[Chris3875]

North is playing in 1NT and has made 6 tricks. West is on lead and plays the Ace of spades, North follows and East is pondering

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which card to discard when West (thinking the King of hearts is good) lays down the last card and says "it doesn't matter what you play".

[BunnyGo]

Chris3875, on 2010-November-16, 17:11, said:

West (thinking the King of hearts is good) lays down the last card and says "it doesn't matter what you play".

I think he is now correct.

[Chris3875]

Hmmmm except his partner MAY have thrown off the Ace of hearts.

[wyman]

Chris3875, on 2010-November-16, 17:41, said:

Hmmmm except his partner MAY have thrown off the Ace of hearts.

That was his point. N/S +90.

edit: I don't think E/W get this ruling unless they are particularly strong. East could make the case that he was replaying the tricks in his head to make sure that he counted the hand correctly or something, but I don't expect much leniency from the director here. It is slightly more interesting imo if N already had shown up with, say 17 hcp (1N -All Pass), and at trick 12, west claimed "1 down, SA, HA"

[Chris3875]

Oh yes, sorry BunnyGo, I didn't understand your reply.

[RMB1]

Chris3875, on 2010-November-16, 18:14, said:

Oh yes, sorry BunnyGo, I didn't understand your reply.

I'm not sure I have understood any of the replies.

Perhaps we should read from the law book:

Law 68 B. Concession Defined. said:

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.

West has conceded the last trick, presumably East has objected. So play continues and East has unauthorised information from West's last card.

Is discarding the ♥A a logical alternative? Certainly discarding ♣K is suggested by the sight of a ♥ as West's last card. Apparently East was seriously considering it, otherwise he has nothing to think about.

Would some of East's peers actually discard ♥A? Having "seriously considered" both discards, would they all get it right? That's a harder question, but that's the one we have to answer, and I guess we need to know alot more (about the players and the play) to answer it.

[pran]

RMB1, on 2010-November-16, 18:41, said:

I'm not sure I have understood any of the replies.

Perhaps we should read from the law book:

West has conceded the last trick, presumably East has objected. So play continues and East has unauthorised information from West's last card.

Is discarding the ♥A a logical alternative? Certainly discarding ♣K is suggested by the sight of a ♥ as West's last card. Apparently East was seriously considering it, otherwise he has nothing to think about.

Would some of East's peers actually discard ♥A? Having "seriously considered" both discards, would they all get it right? That's a harder question, but that's the one we have to answer, and I guess we need to know alot more (about the players and the play) to answer it.

Precisely so. And as the Director I would rule that East discards his ♥A unless some extremely convincing reasoning was offered to me why he obviously would stick to it (absent any kind of remarks from West).

[Free]

Seems to me like an easy counting problem. How many ♣ does East think are left in the game? If he thinks 0 or 1 in another player's hand, then it's pretty obvious that keeping ♣K is ridiculous... I think there's a fair chance of East discarding his ♣K without the UI. However, it will be East's task to convince the TD that he knows keeping ♣K would be stupid.

[WellSpyder]

Free, on 2010-November-17, 04:09, said:

Seems to me like an easy counting problem. How many ♣ does East think are left in the game? If he thinks 0 or 1 in another player's hand, then it's pretty obvious that keeping ♣K is ridiculous... I think there's a fair chance of East discarding his ♣K without the UI. However, it will be East's task to convince the TD that he knows keeping ♣K would be stupid.

I don't understand why it is ridiculous to keep ♣K if there is 1 club in another player's hand. And if East knew there were no other clubs out then why was he thinking at all?

[bluejak]

WellSpyder, on 2010-November-17, 05:27, said:

I don't understand why it is ridiculous to keep ♣K if there is 1 club in another player's hand. And if East knew there were no other clubs out then why was he thinking at all?

Probably, because like 98% of all bridge players, he was happily following suit or discarding with small cards and without his brain working. Suddenly he has to make a decision and realises it would have been better if he had been counting as he went along. Surely you shave seen this? It happens ten times a session at my table, often by me!

Now there are two possibilities. He can convince the TD he definitely would have worked out there were no clubs out, or that West had a heart left, or he cannot. If he can then we assume none of his peers would actually choose the ♥A as a discard so it is not an LA. If he cannot, then the discard of the of the ♥A becomes an LA and we give declarer a trick.

I think there are two important things to realise here [apologies to everyone to whom this is completely clear]. First, this is basically a UI problem, not a claim problem. Second, it is a matter of judgement after the facts are gathered but unlike many judgement decisions the judgement is fairly easy, the fact gathering is the problem.

[Free]

WellSpyder, on 2010-November-17, 05:27, said:

Free, on 2010-November-17, 04:09, said:

Seems to me like an easy counting problem. How many ♣ does East think are left in the game? If he thinks 0 or 1 in another player's hand, then it's pretty obvious that keeping ♣K is ridiculous... I think there's a fair chance of East discarding his ♣K without the UI. However, it will be East's task to convince the TD that he knows keeping ♣K would be stupid.

I don't understand why it is ridiculous to keep ♣K if there is 1 club in another player's hand. And if East knew there were no other clubs out then why was he thinking at all?

If there's only 1 other ♣ left, there are only 2 possibilities (since dummy doesn't have one anymore):
- partner has it: in this case, discarding ♣K is safe because partner's small ♣ will become a winner
- declarer has it: in this case, there's no need to keep the ♣K because partner will lead another suit

No idea why he was thinking, probably recounting the hand because he was playing on auto-pilot (what else can he be thinking about?). That doesn't mean he has to stop thinking and automatically discard his ♥A right? If he can show why he should discard his ♣K without using the UI, then there's no problem at all. But, like Pran says, he has to be very convincing.

[WellSpyder]

Free, on 2010-November-17, 06:16, said:

If there's only 1 other ♣ left, there are only 2 possibilities (since dummy doesn't have one anymore):
- partner has it: in this case, discarding ♣K is safe because partner's small ♣ will become a winner
- declarer has it: in this case, there's no need to keep the ♣K because partner will lead another suit

No idea why he was thinking, probably recounting the hand because he was playing on auto-pilot (what else can he be thinking about?). That doesn't mean he has to stop thinking and automatically discard his ♥A right? If he can show why he should discard his ♣K without using the UI, then there's no problem at all. But, like Pran says, he has to be very convincing.

Agreed - thanks for pointing this out to my dozy brain. And I agree with you and Bluejak that the defender is presumably trying to work out the count having failed to bother to do this up to now. My experience suggests, though, that most defenders (including me) have at least a non-neglible chance of getting this wrong if they find themselves in this position since if you are not concentrating enough to keep track as you go along you are probably also not concentrating enough to be able to recall all the discards...