[nige1]

IMO

• By default, the new laws allow a defender to ask "having none?" when his partner shows out.
  
• A defender should always ask or never ask -- "Randomly" asking is a bit silly
  
• In practice, however, players often refrain from asking when they know from their own hand that partner is out of a suit. This provides unauthorised information.
  
• This law is unnecessary. It panders to sloppy old local regulations. It should be removed.
  
• Communication between partners about the contents of their hands should again be restricted to the media of calls and plays.

[jeremy69]

Quote

•This law is unnecessary. It panders to sloppy old local regulations. It should be removed.

I think it was a retrograde step in the 2007 laws and in England we had spent time getting used to not asking. I can remember one case in a trial where someone did ask when they should not have done so and the revoke was deemed to be established.
Zones did have an option and we voted in England to allow this once again or to be exact we didn't vote to stop it.

I don't think that there is the slightest prospect of change before the next laws review and probably not then. One thing some players did, of course, was simply to hold their card in position until partner (hopefully) woke up.

[bluejak]

The problem is that under the 1997 Laws there was a very silly Law saying what you should do if a defender asked his partner. Under the previous Law book there was a sensible Law saying what should be done. But under the 2007 Laws there was nothing to be done. That removal of the penalty meant that, in thw view of the English and Japanese authorities, it was impractical to continue forbidding partner from asking.

If they would re-instate a Law on what to do, preferably not the 1997 joke but the sensible 1985 Law, then I have little doubt England, Japan and other authorities woudl reinstate the ban on asking partner.

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on Oct 15 2009, 01:12 PM, said:

The problem is that under the 1997 Laws there was a very silly Law saying what you should do if a defender asked his partner.  Under the previous Law book there was a sensible Law saying what should be done.

The 1997 Laws said that asking the question rendered the revoke established. That seems sensible enough. What was the 1985 Law?

Jeremy said:

One thing some players did, of course, was simply to hold their card in position until partner (hopefully) woke up.

I think that this established the revoke as well.

Luckily, the asking thing has not caught on in England. Maybe not too many people know about it. Maybe it will stay that way until the next edition of the Laws...

[bluejak]

No, the 1997 Laws did not establish the revoke. The revoke was not established but was treated as though it had been. Dagenham. The 1985 Laws established the revoke.

[pran]

bluejak, on Oct 15 2009, 11:39 AM, said:

No, the 1997 Laws did not establish the revoke.  The revoke was not established but was treated as though it had been.  Dagenham.  The 1985 Laws established the revoke.

To be precise:
The 1987 [sic!] laws only stated that it was illegal for one defender to ask his partner about a possible revoke, but it said nothing about the possible consequences of such a question.

In 1988 WBFLC (ref. Grattan Endicott) added a new law numbered 63A4 and changed Law 61B, the effect of these changes being that the Zonal Authority could decide that defenders were allowed to ask each other about possible revokes, and that if no such decision had been made by the ZA the consequence of such an illegal question was that the revoke in progress (if there was one) became established and could not be corrected. Law 64 would then of course apply.

These rules were again changed in the 1997 laws. From now on the consequence of a defender's illegal question about his partner's possible revoke was that the revoke in progress (if any) must be corrected, but in addition was to be treated as an established revoke subject to a penalty under Law 64. Furthermore the retracted revoke card became a major penalty card.

So the revoke rules have been perfectly clear and consistent all the time except for the brief period after the publication of the 1987 laws until the adjustment made in 1988. The consequences of these rules have, however, sometimes been ridiculously harsh.

Regards Sven

[bluejak]

I think "perfectly clear and consistent" is not a good description of a Law so little understood that it was misquoted more than any other - including in this thread - and one that a situation can be found which gives one side 14 tricks and the other minus one. I still think completely ridiculous is a better description.

[barmar]

nige1, on Oct 15 2009, 01:56 AM, said:

IMO

• In practice, however, players often refrain from asking when they know from their own hand that partner is out of a suit. This provides unauthorised information.

Is that really true? In my experience, the people who ask are pretty consistent about it. They ask even when partner is expected to show out. E.g. if I echo while partner leads the ace and king, he expects me to ruff the next trick, yet my partner still asks when I do that. Or if declarer is known to have a 5-card suit, there are 3 in dummy, and partner has 3, he'll still ask when I show out playing 4th hand to the third trick.

My regular partner may be particularly ethical about this, but I haven't noticed other players doing otherwise. Most players don't ask at all, ever (I never got in the habit), but the ones who do ask don't seem to vary it much.

[pran]

bluejak, on Oct 16 2009, 03:05 AM, said:

I think "perfectly clear and consistent" is not a good description of a Law so little understood that it was misquoted more than any other - including in this thread - and one that a situation can be found which gives one side 14 tricks and the other minus one. I still think completely ridiculous is a better description.

Please show with a case (real or constructed) exactly how the laws as written could give one side 14 tricks and the other -1 trick.

Sven

[iviehoff]

bluejak, on Oct 15 2009, 05:39 PM, said:

Dagenham.

To assist our non-British readers, this translates as "beyond mad". Explanation: "barking" is British slang for mad, and the Dagenham stations are a few stops beyond Barking station on the London Underground system. Also in use are Upney (one stop beyond Barking) and East Ham (one stop short of Barking). These jocular turns of phrase are not universally known even in Britain.

[bluejak]

When I was first playing the game seriously, at university, it was permitted to ask partner "having none". Being cautious with our ethics, we agreed to ask each other consistently, but we noticed that in doing so we were unusual: most players did not ask if it was obvious.



I really am not sure I could be bothered to work out the case for 14/-1 since it is not a current Law. But to save me the trouble, try this and see what happens:

Player A wins the trick by ruffing. His partner says "Having none" and he has got one. His side make one subsequent trick. Your ruling?

[iviehoff]

bluejak, on Oct 16 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

I really am not sure I could be bothered to work out the case for 14/-1 since it is not a current Law. But to save me the trouble, try this and see what happens:

Player A wins the trick by ruffing. His partner says "Having none" and he has got one. His side make one subsequent trick. Your ruling?

The 1997 law 64A says this:

1997 laws, on 64A, said:

When a revoke is established:
1. Offending Player Won Revoke Trick
and the trick on which the revoke occurred was won by the offending
player, (penalty) after play ceases, the trick on which the revoke
occurred plus one of any subsequent tricks won by the offending side
are transferred to the non-offending side.
2. Offending Player Did Not Win Revoke Trick
and the trick on which the revoke occurred was not won by the offending
player, then, if the offending side won that or any subsequent trick,
(penalty) after play ceases, one trick is transferred to the non-offending
side; also, if an additional trick was subsequently won by the offending
player with a card that he could legally have played to the revoke trick,
one such trick is transferred to the non-offending side.

I really don't think it ever actually instructs the transfer of a tricks a side didn't win. After all, if a side hasn't got the trick (any more), it can't be transferred. I think the 14 to -1 reasoning comes from people thinking about "how many tricks is the penalty for this revoke", in which case you can find yourself thinking it is a "2 trick revoke" when you only have one trick to transfer (the case David mentions). But if you actually read what 64A actually says, it talks about transferring specific identified tricks to the other side, and a specific, identified trick can't be transferred if you haven't got it (any more). In particular, when 64A2 applies you can find yourself instructed to transfer the same trick twice over; but having already transferred it once I don't think it that when you are instructed to transfer it again it means you should transfer an additional, possibly non-existent, trick.

But putting the 14 to -1 red herring to one side, it really is difficult to know what 64A means when applied to a "having none" as-if-established-but-actually-corrected revoke. The revoke card won the trick, but it was corrected and now the trick wasn't won by the offending player - are we in 64A1 or 64A2? A card that could have been played to the revoke trick won a trick; but the revoke was actually corrected with such a card, so are we really meant to apply that bit?

[bluejak]

Whatever. The point is that the previous Law, when asking partner established the revoke, was easy enough and sensible, and would be re-introduced as an option if I had my way.

[pran]

bluejak, on Oct 17 2009, 12:26 AM, said:

Whatever.  The point is that the previous Law, when asking partner established the revoke, was easy enough and sensible, and would be re-introduced as an option if I had my way.

iviehoff beat me to it and made what is also my point clear.

I agree that the law was easy enough; this applies to the 1975 law, the 1987 law (except for the interim period between 1987 and 1988), the 1997 law and to the 2007 law.

Which of these laws were sensible is a matter of opinion. I happen to have the opinion that the 1987 and 1997 laws were unfortunate in this respect and it seems that here at last, WBFLC has reached the same opinion.

There can be little doubt that WBFLC intended each law to be "sensible" when promulgated, but (quoting Henrik Ibsen:) "Arrived later at a different conclusion".

Sven.

PS: Thanks to iviehoff also for the explanation of "Dagenham". Although I feel familiar with the London Underground system this expression was unknown to me.

[bluejak]

The 1997 Law was widely misunderstood - as seen in this thread - and not easy to apply. Any suggestion it was as easy to apply as the 1987 Law is just untrue: most TDs applied the 1987 Law in error rather than the 1997 Law because they neither understood it nor believed it.

As for 2007, that is arrogance: the WBFLC knew what people wanted, notably the Japanese who made a real attempt at getting the 1987 Law, and decided to stop people getting what they wanted by making a Law that did not work.

So the WBFLC have decided to increase problems at the table, UI, and so forth, because the Americans could not get their people to follow the rules - or so Kaplan said when the original change was brought in then weakened.

[blackshoe]

I have noticed what appears to me to be a tendency in the ACBL to adjust regulations (and laws, I suppose, when they can get the WBFLC to go along) because players simply do not follow what's in place, instead of enforcing the existing rules. Seems a poor way to run the game, but there it is.

[TylerE]

Is there really anything inherently evil in trying to align the rules with common practice?

[pran]

bluejak, on Oct 17 2009, 02:27 PM, said:

The 1997 Law was widely misunderstood - as seen in this thread - and not easy to apply.  Any suggestion it was as easy to apply as the 1987 Law is just untrue: most TDs applied the 1987 Law in error rather than the 1997 Law because they neither understood it nor believed it.

OK, I accept that this is your opinion, but I absolutely refuse to accept it as a general fact. I have long been astonished about many of the misunderstandings that appear revealed in this and other threads but I consider these misunderstandings to be evidence of limited TD training rather than of a poor law.

Maybe Norwegian TDs have had a better understanding of the laws than TDs elsewhere, I cannot say, but except for the interim period between 1987 and 1988 we have certainly not had more difficulty with one version of the revoke laws than with any other version during the last sixty years.

To use your own statement in a slightly different way: As far as Norwegian TDs are concerned Any suggestion that the 1987 Law was easier to apply than earlier or later laws is just untrue: Most Norwegian TDs applied the at any time current law correctly, probably because they were systematically trained to understand it properly.

The "won with a card that could have been played to the revoke trick" rule in the 1987 and 1997 laws frequently caused some extra effort in applying the revoke law during the years 1987 to 2007 but not for understanding the law.

What Norwegian players wanted seems to have been reinstatement of the permission for a defender to ask his partner about a possible revoke like it was before 1987, of course subject to possible violation of Law 16.

[blackshoe]

TylerE, on Oct 17 2009, 02:41 PM, said:

Is there really anything inherently evil in trying to align the rules with common practice?

Is there really anything inherently useful in implying, via a question, that I said something that I did not say?

[pran]

TylerE, on Oct 17 2009, 08:41 PM, said:

Is there really anything inherently evil in trying to align the rules with common practice?

Yes, if common practice is to steal and defraud I believe in laws that counteract this practice rather than support it.

Transferred to Bridge: The most important task for the lawmakers is to decide how we want the game of Bridge to be played and then write the laws on bridge to correspond with the result.

That "everybody cheat" is no argument.

Regards Sven