It appears that both have gotten away with it.
There is one pair that includes a US-based world class player that was cheating that thought if they changed their BBO handle I would not catch them and their names would be forgotten. Nope.
There are at least two world class players that were almost certainly collusively cheating in ACBL BBO events last year. Both have recently played in ACBL BBO events. Both were reported to ACBL some time ago. The wheels of justice move very slowly.
ACBL convicted another pair a couple of days ago. See http://web2.acbl.org/dis.../CurrentlyUnderDisciplineList.pdf. David and Mary McCarron (david6264, mary6264). This pair was given a 6 month suspension (ban) and two year probation. They confessed to collusive cheating. The report is at https://web2.acbl.org/discipline/HR_AC_McCarron_McCarron.pdf.
They currently rank #453 on my most likely to be cheating list for pairs with over 1000+ total boards in VACB events. I have 13606 partnerships with 1000+ boards. Thus... at least 3% of pairs with 1000+ boards are cheating in VACB events.
This pair has a 6 month ban. The only other pair I have ranked under 500 that ACBL has convicted is #178. For ACBL BBO events, the convicted pairs rank 52, 74, 83, 99, 109, 173, 457, 479. Other convicted pairs do not have enough boards to be ranked.
The May 2021 issue of Bridge World has an article called, "Goodbye, Columbus, III" by Bart Bramley. It is on pages 3-6, 8-18. It covers the eight teams in the Columbus-Alt online tournament held as an unofficial replacement for the 2020 Vanderbilt.
It is the funniest piece of Bridge writing I have ever read, but not for the reasons that you might think.
There were eight teams: Blass, Lavazza, Meltzer, Moss, Spector, Street, Tulin, Upmark.
Bart has apparently written this as a normal Bridge article. In fact, if you read it as such, there is absolutely nothing amusing or funny about it. Just another well-written, well-researched article by Bart. You will struggle to find anything mildly amusing.
Now, I will tell you that the players involved include Michal Nowosadzki on the Blass team. Michal has since confessed to self-kibitzing when he played online. Giorgio Duboin was on the Lavazza team. Bridge Winners posted an article about Duboin stating that he was cheating when playing on-line - full disclosure - I provided a report that included the statistical details. Cedric Lorenzini was on the Street team. Cedric has confessed to cheating on line, but his confession was not too clear on the details.
For those that are Bridge World subscribers, read the article again. This time with the knowledge that at least three teams had at least one cheating player on it.
Focus on the adjectives that Bramley uses to describe some of the calls and plays.
Now.... I will state that there is at least one other player who was a self-kibitzer that was playing in this event. The name is not public. My understanding is that they have confessed to some of their friends, but not publicly yet. I have all the data, as soon as they confess I will publish. Not a name you might expect. This is a player that was discovered through the work I have been doing, and I have been told that the BBO connection data proves they were self-kibitzing.
I will also state that there is at least one other pair that was collusively cheating in on-line events that was playing in this event. Again, the names are not widely known. Their boards have been reviewed by top experts who decided they were collusively cheating. The statistics back this up.
I cannot state that any of these six players were cheating in this event; just that they were all playing in this event.
Now, once again, re-read the article and focus on the adjectives and adverbs that Bart uses when describing what happens.
I then played the game: could I tell from Bart's phrasing if someone could independently work out who was cheating. You can't. You almost can, but not quite. Bart was very clever in selecting certain boards and which phrases he used for different players.
Maybe 1-2 years from now when these names are publicly known we can refer back to this article and re-read it.
There are two cases:
1. Bart knew the names of the cheating players and deliberately wrote the article as a Disney movie. For the 'kids' in the audience (the Bridge World subscribers), everything appears to be on a level and the audience find his write-up entertaining. However, for the 'adults' in the audience - those that know who the cheating players are - and the name of the collusive cheating pair is now reasonably well known within the community - but the self-kibitzer is not as widely known as far as I can tell - Bart has put in several well-placed adjectives and adverbs to tell us he is on the knowledge as well.
2. Bart has no idea that any cheating was going on and wrote this as straight-up article. If this is the case, then this is absolutely the funniest piece of Bridge journalism - but for the wrong reasons!
I don't want to know which it is. I assume #1, but if it is #2 then this is even funnier.