Brighton Day 1 - real friends - virtual names

Brighton is the biggest event of the domestic calendar and so you get to meet people you don't see very often: players, TDs and backroom staff. For much of the rest of the year I communicate with these people via telephone and email and rarely see them face-to-face.

A silly incident yesterday, reminded me that people's virtual personna (or at least their names) can leak into real life®. Much of my online bridge discussion takes place on BrideBase forums. Among the TD's at Brighton are a number of BrigeBase members, who I might think of as gordonTD, mamos, bluejak, and VixTD.

A player came up to me at the start of play and said his partner would be late and he would start off playing with a substitute. Later his partner turned up and was able to start playing and so I went to the TD in charge of the White section just to explain what was going on. This was fine until I wanted to refer to the player by name — all I could think of was "gnasher" — and that did not seem an appropriate form of address. After an a bit of a pause and a bit of poiting I managed to come out with "Andrew" — sorry Andy.

(Equally, "campboy" does not sound like a name I should use at the table.)

Correcting an explanation

Although I am scorer, there is some time to give rulings. I was called to a table where South had explained partner's 3♦ as something to do with the majors but as soon as the auction reached him, he thought better of it, and decided that 3♦ was probably natural and he should just bid 3NT. Later, when he thought the auction was over, he explained that what he said about 3♦ was probably wrong. I sorted this out and there was no harm done — the other side would not have done anything different with the correct explanation.

But he should have corrected the explanation as soon as he realised he was probably wrong. This is an aspect of procedure that is not obvious to players: if a you give an explanation that you later think is incorrect then the TD should be called immediately and the correction given (Law 20F4). There can be no damage in correcting as soon as possible, and damage has been done my the original misexplanation. This is in contrast to when partner gives an incorrect explanation and does not realise: you cannot correct the explanation until at least the end of the auction (as the declaring side) or the end of play (Law 20F5).

Although the difference between the two situations is logical, it is not always obvious that logic should be assumed to apply to the laws of bridge.

Nightmare at the club

No real directing this month, except for a “guest” appearance at the club — I managed to call the moves to time, and sort out the scoring problems. Instead I tried playing the game yesterday but that was a disaster, the only thing I did right was to give a ruling on a board the real TD had not yet played.

All dummy's cards not displayed

The ruling concerned the problem of what to do when dummy manages to hide one of their cards when displaying their hand in dummy. Inevitably this does not get discovered until half way through the play, when the card above the hidden card is played. Dummy is at fault (Law 41D requires dummy spreads his hand in front of him on the table, face up ) but there is no prescribed penalty. We have to fall back on something (Law 12A1 will do) when the defenders have been damaged, and adjust to the result that would have happened if the defenders had been able to see all dummy's cards from the outset.

This sort of ruling comes up from time to time and appears on the internet: it is now covered in the EBU County Directors' course. Perhaps it should be covered explicity in the laws. It only needs another sentence in Law 41D.

If dummy fails to display his hand as specified, and the defenders are damaged, the director shall award an adjusted score.

Confession is good for the soul

The low point of the evening was a misinformation case.

W	N	E	S
		–	1♣
(1♦)	1♥	–	2♦A
–	3♥	–	4NT
–	5♦	Q–	5♥
End

East asked about 5♦ during the auction and South said “one ace or the king of trumps”.

The end of the round was called as play started. The opening lead was a diamond, won by East's queen, and then he cashed a top spade, but when he tried to cash ♦A it was ruffed by declarer. Declarer now crossed to dummy in spades and discarded a club on dummy's ♦K. This all seemed odd to South, as the only key card North could have was ♣A. South concluded that North did not have any key cards and then remembered they played RKCB 41/30. South told the table that he had given a misexplanation of 5♦ * but play continued. Declarer was able to complete a cross-ruff, finally drawing trumps in hand (when they broke 2–2) and cashing his established spade; making 5♥.

South again said there had been a misexplanation and the defence would have cashed the first three tricks if they knew declarer had no aces. But East/West were not interested and just wanted to move for the next round. Perhaps it would have been better if North had given up when the misexplanation came to light and claimed down –1 that would have happened if the defence had cashed their three tricks.

* Should he do so now? Law 20F4 says he should; Law 43A1a suggests otherwise.