[blml] claim

[Eric Landau]

On Dec 19, 2007, at 6:28 PM, Sven Pran wrote:

>> On Behalf Of Eric Landau
> .................
>>> From Law 68B1: "a claim of some number of tricks is a concession
>>> of the remainder, if any."
>>
>> That in no way implies that an attempt to claim some number of tricks
>> is an attempt to concede the remainder.
>
> Please, please. Come on and be sensible.
>
> If with five tricks left to play I end the play by showing my cards  
> and say:
> "I get two tricks", isn't that both a claim of two tricks and  
> simultaneously
> a concession of the other three?

Yes it is.

But it would not have been prior to the enactment of the 1987 Laws.

The only reason that a claim of two tricks is simultaneously a  
concession of the other three is because L68B says so.  It has  
nothing to do with logic or being sensible.

It seems unreasonable to assume that a statement such as "I get two  
tricks", which would *not have produced a concession* in 1986,  
somehow transmuted into an "attempt to concede" in 1987.

In 1986, "I get two tricks" was a claim, and, if there was a problem,  
was adjudicated using the claim laws.  There was no need, then or  
now, to invoke any of the laws specific to concessions.  This was not  
a problem that needed fixing, and there is no reason to think it was  
"fixed".

So why was this language ("a claim of some number of tricks is a  
concession of the remainder, if any") added to the laws in 1987?

Back in the "bad old days" of "that ol' black magic", when  
coffeehousing was still rife, one of the hoariest old chestnuts was  
the pseudo-claim, in which the coffeehouser would make it look like  
he was claiming in an attempt to induce the opponents into a  
revealing tell or an unwarranted concession, then, if called on it,  
insist that he never intended to claim.  A good deal of new law was  
added to TFLB in a (successful) attempt to eliminate that practice.   
That's why we have laws saying that a declarer who shows his cards  
has claimed unless he demonstrably did not intend to do so, that a  
player who abandons his hand has conceded the rest of the tricks,  
and, I would argue, that a player who claims some of the rest of the  
tricks has conceded the others.  That seems far more sensible to me  
than to assume that this particular change was intended to produce a  
legal way for play to continue after someone says "I get two tricks"  
and tables his cards (which is where this thread started).

> I have nothing more to add to this discussion, if you want to consider
> yourself a "winner" then be my guest.

I will consider myself a "winner" of the BLML nitpicking-the-language- 
of-the-laws "game" only when I succeed in convincing TPTB at the WBF  
to abandon their Cheneyesque insistence on secrecy, permit future  
drafts of the laws to be reviewed and commented on by a significant  
number of knowledgeable players and directors who had nothing to do  
with their formulation, and, when they pronounce on clarifications or  
interpretations of TFLB, make a serious effort to insure that the  
players and directors who are expected to abide by them are informed  
of them.


Eric Landau
1107 Dale Drive
Silver Spring MD 20910
ehaa at starpower.net