Declarer shows hand to one opponent

[blackshoe]

gesture |ˈjesCHər|

noun

a movement of part of the body, esp. a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning: Alex made a gesture of apology | so much is conveyed by gesture.

• an action performed to convey one's feelings or intentions: Maggie was touched by the kind gesture.

• an action performed for show in the knowledge that it will have no effect: I hope the amendment will not be just a gesture.

 

Showing your hand is not a gesture.

[Vampyr]

Sometimes the claim statement would be something like "If you lead a club I can do A, if you lead a diamond I have a free finesse, if you lead a spade I can something else," possibly with longer explanations for each case. It's not always shorter to verbalize a bridge position than to display it, but displaying to both opps without a claim statement is dangerous. Occasionally the player at the table can work out the most efficient course of action better than armchair quarterbacks who haven't seen the hands in question.

 

Your experience must be different to mine; when I see this behaviour it is normally a 2- or 3-card ending.

[barmar]

All I know is that the times I've done this, I couldn't make a clear claim; if I could, I would. As I said earlier, I'm usually inferring the layout from the player's difficulty in finding a play.

 

As a corollary to that, I would only do it with good players. Bad players often go into the tank for totally incomprehensible reasons -- if I try to take inference from it, there's a good chance I'm wrong.

[bluejak]

Would everyone be ok with this if Declarer needed to find a key card in the end position and could play either opponent for that card?

No. Deal with him using Law 23.

 

No laws forbids it. Law 23 relates to irregularities, not just to infractions. An irregularity is "A deviation from correct procedure inclusive of, but not limited to, those which involve an infraction by a player."

 

Having said that, Law 23 also uses the word "offender". Hmm.

If a player shows his hand knowing it may give him an advantage, he's committing an offence.

 

In fact, these laws don't even say that a player is supposed to keep his cards to himself, so if a player does keep his cards to himself, that would be as much of an irregularity as showing the cards- following your reasoning. Phew, lucky that your reasoning is flawed. ;)

Custom & practice decides much of what we do. Deviations from that are irregularities.