Regular partnerships should have a convention card available for their opponents to look at.

If you are sitting out please try and remember others are playing and have no interest in your conversation so please keep your voices down.

Please fill in the travellers before your own personal scorecard and remember not to discuss the hand as the board has to be played at other tables.

Don't hover at a table waiting to collect boards you are about to play. Ask someone who has no further interest in those boards to get them for you.

At the end of the evening please make sure that the table and chairs you have just used are put away.

If they have not already been collected take the table number and Howell movement card if these have been used, to the table at the front of the room.

If you have any queries at all during the play of the hands don't try to solve them yourselves but rather call the director for the evening over.

USEFUL INFORMATION RE CONDUCT AT THE TABLE.

HESITATION

It is not against the rules to hesitate: ie take extra time before bidding or passing. In fact for most of us it is almost inevitable that occasionally we hesitate as we try to work out how to bid a difficult hand.The trouble is that the partner is put on the spot because he/she has been given information. For example a player who thinks for a long time and then passes is saying: “I almost have a bid, but I’m not sure what, so I’m passing.”Information is also passed by a player who hesitates and then bids. The inference is that the hand was only just worth a bid and that pass was a possibility, or that there was a choice of bids. In these circumstances the partner is expected to ignore the ‘unauthorised information’. It is all too easy to be influenced by the hesitation and make a bid that might not otherwise have been made. When there is a hesitation, followed by a bid from the partner, the opponents are entitled to call the director and reserve their rights. This is a necessary formality,  just  in case it is later revealed that there has been an infringement. It is not a suggestion that either player has done anything wrong, and neither should be offended.  If it is not agreed that there was a hesitatation, the TD should be called. If it is agreed, play can go on. At the end of the hand it may be accepted that the bidding player had the values for his bid. But  if the opponents feel that the bidder may have been influenced (maybe unconciously) by the hesitation the TD should be called. The TD has to decide whether the hesitation changed the outcome of the auction. Did the partner have a clear-cut bid even without the hesitation? If so, no penalty. If the partner had logical alternatives did he make the choice that at least 70% of players of like ability would make? If so, no penalty. 
If neither of these two criteria are met the TD can adjust the score so that the non-offending pair get the best score reasonably to be expected on the hand. Hesitations are a cause of friction wherever bridge is played. The best solution is never to hesitate. But that is asking the impossible.  So the onus is on the partner. He must scrupulously ignore any ‘unauthorised information’, whether it be a hesitation, squirming in the chair, or scratching the head!

ASKING QUESTIONS

Information can also be passed by asking a question about an opponent’s bid and then passing.The suggestion is that the questioner nearly has the values for a bid or has an interest in the suit bid by the opposition – information that is heard by his partner. 
It is perfectly within the rules to ask a question but the player should always be aware that there is the possibility of passing ‘unauthorised information.’ The counsel of perfection is to wait until the end of the auction before asking questions. 

 
Note for further reading. Laws 16 and 73 apply.