I have often been told by some
Victorian players that cheating never occurred in Victorian tournaments. I have
always stuck to my stand that cheating is rife because of the laxity of most
tournament directors, who either don’t care or don’t know how to curb it.
There are two simple rules
that should be highlighted at the beginning of each and every tournament,
especially if novice players are present:
(1) The first rule is to
show an empty hand before it enters the bag, and to show an empty hand after a
total of 7 tiles sit on the rack. This rule aims at stemming out the evil habit
of returning unwanted tiles to the bag, or palming an extra tile in addition to
the 7 legitimate tiles. At the beginning of a recent tournament, the tournament
director ridiculed the need to show an empty hand after replenishing the rack. This
particular TD might realise that if that part of the rules was observed, there
would have been no need to report a very recent Victorian cheating incident where a
player was found looking at an eighth tile in their hand while considering
their next move.
(2) The second rule is about the
proper height of the bag before opening it and drawing tiles from it. While not observing this rule is the least effective cheating method, it remains a nuisance that should
be eliminated.
Hopefully, this message
might get through to some Victorian TD’s, who are regular readers and haters of
this blog.
