[blml] Who's afraid of the ...

[Adam Beneschan]

Richard quoted:

> Bart Bramley (ACBL casebook panellist) asserted:
> 
> Note that East-West's acquiescence was an easy trap to fall
> into.  Declarer still had two trumps left at the time of the
> claim.  Thus, working out that normal defense could prevail
> necessarily took extra time.

With all due respect to Mr. Bramley, I think this is a pretty lame
excuse.  Certainly, if West had had A9xx of hearts and the declaring
side had KQJ10 between the two hands, declarer's claim of losing just
one heart trick is pretty obvious, and wouldn't require any extra
thought.  But the actual position, KQJx of hearts in dummy and West
holding ATxx, is very different---how is declarer going to take care
of the 10?  Declarer didn't say.  Plus, it should be clear that
declarer goofed since he doesn't know that *East* didn't have ATxx;
knowing this (that declarer was obviously being careless) should have
made E-W look a little more closely anyway.  

In any case, I'm nowhere near the level of "international expert", but
I don't think I would have fallen into this trap.  The heart holding
would have set off a small alarm in me, which would have caused me to
look just a little more closely, which would have led me to wonder
exactly how this was going to played, which would have led me to start
looking a *lot* more closely and to realize that I would need to spend
the extra time necessary to work out the position.  (Most likely I'd
just call the director before spending the extra time.)  Maybe that's
just me; once, at a Seattle NABC, I made a careless claim and my
less-experienced opponents accepted it without much thought, and I
realized a few boards later that I should not have claimed (although I
would have made anyway on the actual lie, but there were several
possible layouts where my claim could have failed)---and ever since
then I have tended to be a lot more careful about claims, both mine
and the opponents'.  Even so, I still believe that it was a gross
error for E-W to acquiesce to this particular claim, and I don't have
much sympathy for them in their attempt to get their trick back
later. 

                                -- Adam