Welcome, Rui!
Unit 141 welcomes Rui Marques
of Setúbal, Portugal - international tournament director, management consultant for individuals and public organizations. Rui started playing bridge in 1989, and became a tournament director in 1990. In 1993, at the EBL TD Course in Amsterdam, he was rated at the top level "A" and has been directing at the top level since the 1993 European Community Bridge Championships held in Montechoro, Portugal. He was appointed as Chief Tournament Director for both the EBL (since 2015) and WBF
(since 2017). He is frequently a member of the teaching staff at the international tournament director´s courses held by the European Bridge League. At the national level he managed a number of bridge clubs on the Lisbon area, held managing positions within the Portuguese Bridge Federation for two terms, was Chief Tournament Director for the Estoril Grand Prix for more than a decade and has been the Chief Tournament Director for the Madeira International Tournament since the first edition held in 1998. He is the owner and manager
www.lusobridge.org
since its inception in 2004.
Fun fact: During the 90´s Rui was a "whiz kid" on TV quiz shows on national
television. He
is currently living in Philadelphia (USA) with his wife, international bridge player Connie Goldberg, and has been pitching in directing at our local club Raffles, and tournaments far and wide, including the upcoming NABC. We are very grateful for the following article he has provided us on a topic which comes up often at the table.
Unauthorized Information?
Bridge is a game of information exchange. When a player calls or plays, he is sending information across the table. The fact that the player made a certain call or play, and all the positive and negative inferences deriving from it, is authorized. When he hesitates, alerts, explains, makes a comment, bids too fast, questions the opponent, or the like, any information that might derive from that is unauthorized for his partner (and authorized for the opponents).
In practical terms, a player has to imagine that his partner is on a black box, and the only things that come out of the box are the calls and plays.
Often we find it hard to understand this concept and abstract ourselves from "knowing", for example, that partner thinks that we are playing Lebensohl when we are playing something else and he completely forgot. And sometimes even if we try hard to ignore the unauthorized information, we end up taking some questionable action.
For example, we open 1H on H AQJ98 S KQ2 D 2 C J9876 and partner bids 4D on H K765 S JT9876 D - C AKQ. We bid 4H. Partner takes another bite of the cherry and bids 4S. We bid 4NT and partner bids 5H (two key cards without the queen). Two key cards are missing, so we pass. Now imagine that partner hesitated for a while before bidding 5H. What does it show, or suggest? How long does it take to count your key cards?... The only possible explanation for the break in tempo is that partner is void in diamonds! Either that, or he was thinking of where to go for a walk on the weekend! We might be itching to play a slam, and think of a million excuses to continue the bidding, but we can't. Partner told
us that two key cards are missing. Bidding on is not justifiable from the bidding, and even if in all honesty it was not based on partner's hesitation, it might have been, and the opponents are well entitled to call the TD, and the TD should roll it back to 5H. This is not an evaluation of whether we did something unethical or not. It's just a decision that states that our call might have been based on unauthorized information. And this situation is so frequent that it was named "Hesitation Blackwood"...
Another example: Partner opens 2NT. We think that we play Stayman, and we bid 3C. Partner alerts as "Puppet Stayman". We have to ignore what we heard. For us, it is still Stayman. When partner bids 3D, showing at least a major of 4 cards in his mind, we must ignore it. For us it denies any major. (We think it is Stayman, remember?)
And one more example: Partner lead the 3 against NT (4
th
best for us). Opponent asks, and we explain. Partner blushes and looks surprised. We "know" that he got it wrong somehow, but that is something that we cannot know. The grimaces, the blushing, the "oops factor" is unauthorized information.
When called to a table because of a possible issue of unauthorized information from partner, the TD should establish that there was UI, that the action from the player could have demonstrably been suggested by UI, and that there are other less successful logical alternatives to the action that the player took. If these three conditions are verified, the TD usually adjusts the score. This is normal in bridge. Getting a score adjusted is not cause for shame, or an ethical indictment. It's part of the game. We may think that we did not use UI, but the TD may think that we might have done so, and the standard of proof is just that we "might have done so".
One common mistake that TDs do is to say that a player that potentially received UI should "ignore that information". The correct explanation of what a player can do is "to not select an action that could demonstrably be suggested by the UI that was made available". Sometimes the action suggested is the majority action (the action that most people would choose), but if there are logical alternatives the player should stray from the beaten path and not select the suggested action.
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