PeterAlan

Isn't the answer to your last question obvious? In the first case there was a revoke, and attention was drawn to it. In the second, there was no revoke to draw attention to, just as you go on to illustrate in the rest of your paragraph. What's the problem with that? You highlight the issue exactly - you just seem unwilling to accept the obvious answer. Your second paragraph indicates, I think, where the confusion lies. You're still concerned with what was known by the players at the time, and I'm not. We do not need to bring the state of mind of the players into the picture in order to settle the objective test of "was attention drawn to the revoke?", which can be done in exactly the way you set out in your first paragraph. We do not need to know the answer to this at the time, only when it becomes in point later on.

It seems to me that you are treating the words "attention drawn to the revoke" as though they say or mean "attention drawn to fact that a revoke has taken place", whereas I'm not doing so. You may say that I'm taking a rather literal reading of the laws in advancing this view - I might even agree. But I think that we ought to start with what the laws actually say. And in this instance your interpretation arguably might disadvantage a non-offending side.

See Law 61A above - "Failure to follow suit [when you should] constitutes a revoke." The failure to follow suit is the revoke in these circumstances, and any argument that attention is being drawn to one but not the other is, in my view, sophistry. Yes, attention is being drawn to the failure to follow suit, but if that failure "constitutes" a revoke then attention is being drawn to the revoke as well. Both are the same action - a revoke is not a state of awareness, it is the action of failing to follow suit when you should, and attention has been drawn to that action. A banana doesn't cease to be a banana just because someone describes it as a fruit. "I draw your attention to a piece of fruit." Is the piece of fruit in question a banana? Yes. Then attention was drawn to a banana, whether or not its banana-ness was spelled out at the time. The attention relates to the object, not to how it may have been described. In our case, the focus is on the action of playing a card. The question may be a general one, but it relates to a specific action, and it is to that one action that attention is being drawn. If that action is a revoke (banana), as well as a failure to follow suit (fruit), then attention has been drawn to a revoke (banana).

I disagree. The evidence available at the time may not indicate that there has been a revoke, but that is what is irrelevant. What is relevant is that in fact there has been one and, I stress, it is the action of failing to follow suit that constitutes a revoke (Law 61A), and it is that action that has been drawn to everyone's attention. Are you denying that declarer's action in failing to follow suit is, in fact, a revoke?

Everyone's attention has been drawn to the fact that declarer has shown out of Xs. That action is a revoke (see Law 61A), and attention has been drawn to it. The four players may not be aware at the time that it is a revoke, but it's a revoke nevertheless, and always was, regardless of when this fact comes to light (if it does). It doesn't stop being a revoke just because that isn't known to the players at the table at the time (many revokes are not immediately picked up). Put a different way, attention has been drawn to the revoke; what has not been drawn to everyone's attention is that it is a revoke; that doesn't change the fact that it is one and remains so. What you seem to be suggesting is that a revoke is not a revoke until someone notices it. I beg to differ.

True, but this doesn't help us with the answer to the original question.

This is the crux of the issue. I am less confident of the answer than you. True, but in both scenarios the fact of the revoke is nevertheless there, so one might well regard it (the fact, not the revoke) as established (except in the sense of verified, which is presumably what you mean). Declarer's denial of it in scenario 2 doesn't make it any less real. This is where the problem lies - the defenders may well not do so, because they do not realise that there has nevertheless actually been a revoke.

The question by dummy did not call attention to the revoke - the answer "Oh, I see I do" did! The question by dummy did not call attention to the revoke - nor did the answer. Attention to the revoke has not happened (yet). I'm struggling to see why the accuracy (I'm avoiding "truthfulness") of the declarer's answer should determine the result of the question posed (ie has attention been drawn to the revoke), especially when the inaccurate answer may result in a more favourable outcome for declarer than the accurate one. In both scenarios it is a fact that there has been a revoke. In both dummy has asked about it. Why is it the accuracy of declarer's answer that determines whether or not attention has been drawn to the same actual event?

I'm trying to keep the situation as straightforward as possible - we needn't impute nefarious motives to the declarer, who could simply be mistaken (concealed card, dropped card, etc).

Scenario 1: Declarer's LHO leads a plain card to a trick, which declarer ruffs in hand. Dummy enquires "having no Xs, partner?" and declarer says "Oh, I see I do." Do we all agree that attention has been drawn to the revoke? Of course, it is not established unless declarer has already played to the next trick, claimed, etc. Scenario 2: Declarer's LHO leads a plain card to a trick, which declarer ruffs in hand. Dummy enquires "having no Xs, partner?" and declarer, holding at least one X, wrongly says "No, I don't" and plays on. Do we all still agree that attention has been drawn to the revoke? If not, why not? Suppose now that in Scenario 2 the fact of the revoke does not become clear until after the non-offending side has made a call on the subsequent deal or until after the round has ended (see Laws 64B 4 & 5). As long as the scoring correction period has not ended Law 64C remains applicable, but do we agree, or not, that rectification under Law 64A still applies?

The software that comes with the common Duplimate machine allows you to set the dealing parameters so that the cards in each hand are not shown on the screen when dealing - that's the norm when dealing at my club. This means - as I did when directing tonight - that it can be simplest just to collect up the board, drop the cards in the dealing machine's hopper, open up the relevant deal file and re-deal the board in question on the machine. It took about 90 seconds in all. Of course, you need an appropriate computer and dealing machine set up, with easy access to it, but this proved to be a very effective solution to the problem.

Go to the Score Sheets window for the board in question; the fines columns are the last two in the score traveller table.

My thanks to all who contributed. This thread has completely fulfilled the purpose I had in mind when I posted the OP, and I'm very grateful to you all.

IMPs (EBU club teams night). [hv=pc=n&w=saj52ht3djt6ck984&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=p1cp1h1s2h(Alerted%3B%20shows%204%2B)3s4hpp]133|200[/hv] You're W, a good club player. Natural Acol-style bidding; the alert of S's 2♥ was just because it promises 4; S could have 4 ♣s and 4 ♥s, but will then be 15+ HCP. What calls do you consider? Which call do you make? (If you wouldn't have bid 3♠ on the previous round, please indicate.) PS: The Alert was what happened at the table - it is not required by regulation. Please don't concern yourselves with it.

Since this was presumably the British Winter Sims, you could have protected yourselves by dealing the rest of the boards in the first place (36 deals are supplied, not just 32). Perhaps next time. NB: 24 boards played out of 34 in play just meets the EBU's 70% rule (70% of 34 is 23.8).

Look up the definition of range as it pertains to math to see where you are wrong. Robin is someone who studied mathematics to doctorate-candidate level at arguably the strongest mathematics faculty in the UK, and knows whereof he speaks. There is more to the subject than definitions from MathGoodies. This kind of gratuitous rudeness is out of order. Peter

All these hands (including Pran's xxx - xx variation of Lycier's) have 14 cards.

Omar Sharif

This got me interested enough to generate the actual HCP distribution for a pair of hands, and work directly from those numbers. Initially I thought to myself that, since the HCP distribution of a single hand is obviously not symmetric about the mean, then the HCP distribution of two also might not be, but then I remembered that for every pair of hands with N points there's another with (40-N)! So the distribution is indeed essentially Normal, with mean 20 and SD, as Helene has already given much more elegantly, of 4.77 [4.769182]. Since I had the numbers, I let the machine compound them up for 24 deals, and the (E&OE) number-crunched result I got for WellSpyder's combined holding of a total of 393 (or less) HCPs between two hands over 24 boards was 0.010260% (1 in 9747).

I would certainly agree that it becomes E's 'turn to call' once he has accepted the BOOT; notwithstanding your assertion, it's not at all clear to me that this is the case until then. Your argument that it becomes E's 'turn to call' "at the moment the TD gives him the option to accept the BOOT" seems like a very flimsy cover for an already chosen position, with an artificial-seeming and arbitrary trigger point. The process that follows a COOT (let's generalise; not just a BOOT) is set out in Law 29: There's nothing here conferring a right to ask questions before arriving at the election under A, so the only Law that permits questions about the COOT remains Law 20F1. One can argue (and I would) that the reference in B to "the player whose turn it was to call" is no more than a identifying description (it conveniently embraces all three possible cases), and, in the absence of any explicit denotation that it becomes the 'turn to call' of the player after the caller-out-of-turn, it seems to me that this status is in abeyance until either that player determines the position by deciding to call (thus accepting the COOT); accepting the COOT without yet having called; or rejecting the COOT; or is pre-empted by his/her partner making a call to which Law 28B applies. In a nutshell, it becomes that player's 'turn to call' when (s)he decides (s)he's going to call, and not before. If this is so, then it follows that the player after the COOT may not ask questions about the COOT (or the opponents' prior auction) before deciding whether or not to accept it.

I'm led to the following thought about a possible lacuna in the Laws: I'm not at all sure that SB is entitled to ask any questions. It's not clear to me that N's BOOT renders it E's "turn to call". Certainly, E may accept N's BOOT, either explicitly or, implicitly, by calling himself, but I can't quickly find anything explicit in the Laws that makes it his "turn to call". Moreover, we also have which means that E has not become the only player permitted to call. It's therefore not clear to me that the very specific prerequisite in Law 20F1 allows him to ask any questions.

For a 13-card hand in isolation it's 4.130. I don't know the number for a pair of hands within a deal.

Not just the cities either. I now live in a small market town in the Oxfordshire / Warwickshire border region. There are a couple of identical buy-to-let 2/3-bedroom houses just near me - both will have cost c£200,000. An acquaintance has a small portfolio of 2 buy-to-lets - one in this region, which cost c £120,000, and one in Northampton, c £80,000. Both are providing affordable housing for people who couldn't dream of getting onto the purchase ladder at this point in their lives, and providing a practical investment for my acquaintance. Such properties will be even cheaper in other parts of the UK. These sorts of small scale buy-to-let arrangements are commonplace here. You can see why there are other perspectives.

Believe it or not, there is more to the UK than London. A market without buy-to-let is necessarily pretty soon a market without private landlords. Where does that get us?

May I nominate this for Overstatement Of The Year? What sort of rental market do you think there would be without buy-to-let?