How on earth is winking a clear offer of anything?
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Winking is a transfer of information by the winking player that tells the other player that he will get rewarded. The winking player tells you this, according to the original statement. This wink and its interpretation both exist on earth, by implication in the original statement.

-Eric

Originally posted by Eric Shukan:

Winking is a transfer of information by the winking player that tells the other player that he will get rewarded. The winking player tells you this, according to the original statement. This wink and its interpretation both exist on earth, by implication in the original statement.

I'm sorry, my initial reaction seemed to be needlessly antagonistic to you Eric. But yeah, as Florian pointed out, the question kind of becomes moot when the player admits that he intended to bribe his opponent.

Is it safe to summarize here that bribery can be implicit, does not need to be explicit, and if we believe implicit bribery is occurring we should be disqualifying the offending party or parties? If this is the case, it seems to me that most competitive players have an understanding of the specific language, “Would you like to prize split?” followed sometime after by the question, “Will you concede?” to be an offer of value in exchange for the result of a match. Especially in cases where there is a clear difference in potential prizes due to pair downs, is there anyway for these statements to be interpreted as anything other than bribery?

Edited Mike Noss (Jan. 12, 2015 08:51:14 PM)

Mike, that is the question I have. If a player offers a split in a situation where the offering player is the only one that can move on to top 8, is it not implied that in return for the for the split, the lower ranked player will concede? If so, shouldn't any such offer of a split be considered bribery?

This has been a really good discussion!
Responding to Rich and Mike, I don't think splitting in a “1 player moves to top8 if wins while the other can`t” situation is necesarilly a bribery, even if one of the players hope that this split will make his opponent to concede.
I believe that hoping is not the same as offering something, and shouldn't be taken as the same thing. Asking afterwards for a consession, as Kim Warren said, doesn't seem wrong according to MTR or IPG.

Now, one of the most grey situation I can think of would be something like:

(Both players sit)
A: “wanna split 50/50?”
B: “Ok”
A: “Great! You know, now that we agree on that, if I win this match, you'll get more boosters than if you win, because there is a booster box for each player in the top 8. Would you like to concede?”
B: “Ok”

Even in this situation, I don't think someone has committed bribery. They arrange the split before the discussion about consession (not the other way around); and A is just explaining that under their current agreement is better for B's own interests to concede (not offering anything in exchange).

Originally posted by Joaquín Ossandón:

(Both players sit)
A: “wanna split 50/50?”
B: “Ok”
A: “Great! You know, now that we agree on that, if I win this match, you'll get more boosters than if you win, because there is a booster box for each player in the top 8. Would you like to concede?”
B: “Ok”

How is this not bribery? A just stated that by conceding, he will give B more boosters than if B wins or they draw, therefore incentivizing B to scoop to him. Seems like cut and dry bribery to me.

He isn't offering anything in the second statement, just bringing a fact to
the attention of B.

Originally posted by Benjamin Bandelow:

Eric Shukan
It seems clear that Player A is indicating that he will give value for a concession.

How on earth is winking a clear offer of anything? No explicit offer was made;

A wink is a clear offer of something because of the cooperative principle. A wink has pragmatic value; both speakers can be reasonably expected to understand the implicature. So although an offer might not have been made explicitly, the player is going to have a very hard time convincing me that it wasn't deliberately implied.

So, what exactly is that offer?

Player A: now give me the 50 Euro you promised me by winking.
Player B: no way, where I come from, 1 wink equals 10 Euro, and I only winked twice.

Ehm… you see the problem?

That seems to me to be a problem for the players to fight out, not the judges.

Originally posted by Dustin De Leeuw:

So, what exactly is that offer?

Player A: now give me the 50 Euro you promised me by winking.
Player B: no way, where I come from, 1 wink equals 10 Euro, and I only winked twice.

Ehm… you see the problem?

The offer was “I'll give you something.” In the case of a prize split the expectation is an even split. In the case of a wink, who knows what it is. But it's still an offer of something. Offering either in exchange for a concession is a problem.

Edited Marc DeArmond (Jan. 14, 2015 11:26:07 AM)

All we care about is was the offer legal. Winking instead of talking tends
to imply covertness and attempting to not ‘say’ the wrong thing. So it
doesn't matter what the offer was, the way it was done clearly and simply
means it was bribery.

I get that is clearly bribery if the player event admits that this was his intend, but what if he would have denied it?
To me, the wink alone is not a clear sign for bribery since it is a very vague way of communication.

The following scenarios come to my head for the following situation “Do you wanna concede? *wink*”:
- I am just making a joke. I wink to make it clear that I am joking.
- I want to signal my opponent that it would be nice of him to concede (without any intention of splitting).
- I am actually trying to bribe my opponent.

I guess, depending on the social context, a lot more scenarios can be constructed where the wink has nothing to do with bribery.
To be honest it kind of scares me, since I winked to my opponents more then once, mostly to underline a joke, and maybe the next time I do this I get DQ'ed for bribery? I hope not.

What if instead of winking he would reached with his arm for a handshake?
It just might be the attempt to be friendly because he assumes his opponent is willing to concede and shake his hand. But it also might be an implicit offer of a split? Who knows.

Maybe I just do not get the argument, but to me it seems a lot of people think it is pretty cut-and-dry that a wink is a sign for bribery. I do think a wink in certain situations, in certain rounds, at certain table numbers warrens an investigation on what was going on, but just assuming a wink is a clear act of bribery sends the wrong signal.
It might lead to players afraid of shaking hands, just because it might be interpreted as some kind of shady business.

As I already said, maybe I'm just missing something here or simply don't get it. In this case, I would be happy if someone could enlighten me, because I'm really confused by this discussion ;).

The following scenarios come to my head for the following situation “Do you wanna concede? *wink*”:
- I am just making a joke. I wink to make it clear that I am joking.
- I want to signal my opponent that it would be nice of him to concede (without any intention of splitting).
- I am actually trying to bribe my opponent.

Maybe I just do not get the argument, but to me it seems a lot of people think it is pretty cut-and-dry that a wink is a sign for bribery. I do think a wink in certain situations, in certain rounds, at certain table numbers warrens an investigation on what was going on, but just assuming a wink is a clear act of bribery sends the wrong signal.

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So, let's examine the context in the final round of Swiss in which if you get a concession you make T8.

Assign probabilities to how often a wink means each of these.

Here's my assignments:

joke = 2%, and you may well still be DQ'ed. Don't joke about bribery when you have high payoff available.
signal that it would be nice = 2%, I've never heard of this in this context, so I'll give it 2% just in case.
bribe = 96%

You can come up with more, too, and they are all equally unlikely. But note that in each of the cases, you acknowledge that the wink conveys information. So, we apparently agree on that point.

As for “wink being bribery”, please stop straw-man arguing. No one said that a wink was bribery. People are saying that in the context of the scenario that was given that the wink ALONG WITH OTHER BEHAVIORS is bribery.

Don't take the wink out of context, and recognize that when you come up with other possibilities for the meaning of the wink in the context given, that those possibilities may have frighteningly small probabilities (can you come up with one which is 30% or 40% in that context?)

Lastly, encourage players NOT to joke about bribery. I say that because every fourth or so bribery DQ is a case where the offender says he was joking. No joke - I've seen hundreds of Bribery DQ reports. IC tends to believe the guy maybe one time in 30, and these are in situations where the payoff is small or nonexistent.

Eric S.

I want to pitch in here…

A few people stated that once the player says during the investigation he intended to give his opponent something we have to DQ him for Bribery. I believe thinking this way is wrong and is reverse engineering your way of thinking. It was made clear before that the intent to give your opponent something in exchange for a concession or draw is completely legal, you are just not allowed to use this as an incentive.

The only think this discussion is about, really, is whether winking is enough of a sign to indicate the promise of something. Personally I would generally say it isn't but given context, being in the last round and on the verge of top 8 I will likely rule it is.