[blml] Disposition of minor penalty card fourth player in trick

[Alain Gottcheiner]

Hans van Staveren a écrit :
> I just had a case here where some aspiring TD's were taught by one of our TD
> teachers that when you are fourth in a trick the minor penalty card penalty
> does not apply.
>
> Example, South has the spade-7 as a minor penalty card. South also has the
> Spade A and 9.
>
> Spade trick goes 2,3,8 and now South to play. According to current(and new)
> law South can choose between 7 and A. According to this teacher, being
> fourth to play South could play the 9. His idea undoubtedly is that since
> the minor penalty card only leads to signaling penalties that should not
> apply at the last hand in the trick.
>   
IMHO this isn't a good idea.

Consider two situations :

a) South holds A62, the 2 a mpc.
b) South holds the A86, the 8 a mpc.

If South is allowed to play the 6 in both cases, partner will now in a) 
that the 6 is a high card, and in b) a low card.
This means the mpc helps parner understand the signal.
The fact that South is 4th-in-hand doesn't change anything about it.

Okay, the case you mentioned is a case where South should take the trick.
But even so there remains a problem.
Say the highest card in the trick so far is a 6. Then taking with the 9, 
while partner knows you hold the 7, can have a meaning.
But partner shouldn't have known, at first, that you hold the 7.

There are cases where one could allow playing another small card, 
because it won't help partner, but the frontier of this set of cases is 
difficult to describe, so that we'd rather not allow this at all.

Best regards

   Alain