[blml] Revoke established?

[Sven Pran]

> On Behalf Of Adam Beneschan
> > > Sven:
> > > Good point, but Dummy did not "play" his single club; he 
> > > "placed" his single club in a played position. That is
> > > an essential and important difference.
> >
> > Play :
> > 1. The contribution of a card from one's hand to a trick, 
> > including the first card, which is the lead.
> >
> > So, to 'place' a card is not an (illegal) play?
> 
> When I looked over the Laws to try to answer the question, 
> "Does dummy play the cards in the dummy?", I found, much to 
> my surprise, that there is an ambiguity in the Laws.

This IMO is reading the laws in a similar way as a certain character is
known to read the Holy Bible.

> Laws 41D, 45B, and 45D seem to indicate that the answer is "no".
> Dummy does not play the cards; declarer plays the cards, and dummy
> just moves them around at declarer's command.
> 
> 41D: ...Declarer plays both his hand and that of dummy.
> 
> 45B: Declarer plays a card from dummy by naming the card, after which
> dummy picks up the card and faces it on the table. In playing from
> dummy's hand declarer may, if necessary, pick up the desired card
> himself.
> 
> 45D: If dummy places in the played position a card that declarer did not
> name ...
> 
> 
> Laws 42A3 and 44B, however, seem to indicate that the answer is
> "yes".
> 
> 42A3: [Dummy] plays the cards of the dummy as declarer's agent as
> directed...
> 
> 44B: After the lead, each other player in turn plays a card...
> 
> 
> Quite conceivably, nobody who worked on the Laws thought that it
> really mattered whether dummy or declarer was considered to play the
> cards from dummy.  But now we've found a case where it does matter.
> (Really, someone should be tasked with studying carefully every
> possible combination of two or more Laws to make sure there are no
> such problems when several Laws are combined.  My calculations show
> that there are only 9903520314283042199192993698 such combinations, so
> it shouldn't be a problem for someone to accomplish this in a few
> weeks.)
> 
> Anyway, after looking at the above Law snippets, I think the answer to
> "Does dummy play his own cards?", at least for the purposes of
> applying the revoke laws, is "no".  To me, the effect would be the
> same as if a kibitzer had placed dummy's singleton in the played
> position.  Perhaps I could live with a ruling that since dummy
> violated Law 45F by placing a card in the played position without
> instruction, even though it was a singleton, it should be OK to
> penalize the partnership by making the revoke an established one.  But
> my general feeling here is that declarer didn't play a card, and dummy
> doesn't participate in the play at all, therefore declarer gets to
> correct his previous revoke.  Then both opponents get to take back
> their plays to the next trick, and the cards they played are AI for
> each other and UI for declarer (Law 16C).

At least you reach an acceptable conclusion, but your arguments involving
Laws 42A3 and 44B are not up to your standards:

Laws 42A3 says (as you correctly quote) "... as declarer's agent as
directed..." which clearly means that Dummy may not "play" on his own
initiative. Furthermore you omitted the very important continuation in this
law: "(see Law 45F if dummy suggests a play)."

So the only remaining law to indicate that Dummy can "play" a card after all
is Law 44B provided that the player who becomes Dummy when the opening lead
is faced (see Definitions) is still to be considered a "player" for the
application of Law 44B.

IMO the other laws you have quoted, and also in particular Law 45A (which
you omitted), all clearly imply that "Dummy" is no "player" for the purpose
of applying the laws.

I think we can safely conclude that Dummy can never "play" a card.

Regards Sven