[wyman]

See above: Dummy (not declarer) won the revoke trick.

[blackshoe]

Grr. Okay, I'll fix it.

[mycroft]

blackshoe, on 2011-November-02, 15:31, said:

David is right that reading the laws to the table might have scotched the debate, although in this part of North America, even attempting to do so is likely to result in vociferous complaints from the players, along the lines of "we don't have time for that!"

But (to riff off the traditional business gripe) we sure have time to argue that we know what it says.

Having said that, there's a reason that this TD's lawbook is (unless I haven't done my ritual today, which does, unfortunately, happen) always at the table when I get there. And when I haven't done my ritual, it's at the scoring table (which is bad, but not hopeless).

[Chris3875]

Thanks Ed, David and all. I wasn't the Director on the day but was approached by the South player yesterday who told me that he got a bad Director decision while he was playing at an event in Melbourne a few days earlier. When he described the scenario I told him that, in my opinion, the Director got it right but he was adamant that no matter what the law book says, it was entirely unfair to make him give a trick back that he was never going to lose, no matter whether he revoked or followed with a trump.

[blackshoe]

A friend of mine used to say "you're entitled to your wrong opinion".

The law is clear, so your South's opinion of what's fair is not really relevant. You might also show him

Quote

Law 81B2: The director applies and is bound by these Laws and supplementary regulations announced under authority given in these Laws.

If he still has a beef, tell him to take it up with the WBFLC.

[iviehoff]

There is also L12B2:

The Director may not award an adjusted score on the ground that the
rectification provided in these Laws is either unduly severe or
advantageous to either side.

I shall never forget the time when, as a student, I inadvertently reversed the order of my first discard and last follow in hand while cashing out a suit in dummy. Completely irrelevant to anything or anyone, but one trick to the opposition. My opponents were perfectly aware of this, but quite unapologetic about having the law applied. It was a lesson on the importance of being careful, and also on the expectation that the law will be applied. I will unapologetically apply the law to my opponents for the same reason.

With its automatic penalties, the revoke law is somewhat random in its effect. The usual justification is that (1) following suit is the most important principle of the game, and people need a sharp tap to be reminded that it is important; (2) automatic penalties are easier to apply than equity adjustments. But in fact the revoke law has tended to get less severe to the revokers over time, and the number of equity adjustments is becoming slightly more common.

[iviehoff]

BunnyGo, on 2011-November-02, 11:14, said:

It's even better than the (apocryphal? fictional? I dunno) hand where a pair made 7♠ off the ace of trump. They made on a cross ruff and when the person holding the ace also had 14 cards and the perfect distribution so that they could never ruff in, the slam was made.

Doesn't always follow: we need to add in some further facts to get this to work. For example, if they had been playing with a 52-card deck, so someone else had only 12 cards, then that won't count as making the contract, under Law 13C. But if they had been playing with a 53 card deck, and you can be sure it was 14-card holder who was holding the extraneous duplicate card, then it could just work. Under law 13F, you rule that play was as if the extraneous card was never there. Then, under Law 67, there is a defective trick with a card short, and the trump Ace must now be contributed to that trick without changing its ownership. This law also tells us that this is automatically a 1-trick revoke, so in this scenario it would be possible to make a grand slam off AKQ of trumps (assuming the KQ were crashed on the same trick).

[billw55]

Chris3875, on 2011-November-02, 18:27, said:

Thanks Ed, David and all. I wasn't the Director on the day but was approached by the South player yesterday who told me that he got a bad Director decision while he was playing at an event in Melbourne a few days earlier. When he described the scenario I told him that, in my opinion, the Director got it right but he was adamant that no matter what the law book says, it was entirely unfair to make him give a trick back that he was never going to lose, no matter whether he revoked or followed with a trump.

I am curious. I made my earlier post partly in jest, but I wonder: let's imagine that after declarer has revoked on trick 11, he then claims rather than lead a card from dummy to trick 12. Now the revoke is not established (I think). What ruling in this case?

[RMB1]

billw55, on 2011-November-03, 06:43, said:

I am curious. I made my earlier post partly in jest, but I wonder: let's imagine that after declarer has revoked on trick 11, he then claims rather than lead a card from dummy to trick 12. Now the revoke is not established (I think).

The revoke is established: Law 61A3. "Revoke becomes established ... when a member of the offending side makes or agrees to a claim or ..."

If the revoke is not established, it is corrected and play continues: declarer makes all the tricks.

[billw55]

Well that answers that

Lastly, this declarer strikes me as a fishy character. Regardless the laws (which are clear anyway), his argument makes no sense to me intuitively. How can a bridge player be so adamant that he can revoke and incur no penalty? Mistakes count, a revoke is no different from any other mistake in this respect. If you have a winning line you have to actually play it, or at least accurately claim it, however simple. Accepting lines of play that are stated *after* an irregularity is a very slippery slope.

[suprgrover]

barmar, on 2011-November-02, 13:43, said:

Why don't you send them an email. They probably just forgot about the old page.

I do wish someone would convert the new Laws to HTML format, like the old ones. Having to scroll through a huge PDF file is a royal pain.

I did. Two years ago. And I was told that (1) the new Laws would not be put in HTML format and (2) they had no intention of deleting the old Laws.

Asking the ACBL to do even the most obvious things is an exercise in frustration. (Don't get me started about how the Laws Commission has not yet decided how to apply 12C1(b) in ACBL-land. Indeed, the latest news I have heard from Horn Lake is that the 1992 ruling [that non-offenders must "continue to play bridge"] is somehow still in effect.)

[blackshoe]

Well, let's see. Making errors, including "serious" ones, is part of the game. So is the occasional wild or gambling action. So I guess unless a player abandons his hand, or clearly expresses no interest in the outcome, he's still "playing bridge", so 12C1(b) won't apply to him.

[iviehoff]

billw55, on 2011-November-03, 07:13, said:

Regardless the laws (which are clear anyway), his argument makes no sense to me intuitively. How can a bridge player be so adamant that he can revoke and incur no penalty? Mistakes count, a revoke is no different from any other mistake in this respect. If you have a winning line you have to actually play it, or at least accurately claim it, however simple. Accepting lines of play that are stated *after* an irregularity is a very slippery slope.

He is mistaken, but it isn't such a ridiculous error to make. As someone else said, he seems to have confused the revoke laws with the claim laws. There are some laws with automatic penalties, and some laws with equity adjustments. There's even quite a long list of (rare) revokes that get equity adjustments. His final parting shot can be interpreted as saying that he thinks the law should not be so, not that it isn't so.

But I agree with your final sentence. I wouldn't have given him all 3 tricks if he had claimed without a statement, and I had to adjudicate it. There is a line of play to lose a trick, and I consider it merely careless to follow it, unless he has given us some kind of an indication he is aware he can take 3 tricks despite the defensive trump situation.

[RMB1]

iviehoff, on 2011-November-03, 11:06, said:

... I wouldn't have given him all 3 tricks if he had claimed without a statement, and I had to adjudicate it. There is a line of play to lose a trick, and I consider it merely careless to follow it, unless he has given us some kind of an indication he is aware he can take 3 tricks despite the defensive trump situation.

But if had claimed after he had played ♣9 from dummy and before he had played from hand, then you would give him all three tricks. (?)

[suprgrover]

blackshoe, on 2011-November-03, 10:48, said:

Well, let's see. Making errors, including "serious" ones, is part of the game. So is the occasional wild or gambling action. So I guess unless a player abandons his hand, or clearly expresses no interest in the outcome, he's still "playing bridge", so 12C1(b) won't apply to him.

No, this is the ACBL, where non-offenders can't buy a break.

Here is the relevant bit from the Tech Files:

Quote

RESPONSIBILITY OF PLAYERS TO PLAY BRIDGE.

At the 1992 Indianapolis NABCs, the ACBL Laws Commission reaffirmed the position that in order to fully protect their rights, bridge players are under an obligations to play at a reasonable level commensurate with their expertise. A serious misplay can be cause for a player to have to accept a bad score that was actually achieved even though the offender's score should be adjudicated.

The positions that any result achieved after a to-be-disallowed action is not to be considered (because the non-offenders should never have been a position to commit the egregious error) was declared invalid.

When the director decides that there has been a violation of law resulting in damage to an innocent opponent, he shall adjust the score using the guidelines of Law 12C2, which states, "When the director awards an assigned adjusted score in place of a result actually obtained after an irregularity, the score is, for the non-offending side, the most favorable result that was likely had the irregularity not occurred, or, for the offending side, the most unfavorable result that was at all probable."

For example: (snipped; E-W used UI via a hesitation to get from 5♦ to 6♦.) The committee felt a significant minority would have passed over 5♦. However, during their questioning, they learned that South had misplayed the contract and East could have beaten it. After determining how the play went, the committee judged that East should have known he could ruff a trick to set the contract and failed to make an easy play (for his level of expertise) by not ruffing.

The committee ruled that North-South can not bid 6♦ after the hesitation but that East-West had a clear shot to set the contract which they failed to do only because of their own carelessness. Therefore, the most favorable result for East-West was in fact 6♦ properly defended and the most unfavorable result for North-South was 5♦, making six. The final ruling was to score East-West minus 920, the result at the table. For North-South, plus 420, the presumed result of a 5♦ contract.

[blackshoe]

Well, aside from the obvious errors in the example and the fact that Law 12C2 is now the wrong law for what they're trying to say, this Tech Note does seem to cover the SE part of SEWoG pretty well. I agree they should update it - it doesn't seem that hard - but I'm not inclined to include this little problem with the many more serious ones (IMO) caused by the organization's attitude towards their responsibilities.

[suprgrover]

blackshoe, on 2011-November-03, 19:28, said:

Well, aside from the obvious errors in the example and the fact that Law 12C2 is now the wrong law for what they're trying to say, this Tech Note does seem to cover the SE part of SEWoG pretty well. I agree they should update it - it doesn't seem that hard - but I'm not inclined to include this little problem with the many more serious ones (IMO) caused by the organization's attitude towards their responsibilities.

While I think that the error mentioned in the Tech Files does not rise to the level of Serious Error as the august commentators here seem to understand it, what galls me is that no one with authority at ACBL HQ deemed it important to update the official pronouncements on Law 12 even after Law 12 changed in 2007.

There are more serious problems, of course. Almost every British director knows about the White Book, knows that it's current, and knows that it's pretty damned complete. Most American directors don't even know about the Tech Files, never mind know how incomplete or out-of-date they are.

[blackshoe]

The Tech Files are part of ACBLScore, which every club in North America uses, AFAIK. Certainly it's the easiest way for clubs to carry out their responsibilities vis-à-vis reporting game results to ACBL HQ. The problem is, the program has two modes: Tournament Mode, and Club Mode. The Tech Files are only available in Tournament Mode, and many club directors, even if they knew the Tech Files were there, would be afraid to switch modes in the middle of a game, for fear of losing their data. The fear is unfounded, but it's there.

Earlier today, I was looking up some things in the Orange Book, and I wondered how hard it would be to produce an ACBL equivalent to the OB and the WB and, for that matter, the TB. Frankly, it's more than I would want to take on, unless the ACBL wants to pay me to do it. Can you say "fat chance"?