If I had to guess the most common infraction in bridge (and guess because I don’t keep statistics), I would say it is declarer leading from the wrong hand. He leads from Dummy when he won the last trick in his hand or the other way around.
Now I’m rarely called to the table when this occurs (the other night was an exception as I gave this chat before the game!). However, it is an infraction.
UI, “Unauthorized Information”, is the bane of the ethical bridge player’s life. He or she tries hard to play by the rules, but gets hurt because some players don’t. We can, perhaps, forgive some of those players as being “ignorant of The Laws“, but it is not really a very good excuse. If you are going to play a game, especially seriously, then you should learn the rules of the game.
That, as I’ve said, is what inspired this series of blog posts and my 5-minute “chats” before the start of games I run.
Bridge organizations, including the World Bridge Federation, the ACBL and the Canadian Bridge Federation, establish various regulations. There is one important thing about these regulations (and the “Conditions of Contest” for a tournament) and it is stated explicitly in The Laws: They cannot conflict with The Law.
We talked about Dummy — dummy’s rights and what dummy is not allowed to do, such as suggest a line of play to declarer. In a way, what dummy is doing if he reaches for a card in dummy before declarer has called for it, is to tell declarer something declarer should not be privy to — what he, dummy thinks is the right play.
That brings me to an area of The Laws, the bain of a director’s life and one of the main reasons for this series of chats… Unauthorized Information (often referred to as simply “UI”). Perhaps the easiest way to think about unauthorized information is to look at Authorized Information.
Some of you may have heard of the “World Bridge Federation” (WBF). It is the umbrella organization that is responsible for the bridge laws (Laws of Duplicate Bridge) and for holding world bridge championships and other world-wide events.
There are “independent” organizations that are members, directly or indirectly of the WBF. They fall into a hierarchy as follows:
