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Made 7NT when defender on lead had the A of Clubs


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This is a true experience. My wife and I were bidding, playing precision, and got messed up in our communication during the bidding process and asking sequences. At one point, my wife bid 4C which was promptly doubled for a club lead.....Anyway we got to a disastrous 7 NT trump contract with my wife playing it.....RHO led a club out of turn for the opening lead....We call the director over and he explains the options to my wife and my wife tells LHO she will not allow a Club lead. LHO then lays down the Ace of Clubs !...The director explains that this is now a penalty card and to lead something else. It was all over for the opponents then....my dummy hand held something like,K,Q,J,10,x,x of Clubs..... LHO made a legal lead which my wife took and eventually the penalty Ace of Clubs had to be discarded and the impossible 7NT contract was made
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This is a true experience. My wife and I were bidding, playing precision, and got messed up in our communication during the bidding process and asking sequences. At one point, my wife bid 4C which was promptly doubled for a club lead.....Anyway we got to a disastrous 7 NT trump contract with my wife playing it.....RHO led a club out of turn for the opening lead....We call the director over and he explains the options to my wife and my wife tells LHO she will not allow a Club lead. LHO then lays down the Ace of Clubs !...The director explains that this is now a penalty card and to lead something else. It was all over for the opponents then....my dummy hand held something like,K,Q,J,10,x,x of Clubs..... LHO made a legal lead which my wife took and eventually the penalty Ace of Clubs had to be discarded and the impossible 7NT contract was made

Circa 1979, small Sectional tournament, I was lined up with an ostensibly competent partner (bearing in mind we were in our mid-twenties and none of us were really expert), and early on I opened 2 with my balanced 22 and partner held a full opener with a 7 card heart suit so he showed hearts by what was then our conventional method of bidding 2N, and over my 3N, asked for Aces and I told him I had only 1...he didn't believe me and bid 7N with his 2.

 

My LHO, who was much older...probably in his 40's(!)....was positively vibrating as he doubled.....there were 3 passes......my LHO was laying down the spade Ace as my hand was rising in the air for the TD. Sure enough, it was a lead out of turn, and my partner knew enough to bar the lead.....we had 13 top winners outside the spade suit.

 

Ok...so this was weird enough, but we were in a 13 table section and scored only 11 on a 12 top......3 pairs were in 7N doubled, making.

 

We had to redouble to get the top.

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I like where this thread is going..... :)

I would like to contribute experiences like this, but I don't have them.

I described a similar experience before: I was in 6N after my partner got rather more enthused than her hand warranted...I had shown a 4 card spade suit at some time.

 

The opening lead was slow in coming, and turned out to be harmful to the defence by picking off a missing Jack, which gave me 11 winners. I was off the spade AK and the heart K. Taking the heart hook would, if successful, get me to 12 tricks.

 

Oh well....I ran a bunch if winners and LHO looked increasingly uncomfortable. Meanwhile, her partner, a reliable type who would be insulted at the notion that she ever falsecard, pitched a discouraging heart.

 

Well, long story short, with 4 cards left, LHO held spade AK(!) and heart Kx, and I held QJ AQ with the lead in dummy. I pitched a spade and so did LHO. I had nothing to lose, since I trusted RHO and LHO was clearly holding the heart K, so exited a spade and LHO won to lead into my heart AQ. Trust me, anyone capable of not leading the AK of spades would be incapable of stiffing the heart K.

 

LHO later explained that she didn't want to lead the spade AK because she thought that I would be ready for that. I didn't say anything about how lucky she was that she hadn't doubled the slam.

 

Oh, the joys of playing in weak fields :D Finalists in the Spingold, etc, never get to experience this sort of thing.

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A long time ago a defender revoked ruffing a card using the Ace of Trumps.

 

He lost that trick due to revoke laws

 

Is it natural justice to lose the Ace of Trumps?

 

It's a fun story. I doubt this thread is "let's discuss whether this was fair or not"

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A long time ago a defender revoked ruffing a card using the Ace of Trumps.

 

He lost that trick due to revoke laws

 

Is it natural justice to lose the Ace of Trumps?

 

The funnier version of that is one where somebody never had a chance to make the ace of trumps because the guy with a 14 card hand had to follow to the first 13 tricks.

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I once performed a succesful colour coup, and it wasn't even on purpose! I don't remember the exact hand, but I was playing something like 3NT with KQJT98 (small doubleton in my hand) and a very small chance for an entry. When I played K RHO ducked (killing dummy) and LHO showed his count. Next trick I played Q from dummy (to take the finesse) and RHO 'took' his A... Needless to say, A became a penalty card which had to be discarded a couple of tricks later, and my second was enough to reach dummy and run the s. 3NT was several tricks down at all tables, and I made overtricks :D
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Eddie Kantar wrote about a hand played by Jim Linhart, where his partner bid 7 and RHO doubled and put the A on the table without waiting for three passes. Linhart bid 7NT, and the Ace was a penalty card that had to get pitched after some desperate declarer play finally voided RHO in another suit.
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How about making 7NT missing two aces?

 

Two international players bid to 7NT no doubt assuming some first round controls were aces not voids. Opponent tables two aces at the same time saying, "I'll just takes these two". Unfortunately there were leads out of turn and director rules that declarer can ban the lead of both suits.

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How about making 7NT missing two aces?

 

Two international players bid to 7NT no doubt assuming some first round controls were aces not voids. Opponent tables two aces at the same time saying, "I'll just takes these two". Unfortunately there were leads out of turn and director rules that declarer can ban the lead of both suits.

 

Truscott wrote about a match with a similar incident where the defense actually did take their tricks, quite a few in fact. They happily reported +2,000 at the comparison and their teammate said "Push."

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Truscott wrote about a match with a similar incident where the defense actually did take their tricks, quite a few in fact. They happily reported +2,000 at the comparison and their teammate said "Push."

 

As far as disappointing comparisons go this must rank with the one a couple of top brits managed many years ago where one declarer scored +1370 on some compound squeeze to find this saved an IMP vs the 5200 redoubled fiasco at the other table.

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How about making 7NT missing two aces?

 

Two international players bid to 7NT no doubt assuming some first round controls were aces not voids. Opponent tables two aces at the same time saying, "I'll just takes these two". Unfortunately there were leads out of turn and director rules that declarer can ban the lead of both suits.

 

Is this the right ruling, this is a claim not exposing cards, so surely play ceases and you can't force utterly unreasonable plays (like discarding the aces).

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Molson and Baron once had a long auction, cue bidding everything twice and each with a running suit to 7nt.

 

An opponent led a x out of turn and Molson said "It doesn't matter" and laid his dummy down. Hearts split 6-7 and Boris chased him out of the room.

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Is this the right ruling, this is a claim not exposing cards, so surely play ceases and you can't force utterly unreasonable plays (like discarding the aces).

 

There were 13 tricks available in the other two suits.

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A previous partner of mine was very much a novice and this led to some "entertaining" results, like 1H-4C (SPL); pass and I made it on a 3-1 fit! (Of course, we were cold for 7H.) And then there was the case of the board that wasn't shuffled properly where we held all 40 HCPs between us (18 top tricks in three denominations) but couldn't manage to bid beyond 3NT :/

 

Once at Brighton my current, and much more competent, partner scored up 7 missing two aces. He was 1-0-6-6 and had opened a system strong bid so I figured he "had" to have the A, right? -.- The guy on lead was far too trusting that as partner hadn't redoubled in hearts to show a first-round control, that's where the ace was cashing. Partner ruffed out his club suit to discard all spades from my hand, and as we left the table much arguing ensued. :/ Unfortunately since then in any silly slams we've bid, mainly due to Blackwood disasters, every opp has doubled but nobody so far has been kind enough to lead out of turn.

 

ahydra

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Not when the opening leader has claimed the first two tricks (and conceded the rest).

 

Once he's claimed, with an incomplete statement (no line of play), all doubtful points, including whether he will actually get in, are resolved in favor of the other side.

 

What's more interesting is that saying "I'll take these" does seem to constitute a claim, whereas just dropping the aces on the table does not -- and thus the two situations are resolved differently, one under claim procedures, the other under penalty card procedures.

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The claimant wasn't on lead, so what's to say you were getting those 2 aces?

Good point.

 

It's vacation here. I probably hadn't switched my brain on yet and had overlooked the part that the claimer wasn't on lead. Either way, I agree with Cyberyeti that this was a claim and that the aces were not penalty cards.

 

Rik

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