[blml] Réf. : played or not?

[Matthias Berghaus]

Hi all,

ton schrieb:
>
> This is an interesting case, which means that I do not have a clear answer. 
>   

neither do I... :-)
But to quote another BLML member: how do we want the game to be played?

> I do not join Grattan when he says that in this case no suit was indicated.
> When declarer thinks to play in diamonds and asks to ruff he indicates the
> diamond suit. How can that be ignored? 
>   

There is no doubt in my mind that every director wants a declarer who 
doesn`t know what the contract is to pay for that, as every director is 
also a player, and players are pissed off when opp does something stupid 
and gets away with it. The problem is that we cannot do it consistently, 
as some declarers will tell us what they intended and others will not 
(or lie about it). We would scare off the naive ones, and send the wrong 
message to the honest ones. Seems wrong to me. We can be consistent, but 
that lets declarer get away from a stupid error.

So how should the next laws read?

Option A: Find a way to define the card that is deemed to have been 
called for. Suit to dummy`s right, first suit named by declarer, dummy`s 
longest suit, whatever. Consistent, but quite random, not always looking 
very fair to the players. Yesterday evening declarer thought he was 
playing hearts, which lay on the wrong side of dummy to be trumps. NT 
contract, of course. This only came up when the score was to be 
determined (and after defenders accepted a claim....). This would be 
teriibly unwieldy or rerribly random or both.

Option B: Leave it to the TD`s judgement to determine whether a card can 
be identified as the one declarer wanted to be played, and rule that 
card played, or - if unable to do so - rule no card to have been played 
and let declarer name whatever he wants.
This is more likely to let the players feel that "justice" has been 
done, but will sometimes be controversial. Some clause should define the 
room for judgement (not easy to do), but clearly empower the TD to use 
judgement.

Option C: Rule call of card not in dummy in all cases. This has the big 
advantage of being consistent, but lets declarer off some hooks.

> When declarer does play 4 hearts and asks to ruff will anybody ever ask him
> with what suit? 
>
> But then he can't ruff so what gets priority? If you say he indicated the
> lowest diamond you know what to do. If you say he asked for a card which is
> not in dummy, one with trumping quality, so winning the trick that means,
> you also know what to do. 
>   
Looks like Ton would vote for option B here. So would I. But hundreds of 
less experienced (or self-assured) directors would want either A or C, 
because it lets the director off the hook. Personally I could live with 
C (Consistency!), but A looks completely unworkable to me. A very 
cursory draft of such a rule left me with several ifs, buts and 
whereases, leading to confusion and much waste of paper.

For what it`s worth I think the current rules say C, but I could be 
convinced otherwise, maybe because I want to be talked into B.

Regards
Matthias