Unauthorized Information

What is Unauthorized Information (UI) ?

You are allowed to base your choice of calls and plays on several legal sources of information:

• The auction and the previously played cards
• The vulnerability
• Your opponents' convention cards, alerts, and replies to your questions
• Your interpretation of your opponents' mannerisms and their table talk -- at your own risk!
• Information from withdrawn calls following an infraction by your opponents

You are not allowed to benefit from any other source of information, especially when that information might tell you something about what is in your partner's hand. For instance:

• Knowing whether or not your partner Alerted his or your bids. (Use the "Alert" button, not table chat, to make alerts!)
• Hearing partner's answers to the opponents' questions. (Always reply privately to a question to avoid giving your partner this problem!)
• Any table talk from your partner. Especially any comments like "I misbid, is it too late to change my bid?" or (immediately after partner bids 4NT) "We do play RKC, don't we?"
• Information from withdrawn calls or plays after your side does something wrong.
• Looking at your own convention card or system notes during the auction to remind yourself what your partner's bidding means

More rarely, UI can arise from overhearing a comment another player makes about a board you haven't played yet, or accidentally seeing a hand in a board you haven't played yet. Well-written bridge software reduces "accidental UI" of this type to almost nil.

To deliberately seek out information about a hand you haven't played yet, of course, is outright cheating and the worst sort of receving UI there is.

What are my obligations after receiving UI?

Despite all precautions, inevitably partner will accidentally type something in table chat on occasion, and you will have to avoid taking advantage of the UI. Here is the actual wording of what the Laws require of you:

After a player makes available to his partner extraneous information that may suggest a call or play... the partner may not choose from among logical alternative actions one that could demonstrably have been suggested over another by the extraneous information.

In other words, once you've received UI from your partner, if you face any close decisions what to do yourself, you must do the opposite of what the UI says your partner "wants you to do." Only if your action is clear-cut (or the UI hasn't told anything about which choice is more likely to work out well) may you do what you originally planned.

Example: Suppose you open 1 and your partner raises to 3. You think you have agreed to play limit raises, but you hear your partner say "weak with 4-card heart support" to the opponents. If you have a subminimum opening bid yourself, it would be automatic to pass a limit raise, and you still may. However, if you have a borderline hand, that you aren't sure whether should raise to game after a limit raise, you are now obligated to raise to game. And of course a 15-point hand that would be a clear raise to game opposite a limit raise will still bid 4; it would be grossly improper to pass even with extra strength, because your partner "let you peek at his hand" and see that he doesn't hold the 10 points he promised you.

When should I call the director?

The best time is as soon as you aware that UI has been passed. The director can make sure that whoever received the information is aware of their obligations and avoid the need for a score adjustment later.

Sometimes you won't be aware anything has gone wrong until the end of the hand, and then call the director and ask him to check into why an opponent managed to make a "lucky guess" at the best bid or play after receiving UI. (Or your opponents may call the director suspicious that you have done the same.)

What you want to avoid is making an inquiry about UI into an accusation of cheating. "Just doing what I would have done anyway without the UI" is not deliberate cheating, but it might still result in a score adjustment if there was a close decision where someone was expected to "bend over backwards" to avoid taking advantage of the UI.

If the director does feel a player has failed to meet his requirement to avoid taking advantage of UI, he may adjust the score to reflect what was likely to have happened had everyone acted properly. He is not necessarily accusing you of cheating or even doing anything deliberately wrong when he adjusts your score; he'll explain what he is adjusting the score to and why, and advise you of your right to appeal if you disagree with his judgment.

The rules about UI are in Law 16 and Law 73.