[blml] concession

[Sven Pran]

> On Behalf Of Eric Landau
............
> This is where we started.  We know that if there was a claim of all
> the tricks, play must cease.  We know that if there was a concession
> of all the tricks (objected to), play must continue.  Initially, we
> accepted the intuitive-sounding notion that partial claims and
> partial concessions are the same thing, some hybrid claim/concession
> entity not actually mentioned in TFLB, and that "of course there
> could have been a single law". 

So far everything seems OK

> So we tried to amalgamate the existing laws into that notional "single 
> law", and discovered that it would require that play simultaneously
> cease and continue.  

Who are "we"? 

> Of course there could have been a single law, but it would have had
> to direct one or the other.  Since there of course could have been,
> but there isn't, some of us are less than comfortable with assuming
> that somehow it just got left out by accident.  Rather than
> pretending to know what it would have said if someone had actually
> written it, we look to the laws that are actually there.

So what do these laws say?

First of all we must remember that there is a major difference between
claims or concessions made by declarer and claims or concessions made by a
defender: Declarer is the only player acting for the declaring side while
there are two defenders and they share the same rights.

When declarer makes a claim and/or a concession that is final, but when a
defender makes a concession with or without an implied claim his partner may
still have something to say about it and Law 68B2 is the one that tells us
how to proceed in such situations.

The partner can object for two different reasons: 

1: In his opinion the defender has claimed too many or conceded too few
tricks.

2: In his opinion the defender has claimed too few or conceded too many
tricks.

Does reason 1 create any problem? Hardly. I don't think any lawmaker ever
imagined an objection for such reasons, and in any case the matter should
easily be sorted out whether play ceases or continues.

So let us go to reason 2: Law 68B2 instructs us that in this situation play
shall continue (with due regard to UI and all such stuff) because now the
objection is essentially an objection to the concession (regardless how it
is made), the other defender disagrees and wants some of the conceded
tricks.

Law 68B could have said that play should cease also in this case, but it
doesn't. It could have said that the claim part should be ruled upon by the
Director and then play should continue for the concession part. Thanks
heaven it doesn't. I assume anybody who has ever directed and had to rule on
claims will appreciate that it doesn't. Such a law would in most if not all
cases have been impossible to apply.

So where do we stand? We have Law 68B2 that tells us (literally without any
limitation) that when a defender concedes one or more tricks and his partner
immediately objects then play shall continue, period.

I have nothing more to add beyond what has already been said more than once
from those sho should be authorities on the laws of Bridge.

Sven