Cheating has been a hot topic around the bridge table over the past few months to weeks – but when checking news headlines for sports and cheating, I notice that it’s not a topic that ever went away.
I read Confession of a Self-Kibitzer (by Michal Nowosadzki) on BridgeWinners – in it, he admits exactly that. He screwed the system. He cheated.
He says, “So the dog was barking, the baby was crying, I was barely conscious at the moment, so I said to myself OK, let’s see all the hands to avoid any stupid mistakes […]”
While I’ll give him a few brownie points for admitting his role, I don’t think it deserves any Masterpoints.
Take the same stance as above, but imagine that he was doing literally anything else at the time. Driving a car, running a nuclear power plant, passing the bar – or God forbid, becoming a medical doctor.
Sure, the dog barks, the baby cries: It’s all a little overwhelming, right? So, you cheat. Just a little. Once.
But inevitably, once you’ve seen that you can get away with it, you’ll do it more than once.
This is how we get bad medical professionals, unethical lawyers and professionals in other fields who look the other way. Everyone has their own dogs and babies they could attribute if they screw up – but it feels a little like saying the devil made you do it.
Distractions – dogs and babies – are everywhere. That hasn’t made a massive chunk of bridge players cheat, and it didn’t have to make you do it, either.
Harsh?
Maybe. But I’m still sure that those who cheat at bridge are likely finding the same loopholes elsewhere in life – and for the sheer reason that they’re able to get away with it “just that once”.
- Confession of a Self-Kibitzer
- ACBL’s Anti-Cheating Commission