[mrdct]

bluejak, on Jan 5 2010, 03:43 PM, said:

Once an irregularity has been perpetrated it is too late to prevent it.

Rubbish. What if dummy hadn't said a word and then declarer said "wait a minute I fear that we may have breached the Law requiring the director to be called after an irregularity so we better call him now to prevent that irregularity". When you turn up at the table are you going to say, "sorry once an irregularity has been perpetrated it is too late to prevent it"?

The timeframe specified in the Laws is "the Director should be summoned at once when attention is drawn to an irregularity". Blackshoe has already indicated that the timeframe between the "oops" and dummy's comment was so short that it did not afford him sufficient time to explain declarer's rights. Obviously "at once" can't mean instantly as humans need to time to cogitate what's going on and then come to the realisation that a director is required.

[bluejak]

Rubbish. You mean that dummy has not got time to speak while two more cards were played? I am surprised you want to support deliberately unethical behaviour. Ok, it was not cheating because I expect dummy did not know it was unethical, but condoning dummy directing play is awful.

Sure, if declarer had called the TD, or even if dummy had said something suitable, or had said it at a non-critical moment, it might be different. But that is not what happened: what happened is dummy waited until a critical moment and then made a suggestion about the play to declarer.

[duschek]

I believe that "oops" amounts to drawing attention to the irregularity. Thus dummy should call the TD when nobody else does (Law 9B1).

It all depends on which side knows about the rules. Here, it seems that declarer was unsure and relied on LHO's authority. From dummy's outburst it is clear that she has some understanding of the Laws, but not necessarily a strong TD. I am not going to let LHO benefit from this. I would rule that LHO had decided on a rectification himself, apparently being that the retracted spade should just remain face-up on the table and be played when possible. I would cancel that rectification under Law 10B and provide the correct rectification (penalty card, lead options) according to Law 50.

I fail to see why I should not cancel a clearly illegal rectification decided by the players, even when dummy decided to summon the TD at this time, when I hold LHO primarily responsible for (perhaps inadvertently) taking advantage of the fact that everybody at the table sees him as an authority on the Laws. Had dummy approached me after the hand, I would cancel the rectification and award an adjusted score on the same basis, so dummy hardly gains from "timing" her TD summoning.

Note how well this ruling, easily supported by the Laws, fits with 1eyedjack's layman views. I would certainly expect of any player with directing skills to summon the director when he or his partner tries to correct a mechanical error such as a revoke, call out of turn, or the like.

[jdaming]

bluejak, on Jan 5 2010, 04:24 PM, said:

then made a suggestion about the play to declarer.

I completely agree that saying something like "declarer has the right to forbid that suit being led" WOULD be unethical (cheating against the laws what have you) but this is not what happened. Dummy simply stated that Declarer had options. Which are the options declarer is given by the laws and might have otherwise have been taken from him.

[TimG]

I don't think

Quote

"Wait a minute, partner has lead options here"

amounts to directing the play.

I don't think dummy was really preventing an irregularity, but rather protecting her side's rights. I don't think there should be any objection to that. Does anyone really want to gain because declarer wasn't aware she had rights and wasn't bold enough to call the director and ask?

[mrdct]

bluejak, on Jan 5 2010, 04:24 PM, said:

You mean that dummy has not got time to speak while two more cards were played?

That is exactly what the facts reported by blackshoe suggest as by his own admission between his "oops" and dummy's comment he did not have time to explain declarer's rights so obviously the period of time it took for the last two cards of the trick to be played was extremely short.

It is ludicrous to suggest that dummy was lying in wait for the opportune moment to interject to gain some advantage for his side.

Perhaps dummy was waiting for someone else to pipe-up, but when nobody did took the appropriate action to prevent the irregularity of the director not being called to the table.

We don't have any details of the hand or how many tricks there were to go, so I guess it is also plausible that dummy might have felt if her side won the trick the hand would be over and the penalty card would be irrelevant so was initially comfortable to let the ball go through to the keeper, but once it was known that lead penalties could come into play, she quite reasonable sought to prevent the infraction of no director being called.

[bluejak]

If I am declarer, yes. I believe dummy should not help me in the play.

I still think most of the responses ignore the timing of dummy's intervention.

[blackshoe]

Since mrdct has got it wrong, let me clarify the timing:

I revoked. I corrected the revoke. Declarer played from dummy. Partner won the trick. Dummy immediately made her comment. I then objected to the comment. She then called the director. There were no long pauses anywhere in there. OTOH, it didn't happen with split-second timing, either. Say a second or two between events.

It wasn't the time between "oops" and the comment, it was the time between partner's winning the trick and the comment to which I referred earlier.

I am not at all sure that either member of this pair considers me an authority on the laws. Both seem pretty confident that they know more about the game (all aspects) than just about anybody else.


As to mrdct's other suppositions: yes, it's ludicrous, which is why I didn't suggest it, no, and no.

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on Jan 6 2010, 02:06 AM, said:

I still think most of the responses ignore the timing of dummy's intervention.

Did you not read the post directly above this one? It states what is pretty obvious, that dummy did not know until the end of the trick that her LHO would be on lead to the next trick.

I do not understand what you are suggesting, David. Should dummy, whose partner might not be aware that he had rights, have let play continue?

I think that "oops" clearly calls attention to the irregularity, but even if this were not the case, I think that allowing a lead to be made when there is an exposed card that has not been deemed a penalty card by director is an irregularity.

The OP stated:

Quote

Dummy did not call the director, so I didn't complain about her calling the director. What she did is to participate in the play of the hand by pointing out to her partner* that in her opinion he has lead options before my partner led to the next trick. I'm not so sure he has those options, though, since there was no TD call and no TD ruling regarding the revoke.

This is an interesting position. When exactly was the ruling to be made regarding the revoke? Would the OP have let partner lead and play continue "normally", declarer perhaps having been ignorant of the fact that he has been taken advantage of?

Also, this whole thing about dummy's mentioning "lead options" is stupid. I think that it is only natural for dummy to say something to that effect (possibly accidentally, and possibly in a bit of a panic) to make sure play is halted and the lead not made before the director arrived.

I am very slow to use the C word, so I will side with the poster who said that the OP's actions (and probable motives) were "suspect".

[gnasher]

Quote

I am very slow to use the C word, so I will side with the poster who said that the OP's actions (and probable motives) were "suspect".

I think you should be slow to use the "s" word too.

In any case, it seems quite inappropriate to use it here. Blackshoe's failure to call the director immediately seems to have been motivated by a desire for an easy life, and his concern about what dummy said appears to be driven by the belief that the letter of the Laws is more important than its spirit. That might seem wrong-headed to some of us, but it seems quite unfair to question his motives.

[Codo]

I totally agree with Andy that Blackshoe never tried to cheat or to do something suspicious.

He tried to solve a problem a little outside the laws to speed up the game or make the game easier. Well he failed with this ideas.

But besides this: I have zero understanding for the blaming of the dummy. Even if she choose the wrong moment and or the wrong wording. She did never ever suggest a game plan for declarer nor is there anything in the case which states that she deliberately waited till a good moment to help declarer.

[bluejak]

Vampyr, on Jan 6 2010, 09:55 AM, said:

bluejak, on Jan 6 2010, 02:06 AM, said:

I still think most of the responses ignore the timing of dummy's intervention.

Did you not read the post directly above this one? It states what is pretty obvious, that dummy did not know until the end of the trick that her LHO would be on lead to the next trick.

So what? There are other rules to do with major penalty cards.

Vampyr, on Jan 6 2010, 09:55 AM, said:

I do not understand what you are suggesting, David. Should dummy, whose partner might not be aware that he had rights, have let play continue?

Absolutely: an ethical and knowledgeable player would do so. But no, she wanted to direct play.

Vampyr, on Jan 6 2010, 09:55 AM, said:

I think that "oops" clearly calls attention to the irregularity, but even if this were not the case, I think that allowing a lead to be made when there is an exposed card that has not been deemed a penalty card by director is an irregularity.

Exactly, and if dummy had called the TD when the card was exposed there could be no complaint.

[pran]

bluejak, on Jan 6 2010, 01:12 PM, said:

Exactly, and if dummy had called the TD when the card was exposed there could be no complaint.

A little thought experiment:

Dummy says nothing. East wins the trick and continues with some card without awaiting Declarer to execute his options.

Is East guilty of any irregularity?

IMO absolutely not. The Director has not been called and East is not expected to know the laws about penalty cards. It is one of the Director's duties to make sure she is aware of both her duties and her rights in all situations.

The irregularity: East leading prematurely when her partner has a penalty card is in this case a consequence of the Director not having been called in time.

If I as Director had been called at this stage (on East's premature lead) I would simply rule that East takes back the card so led without any rectification and then let Declarer execute his options. I would also warn the players to always call the Director in penalty card situations.

So back to the original problem: I shall not penalize Dummy for "rectifying" the error of not calling the Director on the revoke before further consequences of this failure become imminent (so long as Dummy's actions do not violate Law 43A1c. (Dummy must not participate in the play)

However, this law actually continues with nor may he communicate anything about the play to declarer so the question still remains whether Dummy violated this last part of that law; I tend to say no in this situation)

[blackshoe]

I had composed a long response regarding among other things your (some of you) assumptions that I had some kind of ulterior motive in not calling the TD in the first place, and then objecting when dummy spoke up. I did not. You want to keep believing I did, fine, do so. I have no more to say about it.

I posted this in Simple Rulings in the first place because it seemed simple: did dummy violate Law 43A1{c}, or not? Two people have answered this: one says no, the other says yes. The rest of you are busy with other agendas. So be it. I'm done.

[jdonn]

blackshoe, on Jan 6 2010, 10:02 AM, said:

I had composed a long response regarding among other things your (some of you) assumptions that I had some kind of ulterior motive in not calling the TD in the first place, and then objecting when dummy spoke up. I did not. You want to keep believing I did, fine, do so. I have no more to say about it.

I don't believe anyone has said you had an ulterior motive. Just that it could appear that way to your opponents. I don't see what's so controversial or offensive about that. Personally I criticized your actions but not your motives. I know you were just trying to save time.

Ah I see now, someone did question your motives. As inappropriate as it is, it does back up my point that you have to be careful not only of how things are but of how they seem to others.

Quote

I posted this in Simple Rulings in the first place because it seemed simple: did dummy violate Law 43A1{c}, or not? Two people have answered this: one says no, the other says yes. The rest of you are busy with other agendas. So be it. I'm done.

At the end of your original post you didn't ask "did dummy violate Law 43A1{c}, or not?" You asked "comments?" So, that's what you got. To answer what you want to ask, if you ask me, saying "oops" and putting out a new card constitute 'calling attention to the irregularity' so dummy was within his rights to call the director. Saying "you have lead options" is technically illegal but utterly irrelevant and shouldn't be punished since it's exactly what the director was going to say when he got there.

[pran]

blackshoe, on Jan 6 2010, 04:02 PM, said:

I had composed a long response regarding among other things your (some of you) assumptions that I had some kind of ulterior motive in not calling the TD in the first place, and then objecting when dummy spoke up. I did not. You want to keep believing I did, fine, do so. I have no more to say about it.

I posted this in Simple Rulings in the first place because it seemed simple: did dummy violate Law 43A1{c}, or not? Two people have answered this: one says no, the other says yes. The rest of you are busy with other agendas. So be it. I'm done.

Fair enough, but may I just post a reminder of Law 11A:
The right to rectification of an irregularity may be forfeited if either member of the non-offending side takes any action before summoning the Director. The Director does so rule, for example, when the non-offending side may have gained through subsequent action taken by an opponent in ignorance of the relevant provisions of the law.

I consider Dummy's action here very ethical for the purpose of avoiding this law to come into effect from a possible premature lead by East.

[bluejak]

How do you know, pran, that dummy's LHO would not have ducked rather than winning the trick if he had known about the lead penalties? It is not the fact that dummy spoke up, it is that she let play continue and then spoke up at an inappropriate time and in an inappropriate way.

[iviehoff]

pran, on Jan 6 2010, 04:52 PM, said:

Fair enough, but may I just post a reminder of Law 11A:
The right to rectification of an irregularity may be forfeited if either member of the non-offending side takes any action before summoning the Director. The Director does so rule, for example, when the non-offending side may have gained through subsequent action taken by an opponent in ignorance of the relevant provisions of the law.

I consider Dummy's action here very ethical for the purpose of avoiding this law to come into effect from a possible premature lead by East.

But the director call is already late, and the OS are potentially already damaged by the lateness. So this is already precisely the kind of situation where a TD might (might, not must) deny the NOS rectification under 11A.

There are two ethical things dummy could have done. They were (1) call the TD at the time Ed drew attention to the irregularity. Or, (2) keep his mouth shut ever thereafter. There is something else dummy might reasonably have done at this point, but it doesn't involve calling the director, and I'll say what it is at the end.

The offending side should be warned of the lead restrictions at the time of correction of the revoke, not a trick later, since it can affect their choice of play, so this is precisely an example of the situation in 11A. TD would have been within his rights to deny to declarer the application of the lead restrictions because of the late call. But whilst that would have been a legal ruling, it isn't necessarily what he should have done, as there could be more to the story. I'll tell you what I would have done later.

I find it inappropriate to call East's lead "premature", purely because he might have done it before the director was called. The director should have been called a trick ago. Things having been allowed to proceed, East is no longer required to call the director "on himself", or wait longer than normal tempo for another to do it, and so shouldn't normally be punished if he carried on in normal tempo. Certainly if East were on lead immediately after the irregularity and led without allowing time for the director to be called, that would be "premature", and director would require its retraction if necessary if called at that point. But in the present case the NOS has allowed events to proceed, and therefore under 11A lose their automatic rights to insist on rectifications. If N/S had called me after East had led, I do not think I would require the lead to be retracted, unless possibly I thought S was a weak player who did not know about the necessity of calling the director at the right time in order to obtain protection.

One might argue that Ed, being a qualified TD, correcting his own revoke and putting out his penalty card, and playing against another qualified TD, had implicitly suggested that his side would suffer the lead restrictions in the laws, and that he was going to mention them at the appropriate point, and did not expect to benefit from the protection in law 11A in relation to earlier mention of the lead restrictions. If you allowed that argument, then you might say that N/S were expecting the lead restrictions to be mentioned by Ed when his partner came on lead, and when they weren't, then they brought it up themselves in an unsurprising manner.

But in general that is not how Ed's actions are interpreted. Ed's actions amount to an offer of a table-made ruling, and NS consented to it. Why should the director disturb this? And if the lead restrictions are not volunteered at the initial point, how can we know whether they were ever intended to be part of the agreed table made ruling? In general, if your opponents offer you a penalty card without the intervention of the director, and no lead restrictions are mentioned, you have agreed to a table-made ruling without any reliance on later obtaining the lead restrictions. And that is what commonly happens when directors are called late to table-made penalty card rulings, as I understand it.

So if I'd been the director here, unless declarer was a lesser player unaware of the need to call the director for protection of his rights, I'd have told NS that they had consented to a table-made ruling, and therefore any consequentials are for negotiation with the other side. I would further tell them I didn't expect to be bothered by either side further on this matter, or there could be trouble.

So the third, reasonable, thing dummy might have done was turn to Ed and say something like "Surely you were intending to tell declarer about the potential lead restrictions at this point". And, since this is Ed, behaving in an uncomplicated matter, I would have expected him to reply "Of course, I temporarily forgot". Even if he didn't like his opponents.

[blackshoe]

pran, on Jan 6 2010, 10:52 AM, said:

Fair enough, but may I just post a reminder of Law 11A:
The right to rectification of an irregularity may be forfeited if either member of the non-offending side takes any action before summoning the Director. The Director does so rule, for example, when the non-offending side may have gained through subsequent action taken by an opponent in ignorance of the relevant provisions of the law.

I disagree with your reading on the applicability of this law here, Sven. The irregularity to which Law 11A here refers is in this case the original revoke. The NOS (in this case, declarer) already (potentially) forfeited his right to rectification of that irregularity (to wit, the right to apply lead penalties) when declarer played a card from dummy after the revoke, not having called the director.

I'm not convinced that South (not East, who was dummy) leading to the next trick would be an irregularity, given that there was no director ruling on the original revoke. Unless, of course, every action subsequent to an irregularity to which attention has been called, save calling the director, is also any irregularity. I'm not so sure about that one, either.

[wank]

with regard, to the allegedly dubious timing of dummy's intervention, dummy (and everyone else) must call the director when attention is drawn to an irregularity. i can well imagine not paying a great deal of attention as dummy (i have often read the newspaper as dummy when playing against people i know, for example) and only realising that an irregularity had occurred, that attention had been drawn but no director had been called after a couple of seconds (i.e. the OP's a second of 2 per action), as such she may made her statement immediately from her viewpoint.

as to the statement itself, she didn't offer a ruling or do anything else untoward. stating that partner has options prior to summoning the TD is imo just good manners - if my opps suddenly launched into a director call without a preamble in any situation i'd be a little offended, rightly or wrongly. [no i don't object to opps calling the director, but i think it should ideally be done in a non-confrontational fashion] obviously we don't know what she planned to do after making her statement, as the OP intervened by replying to her, but there's no reason to assume she wasn't planning to immediately call the director, after all, she had already declined to volunteer what the options were herself, but must have expected someone to lay them out.

as such, i don't consider there's any evidence that north did anything else than what she was directed to do by law.

As for the OP, I'd say his actions at the table were 5 star hypocrisy considering he's a TD. If I had more stars available, I would be awarding extras for bringing it up on the forums, especially as he's a moderator here.