How would you rule?Failure to Alert

[Sadie3]

At the NABC in Reno, in a knockout event.... the bidding went...

1H (2D) X P

2H! (3D) X P

P

There was a slight break in tempo before the 2H bid, but not enough to cause the diamond bidder to call a TD. This was a player with approx. 200 master points and very little tournament experience. Before the opening lead, the doubler called for a director saying, there has been misinformation. The TD talked to the doubler away from the table, came back, stated there has been unauthorized information now given to the doublers partner and then directed the table to play the hand while she watched. The dummy asked if the declarer was entitled to know what the defenders now knew and was told no, play the hand. At the end of the hand, the contract was set 2 tricks in the 3D contract. The TD stated that she saw nothing untoward in the play of the hand, however, the first double made by the doubler was a penalty double and there had been a failure to alert. The TD had all the players lay out their hands, and stated that the doublers would make 4 maybe 5 hearts, therefore the score of -300 was better than the score of -620 and the result stands. The TD also took the board away and made a hand diagram of the hand and possibley conferred with other TD's. When she returned the board, she again stated that the result stands for the reasons she stated initially.

 

1. Should there be some penalty applied for the defender calling attn to the irregularity before his opening lead?

2. Should the bids have been rolled back so that the 3D bidder could take back his 3D bid?

3. If the 3D bid was rolled back, could the doubler then bid the game bid of 4 hearts, or is any restriction placed on his bids at this point?

4. Was the TD correct in refusing to explain the nature of the director call before the play of the hand?

 

The other table played in 4H making 5.

[PeterE]

1: not necessarily; depends on the level of expertise of East.

 

2: never ever; read Law 21 B1a.

 

3: irrelevant, see 2 above.

 

4: yes; as there is no right to know about MI from the defending side until the hand has been played, there is no right to know about what East was saying.

[gordontd]

Presumably the ruling was based on the idea that dealer's LHO would not have bid 3♦ with the correct information, but that dealer's partner would bid 4♥? Do you have the hand of dealer's partner?

[Sadie3]

The 3D bidder was the 200 pt master point holder. The defenders that failed to alert were a 20+ year established partnership according to the first statement he made to the TD when she arrived at the table and knew the TD well enough to talk to her on a first name basis which was very intimidating to the declarer who had no clue what was happening. He said something to the effect, "you know we have played this style for over 20 years, xxxx-name. At this point, the TD waved the doubler away from the table to continue the conversation. The declarer thought he had done something incorrect until the end of the hand because the TD did not explain anything to him. The bracket was 2600 to 4500 master point range. Since it was a knockout event, I have no hand records to give exact hand, but the penalty doubler had 5 diamonds behind the declarer and 2-3 hearts with limit raise point range.

 

 

As an aside, the match was won by the declarer's team, so no appeal or further action was required. If the match had been won by the failure to alert pair, do you think there was sufficient damage caused here to warrant an appeal?