[blml] "Reveley" ruling

[David Grabiner]

"Harald Skjæran" <harald.skjaran at gmail.com> writes:

> On 12/03/2008, John (MadDog) Probst <john at asimere.com> wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Robert Geller" <geller at nifty.com>
>> To: "Bridge Laws Mailing List" <blml at amsterdamned.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 5:23 AM
>> Subject: [blml] "Reveley" ruling
>>
>>
>> > richard.hills at immi.gov.au writes:
>> >>So a Reveley Ruling is permissible under a Law 27D correction
>> >>of a Law 27B1(a) ruling.
>>
>> A Reveley ruling is where you've decided someone has cheated and adjusted
>> the score. You weight the score and include, in part the original auction
>> and score. It's a Reveley ruling because you've included part of the weight
>> of a score which you deemed illegal. the solution is to find a different
>> auction to the same spot and now it's ok, of course.
>
> That might work when we're looking at bidding only. But it doens't
> work if we're talking about defence or opening lead.
>
> I once held something like 8x 9xxx Jxx Jxxx in a teams game. RHO
> opened 1NT and LHO raised to 3NT. Now I knew I was going to lead S8.
> Partner had a problem, and thought about his call for quite a long
> time before passing. Of course I now "knew" he had spades and was
> thinking about doubling (or bidding 4S). So I had a problem. Knowing
> that I'd lead S8 on this sequence with this hand 100% of the time I
> decided to do just that, thus 3NT went down. It's making on any other
> lead. If TD/AC decide that other leads are LAs and Reveley ruling is
> illegal, 3NT will always be ruled making. Which IMP is wrong.

The principle is that the lead of the S8 is either an infraction or not.  If the 
lead is an infraction, then you must get a score, or combination of scores, 
which could have been achieved without the infraction. If the lead is not an 
infraction, then you must get the table result.  A split score gives you a 
better score than you would have had if you had obeyed the Law.