Gail Norman announced at the Club Night on Wednesday 16^th July 2014 that the Committee of Oxshott Bridge Club had discussed the problem of “Unauthorised Information” and she requested Members to be particularly careful not to inadvertently contravene the Rules of Bridge.

Wikipedia  defines “Unauthorised Information” (UI) (Law 16) as

“any information that a player obtains by means of:

·        Partner's remarks, questions, mannerisms, hesitation and similar,

·        Information from calls and plays which were legally withdrawn and/or substituted as a consequence of that side's infraction (the non-offending side may use this information),

·        Overhearing remarks at other tables or seeing a wrong card.

Reception of unauthorized information is not an infraction per se. However, the player who (might have) received it has severe limitation that (s)he may not act on the basis of it (even if the action is reasonable), but must select a logical alternative instead. The definition of logical alternative is fairly strict, and includes all but practically inadmissible alternative actions. However, in the (fairly unlikely) event that the logical alternative becomes a successful one rather than the action suggested by the UI, no further redress is given to the non-offending side.

The exception is when the player receives a UI inadvertently, as by overhearing remarks at other tables. In that case, the director may adjust positions, appoint substitutes, or award an adjusted score.”

Gail Norman, as Chairman of Oxshott Bridge club, wanted to ensure that the Standards of Play were improved. Members were asked to avoid unnecessary hesitations, such as touching the Bidding Box before actually making a bid or unreasonably hesitating before bidding. Although the communication of “Unauthorised Information” may be completely inadvertent, it is always a source of potential conflict and bad feeling. She asked Members to be mindful of the risks and to give every effort to avoid giving Unauthorised Information.

The following articles may help to exemplify the issues around “Unauthorised Information”:

1)     The Facts about “Unauthorised Information:

a)     Article from Darren Evetts – March 2011

b)     Article from Frank Groome – October 2009

c)     Article from Pocklington Bridge Club

d)     Article from Mountnessing Bridge Club

2)     Recent International Scandals around “Unauthorised Information”:

a)     Dirty Dealings – Bridge World Champions caught cheating – Daily Telegraph (29 Mar ’14)

b)     History of the Bermuda incident (1975)

c)     Scandals Report from Terence Reece

1)     The Facts about “Unauthorised Information”:

a)     Article from Darren Evetts – March 2011

What is Unauthorised Information; commonly known as UI? UI is the opposite of AI – Authorised Information. Let us deal with AI first. AI is made available to you from the legal calls and legal cards played by both your partner and the opposition. Any other information you receive is unauthorised (there are some exceptions to this under law but we won’t digress down this route). UI can come from partner’s comments, gestures or mannerisms, breaks in tempo (hesitations), a question partner asks or replies to, an alert or announcement made by partner.

Creating UI is not illegal but acting upon it is. It is accepted that UI is made available unintentionally and, equally, in the majority of cases it is acted upon unintentionally. The difficulty is divorcing ourselves from what we are allowed to know and what we do know. Once we are in receipt of UI we must take great care not to let it influence our actions. We must consider the auction carefully and be certain that if we are going to take further action it is not based on anything we are not allowed to know (UI!). When things do go wrong the TD will look at the auction; he may ask questions to ascertain your methods and then he will decide on whether or not your action could have been suggested by the UI. Please note the word ‘could’.

If you believe that UI has been made available you should call the Director. This is known as ‘Reserving Your Rights’. The TD will establish the facts and then advise the players to continue and call him back at the end of the hand. In a club situation it is often acceptable to agree the facts and reserve your rights without calling the TD, but if any disagreement occurs the TD must be called at once. The TD will be able to ask relevant questions of the players concerned. Calling the TD is not an accusation of cheating nor, in fact, is the TD ruling against a player who has received UI. I referred to the word ‘could’ in an earlier paragraph.

One could think of it as the ‘offside rule’, as in football. A player is in the wrong place at the wrong time, not deliberately but accidentally. When the TD decides that the UI could have caused the player to choose an action that could have been suggested by the UI then he will adjust the score. A score adjustment is not a fine; it is simply putting right something that went wrong. If the TD decides that because the player concerned should have known better (ie the player is experienced enough to know that he should have taken steps to divorce himself from the UI) he may fine the player concerned. ‘Could’ – The term ‘could’ is provided so that no adjustment is ever an accusation of cheating. ‘Could’ simply suggests that even though we do not believe the player concerned did choose a call that was suggested by the UI he could have done so.

One myth that exists is that when partner hesitates, or asks questions, we are barred from bidding. This is nonsense and, furthermore, it can create more unethical situations – ‘I know if I hesitate, or ask a question, my partner is silenced for the remainder of the auction.’ What a farce that would be! Some simple things that can help us:

· Do not ask questions needlessly. Before play commences you do need to know what system your opponents are playing. If during the auction you have no intention of bidding then do not ask  questions. Of course, if you want to enter the auction you do need to know, but remember that asking a question and then doing nothing is conveying UI. For example the auction goes (note that the bids in brackets are those of your opponents) (1H) – P – (3D) alerted. You hold AKJT98 in diamonds and, of course, you are curious. You ask and are told that it shows a balanced 8-9 point raise to 3H (ie nothing to do with diamonds). You now double – all is well. But what if you pass? Partner now knows that you have interest in  diamonds, or else why did you ask the question in the first place?

· If partner explains a call you have made but the explanation is incorrect you are not allowed to know what was said. You must continue as though partner explained your call exactly as you thought it was. Hard, I know! Also do not react to partner’s explanation because this too is UI. If, as declarer or dummy, your partner explained something incorrectly then call the TD after the final pass. If as defender your partner has given an incorrect explanation you must call the TD at the end of play. Please note that your opponents are entitled to know what your agreements are. If you do not know or are unsure then say so, do not make up agreements. Also if you have messed the system up you do not need to volunteer this. So long as partner has explained your agreements correctly then that is fine (you may need to provide the TD with proof of your agreements if he requests it). If you have made a call based on what you believe your agreements are and then partner offers a different explanation you are not allowed to know that you are on a different page to your partner. You must proceed along the path you started on – regardless of the consequences.

· Do not get caught thinking when declarer is about to take a finesse – this can cause you problems and no amount of explaining that you were considering whether to play the 2 or the 7 will convince the TD that you had a logical bridge reason for thinking! The law states that a player should be particularly careful when variations in tempo may work to the benefit of his side. To intentionally pause in order to lead your opponent astray is illegal.

· Do not get embroiled in arguments with your opponents about anything. If a problem occurs call the TD, that is what he or she is there for. Equally, do not get into arguments with the TD. The TD’s ruling can be appealed if you are unhappy with it. You should be aware that in matters of judgment the TD will normally consult with other TDs, or players, so it is not just his or her judgment that has decided the ruling.

As with all games Bridge has laws and as players we are not expected to know them all by heart. The most important law to remember is that when an irregularity has occurred the TD should be summoned at once. Summoning the TD is not an accusation. What we do need to be more conscience of are ethics. Always explain your system to the opponents when asked – it is their right to know. Do not react as though you are under interrogation, but remember that it is your system and your opponents are not expected to know it. Do not object to a call for the TD; welcome it! Being an ethical player is not necessarily one that never gives UI but one who is aware of it and tries to take the necessary steps to ignore it and, if challenged about it, welcomes the TD’s involvement to put things right.

Enjoy!

Darren Evetts

March 2011

  b)   Article from Frank Groome – October 2009

One of the major causes of friction at the bridge table is the transmission of unauthorised information, either during the auction or during the play. Many players do not properly understand what is meant by the expression and often have no conscious intent to pass information. Additionally, many players (often good ones) do not understand the rules concerning unauthorised information and make statements concerning it that are out and out wrong. It might be useful, therefore, to look at the history of the problem in order to combat it.

The first recognised form of transmitting unauthorised information was known as ‘The French Defence’. Having played a lot of Bridge in other countries, I consider this to be a slur on the honour of the French. They are no more or less guilty of infractions at the bridge table than any other nationality. In the early days of the ACOL weak no-trump opening, however, it was averred that the French asked questions about the strength of the opening 1NT bid, whenever they had values and did not ask any questions whenever they had a weak hand and no interest in competing. It was averred that this ‘defence’ became universal in France, whenever the pesky Anglais invaded their bridge congresses. If it was true that the question or lack of it made a statement about the merits of their hand, then this was cheating.

A partnership may only transmit information about the merits of their hand through the bids in the auction or the signals during the play. Any other means imposes conditions on the partner of the player concerned, whether the transmission of unauthorised information is intentional or not. Examples of unauthorised or extraneous information that may suggest a call or play to one’s partner are a remark; a question; a reply to a question; an unexpected alert or failure to alert; unmistakable hesitation; unwonted speed; special emphasis, tone, gesture, movement or mannerism. Whenever any of the above occurs, the partner may not choose from among logical alternatives a call or action that could demonstrably have been suggested by the extraneous information.

One often hears players remonstrating with others whenever they ask a question and then ‘Pass’. It is completely wrong to say that one shouldn’t ask questions and then ‘pass’. Any player has the right to ask the opponents about any of their bids in the auction, when it is that player’s turn to bid. Asking a question and then passing only becomes a problem if the partner of the questioner then takes action that could have been suggested by the question. The usual yardstick is for the director to require that any action in the remaining auction or the subsequent play taken by the partner of the questioner would also be taken by 70% of players of an equivalent standard. Thus if partner asks the meaning of a 2 response to an opening 1NT and you subsequently make the opening lead of a , you could be on very sticky ground if this lead would not be made by 70% of players of your standard. This is true even if partner’s question was entirely innocent.

Another form of unauthorised information is to hesitate unduly during the auction or the play. Once again this puts partner under the obligation not to make any call or play that could have been suggested by the hesitation. Taking the time to think in a difficult auction is entirely understandable, but it can put a lot of pressure on partner to behave completely ethically. Time and again there are borderline decisions to make and if there has been an undue hesitation by partner at any moment during the auction, then the player under the ethical obligation must err on the side of caution. It is surprising how often a player takes the time to consider whether he should ‘double’ or not during the auction without appreciating that a subsequent ‘pass’ would put their partner under ethical pressure. There is a simple rule of thumb in these circumstances – if you have to think or hesitate during the auction then bid rather than pass.

Hesitating during the play occurs most often when a defender has an Ace and is considering whether to play it when declarer leads up to an honour or honours (particularly K J in the suit). If the defender elects to duck after thinking for some time, he has passed unauthorised information which puts partner under ethical pressure. It would be very dubious if partner was on lead and returned the suit knowing that partner had the Ace, if there was any other rational choice that could be made.

Hesitating when only a singleton is held is very naughty and should not be done in any circumstances. Even if you are planning your discards on subsequent rounds of the suit, do this after you have played your singleton. The relevant law states:- A player may not attempt to mislead an opponent by means of remark or gesture, by the haste or hesitancy of a call or play (as in hesitating before playing a singleton), the manner in which a call or play is made or by any purposeful deviation from correct procedure.

Unauthorised information can also be passed by facial expressions of a player during the play (scowls, frowns, tutting etc. etc.) Often these are inadvertent and no inference should be drawn. Indeed there have been occasions when I have been told that I have been frowning during the play. This is not something that I am ever aware of – I am simply trying to picture the distribution of the hand out in my head and probably finding it hard work. There is no intent to suggest to partner that I am unhappy with his line of play or want him to do something else, but there certainly have been occasions when partner has believed this. If any facial expression or tutting etc. is intended to suggest that partner is doing something wrong during the play, then this would be cheating.

Frank Groome

(October 2009)

 c)  Article from Pocklington Bridge Club:

If you give your partner any information about your hand - other than by what you have bid or played - this is unauthorised information.

It could be any deviation from the normal pace of play - playing (especially a low card) or bidding (especially passing) too quickly may indicate that you don't have any strength in your hand - or, if you stop to think for too long before playing or bidding, this tells your partner that you have something to think about.

Equally, any 'attitude' in playing a card or making a bid could give information - a big sigh or a glare tells one story, dropping a card carelessly onto the table or paying little attention when the opponents are bidding/playing tells another.

You should always try to bid and play at a regular and steady pace, and to remain impassive - no matter how much you might want to dance with joy or scream with rage!

Any bids that you make, any cards that you play, any agreed systems that you have. Most partnerships have agreed systems for count, attitude and discards - for example, discarding a low card asks your partner to lead that suit, playing high then low indicates an even number of cards. These are all perfectly legitimate, as long as you tell your opponents if they ask.

There is nothing illegal about giving unauthorised information. Sometimes you can't help it - if you've got a really difficult decision to make, you might need to take some time to think about it. What is absolutely against the rules is usingunauthorised information. If your partner has given anything away about his hand, you must not use this to your advantage.

For example, if your partner hesitates for a long time before playing a low card, you might assume that he has an honour in that suit as well. If you then led this suit back to your partner, your opponents would be well within their rights to call the director and claim that you had used unauthorised information. On another hand, your partner sighs or huffs and puffs while bidding a no trump, you might conclude that it is a bid of last resort and he doesn't have a good no trump holding. If, with a balanced hand, you correct this to a suit rather than leaving or supporting no trumps, your opponents could again claim that you have used information that you had no right to.

The director has a range of options available to him if he believes that this has happened, including changing the contract, changing the result and penalising the offending pair. It doesn't matter if the information was given deliberately or unintentionally - if the director believes it was used to gain advantage, he should take action.

A hesitation won't always give unauthorised information. Sometimes, a player may stop to think before bidding or playing, if he has two or more options available to him. It may not be clear what they are! For example, if you open 1NT and your partner thinks for a long time before bidding 2C (Stayman), you know that he has had to make a difficult decision, but you don't know what the other choices were - he could have been wondering whether he should pass, or whether he should jump straight to 3NT, or whether to play a transfer … you don't know any more detail about his hand than if he had made the bid immediately, so no unauthorised information has been given.

d)   Article from Mountnessing Bridge Club:

UNAUTHORISED INFORMATION EXAMPLE 1 – Provided by MIKE GRAHAM

Take the following situation: you hold a 14-HCP hand with 4-4-3-2 distribution. Partner opens 1NT ( 12-14). You would like to find out if partner has a four-card major, so you bid 2♣. Stayman is announced these days, so you are not expecting partner to alert. However, he does. He then bids 2♦. And then you remember; with this particular partner you play Gladiator, not Stayman where 2♣ is a puppet to 2♦, either to play there or to show various other types of hand. What are you supposed to do now?

If you had remembered that you played Gladiator, you would have bid 2♥, natural and forcing. You may still do so, and two opponents and one partner will be none the wiser, for you will appear to have bid your hand in correct systemic fashion. However, if you bid anything other than 3NT now, you are making use of unauthorised information (UI). In this case, the UI comes from partner’s alert. Here, if you bid 2♥, you will get away with it, because, unless you make some indication that you have had a memory lapse, the use of UI is undetectable. But you will know, and how you feel about that says a great deal about you as a bridge player.

In the early days, some quite influential players considered it normal to convey information to partner by means other than a simple bid. For example, they would raise 1♠ to 2♠ in a quiet tone of voice with a minimum hand, and in a confident tone of voice with a better one. This was not, at the time, regarded as cheating; the players who did this genuinely thought that this was how bridge was played, and that any disagreement with this was pious nonsense.

Led by the American player Edgar Kaplan (1925-1997), a group of New York players decided that this was not how bridge should be played. Edgar was the most influential player in the world regarding the new Laws that relate to the game of bridge, and the Law that relates to Unauthorised Information is mostly of his design. Bidding boxes have done away with verbal bidding, although there remain a few incorrigible players who can still make a verbal intonation with a bidding card. At international level, and more recently in national competitions, screens have been in use. They were first used in the Bermuda Bowl (the bridge World Championship) in 1975. The screen is exactly what it says; it is a screen that bisects the table. North and East sit on one side of the screen, and South and West on the other. Bidding boxes are in use; the bidding cards are placed on a tray that slides under a small slot in order to get to the other side. You do not know what bids have been made on the other side of the screen until the bidding tray returns to your side.

These days, the screen extends below the table as well, so that there is an effective “brick wall” between you and your partner. To understand why this was deemed necessary, Google “Facchini-Zuchelli” and get the (rather funny) translated version of a Dutch article. And make sure to shine your shoes afterwards. When playing with screens, you cannot see your partner (a positive advantage in some cases). Conventional bids are alerted – by you, on your side of the screen, to your screen-mate. If he wants to know the meaning of the bid he writes “?” on a large writing pad that is provided by the organisers. You then write the explanation, something like “5M5m 6-10 HCP”, or whatever. The tray then passes through the screen; your partner will alert your conventional bid to his screen-mate, and written explanations may follow. Woe betide you if the explanations differ; the opponents may require the tournament director.

The point about all this is that you have no knowledge whatsoever about what is happening on the other side of the screen. If partner forgets that your bid is conventional, you will not know it. Let us go back to the hand mentioned above, where you held a 14-count with 4-4-3-2 distribution, and let us see how the bidding would go if screens were in use. The bidding tray comes through the slot; partner has opened 1NT. You bid 2♣ alerting it to your screen-mate (all conventional bids are alerted when using screens), and the tray is passed across. When it comes back, partner has bid 2♦. Partner has no four-card major, so you bid 3NT. This bid is passed out (but see a note at the end of this article). As it happens, partner has a 4-3-4-2 distribution, the opponents take the first five club tricks, and Four Spades is a lay-down. You see, you had no idea that your partner alerted your 2♣ bid as Gladiator – as far as you were concerned, partner was responding to Stayman. This time, you have not been alerted to your error.

If you feel that a player may have made use of UI, the correct procedure is to state that you reserve the right to call the Tournament Director. Players tend to get upset about that, as they feel it is akin to being accused of cheating; but that should not be a deterrent. If at any point you feel a player has done so, then Law 16A2 applies: “When a player has substantial reason to believe that an opponent who had a logical alternative has chosen an action that could have been suggested by such information, he should summon the Director forthwith. The Director shall require the auction and play to continue, standing ready to assign an adjusted score if he considers that an infraction of law has resulted in damage.”

In this example, after 1NT-2♣ -2♦-3NT, the 3NT bid may well have a conventional meaning (else why not simply 1NT-3NT?). If so, opener will make the appropriate system response – he knows that 2♣ is Gladiator, after all. And here is where responder may get lucky, as he will now know,from the bidding, that opener has misinterpreted 2♣ , and he may base his actions on that - the bidding itself is not UI. Or he may not get lucky. Opener will still be treading the Gladiator path.

2) Recent international Scandals about “Unauthorised Information”:

    a)    Dirty dealings – Bridge World Champions caught cheating – Daily Telegraph (29 March 2014)

From Left: Michael Elinescu, Entscho Wladow 

For aficianados of the card game bridge, it’s enough to have them spluttering into their cornflakes. The game’s were found guilty of cheating by exchanging coded signals through coughing.image lies in tatters this morning after two German world champions.  After a lengthy investigation that involved the computer analysis of a video recording of their victory in the final, the game’s governing body has concluded that the two men used a system of coughs to indicate what cards they had.

Michael Elinescu, 61, and Entscho Wladow, 71, now face being stripped of their gold medals won in September at the world championships held on the paradise island of Bali. They are the unlikeliest of cheats. Both men are distinguished medical doctors who face humiliation at home. In the world of bridge, they are known, in part reverentially, as “The German Doctors”. At a two-day hearing in Dallas, Texas, the World Bridge Federation (WBF) found the pair “guilty of reprehensible conduct”. As punishment, the men have been banned from playing together in any WBF tournament for life and from playing separately for 10 years. For Wladow that means he will be 81 before he can play competitive, championship-level bridge again. Their deception has echoes of the case of the “Coughing Major”, in which a contestant on the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? used a system of coughs to win the £1 million jackpot prize. Major Charles Ingram was found guilty in 2003 of conspiracy to cheat along with his wife Diana Ingram and former college lecturer Tecwen Whittock, who signalled answers to the questions using coded coughs. 

In a 16-page report, published last week, the WBF concluded that Elinescu and Wladow coughed if they had fewer than two cards in a certain suit − and that the number of times they coughed indicated in which suit they had a shortage of cards. It also found, after studying the evidence, that the pair had a separate coded coughing system to indicate the “preferred lead” when the hands were being played. Contract bridge, for those not familiar with the game, involves a bidding process which takes place before a hand is played. By coughing, the men were able to impart additional information during the bidding process, giving them an unfair advantage over their opponents. The pair were investigated following a complaint by their American opponents in the final of the d’Orsi World Senior Bowl, the most important event in the bridge calendar.

Having studied the evidence, the WBF concluded: “We are satisfied so that we are sure that Michael Elinescu and Entscho Wladow systematically communicated with each other by coughing to convey information of shortage in a suit and also by coughing to suggest a preferred lead.” Law 73B of the rules of bridge decrees that “the gravest possible offence is for a partnership to exchange information through prearranged methods of communication”. The German doctors refused to attend the inquiry held in the US, insisting they would not get a fair hearing because both the chairman of the disciplinary commission and the WBF’s prosecutor in the case were American. The WBF dismissed their claims of bias. The hearing stressed that the other members of the German team had not cheated and were completely exonerated. Nevertheless the Germans, pending a possible appeal, will be stripped of their gold medals and the Americans announced as champions instead.

Cheating in bridge is rare in the modern era because games are recorded and videos can be analysed. But there was a time in the Sixties when coded coughing and other systems were thought to be more commonplace. The most famous case of alleged deception involved the British paring of Terence Reese and Boris Schapiro, who were accused of cheating in the 1965 World Open finals in Buenos Aires. Following a year-long inquiry in Britain by an eminent judge the British pair were found not guilty. By a strange coincidence a radio play about the 1965 scandal is due to be aired on BBC Radio 4 this Wednesday. According to the WBF report, Mr Wold “became suspicious that unauthorised information was being transmitted between Wladow and Elinescu by coughing”. 

Mr Wold began recording the coughs on his own scorecard. “From his notes he was able to identify a code used between his opponents based on coughing. There were two stages to the coughing − one during the bidding phase and another on the opening lead,” the WBF inquiry reported. Mr Wold then handed his notes to his non-playing team captain Donna Compton, who alerted the bridge authorities by passing them a spreadsheet onto which the coughs had been added.  “The Commission heard that as a result of the information obtained by Eddie Wold that it was decided that Elinescu and Wladow should be subjected to discreet monitoring for the remainder of the match,” said the report. The video and audio recordings showed “a clear pattern in the way that Elinescu and Wladow communicated information to each other,” the WBF inquiry concluded, adding: “On each and every occasion when one of them held a shortage in a suit, this was communicated by coughing. This coughing took place when it was that player’s turn to bid. The number of coughs indicated in which suit there was a shortage. If there was no shortage there was no coughing.”  

b) History of the Bermuda Incident – 1975:

In 1975, the Bermuda Bowl was played in Bermuda in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Bermuda Bowl. During the early qualifying stages, Gianfranco Facchini, a member of the Italian team, was observed apparently giving foot signals to his partner, Sergio Zucchelli. The first person to notice unusual foot movements was Bruce Keidan, an American news correspondent monitoring the match between Italy and France. Keidan reported his observation to the North American non-playing captain, Alfred Sheinwold, and to Edgar Kaplan, a member of the WBF Appeals Committee. Kaplan informed WBF President Julius Rosenblum.

Rosenblum observed for a time, then assigned special observers from the Appeals Committee, Johannes Hammerich of Venezuela and James O’Sullivan of Australia, to monitor the Italian pair. According to Keidan, Hammerich and O’Sullivan, Facchini reached out with his feet on several occasions during auctions and before opening leads and apparently touched Zucchelli on the toes once or more. Zucchelli’s feet remained completely immobile and Facchini did not move his feet at other times. Rosenblum, Hammerich and WBF Vice President Jaime Ortiz-Patiño of Switzerland therefore decided to monitor Italy’s next qualifying match, using European observers. Before this plan could be implemented, however, the WBF was informed that the North American team would refuse to play against Zucchelli and Facchini in the next scheduled match. This, plus the fact that rumors of the foot movement accusation were already rampant, caused the WBF to inform all team captains of what had transpired, to postpone the Italy-North America match and to convene a hearing immediately.

The WBF Appeals Committee heard testimony from observers Keidan, Hammerich, O’Sullivan, Rosenblum and Tracy Denninger of Bermuda. Facchini did not deny moving his feet, but attributed his movements to nervous tension. Zucchelli testified that he was unaware of any foot actions by his partner. Oswald Jacoby, who had analyzed some of the hands, was called as a witness, but the committee was unable to find specific correlation between the foot movements observed and the bidding or play of the hands, a factor usually considered essential to conclusive proof of cheating. The WBF therefore resolved that Facchini and Zucchelli “… be severely reprimanded for improper conduct with respect to the actions of Mr. Facchini moving his feet unnaturally and touching his partner’s feet during the auction and before the opening lead.” Coffee tables were thereafter placed beneath the card tables to block any possibility of further such movements. Sheinwold promptly issued a statement: “The North American team endorses the verdict of guilty but deplores the failure of the World Bridge Federation to bar this pair from further international competitions.” The word guilty had not appeared in the original verdict, but a later statement from Rosenblum corrected this omission by declaring that the accused pair “had been found guilty only of improper foot movements.”

The first meeting between the Italian and North American teams, postponed from Sunday afternoon, was played that evening. Italian npc Sandro Salvetti kept the suspect pair out of the lineup, saying that their nerves were frayed by the accusations. Two days later, the pair also sat out the second qualifying match against North America, although they had played in other matches in the interim. On the morning of the first session of the final between Italy and North America, when Sheinwold learned that Facchini and Zucchelli were listed in Italy’s starting lineup, he announced that the North American team would not play against this pair unless instructed to do so by the ACBL. The League’s representatives in Bermuda unanimously ordered the team to play. Italy fared poorly with the accused pair in the lineup, and it was only after they had been benched at the request of Benito Garozzo and Giorgio Belladonna that Italy staged an “impossible” rally to retain the world title.

The partnership of the accused players was broken up and the WBF advised Italian bridge officials that it would not welcome the nomination of either player to any event it conducted in the immediately foreseeable future.

  c)     Scandals Report by Terence Reece: