BBO Discussion Forums: Ethical Question - BBO Discussion Forums

My partner and I play an opening bid of 2H as Flannery in the first two seats only.
I opened a weak 2H in third seat, which partner explained incorrectly as Flannery. Partner raised me to 4H, passed out, and I informed our opponents of our actual agreement at the end of the auction.

During the play, I discover that LHO has the stiff heart king and an opening hand. If 2H was explained correctly, I have the inference that he cannot have five spades, as he would have overcalled 2S with such a hand.

However, since LHO thought 2H was flannery, he may have failed to act with five, or even six, spades.

Question: Is it authorized information that my LHO thought 2H was flannery during the bidding?
Correspondingly, am I forced to take the inference that LHO cannot have 5 spades and play accordingly (that might potentially lead to a spade ruff if LHO does indeed have 5 spades)?

Welcome. Nice first post. I await the knowledgeable posters on this one along with you.

Inclination at the table would be to use whatever I know and can infer, but then call the TD afterward and let him decide, when I honestly don't know what I should have done; then accept the consequences.

No, it is not authorised information. Your partner's explanations are clearly not authorised information to you, and therefore you are debarred from drawing any inferences from it.

 iviehoff, on 2012-January-03, 11:25, said:

Yes, looks like 16A3 covers this quite nicely, although I can't ever remember an adjustment for playing a hand based on partners MI.

Law 20F5(b) covers the case where an erroneous explanation is corrected at the end of the auction, and refers us to Law 75.

75A clearly states that the information from partner's explanation is unauthorized, and you must avoid taking advantage therefrom (Laws 16A and 73C). 75B says that if the misexplanation damages the opponents, the Director should adjust the score.

As Director, first I would determine whether the misexplanation itself caused damage (as, for example, by preventing the opponents from finding their spade game). If so, I would adjust the score under 75B.

If there is no such damage, I would consider whether your line of play might have been influenced by the unauthorized information. Did your (unauthorized) knowledge of LHO's spade holding suggest a line of play when a less-successful logical alternative existed? Did you then adopt that line of play? If so, I would adjust under 16A.

The information about LHO's spade length is unauthorised because it fails the second test of Law 16A1a - it's not "unaffected by unauthorized information from another source".

I still think the question has a bit more depth. I don't remember ever seeing on these fora a discussion of inferences about an opponent's hand pattern from his failure to act after being given misinformation, and the above cites show how we can get from 16A1c to 16A3 to 16B1(a) to 75A; and for that I am thankful, and in the future would know the 3rd-level inferences(guesses) about what a particular opponent might hold are based on UI.

However, back to the OP. He knows lefty had the stiff heart king and opening values (high cards in the minors, apparently). Let us assume he acquired this knowledge by authorized means. This doesn't leave too much of value (forget length for a moment) in the spade suit for an opponent to have passed throughout (without some table action).

If declarer in the play drops a doubleton king-queen of spades offside (for instance), based on this logic, has he used AI from the highcards shown already or UI from the possible spade length on his left? I still think it best to play the hand as well as I can and then rat on myself to the director ---since the opponents might not be in a position to suspect they have been damaged.

If you think you have UI, you should carefully avoid taking advantage of it (Law 73C). If you think you may be taking advantage of it, you probably are. Taking advantage of UI and then calling the TD to sort it out seems wrong to me.

It is not the case that when you have both UI and AI, you (or the director, or anyone else) get to choose which you use. When you have UI, you may not choose an LA which could demonstrably have been suggested by the UI ("could have been", not "was") if there is another LA available, and the LA chosen results in damage to the other side. It doesn't matter if you have AI which suggests that you take the same action, unless there is no LA to that action.

Disagree with Blackshoe here (sort of). If I can work out the hand without the UI and I play it as such, I think its perfectly fine to play it that way and call the director afterward and see if there should be an adjustment.

If UI is the only clue to such-and-such then I agree I'm stuck in my ethical corner.

This seems better than putting my head in the sand and just accepting my fate due to the wrong alert.

If you can work the hand out to such an extent that there is no logical alternative not suggested by the UI, then why would you call the director? There is no irregularity.

 Phil, on 2012-January-04, 12:59, said:

 nigel_k, on 2012-January-04, 13:18, said:

It doesn't work that way. Nobody's asking you to put your head in the sand. What you are asked to do is to carefully avoid taking advantage of the UI (Law 73C) and to refrain from choosing from among logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested by UI.

Are you absolutely sure that, having UI, that UI has no influence on your thinking about the hand? Do you think you can convince the director of that?

Don't forget the definition of "logical alternative": 'A logical alternative action is one that, among the class of players in question and using the methods of the partnership, would be given serious consideration by a significant proportion of such players, of whom it is judged some might select it'.

I suspect that if you "work out the hand without the UI and play it as such" and then call the director, you will find that he will adjust the score 999 times out of a thousand. And somewhere along the way he's going to start giving you procedural penalties for deliberately violating the law.

 nigel_k, on 2012-January-04, 13:18, said:

Of course there was an irregularity. There was incorrect information given to the opponents during the auction.

 aguahombre, on 2012-January-04, 14:41, said:

Ok, but the opponents already know about that, and technically the director should have been called about it already. What I meant is that is there no irregularity related to use of UI.

I guess some on here think that the receipt of UI is a reason to 'stop playing bridge'.

Case in point: a few years ago I'm playing with a partner whom is extremely ethical. Declarer led a card towards dummys KQxx and I make a not so smooth duck with my Ace. Partner gets in a few tricks later and, being the ethical player that he is, does not play over to my A and we lose it.

I do not remember the position except that if he would have taken 15 seconds to count the hand that he would have made the right play and he didn't need UI to do it. As a matter of fact he would have needed to assume that his opponent did something completely irrational like pass a 14 count as dealer or not pitch a loser before draweing trump.

The problem is the "next month bar question" - I guarantee that at some point, *everybody* would have been - and will be - susceptible to it. I know I have (although, to my credit, "next month" is "at the end of the hand, when somebody comments").

All the TDs know this (even if not all of us have had the whatevers to try it). There is an action that from the outside was *clearly* suggested by the UI. The person who did that action swears up and down that "I'd always make this call, it's obvious". A month or so later, the group is shooting the breeze in the bar after a tournament, and someone gives the player the hand and the leadin, and asks what the player would do. When they say "<other action>, what else?" you mention that last month, they swore that it was obvious...

Humans are *incredible* pattern-matchers and subconscious amalgamators of information. The Law is written the way it is to attempt to compensate for that. It frequently - but not always - works.

[edit to add: if there really *is* no LA - the opponents have bid an 18-count like a 12-14 count if partner doesn't have the A, for instance - fine. But they can say that. There are many more times that "the play is obvious; nobody would do anything else" than "but if partner doesn't have that card, opener has 18 and has bid like it's 12".]

There is a problem with getting things right when you have both AI and UI telling you what to do. Of course you may be in a situation where you can work out what to do from point-count, inferences, or whatever, but think how often people go wrong in such situations. Now they get UI and they do not go wrong.

I am always sceptical about the "I could work it out" argument.

 bluejak, on 2012-January-05, 10:52, said:

If you can explain why the alternative is not logical, and that explanation is sound, I don't see why a director or appeals committee would not accept it. Obviously the people who go wrong could not produce that explanation if asked for it.

 nigel_k, on 2012-January-05, 13:06, said:

Interestingly, since none of the other three in this case seemed inclined to bring the TD into it, I suspect only those players who could indeed articulate the issues (both for and against) would ever need to.

 bluejak, on 2012-January-05, 10:52, said:

If it hesitates, shoot it.

There's a difference between "if it hesitates, shoot it" and "I'm skeptical of 'I was always going to do that' arguments". A big difference.