Dirty Tricks (2021) User Reviews

Inside the cutthroat competition that is bridge

[paul-allaer · 6/10 · 11 December 2021]

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.

Unjust??

[billsoccer · 7/10 · 18 December 2021]

Don't avoid this if you don't know/like Bridge. This is a fascinating insight into an arcane world - one that appears to be as subject to anti-science conspiracy theories as 'ours' is.

Granted it starts very slow - introducing us to the alleged cheater, a boy wunderkind who - even as a youth was suspended for cheating. As the boy grows he wins and wins. Then the allegations start. He's accused and is eventually barred for life.

Before that occurs however, there is a (too) brief scene with one of his few supporters - a scientist who was involved in discovering the Higgs Boson. This person analyzed the stats and pointed out that the accusers were relying on a small number of videoed hands to come up with their judgements. Many more than these however they ignored or otherwise didn't use to factor in! He pointed out how biased this as and was overruled/ignored. The documentary didn't cover this point sufficiently to enable us to see if the statistics cited were fair or not. The accused is left convicted and I for one have to question the process and the lack of attention to this.

Wow. Is nothing sacred?

[thejdrage · 7/10 · 26 March 2022]

Omar Sharif had it written in his acting contracts that he could take time off to go to bridge tournaments, he took it so seriously. And my aunt played in the same tournaments with him a few times. (I'm old-er.) Bridge to them was almost a religion.

How sad that as with most things in the 21st Century, bridge has been defiled for the sake of winning. Yep. We gotta win, don't we?

I do find it oddly interesting that Boye Brogeland took up the mantel of the guardian of the gate. It seemed they all turned into villagers with pitchforks running into the night looking for the boogeymen.

Makes me glad I am not of that tribe!!!

Wonderful and about something so unimportant to most people as the game of bridge.

[NightFlyerWatching · 15 January 2022]

This show is phenomenal even though it's a documentary. Soap opera-ish. And about something so unimportant to most people as the game of bridge. The drama, so much drama surrounding the card game of bridge just really wow interesting about something so trivial but not so trivial to some people. Captured so well I'm guessing by director and producer but just really really great.

Brogeland, a bad looser

[rolfhu · 7/10 · 29 December 2021]

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.

i d'no bridge...

[ops-52535 · 7/10 · 13 December 2021]

But used to be good playing ''amerikaner'' at recess in the middleschool corridors. But cheating isnt good so let them have their own league.

So go boye, do them poker faces too, theyre the supreem card cheaters.

A good docu, that wont teach you the game, very objective angled though.

Dirty Tricks has a tricky subject

[hintzde1 · 7/10 · 19 July 2022]

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.

Secret Communications

[aebanks-16901 · 8/10 · 25 December 2021]

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.

Takes boredom to a whole new level

[jake_fantom · 2/10 · 13 December 2021]

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.

Wow! I adore this.

[JurijFedorov · 8/10 · 8 May 2022]

Really liked this documentary. I don't understand bridge and did see the fairly mediocre reviews on this. So I felt like maybe it would be a bit childish, boring, too unfocused. In the first part of it I was constantly looking for things wrong with the documentary to understand the critical reviews. The director was trying to make it flashy and fast paced often overlooking bridge itself. The rules of bridge are not explained for example and we don't see any bridge play.

It's about the giant cheating scandals in bridge in 2015 where many top players were looked into. Video recordings of bridge at top level were made for the first time at that point so for the first time you could rewatch games which meant that all the obvious signals were found the same year and the best players in the world were kicked out.

The documentary is made in Israel by Israelis and the cheater team was Israeli. One top player and one beginner who just cheated so much that he became a top player. I was worried about it being nationally biased and it felt that way initially. Lotan Fisher himself, the top cheater, is the main person interviewed. He has maybe 40 minutes of screentime claiming he is innocent and didn't cheat, accusing everyone of being unfair towards him and taking his dream away, and being extremely self-centered. He claims to be a genius player on such a high level that when he explains why he made some terrible plays that ended up being fantastic no one else in the world can understand it as he is this much better than anyone else. His genius cannot be explained - he's just that much above any logic. Initially I was worried about the doc.

I love cheating scandals and knew about this one too from Youtube so I knew he cheated. His excuses therefore didn't work whatsoever on me. I knew he was lying I was just worried about the documentary not being direct enough and confusing other viewers. Initially you really feel like the doc is unfairly biased as he is from Israel. But once the accusers are interviewed in Boye Brogeland and his friends the documentary becomes fully transparent. He cheated and anyone with eyes can see it in this documentary even if they don't understand bridge. I still feel like they should have focused on Boye Brogeland not the cheater. He's a narcissist getting a ton of spotlight as he's from the country this doc is for. But then the Lance Armstrong documentaries are amazing and he is the main character there. I think the difference is that 90% cheated in Tour de France while in bridge maybe 50% don't cheat so you can easier forget and burry cheaters in history books. It's quite clear cheating is so easy in bridge that out of the 50 best players in the world 26 may be cheaters.

Overall I loved it! The editing was flashy, but never rushed. The music was cool, the style fascinating, and the interviews interesting. There is not much to dislike here. I'd watch such docs all day long. Really great fun.

Compelling

[mklvntwar · 8/10 · 10 December 2021]

Nothing wrong with wanting to be the best. A lot wrong with cheating in order to achieve that. This documentary is really a tragic result of two guys who were caught cheating and thought the ends justifies the means.