[blml] Can you create your own UI?

[Adam Beneschan]

Ed wrote:
 
> A question was raised on the BBO forums. Here's the scenario: You're  
> dealer. The auction goes 1S-(P)-P-(2C)-....P-(P)-2D-(3C).
> 
> You hesitated before passing in round 2. You know your partner is an  
> ethical player, so you can expect his 2D bid to be clear cut. Is this  
> information UI to you? (A poll in the BBO thread was split 50=50).  
> Reference was made to Law 73D1, in particular the last clause  
> "inferences from such variation may apporopriately be drawn only be  
> an opponent, and at his own risk," with the claim that this "clearly"  
> shows that you *are* constrained by UI here. It ain't clear to me. :-)

This is also an ongoing thread on rec.games.bridge (with the
descriptive subject "UI?"), so you may want to check out the responses
there.

My contribution was somewhat along the same lines as Eric's:

# The notion that your actions may be constrained due to the fact that
# your partner is known to maintain an extremely high standard of
# ethics seems contradictory to common sense and absurd on its face.

Some on r.g.b felt that partner's ethical reputation was in fact UI
that you have to take into account; that didn't make any sense to me
either.  My feeling was that you should be entitled to assume
partner's actions are legal, regardless of his reputation.  The
question in my mind was similar to yours: if you assume that partner's
actions are legal, and that therefore his 2D will not be borderline,
is this an inference drawn from the UI that you created, and is it
therefore one that you must bend over backwards not to take advantage
of?  Barry Margolin didn't think so, because otherwise it would lead
to a cascade of Nth-order inferences from UI that would be impossible
to adjudicate, and that the line has to be drawn somewhere.

                                -- Adam