[ahydra]

Unfortunately there are some players in our club who do not claim even when it is obvious that X number of tricks, no more and no less, will be the result. When on defence I am therefore wondering if a situation could ever exist where it would be possible for me to claim some number of tricks for our side, or whether each defender has to claim as an individual only (i.e. not making reference to his partner's cards at all during a claim). Consider the text of Law 68A:

Law 68A said:

Any statement to the effect that a contestant will win a specific number of
tricks is a claim of those tricks.

- it does not state that the contestant making the statement must be the one who wins the specific number of tricks. Thus declarer can say "you'll get one trick" as an alias for "I'll get all but one trick", and a defender should be able to say "my partner gets one trick" or "we get one trick" as a statement of claim.

The situation was that my partner held a master ♣K. I could tell from the plays so far that declarer held all trumps and one club and said as he was running trumps "you have a club left, and [my partner] has the King". Could this be taken as a claim of 1 trick for our side? Most likely it is illegal as my partner could have thrown the ♣K, but thankfully declarer then claimed all but one trick.

Suppose the situation was slightly different: I also knew my partner had all clubs (including the master one) left. Does this change anything? (In this case there's no play for declarer to get all the tricks - though I am rather annoyed that the qualification about plays being "not irrational" from footnote 22 of law 70 was removed (referring to this http://www.ebu.co.uk/publications/Laws%20a...s/2008LAWS.pdf) - surely if declarer claims three tricks with AKx opposite Qx, one defender holding Jxx, he should get all three with no nonsense about him throwing the Q under the A or K).

Another one: suppose the lead is in dummy who has just one card, a club, remaining. Holding the ♣K I forget the ♣A is still out and claim the trick with something like "the last one's mine" when suddenly my partner produces the Ace. Does the fact it was actually my partner who won the trick invalidate the claim?

On a side note, yesterday I showed my cards mis-stating that I would lose two further tricks. Within a second I then realised my mistake and said "no wait, I'm ruffing the ♦K" which was my original intention before I messed up the claim. The laws don't seem to cater for any kind of "instant correction" of a claim like they do with pulling the wrong bid out of the box. Is my corrected claim of losing only one trick valid?

Many thanks,

ahydra

[aguahombre]

defensive claims, usually suck. Even defensive concessions usually just annoy the declarer. that is my layman's view. Let the litigations now begin.

[mycroft]

Laws of Duplicate Bridge, on Law 68, said:

For a statement or action to constitute a claim or concession of tricks
under these Laws, it must refer to tricks other than one currently in
progress*. If it does refer to subsequent tricks:
A. Claim Defined
Any statement to the effect that a contestant will win a specific number
of tricks is a claim of those tricks. A contestant also claims when he
suggests that play be curtailed, or when he shows his cards (unless he
demonstrably did not intend to claim - for example, if declarer faces
his cards after an opening lead out of turn Law 54, not this Law, will
apply).
B. Concession Defined
1. Any statement to the effect that a contestant will lose a specific
number of tricks is a concession of those tricks; a claim of some number
of tricks is a concession of the remainder, if any. A player concedes
all the remaining tricks when he abandons his hand.
2. Regardless of 1 preceding, if a defender attempts to concede one or
more tricks and his partner immediately objects, no concession has
occurred. Unauthorized information may exist, so the Director should be
summoned immediately. Play continues. Any card that has been exposed by
a defender in these circumstances is not a penalty card but Law 16D
applies to information arising from its exposure and the information may
not be used by the partner of the defender who has exposed it.

Taking your points in order:
- "contestant" is defined as the pair/team (ignoring individual events). However, if one defender makes a claim that includes a concession of any tricks, the other defender can "immediately object[]", in which case "no concession has occurred" and the play is completed, subject to UI from cards mentioned/displayed (L68B2). Technically, I suppose, the second use of the word "contestant" in L68A should be "player".
- I wouldn't claim in your situation (partner might screw up), but I would if the trumps and the club are on the board (partner won't screw up).
- The "not irrational" was always frustrating to the directors; the clients know that "but that's irrational" was the secret code. "Careless or inferior for the class of player involved" is sufficient. Playing AKx opposite Qx for two tricks is beyond careless for any player; mistiming the cashing of tricks so that the double squeeze is available if the spades break 5-0 is careless for any player.
- "the last one's mine" when the last one's partners - yes it does technically invalidate the claim. Of course, as the worst possible thing that can happen to your side is that you take the last trick, it's in practise irrelevant.
- reclaims are subject to "normal*" lines of play: L70E and L71 note 2.

It is my experience, and others have shown the same, that more tricks are lost by "playing it out" (say, because my novice opponents aren't going to get it, so I'll just play a couple more tricks - oops) than by misclaiming. If you count the tricks lost because the "play it out" people are continually rushed on the next boards, it's massively on the side of claiming.

I rarely claim as defender, myself - the exceptions being when declarer goes into a funk trying to save himself from a lie of the cards I know doesn't exist, or when I can concede two tricks ahead of declarer because his obvious line of play will succeed ("spades break, dummy's good").

[jillybean]

aguahombre, on Sep 9 2009, 03:57 PM, said:

defensive claims, usually suck.  Even defensive concessions usually just annoy the declarer.  that is my layman's view.  Let the litigations now begin.

I agree, fwiw. Just play it out.

[bluejak]

The sensible thing to do with any claim is to claim when you will save time by doing so. Thus I do not claim when the opponents are very poor and will not understand my claim in a position where I will claim against better opponents.

This applies just as much to defensive claims. This evening I said to declarer "Sorry, but these all seem to be good". All that did was save about four minutes of play. But defensive claims need to be more clear and obvious generally than declarer ones because of the mechanics.

Not claiming in defence because someone will get annoyed or you might get it wrong seems pretty silly to me: just leave it until it is obvious. If your defensive claims lead to arguments then you are claiming too early.

[peachy]

I think defensive claims send a message something like "declarer is too dense to claim so I'll do it for him/her". Unless it is VERY clear what tricks defenders get/don't get, it also _could_ be seen as protecting partner (the other defender) from making bad discards, at least at the club and other lower levels.

This probably should be in the "Change the laws" forum, but I think claiming could easily be restricted to "only by the declarer".

[gnasher]

peachy, on Sep 10 2009, 04:40 AM, said:

I think claiming could easily be restricted to "only by the declarer".

I think that would be very bad. There are lots of occasions where declarer thinks he still has something to think about but defenders know he doesn't - KJ guesses where both honours are offside, suits which defenders know are breaking but declarer doesn't, notrump contracts where a defender is on lead and has the rest of the tricks. Do we really want declarer to spend time and energy on thinking about these situations because the defenders aren't allowed to tell him it doesn't matter?

[iviehoff]

Probably about 20 years ago, I was playing at the Young Chelsea, in a 2-level contract, and sitting pondering at about trick 5 when the defender on my left, a stranger to me, said "look it doesn't matter, you get your 8 tricks whichever line you take". He showed me his cards, and he was spot on, assuming I had some moderate competence that is. Apart from finding it rather extraordinary that he seemed to know just what was in my hand (which presumably required some confidence in my bidding), I found it very flattering that he had assumed I would play with competence. I told this tale to someone a little later in the evening, and got the explanation "that was Martin Hoffman, you know." I was even more flattered.

Back to OP's question, a defensive claim is "WE will get X tricks", not "I will get X tricks". Ownership of tricks in the defence is shared, so the cards in your partner's hand do matter.

But the danger of defensive claims, and drawing conclusions about what is in other players' hands, is illustrated by another case. Sometimes it turns out the cards are not what the information you have says they must be. I learned this once when declarer was sitting there wondering, and I couldn't see what he had to wonder about. As far as I could see he had drawn trumps and set up his side-suit, and they were all his. So I said, "what are you thinking about, surely they are all yours now". And partner said "shut up". In practice declarer did not have anywhere near the cards his bidding proclaimed, and my partner still held a high trump and a stopper in his side suit, but there was nothing in the play so far that had made me suspect any of that. It turned out OK, as it prompted my partner to make a claim of her own at that point for 3 of the remaining tricks. I was lucky that the law does allow a defender's partner to rebut her partner's claim.

[ahydra]

Thanks for responses all - very helpful, particularly mycroft's post. So many responses in just 10 hours!

bluejak said:

The sensible thing to do with any claim is to claim when you will save time by doing so. Thus I do not claim when the opponents are very poor and will not understand my claim in a position where I will claim against better opponents.

I agree with this - claiming is to save time, so one should claim when it would save time (commentators on BBO vugraph often say "claim early, claim often" but one should take the complexity of the claim into account) and not if it will lead to any dispute. Though there's always the odd surprise, eg when playing in a county tournament once, someone rejected my claim of losing two further tricks when, apart from those two losers, the other cards were all winners and (a sufficient number of) trumps... Needless to say I didn't claim against them for the rest of that round

ahydra

[bluejak]

peachy, on Sep 10 2009, 04:40 AM, said:

I think defensive claims send a message something like "declarer is too dense to claim so I'll do it for him/her".  Unless it is VERY clear what tricks defenders get/don't get, it also _could_ be seen as protecting partner (the other defender) from making bad discards, at least at the club and other lower levels.

This probably should be in the "Change the laws" forum, but I think claiming could easily be restricted to "only by the declarer".

If it stops partner making silly discards then the claim is too early. As I said, you do not claim early, but stopping claims when it is obvious seems unfortunate to me.

[mycroft]

If your claim as defender requires your partner to pitch intelligently, it's too early (and the contested claim rules are going to bite you). If your claim as defender requires partner to have looked at dummy or watch you show out of hearts on the first round, that's different.

Defensive claim: as LHO, I have HAQ and a third card. Dummy has two hearts and the good club, which is being played. Declarer is in the tank, wondering which card to pitch from hand, which depends on the other card of the person with the HA (which he also doesn't know). After about 10 seconds of that, I showed him my hand. No idea how much time that saved...Is that wrong?

[blackshoe]

ahydra, on Sep 10 2009, 06:30 AM, said:

bluejak said:

The sensible thing to do with any claim is to claim when you will save time by doing so. Thus I do not claim when the opponents are very poor and will not understand my claim in a position where I will claim against better opponents.

I agree with this - claiming is to save time, so one should claim when it would save time (commentators on BBO vugraph often say "claim early, claim often" but one should take the complexity of the claim into account) and not if it will lead to any dispute. Though there's always the odd surprise, eg when playing in a county tournament once, someone rejected my claim of losing two further tricks when, apart from those two losers, the other cards were all winners and (a sufficient number of) trumps... Needless to say I didn't claim against them for the rest of that round

I agree with Bluejak too - but I am reminded of Will Rogers' advice on investing in the stock market. He said "Buy stocks. When they go up, sell. If they don't go up, don't buy."

[ahydra]

Just thinking...

mycroft said:

- The "not irrational" was always frustrating to the directors; the clients know that "but that's irrational" was the secret code. "Careless or inferior for the class of player involved" is sufficient. Playing AKx opposite Qx for two tricks is beyond careless for any player; mistiming the cashing of tricks so that the double squeeze is available if the spades break 5-0 is careless for any player.

Is there a master list somewhere of what defines careless / beyond careless? I can only see this leading to an argument somewhere, something like:

---

One defender has a trump (♠) left and the lead is in South, who leads a heart and claims the rest but the defenders (who both hold at least one diamond) say it's normal to draw the trump, leading to a heart loser. Is it "beyond careless" that the second heart ruff wouldn't be taken?

Which leads to my second point:

mycroft said:

- reclaims are subject to "normal*" lines of play: L70E and L71 note 2.

The situation was something like

---

Could the defence have claimed it was normal for me not to ruff my diamond loser?

Thanks,

ahydra

[Jlall]

Yes on the first hand you should lose a trick imo. You have too much to do to not state a line, for instance after you ruff a heart how will you get back to your hand? You have a decision to make, the diamond might get ruffed or the club might get overruffed. The fact that you claim without stating a line in this statement seems to indicate to me that you might think your heart is good after you ruff one and you can just draw trumps and claim.

On the second hand if you claimed without stating a line I would give it to you.

[bluejak]

Ruling on claims is a matter of bridge judgement, like deciding what constitutes an LA when ruling on UI. So, no, there is no master list, and such a list would be impractical.

I notice you refer to what people say afterwards: that's easy. They say it is "completely obvious" that claimer would have done whatever suits their side. As a TD you should not be affected by the modern style of arguing whereby everything is completely obvious/terrible/no-one would ever do it/beyond belief/completely stupid/Max Bavin said you rule this way/and so on. The TD just makes a judgement. As with other judgements, polling players helps.

Mind you, I am not too happy about all these 'arguments': perhaps TDs should act harder and fiercer to stop arguments. Just get each side to state their case to the TD and not talk to each other.

Unlike a lot of people, I think the original wording was fine. Lines are normal - inferior or careless - irrational and I am quite happy to make judgements as to whether or not a line is irrational. In both the examples you give it seems irrational to me to go wrong, ie not just careless, so I would not give the defence a trick.

[FrancesHinden]

In general I think it's very dangerous to claim in defence on your partner's behalf. If you claim that "partner has two winners" or whatever, then there are two main possibilities:

1. Your partner was not aware that they were both winners, so might throw one of them away by accident. Or your partner needed to know what declarer's last cards are in order to keep the right cards in hand. Or....

2. Your partner was not aware that (s)he could make a defensive claim

There is always the risk that the TD will be called, and may have to decide that (1) is the case in which case you may lose a trick or tricks.

Solution: teach your partner to claim at the right time.

When it's obvious that declarer has the rest of the tricks, or just has one obvious loser, but is one of those people that insists on playing it out, I sometimes say something as a semi-joke such as "can we give in now?" or "I promise I won't throw away the ace of clubs". This goes over rather better than "why don't you claim?"