Penalty cards

Generally speaking, any card illegally exposed by a defender, even accidentally, becomes a penalty card. This is another complicated area. There are actually two sorts of penalty cards: major penalty cards and minor penalty cards. This has nothing to do with the suit they are in!

A minor penalty card is any single accidentally exposed card below a ten.

If you deliberately expose a card, for example by leading out of turn, or accidentally expose an honour (10 or above), or have two or more penalty cards for any reason, then all your penalty cards are major penalty cards.

Any penalty card must remain exposed. A major penalty card must be played at the first legal opportunity. This means that if you end up on lead you must lead your major penalty card. If you have two or more penalty cards which can be played, declarer can choose which.

If you only have a minor penalty card, you may elect to play an honour (10 or above) in the same suit instead of your penalty card. If you are on lead or discarding, you may play a different suit. In either case, your penalty card stays down.

If you are on lead and partner has one or more major penalty cards you must ask declarer, before you lead, if he wishes to impose a lead penalty. If you lead without asking, your lead is illegal and it too becomes a major penalty card! Declarer has three options:

1. He can require you to lead the suit of (any one of) your partner's major penalty cards. If so, your partner picks up all penalty cards of the nominated suit. They cease to be penalty cards. Note that if you don't have a card of the nominated suit that's declarer's tough luck. Your partner still picks up any penalty cards in that suit and you can lead what you like.
2. He can forbid you from leading one or more of the suits in which your partner has major penalty cards. If so, your partner may pick up all penalty cards in the forbidden suits. For as long as you remain on lead you may not lead any of the prohibited suits (unless you only have cards in the forbidden suits, in which case you can lead what you like).
3. He can allow you to lead whatever you like, in which case all partner's penalty cards remain down as penalty cards.

Note that these lead restrictions do not apply if partner only has a minor penalty card but the fact that partner has the minor penalty card is Unauthorised Information. That means you can't use it as the basis for any decisions. The subject of Unauthorised (or Extraneous) information is discussed briefly in the section Pause for Thought.

The whole business of penalty cards and Unauthorised Information is another strange, and in some ways contradictory, area. The fact that partner has that particular card, or that he wanted to play it, is Unauthorised Information to you but the fact that he must play it at the first opportunity is Authorised Information. In other words, you're not allowed to know that partner has, say, the King of Diamonds but you are allowed to know that if you were to lead a diamond then partner will have to play the card you're not allowed to know he's got! Confused? I certainly am. The best advice, as ever, is if you are in doubt as to what you are, or are not, allowed to take into consideration then call the director.