“Non bis in idem” (or “Ne bis in idem”) is a legal principle. It is as old as Roman Law from literally the year 1 and can be translated as “not twice for the same thing” and that is what this principle is all about: one cannot be tried twice for the same crime on the same facts. It is a very important principle, as it avoids that somebody is tried, found not guilty and then tried again, until finally a guilty verdict is reached.
In the last 4 years, we have seen a number of cheating cases at the world championship level. First, the German doctors Wladow and Elinescu were found using cough signals in the 2013 Senior Bowl. Then 3 pairs were found guilty in the open series: Fisher-Schwartz, Fantoni-Nunes and Smirnov-Piekarek, all for using illegal methods involving the placement of cards and boards. It took a while to sort out all cases, but these 4 pairs got long suspensions effectively ending their careers as players. As it should be.
Finally, there was the case of the Polish pair Cesary Balicki and Adam Zmudzinksi (BZ). This was a rather strange case. While in the other cases, it was clear what the players were accused of, in the BZ case this was not published. In fact, only the invitations to play were withdrawn by the WBF Credentials Committee without any explanation. The matter was simply sent to the European Bridge League (EBL) for futher investigation.
There were rumors on the various bridge fora, suggesting that BZ cheated by the way they placed the bidding cards on the tray. Two cards close to each other meant that a player had a minimum hand for his bidding so-far, the cards wider apart meant that he had a maximum. Of something like that. Also, Kit Woolsey (a US expert) noticed on Bridgewinners.com some unsual hand gestures by BZ after the dummy came down. These were analyzed and Kit claimed that he found a relation between the movements and holdings.
After that, things went quiet for almost a year and a half.
In February 2017, the EBL finally spoke up. A committee had studied all material and reached this conclusion:
- BZ violated proper procedure by not placing the bidding cards from left to right on the tray, with approximately equal spacing between them.
- However, the EBL did not convincingly show that there was a relation between strenght of the hand and the placement of the bidding cards.
- Thus, BZ were aquitted.
Note that nothing was said about hand movements or other gestures, even though the video material was available to the committee and I’m pretty sure that they must have read bridgewinners. If you want to read the full document go here. The bottom line is clear though: there were accusations but the EBL failed to prove them. Not guilty, case closed.
Case closed?
You would think so until this video was posted on youtube.com on Monday. Who posted it, is not clear. The username abracadabra can be anybody and the person who opened thea account did not provide any information about his identity.
The video is a compilation of material from high level events showing BZ in play. The suggestion is made that hand and arm gestures indicate honnors and shortness. For example, touching the chin means that the player has the ace in the suit led, touching the forehead shows the king and there are similar ways to indicate the queen and jack. Putting your hand down on the table and moving your thumb indicates a singleton in the suit led. This way, one should be able to signal all honnors and short suits to partner.
This afternoon, I watched the entire thing. The striking thing is that there is indeed a 1-1 relation between the movements and the hands. It should be noted that some of the video is in slow motion, to show movements that were too fast to be properly seen.
But this is not sufficient to prove anything. The video covers several days of play and nothing is shown about the rest of the time. In case of the thumb, you’d have to watch all hands to see if and when a player puts his hand on the table and look at his thumb. If he also does this with other holdings, then the movement is random and nothing can be interfered. And on a related note, if you have ever watched these players, you know that Balicki doesn’t seem to be able to sit still for more than 2 seconds and moves around like he has had 25 cups of coffee in the last hour. Zmudzinksi is a lot more quiet in that respect.
A second thing that the video omits, is the relation between the plays and any information that has been transferred. If you can signal, for example, the king in a suit, then it becomes much easier for partner to underlead or cash an ace. No plays were shown, which is another weak point. And before somebody jumps on my back, yes, I am aware that the mere action of illegally showing information about a hand is an infraction even if partner doesn’t use that information.
Third: is the information actually visible from the other side of the screen? The camera is positioned above the table, at an angle. The players sit at the table and cannot see partner’s face making it hard to read a signal that involves touching the chin or forehead.
So, it is an interesting video and a good way to spend a rainy afternoon, but I’m not yet convinced that anything new and convincing has been shown. Also, there is the “non bis in idem” principle. The EBL had 1.5 years to investigate the material, all video’s were available and they had ample access to expert witnesses such as Kit Woolsey and his crew of volunteers who analyzed all the material. Yet, they could not get a case together, or at least one that convinced the committee that something illegal was happening. Non bis in idem says that the EBL has had it chance and they are now out of luck.
No doubt to be continued.
And while I’m typing this, does anybody know if anything has happened in the case of Rossano and Vivaldi. Their invitations to the Wroclaw event were withdrawn in September, but no action seem to have been taken since.
A few other bits and pieces:
For those of you who don’t have to work on Friday’s, it might be interesting to know that local TD Saskia and the restaurant “De Leeren Doedel”
are organizing a tournament on Friday 21st, 10:30 to 16:15. 24 boards, with a lunch break in between. I’ve never eaten at this place, so I cannot tell you anything about the food except that it is Italian. I do know that Saskia is a pretty good TD, so the game will run smoothly. To register, go to Saskia’s site. O, I’m currently not working on Friday’s, so I’m available to play that day.
And finally something completely non bridge. Over the past few months, I have been working on moving a collection of stationary internal combustion engines to a museum. 
That project is now coming to an end. The family of the late Mr. de Pecker and the "Grootmoederstijd en Motoren Museum” are proud to announced that the collection will become part of the regular exhibition of the museum. The official opening will be on April 1st. For the full press release (in Dutch), go here.
And if you have a project like this lying around that needs to be done, you know where to find me.