[DaveB]

One from the Club last night.

You respond to a summons and observe the following trick has been played
S (dummy) 9♠
W 8♠
N 6♠
E 7♠

You ask how you may help and E "helpfully" says "when I played the 7♠ it felt odd and I found I have a card stuck behind it"
At this point she exposes the Q♠

You determine that prior to this point noone knew what this card was.

As this card has (now) been exposed you can no longer simply apply L 58B1.

So do you still determine L58B1 as applicable, and the exposure of the Q♠ as a seperate offense, or
that L58B2 is now appropriate and allow E to nominate which of the 7♠ or Q♠ she proposes to play?

[pran]

DaveB, on 2012-November-27, 06:25, said:

One from the Club last night.

You respond to a summons and observe the following trick has been played
S (dummy) 9♠
W 8♠
N 6♠
E 7♠

You ask how you may help and E "helpfully" says "when I played the 7♠ it felt odd and I found I have a card stuck behind it"
At this point she exposes the Q♠

You determine that prior to this point noone knew what this card was.

As this card has (now) been exposed you can no longer simply apply L 58B1.

So do you still determine L58B1 as applicable, and the exposure of the Q♠ as a seperate offense, or
that L58B2 is now appropriate and allow E to nominate which of the 7♠ or Q♠ she proposes to play?

I shall apply Law 58B1 on the 7♠ and then Law 49 on the Q♠ as this card was exposed in a separate action.

[Zelandakh]

Separate - ♠7 played, ♠Q penalty card.

[barmar]

+1

[DaveB]

The question looked as if it was turning out to be a dud (no debate).

However unknown to me someone else involved decided to consult our National Authority (EBU).
The advice we received was that if it the offender causes the card to become visible, the applicable law is L58B2.
So perhaps not so trivial after all.

Subsidiary question:-
Is this a matter of Law in which an appeals committee may not over-rule the TD or is it a matter of judgement?

[c_corgi]

Were the facts presented to the EBU definitely the same as those in the OP? We often have threads here where participant[s] do not agree with the facts as posted by someone else.

[DaveB]

Extract from the email sent to the EBU


At the point the Director arrived at the table the QS was completely concealed behind the 7S.

When the Director asked why he had been called the lady said it was because she had played 2 cards

and only at that point did she split the cards revealing the identity of the QS.


No room for confusion that I can see.

[pran]

DaveB, on 2012-November-29, 12:44, said:

Extract from the email sent to the EBU


At the point the Director arrived at the table the QS was completely concealed behind the 7S.

When the Director asked why he had been called the lady said it was because she had played 2 cards

and only at that point did she split the cards revealing the identity of the QS.


No room for confusion that I can see.

And I shall be most surprised if any authority rules L58B2 in this case.

Until the Director arrived this was clearly a L58B1 situation with the ♠7 played.

It cannot possibly be correct to allow the offender changing her play to ♠Q simply by subsequently uncovering this card, even when a side effect is to create a minor(!!!) penalty card instead of no rectification at all.

[iviehoff]

National Authority might have taken you at your word when you made the (legally incorrect) statement that the lady had played two cards, rather than looking at the details to realise that in fact she had not.

[VixTD]

I don't think the answer to the original query is trivial, and I'm reading the responses with interest.

I had to rule on exactly the same problem about 15 years ago, but if we look at a rather more common situation in which a defender deliberately plays a specific card, but in doing so drops a card that was obviously not intended to be played to this trick, how should the TD treat these two cards?

I think it is obvious that the one deliberately played should be contributed to the trick and the other treated as a (major or minor) penalty card, since only one card was played to the trick. Whatever happened to expose the other card was not the act of "playing". Yet the EBU (via its TD training manuals and exercises, if I remember correctly) expect this to be treated as a case of "simultaneous leads or plays" and apply law 58B2:

Quote

If more than one card is visible, the player designates the card he proposes to play; when he is a defender, each other card exposed becomes a penalty card (see Law 50).

Presumably this would be the case whether the unintended card left the hand at the same time as the card played, or if there were a few seconds' fumbling before control of the second card were finally lost and it landed on the table.

There is relevant advice in the White Book (58.2):

Quote

When two cards are both visible the player designates the card he proposes to play. This does not need to be the card he originally intended. If he is a defender the remaining card is a penalty card but it is only a minor penalty card if it is not the card he originally intended, and if it is not an honour.

I don't think this advice is consistent with the wording of the law, which refers to simultaneous plays. I don't see any significant difference between the accidental dropping of a card along with a played card and the situation described by Dave B.

So if I were following the EBU's advice I would allow East to choose which card she would like to play and rule the other a penalty card. If I were following the laws I would rule the ♠7 played to the trick and ♠Q a penalty card.

[c_corgi]

VixTD, on 2012-November-30, 08:33, said:

So if I were following the EBU's advice I would allow East to choose which card she would like to play and rule the other a penalty card. If I were following the laws I would rule the ♠7 played to the trick and ♠Q a penalty card.

Oh dear. Does this extend to situations where East changes her mind what she wants to play and deliberately produces another card from hand, thus being able to choose between the first one and the second? I don't see any difference between deliberately producing the second card from hand or from a concealed position on the table.

[iviehoff]

c_corgi, on 2012-November-30, 08:58, said:

Oh dear. Does this extend to situations where East changes her mind what she wants to play and deliberately produces another card from hand, thus being able to choose between the first one and the second? I don't see any difference between deliberately producing the second card from hand or from a concealed position on the table.

I don't think there is any possibility that the EBU would mistake that for being two cards simultaneously played.

The whole point of L58B1 is that it means that a card which is concealed is not played. The law was introduced precisely to prevent players arguing that it was, as there are situations when it can be to their advantage to do so. There are some amusing anecdotes of cards stuck behind from the days before this law existed.

One might say that if two cards are removed from hand in the same movement, and both become exposed, then they were played simultaneously even if there was some material time difference in when the faces of the cards became visible, provided that the exposure of both cards was inevitable. One might even say it if it was the concealed card that the player had been trying to expose when be removed both cards from hand. But it does seem a stretch to apply that thought to the present situation where it was the concealed card that was inadvertently removed from hand, and its exposure could have been avoided.

[blackshoe]

In the case at hand, the player had one exposed card on the table — the one she intended to play — until the director arrived. Then she deliberately exposed the other card. She probably thought she was just showing the TD what the problem was, but nevertheless she exposed a card that did not need to be exposed. So I'm not letting her change her mind about which card to play. The seven is played, the Queen is a major penalty card.

Had she just said "there's another card under this seven", I would rule under 58B1 that she should pick up the other card (without exposing it) and put it back in her hand.

[mycroft]

There's this case, and there's the case where someone pulls a card and catch another one with it. Especially for those with long nails, it is possible that either card was the "caught" card and either the top or the bottom card was intended to be played. In this case, however, we don't have the "concealed second card" - and I think this case is the basis of the EBU regulation. The fact that it means that sometimes I can convert a MPC to a mpc by "changing my mind" is of arguable provenance (and the ACBL regulation expects the TD to avoid giving that option).

[pran]

VixTD, on 2012-November-30, 08:33, said:

I don't think the answer to the original query is trivial, and I'm reading the responses with interest.

I had to rule on exactly the same problem about 15 years ago, but if we look at a rather more common situation in which a defender deliberately plays a specific card, but in doing so drops a card that was obviously not intended to be played to this trick, how should the TD treat these two cards?

I think it is obvious that the one deliberately played should be contributed to the trick and the other treated as a (major or minor) penalty card, since only one card was played to the trick. Whatever happened to expose the other card was not the act of "playing". Yet the EBU (via its TD training manuals and exercises, if I remember correctly) expect this to be treated as a case of "simultaneous leads or plays" and apply law 58B2:
[...]

Law 58B2 explicitly applies in any situation when two (or more) cards are exposed in a single act of playing from a defender's hand. Whether one of the cards is "obviously" the card he intended to play is immaterial, the offender enjoys the privilege of designating which of the exposed cards he will play to the trick. This then (of course) also applies when the player deliberately plays one card and another card is accidentally dropped on the table together with the one played.

OP describes a situation where the second card is exposed in a separate action by the defender, not together with the play of the first card. Then Law 58 is not applicable at all, the card exposed later is an exposed card subject to Law 49.

[barmar]

VixTD, on 2012-November-30, 08:33, said:

I had to rule on exactly the same problem about 15 years ago, but if we look at a rather more common situation in which a defender deliberately plays a specific card, but in doing so drops a card that was obviously not intended to be played to this trick, how should the TD treat these two cards?

Dropping a card does not fit the definition of playing a card, so this is not a case of simultaneous plays, and 58B doesn't apply. The dropped card is simply an exposed defender's card, subject to 49 and 50.

[VixTD]

barmar, on 2012-November-30, 12:17, said:

Dropping a card does not fit the definition of playing a card, so this is not a case of simultaneous plays, and 58B doesn't apply. The dropped card is simply an exposed defender's card, subject to 49 and 50.

My thoughts exactly, but you try telling the EBU (and Pran) that.

pran, on 2012-November-30, 11:27, said:

Law 58B2 explicitly applies in any situation when two (or more) cards are exposed in a single act of playing from a defender's hand.

That's not what my law book says.

[barmar]

50B makes a lists "playing two cards to a trick" and "dropping a card accidentally" as two different examples of ways that a defender might expose a card untintentionally. From that, I infer that these are considered different type of mistakes a player could make. So it doesn't seem right to conflate them when determining if 58B2 applies.

[jhenrikj]

The situation when one card was played and another card dropped simultaneously was on the EBL TD training course last december....the answer was that both cards were played and 58B2 applies. I had a long argument with Ton Koijjman and Maurizio di Sacco about that, not agreeing with them, but apparently that is the way EBL (and at least parts of the WBFLC) want's us to apply the laws in that situation. They were exposed in the action of playing a card. I would guess that when both EBL and EBU gives the same answer to a question, we can be quite sure that that answer also is the one the WBFLC will give.

I know that only things published in the WBFLC minutes is law...but when you know what the WBFLC thinks about something even if it's not in the minutes, in my opinion it's wrong to apply the law any other way.

[axman]

jhenrikj, on 2012-December-09, 13:00, said:

The situation when one card was played and another card dropped simultaneously was on the EBL TD training course last december....the answer was that both cards were played and 58B2 applies. I had a long argument with Ton Koijjman and Maurizio di Sacco about that, not agreeing with them, but apparently that is the way EBL (and at least parts of the WBFLC) want's us to apply the laws in that situation. They were exposed in the action of playing a card. I would guess that when both EBL and EBU gives the same answer to a question, we can be quite sure that that answer also is the one the WBFLC will give.

I know that only things published in the WBFLC minutes is law...but when you know what the WBFLC thinks about something even if it's not in the minutes, in my opinion it's wrong to apply the law any other way.

I think that it is readily believable that when a player exposes two cards at his turn to play that the occasion does not constitute normal play.

As you do not elaborate as to the arguments supporting the TK and MS position it is difficult to assess whether they are valid. But it is notable that L49 provides in that situation for such cards to be PCs automatically. And L50 thereby provides that it is declarer [contrary to TK assertion] that controls which card is to be contributed to the trick.