mjj29

We are, indeed, arguing for a change to the intention of this law (or, at least, what you believe the intention to be). The reason for this is that where a card has been played to a trick and does not appear amongst the quitted tricks for any reason at all then (subject to the director satisfying himself of the facts - which we believe will be the majority of the time) it seems most sensible to merely place it back where it belongs and get on with proceedings. This is at odds with what you say the laws require and so we want to change it. In fact we believe this is already the correct (or at least a reasonable) approach to take, but obviously not everyone does, so this is an attempt to rewrite the law to make it clear that this is the (new) intention.

You may have missed that this thread is in "Changing laws and regulations". In this thread I do not wish to speculate whether we should be reading the current L67 as you do or as I do. However, this thread is suggesting a new wording for certain laws - In fact I see two suggestions which both have a similar effect (iviehoff's suggestion is even more thorough and I would favour it, although I suspect the WBFLC will want to keep their word count down). What do you think about changing the current law to the suggested new one? I think it is a useful clarification providing a very sensible solution to this problem.

And it's important to note the difference between revokes and the other 'standard' club issues. With leads of turn etc, the TD can apply a book ruling immediately when the infraction occurs - all players can see that it has happenned immediately (and if they don't call the TD then it's definitely their fault). With a revoke, however, the NOS can be completely unaware at the point it occurs, so the TD can't deal with it immediately. This is why there's a statutory penalty in tricks, to try and make revokes non-judgement rulings in the same class as the above.

The difference will be that if all the players say "the 2H was played to trick 3, look it's missing from its place among the quitted tricks" you simply put it back there. In particular, in the original thread, if someone is merely late turning the quitted card from dummy, you just turn it over. TBH, that's what I believe L67 already says, but there seems to be some disagreement. If a player makes such a statement I think it will usually be fairly easily substantiated by the other players.

That is, indeed the difference and this distinction is the direct cause of 8 pages of discussion in the other thread. I'd like to dispute your claim of "the current understanding" - certainly _your_ current understanding, but I (amongst other, more prestigious, views) don't understand it as that. While this may be true in some cases it would certainly be nice to deal with the case there is no dispute in the clearly simplest and most correct manner. This is not the only place where the director is required to determine facts and I think this is less contentious than determining whether there has been a BIT or (as happenned today) whether declarer had 'held face up touching or nearly touching the table or in a position to indicate it had been played' a card from hand before playing from dummy - or whether he had realised his mistake before it was too late. In fact (as can be seen from more reliance on L64C and in the new L27) the laws are moving towards more judgements to be made by the director. To make it easier though, perhaps it would be reasonable for an additional paragraph to say "if the director cannot determine whether a card was played then he shall deem it to have been played if the card is among a player's quitted tricks and not otherwise" to serve as a guide for contentious cases. I think the suggested law 67 is good and would be happy to see it in the next edition of the laws. I still don't know whether we can propose such things to the WBF directly or not though.

I don't believe it would be rational to play all the other cards before playing trumps. Especially if you are unaware of the possibility of a bad split, it's normal to start by playing some trumps. The claim law allows declarer to notice someone showing out and include that in whether continuing on that line is irrational or merely careless. If there had not been a heart lead it's obvious to award 1 off, since you need to take 3 ruffs, but after the heart lead you only need two and you can take them both with the trumps outstanding, after discovering the bad split, even with a trump return. Maybe it is correct to rule a failing line is merely careless, but I have no problem with a director awarding 12 tricks under the circumstances.

I at least understand your position (although for once I disagree, and this is why). To be clear, in this next example all the players are certain of which cards were played to which trick. There is no question that any trick did not have four cards played to it originally. In the case where a card is dropped, knocked off the table or otherwise disarranged from it's quitted position (and yet everyone knows to where it should be restored), do you think it is correct or equitable to allow the original owner of the card to substitute any other card and possibly replay this card to another trick, with associated revoke penalties? Why can we not just take the card and restore it to the correct quitted position? Matt

So a trick once not defective can become defective? How many cards were played to a defective trick which originally had 4 cards played to it now that it is defective? (I assume you're glossing over the defective tricks which contain exactly 4 cards)

No, Law 27D is not for this. If you have the auction: 2S-2H/3H-out and advancer has a raise of a 3H overcall of 2S, but not of a 2H overcall of 1S then law 27D only applies if 3H isn't a reasonable contract to have reached. Say, if instead the auction could reasonably go 2S-P, then P-X-P-3H-out - 3H is a reasonable result and we should allow the pair with the IB every chance to reach it. Auctions where this is not the case (say, that 2H/3H was 1N/2N and after a double 2N would be lebensohl, so 2N isn't a possible final result) are where law 27D should be used to adjust the score. (note: auctions above may not, in fact, be plausible, they are illustrative only).

Yet you were declaring a trick as defective when it has had exactly one card played to it from each hand? If you're not (as people were assuming) declaring a card which was played has no longer been played - how else are you ruling the trick to be defective?

All bids do that to some extent. Playing 5 card majors, opening 1S denies 9 cards in any other suit. Of course that's obvious. Slightly less obvious is that it denies any other suit being longer (unless it doesn't. In which case it's alertable). I think it depends on what it is denying and how common that is. I wouldn't alert a weak two if I never made one with a side 4 card major and I don't alert my 1S openings because it can never be a balanced hand (I alert them because they could be canapes with a minor, but I digress). I do alert responses to transfers because they deny 4 card support - but there's a specific regulation about that. Remember, not all disclosure is via alerts, the system card should cover things like precise distribution constraints.

You must use your partners' announcement to make your own alerts and announcements as per your system, but your bids must be as you originally believed. So, in this example you must not announce it, but must bid 2S. In the other situation (where you think it's 10-12, but actually it's 14-16), you must announce it as a transfer and then pass. Matt

(except those would be percentages post-IMPing, rather than on the raw scores, so if the other table is -920 that would be 70% of 0 and 30% of +14 for +4.2 to NS, etc)

I may have missed something, but nothing in this thread refers to a specific simple, basic case where Ton and the other WBF laws committee members disagree? Perhaps it was clear from the context in the original thread and I've forgotten, but I'm not sure we always agree on what is 'simple' or 'basic'. Matt

I believe this doesn't have competitive overtones, so under the current OB rules it's not alertable. The Laws and Ethics Committee have recently decided to extend the current "highly unusual" clause for bids also to doubles and redoubles. When that comes into force (1st August?) then I think this does qualify as "highly unusual" and should be alerted. If we think their style does include competitive doubles then it's alertable whatever.

Well, don't forget L72B1 "A player must not infringe a law intentionally, even if there is a prescribed rectification he is willing to accept."

I didn't say you are still free to bid it, just that I don't believe that you would be in breach of L73C if you do. Just L16B instead (I had hoped the rest of my post clarified this).

The only prohibited psyche in the EBU is psyching a multi 2D in a level 3 event (which the EBU doesn't run any of)

Yes, you are under an obligation here, Law 16B and 73C are the relevant laws, I suggest you look them up in the Law book (note: not the orange book). The knowledge that your partner thinks you have spades and diamonds isn't authorised to you. To paraphrase, L73C says you mustn't take advantage of this. If you had decided before the explanation to bid 3H, then 3H can't be taking advantage. Law 16B, however, says (again, paraphrase), if there are several things you could plausibly do and the UI suggests that you do one of them, you must not do that - even if you were thinking of doing that anyway. Without seeing the hands we cannot judge whether you had an alternative to bidding hearts so we cannot say whether or not you should have done so. There are two issues here, the question and the tempo. The orange book says of asking questions "A player has the right to ask questions at his turn, but should be aware that exercising this right has consequences" and "If, therefore, at a player’s turn to call, he does not need to have a call explained, it may be in his interests to defer all questions", although it does say that asking about alerted calls is less of a problem than of non-alerted calls. You are certainly not obliged to bid if you ask, but not doing so suggests to your partner that you have a hand which may have not passed if the answer to your question were different. He then has the obligations I described above. As far as the tempo goes, after any skip bid you have 10 seconds to consider your call - that's what the stop card regulation is for. Generally this will be counted from after the response to the question, if you ask it immediately and providing that you always wait, even if you don't have to think. If you can keep your thinking to within those 10 seconds, then tempo won't transmit UI over skip bids. Where you have taken notably longer than 10 seconds again, this will suggest something about your hand to partner, that you don't have a hand which would pass immediately. Your partner again has the obligations above about not choosing a bid which was suggested by that UI unless that is his only reasonable option. It sounds like in the second case your partner had a clear 4H call and so the question and the tempo weren't a problem, but trying to avoid transmitting the UI will make your partner's life easier. Remember that you should have been given a convention card with the meaning of 2NT on the front you could consult. If they've not done so, then your question will be given the benefit of the doubt more often than not.

Sure, but when people say "we have no agreement", I suspect this would be an appropriate restatement of the situation (unless, of course, they are attempting to signal without having an agreement, which after a while will become a different agreement implicitly)

And that an attempt was made to change it without pause for thought (or call the director to ask to change it, although that didn't happen here). The OP does not give us enough information to determine whether or not such a change was attempted, so we cannot determine whether or not L25A would have applied.

Generally we always rule that you may not select an action over LAs where that action was suggested by the UI - regardless of whether that action would be judged an LA (in effect that the action selected at the table is always an LA). I believe the ACBL have an explicit minute or regulation on the subject. If you don't like that, then just adjust under L73. As Siegmund says - it's pretty obviously an abuse of UI if you think they play new suits as always forcing there.

I have had people in the past say "We play/discard cards which we don't want to keep" - which obviously doesn't cover leads, but seems like a reasonable agreement to have if you don't want to watch for or work out how to give signals. It does still give information to declarer, of course, but much weaker information.

Yeah, it's a static mirror (and not of the whole thing, as much as I could pull off), so nothing like search will work.

I would definitely announce something like you suggest (maybe "Weak to Awful"? "Bad to Worse"?) and might also point it out to oppo when exchanging cards. The OB is clear that's is definitely announceable, 5E1 specifically excludes announceable bids from "it has a potentially unexpected meaning" and 5G3(a) says you should not alert them, so I think that's the best you can do. While 2 bids are on the front of the convention card I would also put it under "Other aspects of the system that opponents should note".