[Thranduil]

Not long ago today, I played in one of those Free Automated Fun tournaments. It went extremely well, I was sitting at like 85% after the first three boards. Then I bid a sharp slam on board 4, which makes. Partner's declaring is a bit shaky, but they haven't made any mistakes that would lose the contract. Eventually, the opps make their natural trump trick and three tricks are left to play. Partner holds another trump and two high clubs - it's easy enough to see that these are high considering we had a 9-card club fit and he played a couple rounds of them already.

And instead of ruffing the heart lead with their last trump and cashing the high clubs for +1430 and 98% (only two others reached that slam), partner starts discarding clubs. Maybe a fatal misclick? No, they did not play the club next to the trump but the other one further away and on the next heart, they discard the second club. Down two for a flat zero.

I immediately reported them for deliberately throwing the game - I was so startled (and busy writing the report) that I forgot to continue playing on the next board in time and got replaced by a robot.

Why does a player deliberately throw a game in that way? There is nothing to gain in these Free Automated Fun tournaments, sandbagging leads to nothing there. And I haven't played with them before, so it cannot be an act of childish "revenge" for a bad result that they consider my fault.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

[mikeh]

Thranduil, on 2024-August-22, 16:35, said:

Not long ago today, I played in one of those Free Automated Fun tournaments. It went extremely well, I was sitting at like 85% after the first three boards. Then I bid a sharp slam on board 4, which makes. Partner's declaring is a bit shaky, but they haven't made any mistakes that would lose the contract. Eventually, the opps make their natural trump trick and three tricks are left to play. Partner holds another trump and two high clubs - it's easy enough to see that these are high considering we had a 9-card club fit and he played a couple rounds of them already.

And instead of ruffing the heart lead with their last trump and cashing the high clubs for +1430 and 98% (only two others reached that slam), partner starts discarding clubs. Maybe a fatal misclick? No, they did not play the club next to the trump but the other one further away and on the next heart, they discard the second club. Down two for a flat zero.

I immediately reported them for deliberately throwing the game - I was so startled (and busy writing the report) that I forgot to continue playing on the next board in time and got replaced by a robot.

Why does a player deliberately throw a game in that way? There is nothing to gain in these Free Automated Fun tournaments, sandbagging leads to nothing there. And I haven't played with them before, so it cannot be an act of childish "revenge" for a bad result that they consider my fault.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

It is, imo, a serious error to assume that a random player on bbo has any ability to play bridge in any reasonable fashion. I would far sooner attribute this debacle to incompetence than to deliberate misplay. While I don’t play…ever…with random partners, I’ve seen quite a few in action, either against me (me playing with a regular partner and asking for ‘expert opps’ and getting clowns) or when dummy and looking at ‘other table’ results to see why our imp score on a board was weird, either in our favour or against us.

I’d definitely never infer throwing a board based on a single hand.

[smerriman]

Hanlon's razor.

[pilowsky]

When bad things happen always assume a conspiracy.