Hi, Bidding Both White, You are sitting East, Partner is dealer with your side passing throughout in the auction. Your RHO (North) opens 2♠, LHO (South) bids 2N on which RHO bids 3♥ with LHO signing off in 4♠. Your LHO who is your screen-mate alerts 2N as Ogust convention on 2♠ preempt and alerts 3♥ informing you that it shows good points (8-9/10) and bad ♠suit. Play You hold ♠85♥KQ5♦Q975♣AQT6 and lead ♠5 on the premise that any other lead could cost a trick since RHO has out-side values and choose to be passive hoping declarer will struggle to make 10 tricks on his own steam. Dummy comes down with ♠K4♥832♦AKJ86♣K72. Declarer held ♠AQJ632♥764♦32♣J4. Declarer promptly draws 4 rounds of ♠ on which you pitch a ♦ hoping to deflect declarer from working ♦ finesse. Declarer still takes ♦ finesse and ends up making 12 tricks (6♠, 5♦ and ♣K). Director call and ruling You call the director at the end of the deal and inform him that explanation given by your screen-mate is erroneous and you had a clear ♥K if given the right explanation. Director verifies the facts. North informs director that his bid showing good ♠ suit and poor hcp (5-7/8) is as per their partnership understanding which is corroborated by detailed systems. Incidentally North had alerted his screen-mate as to the correct interpretation of his bid. South admits that he has forgotten system. Director checks with a few of peers of your class(expert?) who all felt that your lead of ♠ 5 is highly speculative and ♥ K was the clearly percentage lead in-spite of wrong explanation. He ruled that table results stands and awarded PP (procedural penalty) of 3 IMPs to NS. Appeals committee deliberations and decision You decide to appeal. AC checked the facts with the director, your opponents and clearly established that it is case of mistaken explanation by your screen-mate. During the appeals hearing, you inform the AC that given the right explanation of North hand (good ♠ suit and poor hcp), ♥K was an automatic lead and you would have never have wrong. AC asked you the reason for ♠ lead. You explained that you decided to go passive since declarer is known to have outside values in addition to known strength in dummy and felt even♥K lead could sell a trick. Subsequently AC polled a few more experts (players of your class) and nearly all of them suggested they would all lead ♥ K and only a couple of them even considered ♠ lead based on explanation given to East by South. AC did sympathize with East that given right explanation, he is likely to have found the wrong lead, but felt that even given the wrong explanation, his lead was too speculative and could be dangerous as well (finesse ♠ honors in partner's hand). They ruled that director ruling stands and returned the money. A few questions for your opinion: a) Do you agree with director's approach? Should he have ruled in favor of non-offending side and asked N-S to appeal? b) Is the poll conducted by director amongst players of East's class (expert) before giving ruling a good practice? Should he have polled on what other experts would have led given the right explanation as well? c) Do you agree with director's ruling? Should PP be awarded in all such cases of wrong explanation because of forgetting system? d) Do you agree with AC's approach? In such cases should the ruling be solely based on what a player of certain class would have led given the right explanation or should director/AC also factor in did the player make the right or at-least reasonable lead given the wrong explanation? If both factors need to be considered, in what proportion? e) Do you agree with AC's final decision of letting table result stands? Would you have considered reversing table result to 4♠ one down or even given split ruling (50% of 4♠ one down and 50% of 4♠ making)? If you change the result to any of the above options, would you still consider awarding PP to North-South? Rgds, RV
