[blml] Réf. : played or not?

[Matthias Berghaus]

Eric Landau schrieb:
> On Aug 8, 2007, at 8:05 AM, Matthias Berghaus wrote:
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> What is this "hook" Matthias refers to?  If declarer has reached this  
> point thinking he is playing in some other denomination than the  
> contracted one, that will almost always be to the defenders' benefit,  
> and can never help declarer.  Are the defenders entitled to more than  
> that, to the equivalent of declarer "playing out" the entire  
> remainder of the hand not knowing the contract?  That's what's  
> suggested by "letting declarer off the hook".
>
> If declarer calls for a club when there is no club in dummy, we know  
> what to do.  If declarer calls for a trump when there is no trump in  
> dummy, why should we handle it completely differently?
>   

Because we favor the lazy guy who just says "ruff", while a declarer who 
correctly names a card is fixed. Both want to play the same card at that 
moment, both will be informed that they are playing NT (the second guy 
when he tries to lead from dummy to the next trick), so they are 
esssentially in the same position, except that the player who calls his 
cards correctly has to play the card the named, while the other one does 
not (under option C). This is the "hook": Two players want the same 
card, one as to play it, the other doesn`t.

So we would indeed handle it differently when both want to play 
identical cards. This may also be the case under option B, where we 
would take into account what declarer actually said or did. We still 
have a problem when he didn`t say anything.

The bottom line is this: two players want to play the same card. How can 
we make sure that both actually have to play it? Since the answer is 
probably "we can`t", how do we go about finding the nearest approximation?

Regards
Matthias