Contract Bridge, signals, and tells

The Game Room
1

So I have never played a single hand (robber?) of Bridge in my life, but my understanding of the basics is as follows:
[ul]
[li]A game of Bridge is played by two pairs of people, called partnerships, playing against each other.[/li][li]These partnerships are not chosen on a per-game basis, but are often long-term, with the same people playing as partners against different opponents over the years. Quite often they will be friends away from the Bridge table as well, or even a romantic couple.[/li][li]Partners can “signal” each other information about what they have in their hand, via the choices they make in playing their initial cards. But there are strict rules governing what kind of signals are allowed; furthermore, your opponents are entitled to know about the signalling agreements you have made with your partner.[/li][li]It is considered unethical and against the rules to signal information by means other than your choice of which cards to play; for example, by winking, or kicking your partner under the table, or holding your cards in a certain way, or adjusting your glasses or anything like that.[/li][/ul]
Is this correct so far?

So my question is: how does this “no secret signalling” rule work in practice? And how would one tell the difference between deliberate signals and unintentional “tells” which neither the “transmitter” nor the “receiver” may be consciously aware of?

From poker tournaments, we know that even professional poker players are apparently so worried about their unconscious “tells” that they feel the need to dress up like the Unabomber to prevent their opponents getting any information from an uncontrolled facial muscle. Surely, if you’ve been playing with the same partner for years, you could hardly avoid noticing after a while that they seem to be holding their cards a little higher than usual when they have a promising hand. Or that after receiving their cards they use a particular method for sorting them from left to right, and this gives you information about what they are holding.

So how does that work? Are players expected to strenuously avoid getting any information from their partner through such “side channels” and could a partnership get disqualified for acting on such information? Or is it just accepted that this will happen and it’s OK as long as you don’t make deliberate agreements about it?

And how much of an impact does this actually have on the outcome of the game in practice?

2

Interesting question! I’m not a bridge player, though I’ve picked up some things about the game in theory like you have. My WAG is that there’s some of that “semi-conscious signal” stuff that gets picked up on and effects the game, but most Bridge players are such lawful-good to lawful-neutral types that they generally avoid taking advantage of it as much as they can.

One nitpick is that most of the formal “signalling” is during the bidding, not the play of the cards, especially since the side that “wins” the bidding has all of their cards played by the same person. (The partner lays down their hand in full view as the dummy.) So any signalling as card play would be by the opponents. I do know that there are some key signal conventions for the opening lead.

And I love the notion that if you want to know what a particular bid means in terms of your opponents’ signals, you can ask the partner what they understand it to mean, and they’re bound by honor to answer honestly to the best of their ability. That way, the person who made the bid isn’t able to clarify its meaning out loud, though the partner might happen to reveal that they misunderstood what it was actually intended to be.

3

There are some definite issues you need to resolve before your questions can be answered.

  1. Are you playing for money or not? The rules and “conventions” (understandings) are different if you are playing for money.

  2. Are you playing at an expert level or at some amateur level?

  3. Are you playing in some kind of serious tournament possibly representing your country or not? (there are international tournaments like The Bermuda Bowl in which teams from many countries participate).

Things are quite different depending on those issues.

It sounds to me like you have less than a year’s experience and are just in the process of learning how to play. Is that correct?

In any case, I think it’s fairly safe to advise you that it just doesn’t make any sense to cheat under any circumstances. Usually only beginners would try to cheat and they would do that only because they expect it would be fun to demonstrate their prowess over their friends in a friendly game. But, in general, it’s really not worth cheating. There is nothing much to gain.

It would be fairly easy for anyone who plays at a level that is seriously above your level to determine whether or not you are cheating. Just forget about cheating. There is really nothing to gain by cheating.
If you are a serious bridge player, then believe it or not, it is just no fun to cheat and there is no point in cheating.

If you are playing at an expert level, then other experts can generally tell whether you are cheating or not. There are perhaps only one case in ten or twenty years when there is even any doubt as to whether or not someone is cheating.

As far as I can remember there was only one serious incident in the past 50 years and that involved an expert named Terrence Reese who was playing in a world championship with a partner he had for some 20 years. There was some accusation of cheating but it seemed completely ridiculous. At the time Mr. Reese was probably the world’s best bridge player and so there were two important points.

  1. It was almost impossible to find anyone who could tell whether or not he was cheating.

  2. After devoting his entire life to the game and to his reputation as a leader in the field, it made absolutely no sense at all for him to cheat. It would be akin to throwing away his entire life for almost no gain at all. One would need to ask just what he would stand to gain by cheating. He had already won more world championships than anyone else. There was just no point at all for him to cheat. I seem to recall that most of the bridge world at that time just laughed off those accusations.

However, before answering your questions, you need to first determine several of the issues I specified at the beginning of this post.

One thing you might want to consider, however, is this:

If you are going to a tournament and playing not for money but for your reputation, then what would be the point of cheating? People who play at a higher level than you would know if you were cheating or not.

If you are playing with friends for money, would you seriously want to cheat your friends for their money? That would seem kind of pointless.

If you are playing for your reputation, then again, what would be the point of cheating?

I think you will find that most anyone with any level of experience in the game would never bother to cheat because there is just no payoff. It just doesn’t make any sense to cheat.

Most people who play with friends for money do so to add some excitement to the game but would never cheat their friends for money because the friendship would inevitably be worth more than the small amount of money involved.

At any rate, please specify just who you will be playing with and who you will be playing against and what will be the stakes involved.

4

I’m not by any means a serious bridge player, and can only speak for casual, family play, but, in my experience:

First of all, a lot of the things for which people would be likely to HAVE unconscious “tells” (such as how good their hand is) are things that are going to get communicated anyway during the bidding process; you don’t usually reach the end of the bidding without having a fairly good idea how strong your partner’s hand is. Most of the time when I’ve found myself wishing I could psychically signal my partner (which, as chrisk points out, is an issue only if you’re playing defense), it’s to tell them what suit to lead, which is something much less likely to be communicated unwittingly through body language.

Also, keep in mind that people who are playing as partners during one rubber are, in most cases, going to be playing as opponents during the next rubber, so there’s a pretty strong incentive to school yourself out of any unintentionally revealing habits, such as sorting your cards a particular way.

5

Bridge is a wonderful fabulous game that can provide you with a lifetime full of enjoyment, intellectual challenge and many lifelong friends that you will cherish forever.

If you are just beginning to play the game, I would encourage you to spend as much time as possible studying the game. There is just no end to the amount of enjoyment you will get out of it.

6

The thing is, bridge is much more complicated than poker and you reveal more important things through your bidding and “play signals” than you possibly could through tells. At least that’s my analysis as a casual rather than competetive player.

After the bidding is done the player who won the contract plays both his and his partners hands, so he’s out of the “secret signals between partners” game. Almost.

His partner is the one who does the physical playing and can in practice play the “obvious” card, but that is considered bad, although I don’t know how it would be dealt with in a tournament setting. Also bad is for the partner to visibly react to the choices made.

The opponents know what they themselves have, the know how the player bid and they know the hand open on the table, so they can deduce a lot about their partner, certainly the general strength of their hand, and I can’t see how subconscious tells would indicate much more than that. Further details can be signalled through choice of discards eliminating a lot of the benefits of subtle signalling.

The complexity of bridge also means a lot for the likelihood of a subconscious understanding of tells developing. In poker each hand involves a relative few steps for each player, with an immediate resolution and relatively obvious good and poor plays. In bridge if I play the three of clubs on the third play and that displeases you there might be a subtle tell from you, but even if I noticed that it would be near to useless to me. You don’t know what I’ve got, so it’s quite possible, if we’re both fair players, that when we go through the game afterwards you’ll accept that it was a good choice, or at least that I couldn’t have known it was a poor one. Also that single play, and the tell, is mixed in with 13 other rounds of play and a constant mental effort to keep track of all the cards and possible outcomes.

7

You make an excellent point about how people will play with someone as a partner for a few hands but then play with that same person as an opponent during the next few hands.

This occurs during a session of “rubber bridge”. This kind of bridge game is largely outdated these days. But it makes it extremely awkward to cheat when you are playing with someone as a partner for a few hands and you cheat the other two players during that time. But then you switch things up and you play partnered with one of the people you have just cheated as your partner. That makes cheating very awkward and also very pointless.

8

The OP can correct me if I’m mistaken, but I didn’t gather that he’s playing or has any particular inclination to play, just asking the dope to educate him about a question he has on how others play Bridge.

9

Yes, Chris. You are indeed correct. The OP makes it clear that he has never played the game before.

10

Moved to the Game Room.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

11

Cheating is certainly not unheard of. Just google “cheating tournament bridge” and you will find several examples including the latest on this spring involving two German doctors who were coughing signals to each other. I recall an earlier incident when two partners were indicating how many hearts they held in their hand by the way they held their cards.

In some tournaments at high levels, a barrier is put diagonally across the table so you can only see either your left-hand or right-hand opponent and not your partner during the bidding. You make your bid by putting a card (not one of the cards in your hand but bidding cards) on the table. Then the opponent who can see your bid makes his/her bid. Only after both bids are mare are they announced to the other two, but an official. That way no tone of voice, hesitation, squirming, etc. can convey information either intentionally or not.

At almost all tournaments and club play, bidding is done by those same cards. This prevents voice signals, however, the main purpose is to keep the room quiet as there may be a few (in clubs) to over a hundred tables of four players in a room.

Also, I’ll point out that it is not illegal to try to “read” your opponents though it is illegal to “read” your partner.

12

Concur.

I don’t play, I have only the haziest notion of the rules and I’m not sure I’ve ever actually witnessed a game in the wild… but reading the bridge column is one of my greatest delights, like rediscovering “Jabberwocky” anew each day.

It *seems *to be written in English, but is pure Carrollian at its best. :smiley:

Learning to play would forever take away that pleasure.

13

Thanks guys! Very informative and interesting. In particular I wasn’t aware that in at least some forms of Bridge, you don’t always play with your regular partner against opponents, but have to switch “loyalties” during the game.

OldGuy’s explanation about how it works at tournaments where there is money on the line, also answers a lot of my questions. And yes, I also get that Bridge tends to be played in the kind of environment and culture where unenforceable etiquette rules can be expected to be obeyed to a greater degree than among, say, Texas Hold’em players in a typical casino setting.

Indeed, I have never played Bridge and don’t expect to play anytime soon, perhaps never. I got thinking about this topic during the video poker thread, in which the question came up if it is possible for card counting at Blackjack to be considered cheating and/or against the rules, given that it is something which takes place entirely inside the player’s mind and which one could theoretically even do subconsciously. It occurred to me that staying away from reading a partner’s “tells” would be an even better example of a rule which would appear to be unenforceable (“what do you mean I’m not allowed to notice the way my partner holds her cards?”) but which is nonetheless a part of the official rules of the game and of which violations can get sanctioned.

14

Walton, I would like to encourage you to try to learn the game and then to play the game.

There is no need for you to find a steady partner. I think that most players have had a large number of partners throughout their playing lifetimes and I would think you will find a large number of people who would enjoy playing with you.

Like most any other game, I’m sure you will find many partners. You will enjoy playing with some of them and you will not enjoy playing with others. But, a great way to start playing the game is to start playing the game. However, it is never necessary for you to leave your home and still play the game over the Internet. You can do that all for free and there is just no limit to the enjoyment you will find.

Amateur Barbarian offers a truly fascinating alternative. I have never heard of that before. But it is certainly a reasonable alternative. Someone can get a very large amount of enjoyment from the game without ever playing. You can find much enjoyment just by reading about the game and the many exploits that have occurred at the bridge tables.

There are hundreds of Bridge books available and all you really need to get them is a library card and you can get one of those for free in almost every city in the world.

There are hundreds if not thousands of books available from your library and there are also hundreds of websites devoted to the game. Websites come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them will enable you to play while others will just enable you to find entertainment by reading about the game.

One of the very best websites is produced by a wonderful leading expert named Richard Pavlicek.

His site is tremendously versatile. You can learn about the game or you can play the game at his site. You can do almost anything you like and you can do it all for free from the comfort of your home.

I can’t recommend any website more so than Richard’s.

15

Thanks! Can’t promise I will make it my next primary hobby, but I’ll certainly take a look at that site.

16

When you’ve played with the same partner for a very long time, which I have, it becomes very difficult not to read something into their bidding tone or tempo. I read an interview once with poker star Barry Greenstein where he said that he more or less quit serious bridge for that reason. I just looked around and couldn’t find that interview, but I did find this one:

http://home.comcast.net/~kwbridge/barryg.htm

17

It’s not “tells,” but bridge partners begin to learn each other’s habits, especially when they play defense. I had a habit of returning the same suit when my partner led to an ace he had no reason to know I had. It served me quite well on occasion. You also learn their bidding habits. Even using standard bidding, there’s room for flexibility in a bid, and you would know how your partner leans in those situations.

Also, the bidding has to be completely transparent. If you opponents don’t understand a bid, they ask the partner not bidding what it means. Not telling the truth is a serious offense.

18

Ignoring deliberate “cheating,” it is certainly possible to read implications in your partner’s actions. For example, hesitation or pausing to think too long might indicate that there was something to think ABOUT. People sometimes use this to try to fool opponents: if I hesitate and think about a play, it may mean I have some real choice (like playing a K vs playing a 5.) If I play quickly without hesitation, it may mean I have no real choice (like playing a 7 or playing a 5.) These things are theoretically illegal, and in a tournament, a player can call the director if something is really overt. The director can impose penalties.

I try to wait a count of five before playing a card, so that my “pause” and “hesitation” is reasonably consistent and no one can read anything into it.

In practice, most people want to have fun and play an enjoyable (and thought-provoking) game, and are not out to cheat.

19

In my experience, the primary reason people do not cheat at Bridge is because almost all their efforts are very much concerned with improving their level of play.

That is a lifelong goal and cheating defeats the entire purpose of learning and improving one’s game. IMO, the goal of learning and improving is far more important than any short term results and so cheating is of no value and serves no purpose. It’s just a waste of time.

I would like to ask a question of the moderator or anyone else who might know the answer. It seems to me the OP’s question has been answered but there still seems to be some interest in posting about the game of Bridge. Is it OK to just keep posting into this thread?

If so, I would like to ask anyone who might know just what the state of Bridge play is today vis a vis playing online versus playing at a club or in tournaments.

There is a website called OKBridge which is very popular and provides people with the ability to play the game and play it at the very most serious levels of play. It is commonplace for expert players to be found playing at OKBridge. I joined OKBridge for a year and at that time it cost $100 to join for a year.

There are also many other websites that offer people the ability to play competitive Bridge. To the best of my knowledge, OKBridge is the one site that offers the most serious level of play. But there are also many other sites that are similar and people pay to belong to them. There are also several other sites that offer people the ability to play online for free. However, the quality of play is not anywhere near as serious as on OKBridge.

My question is: Does anyone know what the current trend is regarding serious Bridge play? Are serious players now playing online more so than in clubs or tournaments? Or has online bridge play reached a plateau?

Does anyone have a feel for whether the level of serious play is trending towards the online clubs or the “real life” clubs?

20

You can’t have a serious, high level tournament online because it’s impossible to police cheating, and the UI, tempo etc issues that are integral to the game are also v distorted.

All good players play online (on BBO normally) but it’s a question of quantity v quality. The throughput of boards online can’t be beat - I can travel to the bridgeclub (easy trip for me, less so for others who live in the sticks), pay 7 quid to play 24 boards over 3 hours, with a group of people from a different generation who I have little in common with; or I can sit on me aris in the comfort of my own home and play 50 boards online, for free, with better players who are more fun to interact with.

This quality of online play is not as good, though (for a given level of play), and it is definitely bad for your game to play too much online. Part of it is just the inverse correlation of quality and quantity, but even if you’re really focussed and playing seriously it’s not the same as being at the table - intangibles like table-feel are missing, but also concrete things like tempo just aren’t there.