[Thranduil]

Happened today in an online tournament on BBO. I was declarer in 6NT and was at a point where I had to decide between three finesses to make the contract. First finesse was in ♥ for the jack, where (after losing a trick to the ♥A) I held a small one opposite dummy's Q10xxx, the other two finesses were against either opponent for the ♣Q. I led my small ♥ to dummy, and LHO, who at that point only had a singleton ♥ left, hesitated quite a bit before eventually playing their ♥. Of course that made me think they had the jack, thus I took the finesse, which failed and the contract went down one.

Once play was finished, I immediately called the TD for unsportsmanlike conduct from LHO and asked for an adjustment of the score, as I would have not risked the ♥ finesse, had LHO played their singleton ♥ in tempo - I already knew at that point that the diamonds were 4-1 with RHO having the singleton, so the chance for the ♣Q to be in RHO's hand was higher. The hesitation by LHO tricked me into taking the wrong finesse. The TD did not adjust the score though, stating that they were already at the table and did not see a hesitation.

Are there laws in bridge against unsportsmanlike hesitations like here, where a player deliberately hesitates not to give their partner UI, but to trick the declarer into taking a wrong play?

[smerriman]

Yes, intentionally hesitating to trick declarer is specifically outlawed by law 73D 2:

Quote

A player may not attempt to mislead an opponent by means of a question, remark or
gesture; by the haste or hesitancy of a call or play (as in hesitating before playing a
singleton); by the manner in which a call or play is made; or by any purposeful deviation
from correct procedure (see also Law 73E2)

But in a casual online tournament, tempo is virtually meaningless; you have no idea why the person was hesitating (perhaps they had a bad connection, or someone knocked at the door). Perhaps it was your own connection that was faulty, and they played in tempo like the director stated. The director has a record of timings, but it's generally not a good idea to try to read too much into perceived hesitations online.

[P_Marlowe]

 Thranduil, on 2024-November-02, 16:56, said:

<snip>
Of course that made me think they had the jack, thus I took the finesse, which failed and the contract went down one.
<snip>
Are there laws in bridge against unsportsmanlike hesitations like here, where a player deliberately hesitates not to give their partner UI, but to trick the declarer into taking a wrong play?

As stated yes, there are, but if you act on the hesitation, you do it at your own risk.
I dont think the score will ever be adjusted, what can happen is, that the unsportsman like player gets a pp, but you will keep our score.

[blackshoe]

"Bridge is not a very good game." -- David Burn

[pilowsky]

Predicating the probability of the position of a card based on the pace of an opponents play doesn't increase the odds of a finesse working.
It just causes psychic discomfort.

[barmar]

Why would the hesitation make you think they have the jack? They couldn't possibly have been thinking of playing it, since that just solves the problem for you.

[pescetom]

blackshoe, on 2024-November-03, 23:43, said:

"Bridge is not a very good game." -- David Burn

I agree. But 73D2 is a good rule, and maybe it's time we did hold people responsible for their connection and tempo online.

[pilowsky]

pescetom, on 2024-November-05, 12:12, said:

I agree. But 73D2 is a good rule, and maybe it's time we did hold people responsible for their connection and tempo online.

If you can't realistically do it IRL then how can you possibly do it in the ether.

[johnu]

pilowsky, on 2024-November-05, 13:40, said:

If you can't [won't] realistically do it IRL then how can you possibly do it in the ether.

Good question, I made a small modification to your post. IRL, unless there is video proof or somebody monitoring the table with a stopwatch, there's a question as to how long the hesitation was.

Online, with exact play times available, it's possible to analyze the timing of all those questionable plays, similar to how EDGAR works for actual bids and plays.

[sanst]

johnu, on 2024-November-05, 16:46, said:

Online, with exact play times available, it's possible to analyze the timing of all those questionable plays, similar to how EDGAR works for actual bids and plays.

Online there can be all kind of causes for a delay. Even with a fast connection I sometimes have to wait a few seconds for a page to be displayed, which at other moments jumps immediately to the screen. What about clicking just outside the button or having to click twice for no obvious reason? And please, don't start about Edgar.

[blackshoe]

Is "all kinds of causes for a delay" a reason to ignore the law, or an excuse?

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2024-November-06, 12:10, said:

Is "all kinds of causes for a delay" a reason to ignore the law, or an excuse?

A reason. If the playing environment makes it hard to maintain steady tempo, you can't really be expected to follow that law faithfully.

[smerriman]

blackshoe, on 2024-November-06, 12:10, said:

Is "all kinds of causes for a delay" a reason to ignore the law, or an excuse?

Neither. The law applies in both cases, but may result in a different *outcome* online.

[johnu]

 sanst, on 2024-November-06, 04:57, said:

Online there can be all kind of causes for a delay. Even with a fast connection I sometimes have to wait a few seconds for a page to be displayed, which at other moments jumps immediately to the screen. What about clicking just outside the button or having to click twice for no obvious reason? And please, don't start about Edgar.

Yes, there can be all sorts of reasons for a delay. But what if those play delays mostly only happen when declarer is leading up for a finesse, and the player in question only hesitates when they don't have the missing honor(s). Would you consider that to be suspicious or would that just be things happening???

And if not Edgar or something like Edgar, then what? A computer driven analysis of play and bid timing is something beyond the scope of any sort of manual review at any type of scale.

[pescetom]

 smerriman, on 2024-November-06, 19:43, said:

Neither. The law applies in both cases, but may result in a different *outcome* online.

But is there any prevailing reason why it should do so, in 2024?
I would have argued yes in 2021 when many players were still stuck somewhere between smoke signals and a poor phone signal or a flaky ADSL.
But now I fail to see the problem, even in backwards Italy: unless you are in the middle of nowhere you have no excuse and in any case your internet connection is your problem if you agreed to play in internet.
Once we retain players responsible for their tempo (and measure and manage it accordingly) then bridge starts to become a better game.

[Thranduil]

 pescetom, on 2024-November-09, 16:01, said:

But is there any prevailing reason why it should do so, in 2024?
I would have argued yes in 2021 when many players were still stuck somewhere between smoke signals and a poor phone signal or a flaky ADSL.
But now I fail to see the problem, even in backwards Italy: unless you are in the middle of nowhere you have no excuse and in any case your internet connection is your problem if you agreed to play in internet.
Once we retain players responsible for their tempo (and measure and manage it accordingly) then bridge starts to become a better game.

The issue is that BBO is not particularly good at maintaining a stable connection. I have high-end fibre internet here, my PC is connected via LAN, and while I can play video games online, stream and do other things without any issue or lag on my side, disconnects and other inconsistencies like getting booted from one of these express tournaments after way less than 30 seconds (which were 30 seconds on BBO's server, but not on my end due to delays) on BBO are not uncommon.

The hesitation in question was so long though that connection issues are unlikely to have caused it.

[smerriman]

 Thranduil, on 2024-November-09, 17:51, said:

The hesitation in question was so long though that connection issues are unlikely to have caused it.

What do you believe they were trying to make you think? As Barmar mentioned, they couldn't have pretended to be thinking about playing the J, the only card which guarantees you get it right. In this scenario the only plausible explanation for a delay is something unrelated to bridge.

[pilowsky]

There's no doubt that cheating in Bridge is rampant; IRL and online.
There's also no doubt that humans are hopeless at detecting it.

[pescetom]

Thranduil, on 2024-November-09, 17:51, said:

The issue is that BBO is not particularly good at maintaining a stable connection. I have high-end fibre internet here, my PC is connected via LAN, and while I can play video games online, stream and do other things without any issue or lag on my side, disconnects and other inconsistencies like getting booted from one of these express tournaments after way less than 30 seconds (which were 30 seconds on BBO's server, but not on my end due to delays) on BBO are not uncommon.

That is true and certainly an issue, although not the same (and more important) issue you raised in OP, of how online bridge in general should treat alleged or real internet connection problems when they coincide with a certain or potential infraction of the Laws.

In my experience BBO is abnormally sensitive to latency, despite very low bandwidth requirements and protocols that were designed to keep alive on a slow dial-up connection. It is usually related to either imperfect (but functioning) wifi or to a satellite connection (I live in a mountainous area). This is decidedly their problem and should be fixed. But FWIW I have not encountered either directly or indirectly problems with a device wired to a router on fibre. It may be relevant that almost nobody uses Apple devices here.