I recently had a ruling and subsequent appeal ruling on the following situation and I am not convinced that either was correct. I would be grateful for your views. Played in England. The contract was 6S played by E. My partner led a heart and dummy had Axxx void KJxx AKQxx. Dummy ruffed and after some thought declarer asked for "spade". The lowest spade was played from dummy and declarer also played his lowest spade! My partner's 6 of spades held the trick. At this point declarer said "I asked for top spade". The other 3 players had all heard unambiguously "spade". Declarer was very forceful in his assertion. The director was called and gave a ruling that the play to the trick should be rolled back and the AS was deemed to have been led. The contract made 13 tricks. It would have made 12 tricks had the original trick been allowed to stand. Given that it was teams scoring I wasn't bothered about the score it was more the principle I was concerned about. So I asked for an appeal ruling. The appeals committee was set up and heard the facts. Their ruling was to uphold the director's ruling. This concerns me for a few reasons. Firstly, had declarer noticed that dummy's card was not as expected before he played, my understanding is that he would only be allowed to change it if the balance of probability was that he had actually called for the correct card and dummy had played a different one. In this case with 3 players at the table disagreeing with him that would suggest that the card played by dummy should stand. Secondly, as a defender the onus is on me to play to the card actually played by dummy. If I mishear and play to what I think dummy was asked to play then I am correctly judged to be at fault. So should the same onus not be placed on declarer to actually look at the cards played? Thirdly, if declarer has an aberration and plays small rather than the king say, then he now has a remedy to correct his aberration. Lastly, if this is how the laws are to be interpreted then it leaves to way open to malpractice. For example, with AJxxx in dummy and KTxxx in hand you lead small from dummy and if RHO follows just play small and insist that you called for the top card from dummy. I would be interested to know which laws apply to this situation. My tentative search found only words which seemed to support my view!
