This reminds me of professional Bridge. They split the teams with a wall and pass their cards through a window at the same time to prevent communication through timing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Team_(bridge)#Cheating_an...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_sca...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_s...
And those are the ones we know about. :)
As far as actually using bridge in a job interview once. I did. In bridge there's a rule where if your partner gives you a hint not via the bidding, you must take the opposite approach if logically possible. It is called "Active Ethics". I had an interviewer try to lead me by the nose to the answer way too hard, in a debugging interview. So I'd stop and check EVERYTHING I could think of first before doing what he said. I told him I was doing it after the interview, and to look up active ethics if he needed a further explanation.
Got the job.
And sometimes the hint can be a trick! I recently did an interview where the interviewer asked if I should use a shortcut to compare two strings, one that assumed there's only one way to normalize a string. I almost fell for it, but then I hesitated and mentioned that I was concerned about some languages where that assumption wouldn't hold. They agreed and were happy that I chose the safer approach.
This guy was doing the latter, and it was meant to be an interview to test raw debugging/diagnostic skills. If I just followed the breadcrumbs, I'd show no real skill.
In a coding interview, I'd follow the hints.
In this interview I wasn't concerned about that. If you are looking to see if someone understands Linux by testing diagnostic skill, if they are coming up with 3-4 different failures to check for every step... They are doing their job.
Which if you are doing real diagnostics is often 100% the wrong answer.
I double check other people's work, and make sure that everything is right. Because one small misstep can result in not diagnosing an issue correctly.
Listen to what the user reports as the issue.... not the cause. Always work from the symptoms to the problem.
E.g. in an algorithms interview they get stuck on an unrelated python issue (many people interview in python but don't use it day to day), or in a system design interview they get stuck on designing extra-credit subsystem C when they haven't finished subsystems A and B.
If they aren't getting it after a couple hints, I'll just tell them the answer or tell them to come back to it later.
Anyway, I would be very careful if you aren't going where the interviewer is pointing you. If you think it's a trick or you want to practice Active Ethics, then I would call that out in the moment since you might be messing up the flow of the interview at best and come off as hard to work with at worst.
In all situations, judgment is required.
I still want to learn to play at a reasonable level though, I'd rather waste my time on bridge than chess. But it needs to be home games, and there's no way I'm going to find the partners when spades and bid whist are out there and easy to learn.
It has problems. Cheating is a huge issue, as is sportsmanship. If you know bridge. I used to play precision with an 11-13 1NT. When people saw our convention card, they'd often ask to swap tables with other teammates. (Clearly not legal.)
When I was playing on a team where all 4 of us played the same convention card those people made me laugh so hard.
Cheaters will cheat. I played clean, I had fun. I haven't had time to play for a while. But man, bridge is a funny little world.
IANABridgePlayer, clearly.
I've been in the situation in game a few times. Thankfully, my decisions were pretty cut and dry.
You don't have to do non-obvious things. If you are going to accept any invitation to game... You are going to accept even if partner looks happy, what I wouldn't do is throw out a slam exploring bid if I was on the fence about it.
If I was absolute top of range... I'd go ahead and make the bid. Because there is nothing that would change based on partner's actions.
This is like saying a catcher can't signal to a pitcher.
Information-passing is a human skill that adds a dimension to the game. Let the best win.
Initially learning the game it was like “oh wow, that feature of the game has some really cool implications! This is amazing!” but then reading about how real bridge tournaments run, yeah, they crafted the rules to remove every single one of those cool implications.
[EDIT] to be fair, the basic rules would also result in a terrible game as soon as people got too good at exploiting them. I just think they’ve managed to find another way to ruin the game while keeping it technically playable.
HUMs also tend to end up being very destructive to the opponents, because they really don't understand the full implications of the bid. And may not have discussed how to bid over it. Heck I've run into this with people playing over a strong club system, and they haven't discussed what 2C means.
In the end... many games end up with a few rules to make them interesting. I will not defend the ACBL here, I think the WBC is pretty much on the mark last I watched.
Nah. You choose the game that you prefer. You can play the game where you cheat all the time, but don't play it with people who like bridge without asking them first.
There is this thing called "Bridge Judgement" that you are allowed to use.
Just because your hand has 10 HCP... but has 13 spades... doesn't mean you will pass. You'll bid your 7 Spades and call it a day.
Bridge has many shades of grey. It is learning how to dance them correctly that is hard.
It’s like if baseball couldn’t change field size or mound height or whatever and just had to add lots of rules about how you aren’t allowed to throw too fast or hit too far et c., but kept the physical reality of the game the same.