I have been repeatedly asked to ban the kibitzers from the Tonči Radelja Memorial – BBO Intercity League (thereafter, TRM). This is an open team tournament held twice a year, in spring and autumn, on Bridge Base Online (BBO). Let’s look at its history.
The TRM was established in the spring of 2004 by Tonči Radelja, a teacher of mathematics at the University of Belgrade; the idea of Tonči's was to play in friendship; hew wrote, Think of it as an evening at your club: be friendly and enjoy the pleasure of meeting old and new friends at the table.
He passed away untimely in 2014; but not before he had asked me to continue managing the tournament. My role in the tournament is to invite the teams, organize them into homogeneous groups for the first phase, in a round-robin format, and then pair up them in the second phase, which is knockout. I also play, of course; my team is Ascoli Piceno. I have also introduced a written set of rules for the tournament; Tonči’s rules were based on his common sense, but he managed only 20-25 teams, whereas later over ninety teams joined. Today, in the TRM are playing between 50 and 60 teams; they decreased during the Covid crisis, when the National Bridge Organisations started their own tournaments online, offering the so-called "master points" as bait for players seeking illusory recognition of their skill.
Playing the TRM is free, this notwithstanding the prizes are very high: the respect and the friendship of the opponents for our fairness at the table. For some, however, this prize is still too low, so sometimes also enter a few cheaters seeking for the victory at any cost. The defence against them seems obvious to many: to ban the kibitzers.
However the game of bridge, in all its aspects, is a game of extreme complexity, so it’s unlikely that there were simple solutions to its problems. Let’s take, for example, the issue of the kibitzers.
First and foremost, the existence of kibitzers is in the true spirit of friendship, not only in the TRM, but in all the bridge since its introduction into Europe at the end of the 14th century (back then, it was a form of whist, a version of bridge without bidding). Bridge is an "open" game like no other; in no other game in the world an intermediate player can directly compete with world champions. Even in the TRM world champions play side by side with intermediates. If I were to ban the kibitzers, as NBOs do online, I would have to acknowledge the failure of the TRM.
Secondly, reports of foul, but winning play, often come from the kibitzers themselves, because even the strong player sometimes doesn't have a clear picture of what happened until seeing the whole hand, while the average player might not even realize that he has been cheated even when he can see the whole hand. For example, suppose that an expert player prefers a 50 per cent chance of a finesse (which will win) to a 75 per cent chance of a squeeze (which would lose); if his opponents don’t know the technique of squeezing, everything will appear normal to them.
Still, how does a player with a false kibitzer justify an irrational and lucky play to his partner? He could do it once or twice, but eventually he would lose the trust of his partner. On the contrary, if both are cheaters, they don’t need any kibitzer, just a phone, "Points? Hearts?”.
Finally, there’s another topic that must be addressed to. In a matchpointed pairs tournament, there’s no need to justify irrational play because the goal is to make as many tricks as possible, regardless of what might involve giving up an overtrick, like squeezing, safety plays, or endplaying. Furthermore, in matchpointed tourneys, even extremely unlikely playing or bidding might be justified, as, “I felt lucky”, and the like.
In a team tournament, on the contrary, every bid, every card has to be justified by the technique. Therefore, it’s not only easy to spot a cheater by the frequency of winning results obtained by losing playing, but even a sole contradictory hand can be enough.
Paolo