[broze]

Perhaps not strictly applicable to this post but is turning your cards face up and saying something like "you can't do anything" tantamount to a claim of all the tricks? Are you allowed to play the hand with your cards face up?

For example, if an opponent has been thrown in for an endplay, or is considering a discard on a squeezing (or perhaps strip-squeezing trick) I might turn my cards face up to show him that there is nothing to do. This is not (I think ) showing off but I am just trying to save time and the opponent some brainpower. Bad form?

[barmar]

Law 68A says:

Quote

A contestant also claims ... when he shows his cards (unless he demonstrably did not intend to claim, ...).

So you need to convince the players (or TD, if they call him) that you obviously didn't intend to claim when you faced your cards. The example given in the law is when there's an opening lead out of turn, and declarer faces his hand -- it doesn't count as a claim, it turns him into dummy.

Was there some reason you couldn't claim, though?

[paulg]

It is clear that this is a claim. Depending on the standard of players involved I might wish to hear an explanation if this is a complex position or if the claimant is significantly stronger than the defenders. In general I think you should claim in such positions where it will speed up the game.

[Mbodell]

If you want to do this, which I think is rare but possible, you can say something clear like "This is not a claim, I just want to show you my cards to help your decision, but I'm not claiming". That way if you know you have some line that is 100% but complicated to say, you can speed things up.

[mycroft]

Fully expect LHO to spend even more time working out all those options you aren't willing to enumerate before she concedes, though. If you're trying to speed up the play, do the enumeration for her.

When do we really get there, though? Usually when declarer endplays someone, they can say "either you lead this suit into my AQ, or this suit and I get the pitch, or this suit and it's a sluff-ruff". If it's on anything more complicated than that, showing your hand won't actually help them figure out that it's cold on the single-played-as-double you've just set up, no?

Most people who "aren't claiming, just showing you my hand" *are* in fact claiming, but don't want to pay the penalty the second time they made a faulty claim; rather would prefer the opponents pay the penalty for a retracted concession, or want the opponents to work out the claim for him, so that he's saved from a mis-speak or a missed "obvious" option. You can tell which when you take the time to figure out with full hand knowledge what to do, because the "not-claimers" try to hurry you up.

I would rather wait for the lead than look like one of those. Others' opinions may vary.

[billw55]

mycroft, on 2013-February-04, 14:34, said:

I would rather wait for the lead than look like one of those. Others' opinions may vary.

Mine doesn't.

In general, I avoid claiming if I feel there is a nontrivial chance that doing so will take more time, rather than less. Complex claim statements certainly qualify.

[barmar]

Sometimes it's really hard to choose. Yes, the claim might take time to explain, but so can wait for the opponent to get out of the tank he's in, trying to figure out if there's some way he can set you. And it can be painful watching him struggle, knowing that he's wasting his effort -- you'd really like to put him out of his misery.