[DrTodd13]

I'll keep all the guilty parties anonymous but something happened tonight that has ticked me off royally.

---

3N by West.
H4,H9,HJ,HK
S2,S5,ST,S3
HT,HQ,HA,D4
S7,SQ,SA,S8
ST,S9,C4,SK

At this point, the hand is as follows:

---

Now, declarer claims 7 more tricks? No explanation...just a claim for 7 tricks. 2S+1D+1D+2H is only 6 tricks. Where else could declarer think his 7th trick is coming from except for the H2? Defense rejects the claim and leads a small club to the Q and A. Declarer now doesn't make any attempt at all to take 7 tricks (including the CA). He takes his 6 obvious winners and gives up. Either declarer misclicked 7 winners (which he never said) or he thought he had 7 winners and the rejection of the claim woke him up and he realized his H2 wasn't good. Certainly the rejection of the claim is UI to declarer and he should continue with his originally intended line of play to make 7 more tricks. If he does this, he'll try to cash the H2 before leaving his hand and south will win and NS will take their clubs to set the contract. In an ideal world, play would stop after a claim is rejected and a director would determine a result but that would take too long and we know that the director would just say play the hand out. I don't have that much of a problem with that but you have to be ethical and not use UI. Does he have UI? His claim has been rejected by strong opponents. Did he use the UI here? I think it is extremely clear that he did.

I requested an adjustment from the director (after I had already been eliminated from the tourney) on this board and the directorial staff couldn't even agree that there is UI here. This case is so blatant in my opinion and I'm shocked at the disregard the players and the directors had for ethics and rules of bridge in this case. Please oh please give me the ability to give feedback on directors who have such a minimalist grasp of the rules.

[mr1303]

1. Calm down. Bridge is only a game, and there's no point in getting so worked up about things like that.

2. Just because you may be unhappy by a director's ruling, I fail to see the benefit that can be gained by a public message slagging another member off. If you're unhappy about something, you can already put a personal note about him/her so you can remember not to play in his/ her tournaments.

3. BBO is an international arena. Not everyone may know the English for sorry misclick or something similar. I personally think there isn't enough information to go on to make this a clear case of UI. Besides, how do you know that his original intention was to cash out on the hearts? Having not stated a line of play (which people really should do btw) I don't think it's clear cut to adjust this board.

[1eyedjack]

There are four possibilities that I can think of:

1) Declarer thought the Hearts were running, despite that North's discard on the second round exposes the suit

2) Declarer miscounted his top winners, even allowing for the Heart loser

3) Declarer counted everything accurately but misclicked his claim

4) Declarer knew full well that he had only 6 tricks but claimed 7 on the offchance that the claim would be accepted without the defence giving it sufficient thought.

I have known claims of type 4. This is highly unethical and seems to be what you are suggesting happened.

I reckon claim of type 3 is unlikely - he could just reclaim the correct number of tricks following rejection. But it is still a possibility.

I would assume one of type 2 or 3 (probably 2) in the absence of evidence otherwise.

Interesting point ... I did not think it possible that a player could be placed in posession of UI from opponents. Learn something every day.

[red dwarf]

I agree it does look as if he missed discard on 2nd round of hearts and ran for the 6 remaing tricks, but that goes to show that claims should rarely be accepted anyway without an explanation of how play will continue.
Therefore is there a case for on line tournaments to have an option for no claims allowed?
1) it rarely saves time as board could, in most cases, have been played out by the time one has typed in line of play and ops have decided to accept or reject.
2) stops UI if rejected.
3) stops misclicks and gaining extra trick by default or in lesser cases (i hope) stops unethical gaining of extra trick by claiming and hoping ops accept without due thought.

[Trpltrbl]

That's why I always advocate to play with Laws of duplicate Contract Bridge 1997.
As soon as someone claims, the play ceases. And go from there.
But most directors haven't even heard of that, so why even bother.

Mike

[McBruce]

Declarer claimed seven tricks without a statement: two good spades, three hearts, and two minor suit aces. The defense rejected the claim, led a club clearing the suit, and you think he should be forced to play three rounds of hearts so that the defense can win the third round and set the contract with established clubs.

Declarer having apparently failed to notice that hearts were 5-1, I think you are correct here. Cashing what declarer clearly thinks are three winning hearts is not "irrational." Reviewing oneeyedjack's four possiblities:

1) Declarer thought the Hearts were running, despite that North's discard on the second round exposes the suit

2) Declarer miscounted his top winners, even allowing for the Heart loser

3) Declarer counted everything accurately but misclicked his claim

4) Declarer knew full well that he had only 6 tricks but claimed 7 on the offchance that the claim would be accepted without the defence giving it sufficient thought.


Law 70 clearly requires a Director to rule down one in case 1. Case 4, sadly, happens far too often online, but we have no reason to suppose that this is the case here. Case 3 can be tossed because the declarer didn't make an effort to correct the claim--the defense would probably have needed at least 20-45 seconds to look at the cards and count the tricks before rejecting the claim. Case 2 (declarer miscounts winners) seems unlikely: most people can add, and there is no alternate seventh winner.

The trouble is that the nature of online bridge makes this hard for a TD to get right at the time. So if you are in a survivor tournament and you need this result to survive, there is a good chance you are out of luck. Much as I hate to advocate this (because FAR too many people do it without reason), your best shot is to stop playing once declarer abandons hearts and uses his dummy entry, call the Director, and explain what has happened as clearly as you can. Even then many inexperienced Directors will not see the problem at the table. You have to accept that, send them a message (after the tournament, not during), and hope that they learn something for next time.

If I were the Director, I would expect I would have a fair chance of getting this wrong at the table, but I think if I had time to look at it later I would get it right. In a survivor tournament this wouldn't help much though.

Perhaps this is a case for the online Laws to specify that claims online actually give the defenders THREE options: accept; reject and play on (defense seeing all cards); or reject and call TD. This would force the defense at least to call the TD at the time of the claim in cases like this. There might be an argument that by playing on after the claim, the defense loses their right to a ruling of down one and accepts that declarer will win 6 of 7.

[DrTodd13]

I believe it was case #1. It would have done no good to stop play because director would have been called and told play to continue. I think it is safe to say this because after a lot longer time to review, they still couldn't come to the right decision. When you claim without offering an explanation, I believe you should lose a lot of your rights. Merely the opponents asking for an explanation may cause you to play more safely. For example, if you say "claiming 7, 2H,2S,1C,1D" then a strong case can be made that declarer simply misspoke (or misclick)
7 instead of 6. However, with no explanation, the non-offending side is given the benefit of the doubt in bridge. Believing a self-serving statement such as a miscount or misclick gives people no reason to not try this in the future. This principle is applied across the board in bridge to stop people from even trying unethical behavior like intentionally reneging. In this case, once you claim 7 tricks without explanation and play continues you should be forced to attempt to make 7 more tricks.

[Fluffy]

Its not the first time someone arges wrong claims should be followed by not the best play.

But why did declarer play the way he did after rejection?, you really think he realised the ♥ split?, I think he jsut misscounted his tricks, ,thinking at first the ♥ was good, regardless what the law says I don´t think anyone should be punished for misscounting, sincee he in fact played in the right way after the rejection.

About 20% of the claims I make are rejected, most of them because defenders can´t see the lien that leads to all the tricks I claim, therefore I can deduce nothing from a rejection (except maybe about the skill of my opponents), and I ´ll keep on playing the same way I was planing to.

I´ve said this before, but here it goes again: online bridge is not the same than offline, at online saving time is a main goal to achieve, you don´t have to stand on a table looking around, ,you are at your home probably with houndreds fo possible things to do. So claiming as fast as possible should be wellcome.

Did someone claim too much tricks and you accepted to save time?, oh well, you gained some time, and losed an online trick: NOTHING.

Also want to point that if you at first didn´t see the standard lien that leads to making all the tricks proposed, and miss-rejected a good claim, instead of saying, sorry, claim again please. YOU ARE ABLE TO CLAIM YOURSELF, don´t mess more your opponent and claim.

[DrTodd13]

The laws of bridge can be cruel. In face-to-face bridge, defenders are punished for reneging whether or not the renege had any effect on the play or not. Declarer can be given tricks for the defender's renege that he could not possibly get otherwise. Why does this rule exist? It could have been worded differently. It could have just said in case of renege you re-establish equity. Under this modified rule, if the renege had no negative effect on declarer than there would be no penalty. Yet, this is not the rule. The rule is that defenders get punished for the renege whether it was accidental or intentional, with effect or without effect. If the rule was just that you had to reestablish equity then there would be no disincentive for people to intentionally renege. You could always claim your finger slipped or the card was hidden by another card and we would have people out there intentionally reneging and then claiming it was an accident.

The same principle should apply in this case. There has to be a disincentive for 1) declarer to intentionally claim more tricks than he thinks he has and 2) to use the UI that his claim was rejected. Just like accidently reneging and giving declarer a trick he can't otherwise get feels awful, a declarer who claims without explanation, gets the claim rejected and then continues playing in such a way that he could not possibly score the number of tricks he had claimed shall be considered guilty of #1 or #2. "Misclick" or "miscount" cannot be accepted as an explanation because there is then no disincentive to do #1 or #2. You cannot prove that you misclicked rather than used UI any more than you can prove that you accidently reneged.

I most certainly believe that he believed his last heart was good. Another red card was played on the second rounds of hearts and it would be easy not to notice it wasn't a heart. We should provide incentives for people to claim with full explanations rather than without explanations. If he had made a full explanation saying he intended to take 3 hearts then we wouldn't be having this discussion because everyone should agree that the result in that case is down 1. So why is it that he is getting rewarded for making a bad claim with no explanation? I see no reason why the same principles of face-to-face bridge shouldn't apply here. If you claim in real life without explanation and your claim isn't good then defender's get the benefit of the doubt. That is your punishment for not explaining your claim.

You said "I'll keep on playing the same way I was planning to" when one of your claims is rejected. In this case, it is clear the declarer did not take a line of play that could possibly result in the number of tricks he had claimed so this case is different from most rejected claims in that most declarers end up taking the same amount of tricks they had originally claimed by playing the hand out. By allowing declarer to simply say "I miscounted" allows them to intentionally do this without any possibility of punishment. Miscounting hearts is such a clear possibility on this hand that most people are saying it is probable that is what happened. I'm not arguing that the defense can make declarer do ridiculous things like playing A and K on the same trick from Ax opposite Kx but defense gets the benefit of the doubt when there is a strong possibility that declarer has erred in their thinking. On the hand in question, playing the last heart is certainly not a ridiculous play if hearts have split, in fact it is the best play. There is no reason to not believe that that is what declarer intended.

[whereagles]

The laws on claims are being reviewed by the WBF laws comitee. Many Directors are not happy the way it is now. Maybe when the change comes (2007 I think) it will be easier for both live and online bridge to sort out situations like this.

[mink]

I fully agree with DrTodd and McBruce and strongly disagree with the other posters.

There are some prinicples governing the laws of dupicate bridge. Probably the most imporant one is that the side that the director should try to prove that an error by the offending side did not cause a disadvantage for the innocent side, if he considers not to adjust. It would be wrong if the director attempts to prove that the innocent side was damaged through the error, finds annother possible explaination where the damage might be caused by other reasons, and therefore does not adjust.

Example: a Verdi opening of 3C (meaning long diamonds, weak hand) was not alerted. Response was 3nt, which was the contract. The defender fails to lead Club, and so the declarer makes without any Club stopper. There is absolutely no prove that the declarer would have lead Club it the 3C bid had been alerted and explained. However, this is a crystal-clear case for an adjustment, as you cannot prove that the defender would not have lead Club even if the 3C had been alerted. The only possible case where no adjustment is made is if the defender to lead first is void in clubs.

If you think we should disregard such principles in order to save time in online bridge, I could not disagree more. It was a good idea to implement the claiming in such a way that playing can continue with opps seeing all 4 hands if the claim is rejected. However, this should not lead to results that are better for the claiming side than a directors decision would have been, if the play did not continue after the claim. If opps think the claimer achieved a better result than he deserved, they should call the director, and the director should rule as if playing after the claim had never happened. This way, we save time in 99% of the cases, but no harm is done to the innocent side.

Karl

[doofik]

While we're on my pet peeve of claims, I wish that upon claim all cards would not become exposed with the exception of claimer. I've noticed that many players claim at trick 6-7 when there still is an unresolved finesse, line of play has not been declared, and now opponents are going to reject? To what end?

[whereagles]

Mink: Infraction, not error

It's not as simple as you put it in your example. If the Director judges that it is not plausible for the defenders to lead clubs, result stands. The Director must not rule against the offending side automatically. That's not justice, that's punishment.

[Gweny]

Nice thread.

I am "guilty party".

What dr. todd fail to tell you is he do NOT call us when this is going on... thereby removing my ability to ask declarer what is line of play. Moreover, Dr. Todd do not take this opportunity to ASK declarer what is line of play thereby establishing how this person plan to play hearts.

What he also fail to mention is my co-directors maybe 30-40 years experience directing face to face and many many years of online directing. They concur no ui happen.

and Yes Dr. Todd I do find you insulting. I think if you cast off you extreme superiority attitude (like asking if td understand what UI means) you maybe find TDs is more cooperative. This is not case for me for I take any calls very seriously and see it as opportunity to learn new things. I also avail myself of my more experience tds so i may learn from my "elders" (regardless of age),
and ensure I am making correct ruling.

You need to understand this is NOT face to face and other explainations do exist - like miss counting, for what happen in this case.

You is very quick to condeme or claim it is some lack on part of td. Tell me do you ever compliment tds?
tee hee

[Free]

Todd, with all due respect, aren't you exagerating? It's OBVIOUS west THINKS the ♥s will fall, but if they don't it's also OBVIOUS they won't continue to play them and switch to ♦A and some ♠s. So clearly with or without a false claim they will only pick up 6 tricks, no harm done... Do you really need to win in such way? I sure hope not!

About the rules, I don't know how such case should be handled, but some rules suck, and this might be one of them. You don't have ANY disadvantage because of the rejected claim, so you shouldn't get any advantage back for free imo!

But as usual, if it's nicely explained "when the ♥s fall I claim 7 tricks, otherwise just 6", then ALL troubles are gone. When will people learn??

[DrTodd13]

Free...West is not going to know that hearts don't split until he has played the last heart and then it is too late. He plays two more hearts and will still believe that hearts have split. I was already out of this tourney (it was a survivor) and was still lobbying that the opps score be adjusted so it was not about me winning. It was about what I thought was a violation of ethics. He won't know hearts don't split and he'll play the third heart and our clubs will run. Honestly, at this point, what people think the rules SHOULD be is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is what the rules are. Just like people get punished for reneging when it has no effect, misclaiming without explanation may have a negative effect when there is a reasonable or expected line of play that does not result in the stated line of tricks. The rules state that the benefit of the doubt goes to the non-offenders.
If you've ever reviewed the appeals from a NABC, you'll see that self-serving statements like "I miscounted or misclicked" are dismissed as self-serving because to accept such statements would make it impossible to punish people who are behaving unethically.

Gweny. By the time I could have called you to the table and explained the situation the round would have already expired. It took 15 minutes to explain the situation after the round was over so there is no reason to believe it would have been faster at the table. I like the way somebody else put it. Reject the claim and let play continue but declarer can never do better than he would have had had the play stopped at the time of misclaim. You were free to ask the declarer after the hand about the claim but such a question is irrelevant because if declarer has behaved unethically at the table he will lie about it afterwards. He'll simply say "misclick" and expect everything to be better. Even if you were called to the table at the time of the misclaim and had asked declarer to explain, I am still going to argue that the request for an explanation will make declarer reassess the situation and claim only the 6 tricks he is absolutely sure he has. If he then claims he misclicked, it is still a self-serving answer. Where there is smoke there is fire. There is no reason to believe he didn't mean to take 7 tricks when he claimed 7. The only possibility of 7 is the last heart and declarer made no attempt to take 7 tricks after the claim.

Did you read my previous post Gweny? I acknowledge there are a number of reasons why a bad claim can be made including benign reasons like misclick. However, what you seem to be willing to do is to give unethical declarers an easy way out by allowing them to say "misclick." As far as I am concerned, you and everyone you consulted that agrees with you do not understand how to apply the laws of bridge to this situation nor do you understand why the laws exist as they do. I too have consulted certified TDs and expert players and they largely agree with me. As you can see, most of the posts in this thread have agreed than an adjustment is in order.

[McBruce]

Two points:

1) According to the Laws, this is down one.

2) Unless it is explained concisely and accurately what the problem is, in terms that the Director can understand, there is a good chance a Director will not see the problem. I myself was halfway through typing my post above, thinking 'what's the problem here?' when I realized the issue and switched horses! I don't get the anger though: there are difficult calls for the officials in every competition known to Man, and many instances of getting these calls wrong at the time. If we accept DrTodd's anger as reasonable in a mean-little online bridge tournament, then, by that standard, people in Calgary should be forming a militia and invading Tampa Bay (or at least the NHL league offices in New York) for having the Stanley Cup champioinship taken away from them on Saturday night on the late goal that the video replay guys refused to see.

Declarer has failed to count the defenders hearts properly here. This is a fact--there is no possible other way he could claim seven tricks except with three more hearts. (Even if it were doubtful which tricks were claimed in the absence of a statement, Law 70A says to resolve a doubtful point against the declarer.) The fact that one opponent is going to show out on the next heart is irrelevant because claiming seven more tricks established beyond any possible doubt that he thinks his hearts are running whatever the distribution of the remaining.

I don't think this is strictly UI (unauthorized information) as defined by the Laws. Rather, it is extraneous information allowed by the differences in online bridge. What we need is a claim dialog box like the following:

I claim [list box with possible numbers] more tricks [including this one].
(the last bit appears only if the claim is made while a trick is in progress)
Result will be [making|down (number)].
(software calculates result based on what you fill in above, to reduce mistakes).
Claim statement: [area for declarer to type a claim statement]

CLAIMER'S BOX INCLUDES THIS
WARNING: If the claim is rejected in a tournament, the hand is over and the Director will be notified of the contested claim. There will be no chance to revise or expand on your statement.

OPPOSITION's BOX INCLUDES THIS
Accept ( ) Reject and have TD decide ( ) Reject and play on ( )
(The last option may be grayed out in tournaments as part of tournament setup options.)
Reason for rejection: [area for defender to type a reason]
WARNING: If you reject with no reason you may be penalized.

The tourney software would collect contested claims and a TD could resolve them at his leisure, even after the event. (Final scores might sometimes be delayed as a result if they pile up, but the software could assume claims are valid and print scores depending on claim adjudications in red or something.) In this case, the TD will see the .lin file of the play so far, the claim, no statement from the declarer and a defender's objection like "declarer clearly thinks hearts are breaking and they are not." It shouldn't be hard for a good Director to get this right, given time to make a proper decision.

As it stands, the way claims are handled on BBO is convenient for casual online play but contrary to the Laws for tournaments.

[Free]

DrTodd13, on Jun 8 2004, 09:46 PM, said:

Free...West is not going to know that hearts don't split until he has played the last heart and then it is too late.  He plays two more hearts and will still believe that hearts have split.  I was already out of this tourney (it was a survivor) and was still lobbying that the opps score be adjusted so it was not about me winning.  It was about what I thought was a violation of ethics.  He won't know hearts don't split and he'll play the third heart and our clubs will run.  Honestly, at this point, what people think the rules SHOULD be is irrelevant.  The only thing that is relevant is what the rules are.  Just like people get punished for reneging when it has no effect, misclaiming without explanation may have a negative effect when there is a reasonable or expected line of play that does not result in the stated line of tricks.  The rules state that the benefit of the doubt goes to the non-offenders.
If you've ever reviewed the appeals from a NABC, you'll see that self-serving statements like "I miscounted or misclicked" are dismissed as self-serving because to accept such statements would make it impossible to punish people who are behaving unethically.

Sorry, but I don't see how anyone can miss the fact that ♥s don't split after North doesn't follow suit anymore on the ♥8 And he still has 2 left

---

Am I blind or just stupid?

And yes, rules are rules, so they should be followed...

[McBruce]

Look again, Free: the 8♥ is the third round. Declarer has already played two rounds and on the second round, one player discarded a diamond. Declarer missed this and thinks his last three hearts are all good. The discard on the 8♥ doesn't give him any new information if he thinks that both defenders followed to the first two rounds. We assume that he thinks this because he claimed seven tricks, which must include three hearts.

[inquiry]

Free... the reason is if you thought ♥ were 4-2 instead of 5-1 and especially if south drops the ♥65 and keeps the 3. It is plausible that West did miscount ♥ and the failure to accept the claim forced him to recount and come up with 13 this time.

Gweny, Dr. Todd raises an intersting question and something the ACBL directors will need to get a quick handle on. If I read the WBF 2001 online Bridge laws correctly, play STILL STOPS after a claim. The continue playing at this table when it was denied seems to be against the law (and in ACBL events, especially, I think the laws will need to be closely followed).

So to begin with, the continue play can not stand, and director's ruling will be required. Dr. Todd should have called a TD immediately when he contested the claim (since he is going to be a stickler for the laws). The laws have a couple of interesting statements, 1) the claimer is required to state a line (clarrify) his claim. This should have been done without prompting, but Dr. Todd should have asked for the line immediately when it didn't come. 2) The law states

68. D. Play Ceases
After any claim or concession, play ceases. All play subsequent to a claim or concession shall be voided by the Director. If the claim or concession is acquiesced in, Law 69 applies; if it is disputed by any player (dummy included), the Director must be summoned immediately to apply Law 70 or Law 71, and no action may be taken pending the Director’s arrival.

Law 70 deals with contested claims (which this clearly was)....

A. General Objective
In ruling on a contested claim, the Director adjudicates the result of the board as equitably as possible to both sides, but any doubtful points shall be resolved against the claimer. The Director proceeds as follows.

B. Clarification Statement Repeated
1. Require Claimer to Repeat Statement
The Director requires claimer to repeat the clarification statement he made at the time of his claim.

In my humble opinion, technically, the lack of a statement of how to get to 7 tricks is a violation of the laws by WEST. But Dr. Todd could have helped by asking for the clarrification.

So while I am not a person to evoke laws very often, and the two times I have been before an appeals committee, the oppenents were objecting to a directors ruling (sided for me both times). I always take the directors ruling, and online here, you have no choice but to take it. Having said that, if I was directing, I think I would have ruled the contract down. The only "logical" explaination for the seven trick claim is a miscount in hearts. Now, if the director comes to the table and ask, or if Dr. Todd had asked, for a clarification and the declearer said something like 2H, 1C, 1D and 2S... I would accept it was a slip of the finger (claiming on BBO can be a frustrating event... the CLAIM BUTTON needs work).

For people interested, the 2001 WBF Online Bridge laws can be found at...

2001 WBF Online Bridge Laws in PDF format

After reading laws 68, 69, 70 I don't see any other way this situation can be ruled (although I think west should have been given chance to clarify his line, a few rulings like this will get people to state their lines when claiming, and taht will not be bad...

Ben