for å utrykke sin bekymring over at det jukses selv på uhøytidlige turneringer på BBO. Først ser du hans brev og etterpå kommer svaret fra Fred Gitelman.Takk til Svein for dette initiativet og om svaret fra BBO-sjefen ikke innholder noen løsning, er det i alle fall et signal om at dette tas på alvor

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Dear Fred Gitelman,

We have recently come across a Norwegian player who is obviously cheating on BBO. The numbers of fantastic deals over the last months are numerous, so the evidence is clear.

 We have informed the organizers of the most popular Norwegian tournaments on BBO about our findings, so the cheater has been blacklisted and excluded from those tournaments.

However, as it is quite simple to obtain a new userID on BBO, one might suspect this could happen. And the cheater can of course use other BBO activities.

 The player in question is not a member of the Norwegian Bridge Federation – so we cannot expect any sanctions from authorities.

 We would therefore appreciate your view on how we should handle this case in a proper way. Does BBO have policies and technical means to detect and prevent cheaters from returning?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Regards,

 Svein Markussen
(former Vice President NBF)

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Hi Svein

Thanks for your e-mail and your concern about this important matter. This is not really my area, but I have cc'd our Uday Ivatury (or CEO) who might have something to add.

Unfortunately there is no way for us to identify who people really are and to prevent such people from creating new IDs on BBO. There are some things we can do to make life more difficult for such people, but anyone with a reasonable amount of computer skill will have little trouble evading such measures. This is not just a problem for BBO - many sites face this issue and really there is no good solution.

This is part of the price that our users pay for BBO being a free site. If we charged a membership fee then players who cheat or behave very badly would have their membership rights revoked and have to pay again (likely by using a different credit card with a different name) in order to sign up for a new membership. I suspect that would be effective in allowing us to get rid of the vast majority of cheaters and other troublemakers.

But BBO is not going to change in this regard - it is part of our mandate that general access to our site remains free. We strongly believe that this is in the best interest of bridge.

I am sorry I do not have a solution for you and I hope the above helps you to understand the position we are in.

Best regards,

Fred Gitelman
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