If equity is the goal of a director’s ruling, my gut is leaning toward the offending side receiving some score deminished by the infraction, but declarer should not benefit. Thus, declarer is still down 1, and maybe the offending side should have a .5 matchpoint deduction from their final total, for carelessness?

That ruling is probably not within the realm of possibility. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Director ruled “no harm-no foul.”

Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me if that ruling was appealed to committee, and committee ruled the established revolk must stand. It is the rule, afterall.

Hi Paul,

If I had a pseudonym it would be Mr. Equity, but when a play, such as a revoke, is established, it is a bridge crime, not to be committed, but, if done, the penalty to be enforced.

Sure, it is unfair and does not accomplish the equity of the hand, but nevertheless it MUST be enforced, otherwise our game would go in the wrong direction.

To use an analogy, if a motorist would go through a red light, while on a country road and at 3AM in the morning with no car within sight, it would be utterly ridiculous (in my opinion) for a policeman, hidden behind a billboard, to give that man a ticket, but that law should have some subjectivity to it and all logic points to allowing such a law break.

With revokes, bridge must follow the legal track and enforce common breaks, otherwise chaos would rule the day.

Of course the non-offending side would always have the option of not calling the director and accepting down 1 instead of the aberration of making an impossible contract, but that must be followed by a willingness to give up what one does not deserve (a human characteristic not often practiced by hardened bridge players).

The above is only one man’s opinion, but it is what I definitly believe needs to be done

The rules are the rules. Either you follow them for all or we have anarchy. What about a pair (or team) that in a close finish loses the event to the offender. Was it fair to them that a broken rule was not enforced?

If an easy ground ball goes through a fielders’ legs we do not say, “You are a gold glove winner. You would have made that play just about all the time, so the runner is out.”

Through the years, I have allowed many an unmakeable contract to be made. Let’s say that my most recent error is neglecting to take the setting by failing to ruff a winner of declarer’s. Would anyone expect the opponents to overlook my mental error, because my correct play was so obvious? Of course not. But is failing to follow suit — the action taken by the defender in the subject hand –, somehow more obvious, so that the mental error of failing to follow suit — which is not only a mental error but also a rules violation — should be overlooked? Again, at least in my opinion, of course not.

Now, if the error was mechanical and not mental, that can be another matter. But that appears not to be the case here.

HBJ : A decent minded declarer would accept the fact the contract is one off and be dignified enough not to call a director and accept that 5S-1 was was the RIGHT RESULT.
By calling a director declarer is now using the laws improperly in my mind to obtain an advantage he doesn’t deserve.
The revoke did not cost him a trick. The revoke gained nothing for the defenders. The revoke it seems was a heaven sent gift for those who rely on the rules to obtain an unfair advantage, when sportsmanship should prevail.
It is this sort of incident that can lead to unnecessary ill-feeling in the game, and a sense of injustice to the rest of the field when they see an overbidder get away with blue murder.

In my experience, the great majority of serious bridge players who love the game want to honor it by observing the rules and laws as they are written. That should be an unalterable fact and that premise applies anytime it is a SANCTIONED game issuing master points (starting at the ground floor/ala duplicate) and continues through sectionals, regionals, trials, nationals and so on! If you are unwilling to abide by the principle that has been established (without exception), then find some other form of loosely constructed form of entertainment — like hopscotch, tiddlywinks or a kitchen bridge game where there are no card fees, masterpoints or stringent enforcement involved!

I believe when an infraction (or some other irregularity) occurs, traffic stops and you politely call the director who hopefully will know the rules. It should have nothing to do with whomever you happen to be playing — either experienced or “novicy” — friend or foe. Lose no time in summoning the director and pray he or she is qualified to properly adjudicate the matter. Unfortunately, many are not.

In the case Paul cites, I believe the law is clear on established revokes and the score is adjusted to reflect the actual occurrence. If a revoke (as in the subject case) is agreed to, the ruling should not be compromised. It is incumbent to play by the written rules or laws. Otherwise, the game becomes a farce.

While trying to analyze what has been said above, I have come to possibly a too hasty conclusion of agreeing with everyone.

Going further, perhaps the opinions expressed here mirror the lives of those who give them. By that I mean, is that when one of the choices, which, in my opinion, cannot be denied, is for the declarer (and, or dummy) to not call the director and merely accept down one, the result which following equity, at least to me, suggests.

Sure there are arguments, expressed quite lucidly above, why, since an error is an error, sometimes coming in different shapes and sizes, who is to say that any revoke has or has not that characteristic and needs to be subject to redress?

It may narrow down to personal morality or perhaps only the training of always following the applicable law on the subject, regardless of possible extraneous circumstances.

Obviously all human beings do not think exactly alike (thank heaven for that, since life then might be very boring), so I now have reached a conclusion, that whatever is done should be done consistently (if possible) by the non-offending side, resulting in whatever path is chosen, but with no unnecessary harsh words, feelings, nor voiced criticism.

Right or wrong?, no one knows, but the only certain result is that this conundrum will never be settled verbally.

Equity demands that declarer accept his fate and score Down One. Only legalistically can the contract be scored as 11 tricks. We need less legalism and more equity in our game. Yesterday in the Keohane Regional, a Dad declared a partial with his fourteen year-old son as partner and Dummy. At Trick 10, he looked up and said, “What happened to the King of Clubs?” No one at the table had noticed that five tricks earlier, his son had pulled the King, and not the Eight, when discarding on the run of a side suit. We all laughed! Three adults in a prestigious event and n-o-n-e of us awake at 10:30 at night to notice the disappearance of the King. What would you do, for Equity’s sake? We had the boy undo his tricks to unearth the King, exchanged the low Club for the King, and finished the play of the hand. We scored their ten-trick game up and went on to the next hand. We overruled the mild protestation of the Dad, not seeking favoritism for his son in any way. The truth is we all erred. Overlooking a child’s mechanical error or two along the way is not a misapplication of the Laws. All of us need to act in the spirit of the law.

Whilst enjoying Lawrence’s story, it should be remembered that in the next hand, or at a future event when the two pairs are playing, a similar error may occur – except this time in the opposite direction. The difference being that, the result would not be so clear cut or being slightly more serious (UI for example)

There is now additional pressure on the side that should have an adjusted result, not to call the TD and possible additional ill-feeling caused by the ‘failure to reciprocate kindness’.

And again, it should be remembered that many of the other pairs or teams are going to be affected by the (non) application of the law – the deduction of 1 matchpoint from one pair could quite easily affect the final result. (This is one reason why frivolous psyching at the end of a tournament is frowned upon. ) Having read “The Lone Wolff” I was impresesed by Bobby’s insistence that a relatively weak team should give evidence against another one to protect the rest of the field. Surely that should apply here as well?

(How do you miss a king? I thought that it was declarers duty to call the card from dummy for each trick.)