whose lead?

[Vilgan]

Had an interesting auction when filling it at a 0-50 game tonight. Auction went:

 

P - 1 NT - X - XX

1♥ - P (1) - P - X (2)

P - 1♠ - p - 1 NT

all pass

 

1: passed before realizing it was insufficient, thus accepting the 1H call

2: meant as penalty

 

So the question after the auction was: whose lead is it now? North bid 1NT first, but south then bid 1NT himself (rather than raising NT). The direction (my gf, very new at this tbh) said south's 1NT replaced the 1NT bid by north so therefore it was west's turn to lead. Neither of us had a good idea where to look for the law.. and nobody was too worried about it anyways.

 

After the fact though, whose lead is it really after the above auction? If you know, do you happen to know which law or whatever clarifies it? Was a bit interesting, and I was hoping to learn *for sure* for future reference as I hadn't seen this come up before.

 

Thanks!

 

Eric

[kgr]

North did bid NT first and that bid was never cancelled.

I'd say East has to lead.

[Fluffy]

agree

[Finch]

North bid NT first, therefore it is East's lead.

 

To understand this from the Laws, you look in Chapter 1, definitions, and you see that Declarer is:

 

"The player who, for the side that makes the final bid, first bid the denomination named in that bid"

 

You can then look at the Laws on insufficient bid and you see that under Law 27A, the insufficient bid has been accepted (treated as legal). That means that the auction to 1H is legal, so the original 1NT bid still stands and is still legal. The fact that someone else bids 1NT later is irrelevant, the first 1NT has not been withdrawn or replaced.