pgrice

The Director now needs to decide how many tricks to award ... if claimer really hadn't forgotten about ♠J then he might just discard ♠T in an attempt to induce an unfortunate discard from a defender and win trick 13. OTH, no real line was mentioned in the claim statement. I suppose we award all the tricks to claimer as he does have enough top tricks by any order of play other than discarding what he seemed to think was a winner at the time he made the claim. You don't allow Declarer to change a line of play when a card he thinks is high turns out not to be. Now your forcing him to change his line of play due to an incorrect objection from an opponent. Doesn't sound right to me. Declarer needs to stand by his original claim statement which assumed the 10 of spades is high. Lucky for him, he was right. I'm not trying to force claimer to change his line ... not that "They're all mine" is very specific in this regard. I don't think claimer has much choice about "standing by his original claim" It does tell us that claimer thought he had 3 top tricks when he claimed. On this basis alone we award 3 tricks to claimer since it would be irrational to discard 10♠. Later (albeit incorrect) comments seem to show that claimer was easily persuaded that J♠ was still out ... and might just have adopted a losing line to cater for this. I don't think this is at all probable - just point out that it is possible to lose a trick in this way.

First things first: Dummy is allowed to object to a claim or concession: The Director now needs to decide how many tricks to award ... if claimer really hadn't forgotten about ♠J then he might just discard ♠T in an attempt to induce an unfortunate discard from a defender and win trick 13. OTH, no real line was mentioned in the claim statement. I suppose we award all the tricks to claimer as he does have enough top tricks by any order of play other than discarding what he seemed to think was a winner at the time he made the claim.

No. When declarer claimed, he wasn't planning to play for the diamond honours to drop: he was treating ♦10 as a small card and plannng to ruff it in dummy. That part of his plan has no bearing on the new situation in which he'll find himself, where he has to turn ♦10 into a winner. OK - so we judge this as part of the underlying plan that the claim statement alludes to rather than a literal interpretation of DA then DK ...

Yes, there is, you're looking for: and In this case, it seems to me that declarer would immediately notice the problem when the first club in played and defence reject the revoke and will then take careless but not irrational lines which involve a cross-ruff, since that is a later parrt of the claim which appears valid. Given it's clearly at most careless (and possibly the percentage line) to play for split honours, I'd rule a diamond trick to defence. OK the guidance seems clear about not accepting the revoke and if we have nothing to go on it is clear to award a diamond trick to the defence ... but doesn't the statement about how diamonds will be played come under ... Maybe we would follow it if it worked out badly for claimer.

To my mind we should follow the claim statement as far as possible. Declarer has made a pretty unequivocal statement about the next 4 cards she intends to play. Of course she can't discard two diamonds from dummy but this doesn't prevent or preclude the play of the next 4 cards as in the claim statement. Is there guidance on how far we should follow claim statements in cases like this?

Doesn't "second worst" mean n cards split (n-1) - 1. Is this really what is meant? To avoid further confusion could "second worst" be spelt out as "partner holding a void and one opponent holding a singleton". Robin How about "partner holding a void and one opponent holding a small singleton" Peter