A Few Endorsements...
Chip Martel
EDGAR is an outstanding tool to help identify cheating players. It has two
strong features:
- It is comprehensive, looking at all hands and evaluating how well a
pair does overall.
- It is multi-faceted, looking at leads, defense and multiple aspects of
bidding.
Brian and Franco have done extensive cross-checking to show EDGAR does a
good job of identifying cheating pairs with little risk of a false positive. I’m
optimistic that EDGAR will help identify cheating players and reduce the current
extensive time needed for humans to identify these players.
Steve Weinstein
After reading the recent EDGAR articles on BridgeWinners, I contacted Brian Platnick
to learn more about the underlying bridge logic behind the various detectors. I am
convinced EDGAR works as advertised. EDGAR has a good mix of simple methods,
such as "weird" opening leads or slam bidding success, and more clever detectors
such as the ones discussed recently on BridgeWinners.
Brian and Franco have taken a very conservative approach, designing EDGAR to catch
a large majority of online cheaters with minimal risk of falsely accusing innocent
players. EDGAR won't catch every cheater, but anyone who has stayed away from
online bridge because they were tired of constantly playing against cheaters will soon
be able to return to a cleaner game.
Kit Woolsey
Disciplinary panels are asked to make subjective judgments based on
inadequate data, which raises concerns an innocent pair who is way
luckier than normal or has a few suspicious actions will be found guilty.
I have developed my own methods to address these issues, so I was
particularly interested in learning about EDGAR.
I spent quite a bit of time with Brian & Franco discussing the detectors
they developed and the statistical tests they use. It seems clear to me
that EDGAR may let some guilty players slip through the cracks, but if
EDGAR says a pair cheated, that pair cheated.
