Dirty Tricks

As "Dirty Tricks" (2021 release; 100 min.) opens, we briefly hear from Lotan Fisher, world champion bridge player, "the next Michael Jordan of bridge", as one talking head puts it, but then we learn that Lotan and his partner Ron Schwartz are accused of cheating. We go back in time to "Rishon, Israel, 2000", where as young boy aged 11, Lotan is fascinated by numbers and his capacity to memorize numbers is even bigger. He decides to sign up for bridge lessons... At this point we are 10 min into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from Israeli director Daniel Sivan ("The Oslo Diaries", "The Devil Next Door"). Here he tackles a topic that I literally knew nothing about: the cutthroat competition within the bridge card-playing community, and whether the world's best player and his partner have been cheating the system all along, or simply are so much better than anyone else. The challenge is that bridge is a complicated card game, and we are barely given an understanding of the game. Furthermore, watching players play bridge doesn't lend itself to a lot of drama (unlike, say, watching Michael Jordan and the Bulls). So that makes for a challenging first half of the movie. Things get better in the second half, when the director turns his attention to the investigation by the Israeli Bridge Federation. I was surprised how much more interested I became in the documentary when we shifted away from the card playing aspects of bridge to the potential cheating aspects of it all.

"Dirty Tricks" premiered on Showtime a few days ago, and is now playing on SHO On Demand, where I caught it last night. If you have any interest in the game of bridge, or are looking for al off-center look at cheating in sports (in this case: bridge) and how it affects on an entire community, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

If spending the better part of two hours listening to an Israeli bridge-playing narcissist talk about himself is your idea of a fun evening, here's your new favorite documentary. Plus, you get to watch endless home videos of the same narcissist as a young child talking about himself. And if that's not enough to sell you on this stultifying, jaggedly edited portrait of a self-absorbed bridge player, here's more good news: the soundtrack won the Most Annoying Soundtrack Ever award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Devoted to the Game of Bridge, with special mention for incorporating more Israeli rap music than any previous film. If you decide to attempt a viewing, I strongly suggest you keep the remote close at hand, with your thumb hovering above the fast forward button.

Overall, this is a good film, not great as it has to struggle with the depth it needs to explore. I think that people with a working knowledge of the subject will enjoy it, but many will not be interested.

My background does include statistics, amateur bridge playing, and professional level blackjack play with a full knowledge of card counting and some (intellectual only) knowledge of cheating schemes. This helped me enjoy the film, but left me a bit frustrated.

Another reviewer correctly pointed out that they needed to explore the statistical angle further. I fully agree and can say that the statistical expert in the film was highly unconvincing as he was comparing apples to oranges. The issue here is, not unlike blackjack, you do not and will not cheat (or be shown as a legal card counter) on every hand. There will be pivotal times where this will be needed and will be used. Ergo, the statistics will be applied to less than the total amount of hands filmed. And they may not have had enough hands to examine. Full data and full tournament bridge understanding would be needed with the statistics.

I will say as a blackjack expert that can spot skill levels in other players quickly, that the other bridge players' vague quotes that 'they just know' does have more of a ring of truth to it than many would expect. In blackjack, we make cover plays that are not the optimal moves so that the casinos will not bar us. Because we know we can be spotted by people that know. It is a cat and mouse game and it goes in in all kinds of other competitions.

So thank you Dirty Tricks filmmakers for working my brain a little bit here. I wish more clarity was there, but as in life, you don't always get a clarified and obvious truth revealed.

A well done documentary about how bad looser can change change the life of a better player just by crying over and over ....he is cheating!!! He has no prove what is also shown. Another problem seems to be, Lotan is that good, most people not understand he plays.

For those that like documentaries, there will be no letdown with "Dirty Tricks" which could be alternately titled "Secret Communications"

As the movie itself states, it does not go very deeply into the game of bridge and its strategy but does explain the basic premise that two teammates are required to work together WITHOUT communicating to one another. "Dirty Tricks" goes into detail to find out if there is communication happening between players, some ways in which it can/could be done and just how rampant cheating can/could be.

Not until video begins to be used for major tournaments do answers to these questions begin to be revealed.