iviehoff

The only thing I can think is that EW's one diamond trick was a ruff, rather than the K.

Just goes to show it is practically impossible to get unanimity on any kind of dodgy claim situation. On the other question, whether, part way through your claim statement, you find it doesn't work with no UI, yes I think you can say "ignore that, it makes no sense, I'm saying this instead". He'd have to say he now realises that it isn't clear whether he has 12 or 13 tricks, but he could describe the line of play he take to attempt to get 13 tricks. I think that would have been the more satisfactory way of proceeding. After all, here we are, judging his claim by wondering what he will do when he discovers his line doesn't work. If he has already discovered that it doesn't work, without any UI, he can tell us and we can cease wondering.

No one else has commented on it, but this explanation seems quite unbelievable to me. How does the bidding to date allow one to deduce W more likely has 7 than 6 cards? Was E bidding 5C as an advance sac? If so, what has 6 vs 7 cards got to do with it? Was E bidding 5C to make? If so, then he needs to find his partner with a lot of controls, not just one extra card in trumps. There are various things E might have said that I would have believed. But he said something quite different and unbelievable. Now one reason that one gets such explanations is that some people are not very thoughtful and don't know really why they did things, it's just what occurred to them at the time, and when asked to give a reason, not really having one, come up with any old rot instead. That's the charitable explanation.

4th player has legally passed out the board and thereafter exposed his hand. Is there any irregularity in this? He certainly did not expose any card during the auction. Of course we are aware of that: that is precisely the law we are expecting to be applied. Clearly when 3rd player's apparent pass is acknowledged to be unintended and replaced with something else (for it is in time to do that), 4th player's call is no longer passing out the auction, so it didn't even finish the auction: this is one of the important reasons to distinguish between auction and auction period, as you have already acknowledged, because while still in the auction period we may discover the auction isn't finished yet for this reason among others. It isn't very nice for 4th player to discover the hand isn't over after he has exposed all his cards, a lesson to him not to do that when it is still the auction period. I generally say "all over then" before taking any drastic action at the end of a 4-pass auction, just in case there are any lurking issues. I'm aware that rapidly putting your had walrus-like on the table and saying "I had 11, oh you had 11 too, what a shame one of us didn't risk a bid" is common behaviour in some quarters, I did the same when 14 and playing cards on the school lockers, but people who want to play properly should learn a bit better. If 4th player had not been hasty in his actions, we perhaps have a little more sympathy for him when 3rd player comes up with a call rather slowly over his pass card used as a stop card, for it isn't good practice for 3rd player to show a stop card and then think again. This hand is exactly the reason why facing your hand is a dangerous way of passing out what you think is a 4-pass auction.

I quoted it in the form it appears in the EBU White Book (para 8.50.2 in the new 2013 edition), so the danger started there. The point is that - it is usually understood - if you are playing a diamond you are allowed to play a low card not to sacrifice your high card under the Ace which must be played (though in fact the EBU expresses some doubt even about that). But otherwise you cannot take advantage of knowledge of the penalty card which is UI. I was drawing attention to what you clearly aren't allowed to do, rather than what possibly you may.

Clearly someone noticed a risk it might be misunderstood, for WBFLC betook themselves to minute an interpretation. WBFLC minutes 1998-08-24#3] Example However, they may not act as though they know partner has that card. If a king was led out of turn and the king is now a penalty card, then partner must act as though they do not know about the king, nor about the queen, a normal deduction when partner leads a king. They may not choose to lead the suit if the suit is suggested by the king and play of a different suit is a logical alternative.

I agree that option 2 is the way to go, and I wouldn't be looking very hard to find a loophole to prevent it. After all 3rd player had an unconscious mishap but 4th player acted consciously, and I am happy to discourage several of his conscious actions. He should not have taken action with undue haste. He should have made a proper pass and made sure everyone was conscious of it and realising it was the end of the auction, and then done the end of hand admin before doing anything else. And to the extent that post mortems are not to be encouraged, and I can't think of any other reason for exposing your hand like that, I'm be happy to discourage that habit too.

Lots of times. I've seen the pass card being used to alert partner's call, and the double card being used for these things also.

I wouldn't say a heart lead was terribly likely, but a club lead is just as inconvenient, as it equally takes out one of dummy's entries. And you'll be relying on a degree of helpfulness in the breaks even on a friendly diamond lead if they spot the fairly obvious defence of taking the SA first time and returning a H.

Whilst we might think it is pretty clear to North that 4S is likely a disaster without the UI, another explanation for S's 4S bid is that his 2S opener was some kind of a mistake. Clearly undoubled N didn't want to rescue it, not least because 5D might be misunderstood as a forward action, but also because it isn't clear that 5D will be much better than 4S. Now once 4S is doubled, one can argue that N is no longer worried about S mistaking 5D for a forward movement, and N may think, with the double of 4S, 5D has a better chance of being a proftiable rescue. But nevertheless the misunderstanding has been revealed to S, and with that UI S will now be perfectly clear that 5D is based on wanting to play in diamonds, and if N is thinking 5D can't possibly be misundrestood now because of that, that would not be a legal way of thinking. I think the only way to settle the question is with a poll to see if nearly everyone rescues into 5D once 4S is doubled. You'll have to tell the people polled it's behind screens, and the agreements.

You are a robot? It is E's spade raise that I would call questionable. Probably your best chance of making a lot of tricks is to lead the CK at trick 2 and then see how far you get with a cross-ruff. I expect in real life I'd take the DA first and lead towards the CK, as the CA with N is an additional chance, given everything else that can go wrong, and it probably doesn't concede a vital tempo; you are going to need both high diamonds to stand up anyway. To actually make it, that will be the 5 top cards + 5 ruffs, ie 2 club ruffs, 2 heart ruffs and a trump promotion on the third round of diamonds - which probably needs S to hold a singleton trump honour which fell under the A - probably when he get off lead with a trump when in with a club.

There is a question of how systematic this is. If your partner frequently makes bids that depart from the stated system in assorted ways through incompetence, whisky, or whatever, I don't think this is disclosable.

Only declarer/dummy should do this at the end of the auction. Defenders must wait until the end of the hand.

Even if it did, it wouldn't change the ruling in the present case. The present case was clearly due to the player changing his mind on seeing the J, which is a deliberative change of mind, not a slip of the mind by any plausible definition. But I disagree with you, for two reasons. First, slips of the mind are qualitatively different from slips of the hand (or tongue or pen). In the latter case, the hand (or tongue or pen) accidentally does not do what the mind tells it to do, and we allow a correction if it is clear that is what happened. But in these latter cases the defining factor is what the mind directed. When we allow a change of what the mind directed, that is qualitatively different. Second, clearly deliberative changes of mind should still be disallowed. So is it even practical to define a "slip of mind" so that is evidently different from a deliberative change of mind? I don't think so. So I think this is impractical. Most games there are no "undos". Many people think bridge would be better if it was the same. Backgammon is an exception, which is facilitated by the fact that a move has an "end signal" when you pick up the dice, and nothing before that is complete.

The correct answer to this is that dummy does not have a duty to watch out for irregularities, nor does he have a duty to attempt to prevent irregularities. These are permissions, not requirements. Dummy can ask to see the cards at the end of the hand if he is concerned about a possible revoke.

On those grounds, you may as well abandon the "no alerting above 3N" rule altogether. It seems to me that the auction 1S - pass - 4C, interestingly precisely the auction they mention as an example, is the epitome of why you don't have alerting above 3N. I think a better rule would have been that a call above 3N is only (potentially) alertable if it is the first call by that side.

You seem to have in mind that play may proceed to a conclusion without intervention, but you hvae been called because one side now feels that they would have done better if they had asserted their rights at the time. That can be one kind of "trouble". However "trouble" may mean that play is now in an irregular condition and something needs to be fixed, but because it wasn't fixed immediately you are now off-piste as far as a lawbook ruling is concerned. Not acting is now not an option, but because you are off-piste you have a choice to make in terms of the balance of advantage of the ruling you make. In terms of that balance of advantage, or indeed if the hand has proceeded to a conclusion, you need to consider if damage was really self-inflicted: sometimes one of the two sides has been taken advantage of by the other, for example by acting with apparent authority or making misleading comments - and it can be either OS or NOS.

In theory everything about a partnership's methods ought to be disclosed to you. In reality if you play against a player regularly you learn their foibles and can take advantage of them. Thus the reality is that there is useful information about a player's methods that in practice is not disclosed, and can only be learned by experience of them. This issue comes into the same category as that. If you know an opponent is a hand hog, you can take advantage of it: it is no more annoying than players' other foibles. If you know your partner is a hand hog, and you do not like this, you have the ultimate sanction available. This is an utterly mistaken proposal.

Pulling the 1S card out is clearly not the correct procedure for calling 1NT. Do you need a law to tell you that is the case?

Not necessarily in its entirety. But they know that a defender can tell declarer to lead from the correct hand, and if they do that, then he can pick up the wrongly led card and that is the end of the matter. Some may also know they can accept the lead.

From the definitions section: "Irregularity - a deviation from correct procedure inclusive of, but not limited to, those which involve an infraction by a player" I think an unintended call is therefore an irregularity, but not an infraction. L25 specifies its rectification.

Certain common and easy issues are routinely dealt with by the players without the need for the director's attendance, most commonly mechanical errors and declarer's lead from the wrong hand. Thus I don't think the generality of what you say is appropriate. The important thing is to realise that those cases are the exception, and players must not extend their franchise. If a player has, by acting with apparent authority, persuaded another player of something to the latter's disadvantage, the director should, and has the power to, protect the latter.

In some circumstances, players are not allowed to call the director, which varies according to who they are and who did what. So 9B(1) is important in giving permission to all players to call the director once attention has been drawn to an irregularity. With that permission, the players then collectively have a (mild) duty to call the director. Thus if the delay in calling the director makes a mess, the director can say "well you should have done". For those who might have been disadvantaged by that delay, there's a law that says it's your own fault. For those who might be on the other side of that, well I think the director can usually make life for them uncomfortable too if he feels that is unfair. In sum, this seems to be right to me.

You've chosen the easy case of someone clearly deliberately departing from their announced convention. This thread is about when they do it inadvertently or mistakenly, and partner has is apparently aware of their frailties, which is OK so long has he discloses them, and the two-way treatment is a legal convention. Which, to the extent that we have convention control, is OK because the opponents shouldn't hvae to deal with a two-way treatment because two-way treatments are hard to defend against. Misbidding isn't illegal, but in terms of trying to decide whether the allowance for it was due to illegal undisclosed information or legal hunch, I'm OK with the idea of deciding it is the former if it looks like the former. After all, that is basically the approach of Law 23 as to whether advantageous irregularities were deliberate or inadvertent.

You ask for an intelligent auction to get to 6C, but what about an unintelligent one? I can't see any intelligent auction in which partner tells me what I need to know. But if I just blast straight to 5C as my rebid (overcall or no) with his HAK and CJ he might well guess to raise to 6. Of course, like the 2C auction that works out perfectly on this occasion, it is a results-merchant argument, and whether it's a good idea in the long run to bid like that is another matter.