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ilc

And yet they cheat through the screens.

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.

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While I admire your ethics, I feel like a lot of technical job interviews are structured such that you're supposed to actively collaborate with the interviewer. The interviewer is allowed to give you hints or suggestions, and they're very interested in how well the candidate takes hints.

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.

Also many interviews are structured so there simply won't be time to finish the exercise if you're going slow.

In coding interviews, that's very true.

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.

Higher diagnostic skill would be checking the highest-likelihood scenario (that the interviewer had created) first.

No... that's just listening to someone tipping you an answer.

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.

There's a difference between collaborate and get clubbed over the head with the answer.

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.

It probably wasn't the situation in your case, but I often give straightforward hints if the candidate is struggling with something that I don't want them to spend time on so we can get to the significant material.

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.

I was very polite, but I just mentioned each other path.

In all situations, judgment is required.

Oh, I know. Attackers will continue to attack. In my opinion, professional bridge is a doomed game. Decades of added steps to prevent cheating complicate too much an already very difficult game, and determined, smart people are still very successful at bypassing them anyway.

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.

As someone who has played in the Grand National Teams - Flight C. :)

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.

Surely then you're just in a game of bluff with a Sicilian ... ie then you just feel your partner to do the opposite and make sure it's caught, resulting in them taking the action you intended?

IANABridgePlayer, clearly.

Remember, partner has an ETHICAL issue. Partner must work AGAINST you. If they can infer that you might mean something other than what you are signalling, they must take that into account.

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.

Then they see what you're doing and have to act accordingly. Eventually... something about a land war in Asia.

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