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I think people are just offended that they think SB is trying one on. I would want to understand what happened further before I made any decisions. To me these two scenarios are completely different. Scenario A - The person had either picked up his glass to drink or began the act of picking up his drink before the trick was lead. Very closely related would be picking up his drink after the card had been lead, but not noticing the card had been lead before beginning to pick up his drink. Scenario B - The person looked at the lead, then picked up his drink. Then decided to follow suit. The point is shouldn't we establish whether we view the drinking of the beer as a stall tactic or not? If the act appeared to be to create a BIT, then I think the ruling should follow the "could have known" section of the regulations. If the act appeared to be just a normal drinking of a beer, then I think the ruling should be no BIT. I don't know about others, but I have had someone BIT without a bridge reason done to me and it's not a pleasant experience. What made it tolerable was that I got a ruling in my favor on the actual occasion. However, it wasn't pleasant that it was done in the first place. It probably comes down to a needing to be there and hearing from all of the players to make a decision, but I wouldn't conclude on the basis of the facts as presented that it was one way or another.

Here's a hand I played vs GIB today. Thought it was quite nice to get a hand that seemed so composed.[hv=pc=n&s=sakjhajt943dk6c62&n=s953hkq87dq93cq73&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=3d3hp4hppp]266|200[/hv] West leads the ace of clubs and continues with a small club which East ruffs. Now GIB decides to give you the contract and returns a spade. Your play. EDIT: I misremembered the hand slightly and had one of dummy's clubs and spades mixed up, the hand was a little easy in the form I first presented it. The first two tricks went slightly differently (West still has 8 clubs rather than 9).

What would you like the explanation of 3S to be? Natural, exposing a psych is quite reasonable. Most balanced hands can just pass having opened 2C - at least in the real world. GIB E of course does not have that hand and should double or bid 3NT.

On BBO forums, North or East are usually declarer. If declarer isn't specified, it's the hand with 14 cards :)

It sounds like in this rare case "Michaels" was the correct statement of their agreement.

What BIT?!? There is no indication in the OP that West was deviating from the tempo that he normally uses when he is drinking and playing... For all his actions he had a bridge reason: To play a card, he needs to detach it from his hand. To detach the card from his hand, he needs to free up the hand with the glass. To free up the hand with the glass, he needs to put the glass down. (Or, alternatively, empty the glass and hold the glass with his teeth.) So, if one claims that there was a variation from the normal tempo (when West is not drinking, if that can be considered "normal") then there was a bridge reason for this variation. _________________ In the very next round, the very same board is played again. The auction and start of the play are the same. As South leads the ♠J at trick 2, West is trying to play the ♠4, but there seems to be a sticky beer stain on it. The ♠4 is stuck to some other cards and West needs to put his cards down to separate the ♠4 from his hand. South finesses, goes down and calls the TD. How do you rule? Rik

A BIT is a BIT, but that doesn't mean it necessarily conveys UI.

Or to accept its recommendations.

If i make a mistake of picking up my beer, thinking that the person to the right is going to take a while to think, and then they play a card. I could, instead of waiting till i put my drink down to play a card, name the card I intend to play. Play can then continue, and I will play the card I named when i have a hand free. If i have designated the wrong card (rather than changing my mind afterwards), this would then fall under inadvertent designation. This situation is unusual, most people in most situations where they do not have a hand free will free one up and play a card, rather than designate one. It is, however, common to designate cards from dummy, so cards inadvertent designation when calling cards from dummy is by far the most likely application of this law.

There are relatively simple ways to get around this limitation. For example, suppose that two pairs of computer programs are competing against one another in a bridge match. Instead of basing disclosure around a natural language description of the various bids have the program generate 100,000 hands that are consistent with this bid/this auction.