[McBruce]

Silver Linings Week is finally over. In the games I run, attendance was up about 30-50% and we held a special game which was our biggest ever on Saturday Afternoon. Until this extravaganza of masterpoint giving I was very happy about the Virtual Clubs program. Players seemed to be overjoyed to play with and against familiar people online. I'm still happy but have some concerns. This week the competition factor was increased almost to the breaking point and I began to see and hear about some bad behavior:

--A local expert claimed twice in private chat that novice pairs, both of whom didn't come close to average, bidding 50% slams against him that made, must have wires.
--I had multiple instances of ridiculously obvious claims being rejected in seconds after being made, by defenders who seem to be set on the idea that their established queen of clubs just has to win a trick even though they have no entry and nobody else has a club. Some of these were rejected so fast I believe that some players reject all claims as a matter of principle, even if it delays the game for everyone else.
--I had a player complain about the pace of one of the local "Usual Suspects", which is ordinarily a reasonable argument, but in this case there were 12 minutes left in the two-board round and they had little trouble finishing both boards with 4 minutes to go. She claimed the subsequent fast play was because she had called the director and I explained to her that I had come to the table silently and they didn't even know I was there. This drove her up the wall and ten comments later I had to tell her to cool it, enough already.
--I had a silver-point seeker from far far away ask to play in our game with his mother because "his sister lives in Vancouver," and when I told him the rules prohibited that (can't steal players from other clubs), he said "but we have no game at this time slot, so please?" Clearly he was just looking for a big game to join, and I spent a few minutes looking to see if he had ever actually visited our offline club, but then he sent a message telling me I was rude for not responding! By the time I responded to this, he had found some other virtual game to cajole his way into.
--I make announcements to the tournament and to specific tables when time runs low, and go from table to table constantly to look for potential problems, but quite often I am amazed at the time taken for simple plays even when the table has been repeatedly warned that time is running out.
--And I had a player report (sadly long after the fact) the classic double-shot of the whiney bridge primitive: make some public sarcastic comment implying that the opponents have cheated, then after the round ends, go have a private chat with the Director and try to get a ruling without letting the other player have his say. In this case it was a jump to a slam in a Precision auction that any fool would have made given what the auction indicated.

There's a way to fix much of this; not having it makes it more difficult to run these growing events. And players are beginning to realize that we don't have this remedy, and that we are understandably uncomfortable with the all-or-nothing options this forces: ignore or ban. They are starting to realize that they can get away with some of this behavior.

The remedy is this: we need to be able, when appropriate, to apply procedural or disciplinary penalties to a pair's total score.

I'm not suggesting that I would do it often. Offline I certainly do not. Not even suggesting that I would apply penalties on all of the incidents above. But we need to be able to privately tell players that their behavior has to change if they want to be credited with all of the matchpoints that they earn.

I know and understand why BBO resists. Many directors of varying abilities run games. Some would certainly misuse the feature.

If I have to file a report whenever I use the feature, that's fine. Send the report to the players whose score was changed and let them protest if they wish. I'll serve on a committee that reviews these reports to make sure there is no misuse.

If I have to ask nicely and list my directing credentials to have it made possible, that's fine too.

Please don't claim it is too difficult to program. It's not.

I knew this was a problem when I tried out online directing in 2003, long before I even tried directing a club game. It's time to make this an option. Otherwise it's chaos out there.

[Vampyr]

McBruce, on 2020-May-31, 20:07, said:

--A local expert claimed twice in private chat that novice pairs, both of whom didn't come close to average, bidding 50% slams against him that made, must have wires.

Did you ask this “local expert” how a cheating pair can come below average? Yes, it is annoying when a poor pair have a good result against you, but accusing them of cheating is a bit much.

Quote

--I had multiple instances of ridiculously obvious claims being rejected in seconds after being made,

Repeat offenders need to be penalised.

Quote

There's a way to fix much of this; not having it makes it more difficult to run these growing events. And players are beginning to realize that we don't have this remedy, and that we are understandably uncomfortable with the all-or-nothing options this forces: ignore or ban. They are starting to realize that they can get away with some of this behavior.

It seems to me that a temporary ban would be more effective than a DP. People are playing online because at present it’s the only game in town. Deny them that and they will seriously think about their behaviour. Going down a few places in the rankings for a session would mean little or nothing.

[sfi]

Our club exports the BBO results to our normal scoring system. From there we post the official results to the web and run masterpoint reports off these results. There is no reason I can't apply the full range of adjustments there, including procedural penalties and assigned scores.

I know a fair bit of work has occurred in the background between the people who write the scoring program, directors at the national level, and the BBO to make this happen. But I can't imagine we're the only club that does this sort of thing, so you might be able to access the same capability. I would recommend asking the same people who provided the ACBL director login for the club.

That doesn't change the behaviour you are talking about, but it does give you the normal tools to try and manage it.

[mycroft]

There is another, publicly known and supposedly desired, way to handle this: file recorder forms. TDs can and are expected to; if it's the kind of thing that the recorder would be interested in. Players should be encouraged to do this, if they come to you about the rudeness.

I know for me:

• They got a good score against Me, a Name Expert (in their own lights, anyway), they can't have done that without "help": "these things happen, sometimes even poor players guess right." If they mention anything that goes past "suggesting help" and approaching the C word, the same response I give IRL: "Unless you can show me how, you can't make those insinuations here. I'll ask you to stop, or I'll have to penalize *you*." There's a whole world of difference between "can you look at this, please? It seems funny" and "they had to have a wire".
  
• Assuming the rejected claims get an immediate TD call, you do what you always do - show them that yes, in fact, you don't get a club. If they do have a habit of rejecting claims outright, you warn them that wasting time like that is punishable (yes, I know, I'll get to that). One thing I have noticed, myself, is that claims online take a lot longer to be accepted than I remember (either from before, or IRL). Part of it is that it's not obvious if you're giving a trick or claiming them all.
  
• You've never had to say "Cool it, enough already" IRL? I know that 10 seconds feels like an eternity at the table, and that online it's so much so that they call the director. Maybe that should be part of your start-of-tournament announcements (along with "when they ask you a question, answer it" :-).
  
• points magnets need to be reported, especially if you think that they may be scamming the "online club" thing. I Have Opinions on the anti-poaching guidelines, but the principle is correct, and the ACBL needs to know about these people. Especially if they're the "experts" who are going to gripe about the novices' "good luck".
  
• your last point I reflect the first. The behaviour at the table is punishable (if you find out about it); the whiny double-shot gets them "well, if you had an issue, you should have called me at the time. Now all I can do is sympathize. But I'll take a look, and have a word with them if necessary"; after you figure out that the word you should be having is very publicly with the reporter - well, that's hard to do online. "16+ opposite 16 with a known, combined 11 controls and a fit looks like slam to me. What's your issue?"

I absolutely sympathise with you, you shouldn't have to deal with this. The "self-absorbed" players at the table, combined with the GIFTheory (search "GIFT Penny Arcade" if you don't get it - warning, NSF Puritans) means it hits more concentrated online than at the club, but a 20 table club game used to have its share of these, too.

Oh, the punishment? It's simple. Take them off the list of invited players for a week, if you would have given them a PP. Warn them first :-).

[mycroft]

Please note: I do think the ability to assign split/weighted scores, and award PPs, should be available. I hate changing legacy code that, if I got it wrong, would affect 60 000 people, too. So I hope it's high on the priority list, and that it comes in due time, with extensive testing.

[pescetom]

Vampyr, on 2020-May-31, 20:49, said:

It seems to me that a temporary ban would be more effective than a DP. People are playing online because at present it’s the only game in town. Deny them that and they will seriously think about their behaviour. Going down a few places in the rankings for a session would mean little or nothing.

Did you really write this?
Usually you are the first person (right or wrong) to champion existing bridge laws and practice: here we are up against a fundamental issue of any set of laws (punishment) and the related mechanism prescribed by law (score penalties) and suddenly you are in favour of ignoring the whole thing and using what should be an extreme measure (a ban) or nothing instead?

I see nothing in the context of play on a platform like BBO that justifies a deviation from normal law here.
And no technical obstacle to implementing this simple and essential feature.

[jnichols]

pescetom, on 2020-June-01, 13:31, said:

Did you really write this?
Usually you are the first person (right or wrong) to champion existing bridge laws and practice: here we are up against a fundamental issue of any set of laws (punishment) and the related mechanism prescribed by law (score penalties) and suddenly you are in favour of ignoring the whole thing and using what should be an extreme measure (a ban) or nothing instead?

I see nothing in the context of play on a platform like BBO that justifies a deviation from normal law here.
And no technical obstacle to implementing this simple and essential feature.

In favor of ignoring the laws? No. But the platform does not provide for the part of the laws for procedural penalties. So we look for an alternative. Don't like that - find another platform.

Of course you can see no technical obstacle. But then you haven't studied nearly 20 years worth of code.

[Vampyr]

pescetom, on 2020-June-01, 13:31, said:

Did you really write this?
Usually you are the first person (right or wrong) to champion existing bridge laws and practice: here we are up against a fundamental issue of any set of laws (punishment) and the related mechanism prescribed by law (score penalties) and suddenly you are in favour of ignoring the whole thing and using what should be an extreme measure (a ban) or nothing instead?

I see nothing in the context of play on a platform like BBO that justifies a deviation from normal law here.
And no technical obstacle to implementing this simple and essential feature.

A short or long ban is legally within the purview of the director and the management of a club.

[mycroft]

McBruce, it looks like you got one of your requests, at least - hard for the points magnets to petition to join your big game when they can't see it.

I'm not sure I like this change - I like seeing what's around and how the numbers are going (but I could do it from L4C, I guess) - but it certainly solves the problem, and it's not the wrong solution.