[pran]

aguahombre, on 2016-May-14, 03:04, said:

Interesting. I should establish the facts, but not too much.

It is none of the Director's business to (re-)play the board for the benefit of the claimer. His duty is to try the claim on the statement (if any) given and the cards remaining to be played at the time of the claim.

Any essential information from past play must be included with the statement or considered "forgotten".

[Trinidad]

pran, on 2016-May-14, 03:16, said:

Any essential information from past play must be included with the statement or considered "forgotten".

This is often the case, but certainly not always.

To show an example where this is not true. Say that in this case declarer starts with a solid diamond suit that he runs first, with everyone discarding. He crosses to dummy in trick 10 and his last 3 cards are:

♦A
♣AQ

*Thinking* (wrongly) that LHO doesn't have any cards left in the majors, he leads a club from dummy and finesses the queen, losing to LHO's king. He now shows his remaining ♦A♣A and claims. Much to his surprise LHO leads the ♥J.

In this case declarer didn't make any claim statement. But whatever claim statement declarer could possibly make, it will never include: "You are out of diamonds.", because it is irrelevant information in a claim statement based on the idea that LHO is out of hearts and spades.

The fact that declarer doesn't mention the discards on the diamond suit doesn't mean that he has "forgotten". It means that he (correctly) thought it was irrelevant information for the claim that he did make.

It's a TD's job to gather evidence and weight it. In the example that I gave, a TD would consider it unlikely that declarer would ever hold on to his ♦A. In other cases, it would be entirely possible that he would.

Together with the statements by the players, the previous play is an obvious source of evidence.

Rik

[pran]

pran, on 2016-May-14, 03:16, said:

It is none of the Director's business to (re-)play the board for the benefit of the claimer. His duty is to try the claim on the statement (if any) given and the cards remaining to be played at the time of the claim.

Any essential information from past play must be included with the statement or considered "forgotten".

Trinidad, on 2016-May-14, 04:18, said:

This is often the case, but certainly not always.

To show an example where this is not true. Say that in this case declarer starts with a solid diamond suit that he runs first, with everyone discarding. He crosses to dummy in trick 10 and his last 3 cards are:

♦A
♣AQ

*Thinking* (wrongly) that LHO doesn't have any cards left in the majors, he leads a club from dummy and finesses the queen, losing to LHO's king. He now shows his remaining ♦A♣A and claims. Much to his surprise LHO leads the ♥J.

In this case declarer didn't make any claim statement. But whatever claim statement declarer could possibly make, it will never include: "You are out of diamonds.", because it is irrelevant information in a claim statement based on the idea that LHO is out of hearts and spades.

The fact that declarer doesn't mention the discards on the diamond suit doesn't mean that he has "forgotten". It means that he (correctly) thought it was irrelevant information for the claim that he did make.

It's a TD's job to gather evidence and weight it. In the example that I gave, a TD would consider it unlikely that declarer would ever hold on to his ♦A. In other cases, it would be entirely possible that he would.

Together with the statements by the players, the previous play is an obvious source of evidence.

Rik

I intentionally wrote with the statement, not in the statement.

Given the situation I would accept the addition of his knowledge that his ♦A was the only remaining Diamond to the claim.

But I would certainly wonder why in his process of running the solid Diamond suit he did not also cash his ♦A before crossing to dummy in trick 11?

[Trinidad]

pran, on 2016-May-14, 04:53, said:

I intentionally wrote with the statement, not in the statement.

Given the situation I would accept the addition of his knowledge that his ♦A was the only remaining Diamond to the claim.

But, in principle, once the claim has been made and turned out to be incorrect, declarer cannot add: "He is out of diamonds." to his claim statement. So, many claimers will acknowledge that the claim is incorrect and leave the rest to the TD. They say nothing more, unless they are asked, and wait for the verdict from the TD. These are the TD's "nice customers".

The TD has to do the sorting out and gathering of the evidence. He needs to ask the questions and he needs to investigate. The players are supposed to be quiet.

I don't see why the loud mouth claimer who yells a couple of things, most of them nonsense, but one of them: "He doesn't have diamonds" would be awarded an advantage over the player who trusts that the TD will do his job.

Rik

[Zelandakh]

it is worse than that Rik because knowing that the TD will accept such an addition, only the "nice" defenders will give them the chance. The others will show both of their cards and now Declarer has no way of showing that they knew what the second card was. So now being "nice" is a disadvantage for both pairs. This is precisely the thing that Nige is often complaining about and it would indeed be nice if the laws provided the same advantages for "nice" players as for those that push for every small edge that the rules allow (and sometimes a little bit more).

[pran]

Trinidad, on 2016-May-14, 05:55, said:

[...]
I don't see why the loud mouth claimer who yells a couple of things, most of them nonsense, but one of them: "He doesn't have diamonds" would be awarded an advantage over the player who trusts that the TD will do his job.

Rik

It depends.
Here I assumed that the last Diamond was cashed in trick 9, then Dummy was entered in trick 10 and thus had the memory of the diamonds still fresh.

If the player yelled a lot of nonsense including a stray remark on the diamonds I would just ignore it all and rule that he held on to the ♦A.

And anyway, I would still wonder why on earth he did not cash his ♦A earlier.

FWIW: My general attitude on questionable claims is to apply

Law 70 A said:

[...] any doubtful point as to a claim shall be resolved against the claimer.[...]

rather strictly.

[Vampyr]

The trouble with this claim is not that it was unaccompanied by a statement; the t libel is that the claim is faulty.

[blackshoe]

The claim is faulty because declarer is apparently unaware that her LHO has the good ♠J. A clear statement of her intended line of play would resolve the question which ace she would discard on trick twelve. Without it, the defense gets the benefit of the doubt.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2016-May-14, 11:32, said:

The claim is faulty because declarer is apparently unaware that her LHO has the good ♠J. A clear statement of her intended line of play would resolve the question which ace she would discard on trick twelve. Without it, the defense gets the benefit of the doubt.

She didn't make a clear statement because she didn't think it mattered.

Now the TD has to decide what is "normal" given that her incomplete statement was based on a fallacy. Is it normal to hold on to a high card in a suit that everyone else has shown out of several times?

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2016-May-14, 11:50, said:

She didn't make a clear statement because she didn't think it mattered.

Now the TD has to decide what is "normal" given that her incomplete statement was based on a fallacy. Is it normal to hold on to a high card in a suit that everyone else has shown out of several times?

I don't see the relevance of your first statement. The law requires the statement, whether she thinks it's relevant or not.

No, that would not be normal. But there is no evidence that everyone (or anyone) showed out of anything either.

If I were the table TD in this case, I would ask, before defenders' cards are exposed, declarer to state what each defender holds. If she can do that correctly and with confidence, I'll give her the club trick. If she's seen either defender's last cards, of course, this won't work. Now, unfortunately for declarer, any statement she makes would be self-serving, and thus not worth much.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2016-May-14, 12:49, said:

I don't see the relevance of your first statement. The law requires the statement, whether she thinks it's relevant or not.

Of course, but we knew this requirement is regularly ignored when claimer thinks he has all the top cards. He just shows his cards and everyone can see that they're good.

And if she had made the explicit statement "My hand is good", how would that have made adjudicating it any easier?

Quote

No, that would not be normal. But there is no evidence that everyone (or anyone) showed out of anything either.

I thought we were talking about the hypothetical where declarer ran a long suit and everyone showed out of it.

Quote

If I were the table TD in this case, I would ask, before defenders' cards are exposed, declarer to state what each defender holds. If she can do that correctly and with confidence, I'll give her the club trick. If she's seen either defender's last cards, of course, this won't work. Now, unfortunately for declarer, any statement she makes would be self-serving, and thus not worth much.

I'd be satisfied if she said something like "West has shown out of clubs, East has no hearts, and both showed out of diamonds."

[pran]

barmar, on 2016-May-14, 11:50, said:

She didn't make a clear statement because she didn't think it mattered.

Now the TD has to decide what is "normal" given that her incomplete statement was based on a fallacy. Is it normal to hold on to a high card in a suit that everyone else has shown out of several times?

Law 68C said:

A claim should be accompanied at once by a clear statement as to the order in which cards will be played, of the line of play or defence through which the claimer proposes to win the tricks claimed.

This is a "should" law so failing to make such statement is a minor irregularity. However, the option to specify a particular line of play for the claimed tricks is now gone.

From what we have been told she does not have a full and correct knowledge of opponents' remaining cards, she has previously chosen a line of play that appears close to being irrational (not cashing the ♦A in time) and now she suddenly finds herself under an unexpected pressure.

So yes, according to the "definition" of "normal" in Law 70, holding on to the ♦A can well be considered "normal" rather than "irrational" in her (probably) confused state.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2016-May-14, 12:49, said:

If I were the table TD in this case, I would ask, before defenders' cards are exposed, declarer to state what each defender holds. If she can do that correctly and with confidence, I'll give her the club trick. If she's seen either defender's last cards, of course, this won't work. Now, unfortunately for declarer, any statement she makes would be self-serving, and thus not worth much.

So once again you are giving an advantage to a defender that takes the opportunity to display their cards and thus disadvantaging "nice" defenders that do not do so. Do you think this is fair?

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2016-May-14, 14:57, said:

Of course, but we knew this requirement is regularly ignored when claimer thinks he has all the top cards. He just shows his cards and everyone can see that they're good.

And if she had made the explicit statement "My hand is good", how would that have made adjudicating it any easier?

I thought we were talking about the hypothetical where declarer ran a long suit and everyone showed out of it.

I'd be satisfied if she said something like "West has shown out of clubs, East has no hearts, and both showed out of diamonds."

Well, I was talking about the original case. As for "regularly ignored" so what? Does that mean we should pretend she said "I'll keep my ♣A"? (Original case.)

If she'd said "my hand is good", then clearly she doesn't know what's going on, because her hand isn't good. Benefit of the doubt to the defense.
If she'd said that last bit, I'd think she might need psychiatric help. She was West.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2016-May-14, 15:30, said:

So once again you are giving an advantage to a defender that takes the opportunity to display their cards and thus disadvantaging "nice" defenders that do not do so. Do you think this is fair?

I said what I would do if the defenders' cards were not exposed. I did not say what I would do if they were. and what's with the "once again"?

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2016-May-14, 17:36, said:

I said what I would do if the defenders' cards were not exposed. I did not say what I would do if they were. and what's with the "once again"?

And I am asking you now what you would do in the case where the defender chose to expose both cards in their objection. The "once again" refers to the point from my previous post in the thread (it was not aimed at you personally ).

[blackshoe]

Suppose someone claims, and makes no line of play statement, and an opponent simply says "I object" and calls the director. Would you, following the procedure in Law 70B, require the opponents to expose their cards, and then allow the claimer to state a line of play that takes those cards into account? I would not, for the laws require, generally, that I hold the claimer to his original stated line, and if he didn't state one, I won't be looking for normal lines that save his ass, I'll be looking for normal lines that don't. I don't see why it makes any difference to the laws whether the objector's cards are exposed as above, or prematurely. If I came upon a situation where I thought it did make a difference, I would take that into account in my ruling. IOW, I'm not giving objector a chance to "foul" the claim and gain from that. Either way, it's not an automatic ruling, it would depend on the circumstances.

[Zelandakh]

Is that an answer Ed? You wrote that you would ask declarer if the defender's cards were not exposed. Now I am asking what you would do if the cards were exposed by the defender at the time of the objection. It is not a trick question.

[blackshoe]

It seems rather pointless to ask declarer what cards the defenders hold when each has only two, and one of them has exposed both her cards. So I guess I wouldn't ask. If you're implying that asking in the one case but not in the other is unfair to declarer, then I guess if I agree with that I shouldn't ask in either case. So now what?

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2016-May-15, 14:26, said:

So now what?

That's a good question Ed. The first question is whether it is right to ask. If we assume that it is, the logical corollary for me would be to amend the rules so that a defender should not be allowed to expose their cards here. Otherwise we are back to giving an advantage to SB and penalising "nice" players.