[blml] normal lines

[Jerry Fusselman]

Harald Skjæran:
> On 19/12/2007, Jerry Fusselman <jfusselman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >         3
> >         None
> >         None
> >         32
> >  K                    2
> >  None               None
> >  None               None
> >  AK                 Q2
> >         AQJ
> >         None
> >         None
> >         None
> >
> > With North (dummy) on lead, South claims saying, "AQJ are good."
> >
> > If this is contested, I would give South the rest, because I would
> > assume that South with this statement will play his cards top down.  I
> > don't think the law requires him to take a finesse here.
>
> This most definitely is wrong. Unless declarer can prove that he knows
> that spades are divided 1-1, he should be ruled to finesse - losing
> all 3 tricks unless spades are trumps. L70E:"The Director shall not
> accept from claimer any unstated line of play the success of which
> depends upon finding one opponent rather than the other with a
> particular card, unless an opponent failed to follow to the suit of
> that card before the claim was made, or would subsequently fail to
> follow to that suit on any normal line of play; or unless failure to
> adopt this line of play would be irrational."
>

Thanks for stating your position with such clarity.  I expected
someone might say something like this, which is why I chose this
example.  But I disagree with your conclusion.  Law 70E requires that
director "shall not accept any unstated line of play the success of
which depends upon finding one opponent rather than the other with a
particular card, unless..."  We don't need to go into the "unless"
clauses in this case.

The success of dropping the singleton K does not depend on which
player has the singleton K.  More fundamentally, there is no unstated
line that declarer has asked director to accept.  The premise of Law
70E is not satisfied in this case, so 70E has no effect.  Not only is
there no unstated line of play, which is one premise of Law 70E, but
also this play of the ace first works regardless of where the stiff K
is, and it fails regardless of where K2 is assume one opponent has
both.  Furthermore, Law 70E is not supposed to allow directors to
force players into trying finesses they never mentioned, desired, or
considered.  The director is supposed to adjudicate based on the line
or lines of play implicit in the claim statement.

Declarer merely said that his cards are good, and a reasonable
director will assume (I have been arguing this week) that he means to
play his three remaining spades from the top down.  I like Eric's take
on this:

[Eric Landau:]

Look, folks, there's two choices here.

We can say that it is always abnormal to cash suits other than from
the top down, period.

Or we can concede that it would be abnormal with AK5 opp 42 but not
abnormal with 754 opp void, thus burdening ourselves the need to find
some new principle of jurisprudence which would suffice to determine
whether cashing other than top down is or is not abnormal for every
possible two-hand card combination.  That should be doable if enough
of us work on it hard enough for the next few decades.

I think the former approach stands out.

[Jerry Fusselman:]

Me too.  It seems so wise to me that I think it works quite well even
in this case, which could trap a director into requiring a finesse
when declarer wanted none.  The principle I propose is that if
declarer wants to run a suit, such as when says it is good, the
director assumes he runs it from the top down.

Jerry Fusselman