Your Obligations Regarding Unauthorized Information

The following are the Rules of Bridge concerning Unauthorized Information (“UI”). The Rules are not suggestions but rather govern your conduct. You are responsible for following the Rules and, further ensuring, your partnership does not benefit when partner breaks the Rules, no matter whether the result of inadvertence, neglect, presumed intent, or actual intent.

1. When there is no UI, the players may do what they wish.
2. Great care must be taken when UI has been created by your partner, and, obviously, your partner must take great care when you have created UI. You must also be vigilant that if partner does not follow the rules, you are obliged to politely and gently advise your partner of the transgression.
3. When there is UI, you cannot choose, from among any reasonable alternative, a course of action, that may have been suggested by the UI. This means that your bid or play, must be one which 80% of your peers would make. No matter how well judged, no matter how reasonable, and no matter what other subjective reason may be proffered, you cannot take any action which is not one which 80% of your peers would take.
4. If you are a better player, not only is your conduct strictly reviewed, but you are also obliged to be actively ethical and you must go out of your way to see that your partnership does not benefit from the UI. All reasonable doubts are resolved in favor of the non-offending pair.
   (Please see Endnote 1)
5. If the non-offending pair is damaged by your (or your partner’s) improper use of UI, equity will be restored by an adjusted result. If you have benefitted by UI and the opponents have not been proximately caused damage, your result will be adjusted and your opponents’ result may not be adjusted (all doubts will be resolved in favor of the non-offending pair). If no damage has occured and no benefit has been received from UI, the offending pair will be given an appropriate procedural penalty. The procedural penalties will be graduated if offenses increase whether intentional, presumed or actual, by neglect, or by inadvertence. If it reasonably appears that an intentional offense has occurred, the matter will be referred to the Conduct & Ethics Committee either sua sponte, by the Director, by the Board of Directors, or by written request of a member. A member of the Board of Directors is subject to a higher standard in regard to their own conduct. In no event is a Conduct & Ethics inquiry to be viewed as anything other than the purview and province of the Board Of Directors, its delegated Commitee and by promulgated rule.
   (Please see Endnote 2).
6. The bids made and the cards played (and the order of cards) by partner are the only proper information availaible for you to use. You may use the opponents’ available information at your own risk. You may never mislead an opponent. You must correct any impression you have created which may mislead an opponent. Intentionally misleading an opponent, whether with actual or presumed intent, will be the subject of conduct & ethics inquiry.
   (Please see Endnotes 3 and 4)
7. UI is created in many, many ways — anything outside the bid actually made or the cards played (and their order). UI includes, but is not limited, to the following:
   • a significant hesitation or undue haste when calling or playing a card; all breaks in tempo — a break in tempo is any passage of time in excess of ten seconds; the ”normal“ tempo of the player causing the hesitation in excess of ten seconds is irrelevant, the standard is objective — in excess of ten seconds, not any subjective concern or personal reason submitted by the side who has broken tempo — whether or not the stop card has been used (or whether or not the stop card is left on the table), a ten second pause is required where it is manifest that both partners are looking at their cards in a way that suggests reflection and thought. With a hasty, quick, or fast bid, once again, the “normal” tempo of the player is irrelevant, if action is too fast, it is objectively too fast and creates UI. Claiming that a player is always fast or always slow or always deliberate is irrelevant. Faster than three seconds is too fast and slower than ten seconds is too slow. Proper tempo is always reasonably governed by the actual bidding sequence and the experience of the players.
   • a remark or question;
   • the answer to a question;
   • special emphasis or tone of voice, or a gesture;
   • attention to an opponent’s convention card at a significant moment when it is not partner’s turn to call or play;
   • examining opponent’s convention card when dummy;
   • using different designations for the same call.
   • indicating approval or disapproval of a call or play in any manner.
   • indicating the expectation or intention of winning or losing a trick that has not been completed.
   • commenting or acting during the auction or play so as to call attention to a significant occurrence, or to the number of tricks still required for success.
   • looking intently at any other player during the auction and play, or at another player’s hand as for the purpose of seeing his cards or of observing the place from which he draws a card (but it is appropriate to act on information acquired by inadvertently seeing an opponent’s card).
   • showing obvious interest, by any body language, but especially by leaning towards the table, by facial expression, or by eye movement (whether partner is in a “position to observe” or not)
   • showing an obvious lack of further interest in a deal (as by folding one’s cards).
   • varying the normal tempo of bidding or play (N.B., if for the purpose of disconcerting an opponent, the conduct is the subject of Conduct & Ethics inquiry)
   • making gratuitous comments during the auction and play.
   • detaching a card before it is your turn to play.
   • prolonging play unnecessarily (as in playing on although he knows that all the tricks are surely his) (if  for the purpose of disconcerting an opponent, the conduct is the subject of Conduct & Ethics inquiry).

   These are not the only ways UI may occur.

Endnote 1. ”LAW 73 — COMMUNICATION

A. Proper Communication between Partners

1. How Effected

Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of the calls and plays themselves.

2. Correct Manner for Calls and Plays

Calls and plays should be made without special emphasis, mannerism or inflection, and without undue hesitation or haste (however, sponsoring organisations may require mandatory pauses, as on the first round of auction, or after a skip-bid warning, or on the first trick).

B. Inappropriate Communication Between Partners

1. Gratuitous Information

Partners shall not communicate through the manner in which calls or plays are made, through extraneous remarks or gestures, through questions asked or not asked of the opponents or through alerts and explanations given or not given to them.

2. Prearranged Communication

The gravest possible offence is for a partnership to exchange information through prearranged methods of communication other than those sanctioned by these Laws. A guilty partnership risks expulsion.

C. Player Receives Unauthorised Information from Partner

1. Gratuitous Information

When a player has available to him unauthorised information from his partner, as from a remark, question, explanation, gesture, mannerism, special emphasis, inflection, haste or hesitation, he must carefully avoid taking any advantage that might accrue to his side.”

Endnote 2. “D. Variations in Tempo or Manner [Law 73, Continued]

1. Inadvertent Variations

It is desirable, though not always required, for players to maintain steady tempo and unvarying manner. However, players should be particularly careful in positions in which variations may work to the benefit of their side [partnership]. [While seated for play during a session, partners must not employ any means to effect private communication with one another.] Otherwise, inadvertently to vary the tempo or manner in which a call or play is made does not in itself constitute a violation of propriety, but inferences from such variation may appropriately be drawn only by an opponent, and at his own risk.

2. Intentional Variations

A player may not attempt to mislead an opponent by means of remark or gesture, through the haste or hesitancy of a call or play (as in hesitating before playing a singleton), or by the manner in which the call or play is made."

…

F. Violation of Proprieties

1. Player Acts on Unauthorised Information

If the Director determines that a player chose from among logical alternative actions one that could demonstrably have been suggested over another by his partner’s remark, manner, tempo, or the like, he shall award an adjusted score (see Law 16).

2. Player Injured by Illegal Deception

If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a remark, manner, tempo, or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have known, at the time of the action, that the action could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score (see Law 12C).”

Endnote 3. “Any information used as a basis for a call or play must be ‘authorized’.

For information to be deemed authorized there must be an indication from the laws or regulations that the use of that information is intended. Authorization does not follow automatically from a lack of prohibition. Unless there is an express prohibition it is lawful to use information that is given to the players for the procedures of the game, as described in the laws. Also, information is ‘authorized’ when the laws state it to be so. A player is permitted to make and use judgements about the abilities and tendencies of opponents and about the inclinations (‘style’) of his partner in matters where the partner’s decisions are spontaneous rather than habitual or systemic. A player’s habitual practices form part of his method and his partner’s awareness of them is legitimate information; but such method is subject to any regulations governing partnership agreements and to the requisite disclosure. Habit is to be identified when an occurrence is so frequent that it may be anticipated. Not to disclose knowledge of partner’s habits and practices is contrary to Law 75A and where this is the case it is a violation of Law 40 (and thus illegal) when the call is made.”

Endnote 4. “Use of unauthorized information

If a player has knowledge that it is illegal or improper to use in choosing a call or play this knowledge is referred to as ‘unauthorized information’. Such information may be obtained in any one of a number of ways. If it does not come from the player’s partner the Director is instructed how to deal with it in Laws 16B and 16C. Law 16C deals with information from withdrawn calls and plays; these include calls and plays withdrawn by partner. Other information received from partner is the kind that is most likely to be the subject of an appeal. It is legal for a player to base a call or play on information from prior legal calls in the auction or from plays on the hand, from mannerisms of opponents, or from any other source authorized as already stated. Any information obtained from partner otherwise is unauthorized and it is illegal to use it if it suggests a call or play. This includes any information that eases the choice of a call or play.”