[pran]

One of the questions on a (new) test form for TD trials is:

Auction has gone:
West (dealer) 1♦, North: 1♥, South: Double (Inadmissible and Out of turn!)
West: PASS, North 1NT and then all pass.

The board is played out with result 8 tricks to declarer.

Law 36 specifies that the inadmissible double and all subsequent calls must be cancelled and the auction reverts to East who's turn it is to call(?). However, as even play on the board has been completed this makes little sense here, so how should one rule?

[helene_t]

West's pass is out of turn because South's double was inadmissible but North accepted it by bidding 1NT. From then on the auction is back to normal.

[pran]

helene_t, on 2012-November-27, 05:05, said:

West's pass is out of turn because South's double was inadmissible but North accepted it by bidding 1NT. From then on the auction is back to normal.

No sorry: Please see laws 32 and (most important) 35A.

The main problem here is that the players have completed the play after an illegal auction.

[iviehoff]

I presume that EW has woken up at the end of the hand and asked for a ruling.

One possibility is to rule under Law 11A, in which case result stands. The director has discretion to rule that the right to rectification may be forfeited when the non-offending side takes action subsequent to the irregularity. The rectification that has been lost is the undoing of the inadmissible bids and the subsequent auction. Thus the auction stands.

I think that an 11A ruling is possible whenever an auction has proceeded with a bid after an inadmissible (re)double. A more difficult problem is when the inadmissible (re)double is the final call of an auction, or is followed only by a redouble, when we would not be sure of the final contract.

But this is not the only possibility, depending upon details not available to us in this example, hence I ticked something else. Another possibility is to rule under Law 23. Such would require evidence of damage that NS could reasonably foresee in committing the irregularity. We do not have enough information to proceed with that on the present example.

[blackshoe]

I suspect it was East who woke up, since he was clearly asleep during the bidding.

Before I apply Law 11A, I'd be asking all four players why no one called the director after the inadmissible and out of turn double. That might affect my judgement of who damaged whom.

It seems to me that once the opening lead is faced, nothing can be done about the auction. Either you let it stand, or you rule the board is unplayable and award an ArtAS using Law 12A2.

I think either approach is legal. I don't have an opinion as to which may be better.

[Sjoerds]

IMO both sides are wrong, no matter when they woke up. You have to pay attention to the game.
Only problem is which LAW to use

[mink]

Quote

Law 32: A double or redouble out of rotation may be accepted at the option of the opponent next in rotation (see Law 29A), except that an inadmissible double or redouble may never be accepted (if offender’s LHO nevertheless calls see Law
36). ...

"May never be accepted" means all what follows is not an auction, no contract can be established, the card play is pointless and no result can be achieved. So I adjust according to Law 12C2a. N/S get A-. I would ask E/W what had been going on in their minds and award some artificial score depending on their answers and their experience with the Laws.

Karl

[iviehoff]

mink, on 2012-November-27, 10:53, said:

"May never be accepted" means all what follows is not an auction, no contract can be established,

Just because an irregularity has been committed and the director is called too late to rectify it, and the rectification that should have occurred was to cancel various calls, it doesn't mean that the auction did not happen. So maybe the irregularity of accepting a bid that must never be accepted was committed, maybe it wasn't, West hasn't told us whether he did any accepting. But it's too late to fix that now and we have an auction that, despite the unrectified irregularities on the way, came to a completion with a perfectly well-defined final contract, being a bid followed by 3 passes by the other 3 players, and a perfectly identifiable declarer. So the hand is quite capable of being played to completion, and scored. The contract was 1N and made 8 tricks.

As was told in a recent thread, an inadmissible redouble once occurred in the European Championships and was not cancelled. Someone made a bid after it, the contract was played out and scored up. This is not a situation of a hand becoming unplayable, they had no difficulty playing it out and scoring it up.

This, incidentally, is why I think an artificial adjusted score is actually wrong. The hand was playable to completion, and got a result. If there was damage from the irregularity, and there is no immediate reason to suppose there was, we can if appropriate adjust the score under Law 23.

[axman]

pran, on 2012-November-27, 05:00, said:

One of the questions on a (new) test form for TD trials is:

Auction has gone:
West (dealer) 1♦, North: 1♥, South: Double (Inadmissible and Out of turn!)
West: PASS, North 1NT and then all pass.

The board is played out with result 8 tricks to declarer.

Law 36 specifies that the inadmissible double and all subsequent calls must be cancelled and the auction reverts to East who's turn it is to call(?). However, as even play on the board has been completed this makes little sense here, so how should one rule?

It has occurred to me that L36A operates without the presence of the TD much the same way that ‘A trick containing a trump is won by the player who has contributed to it the highest trump.’:

36A If offender’s LHO calls before rectification of an inadmissible double or redouble the inadmissible call and all subsequent calls are cancelled. The auction reverts to the player whose turn it was to call and proceeds as though there had been no irregularity….

As such, where S acted at E’s turn with the improper double, once the requisite calls have been cancelled the auction reverts to E as if there had been no irregularity. iow the -X-P-1N- have already been cancelled, the matter of concern being the subsequent P of E,S,W. The point being that when calls that are cancelled are considered to be cancelled as they are happening [as in double *cancelled* pass *cancelled* 1N *cancelled* the so called rotation is back to the proper player to call, namely east. And as E,S,W had passed [supposedly upon their own misunderstanding and thus not subject to recourse] the auction would thereby have ended in 1H. With the consequence of untangling who won which tricks [the matter of any condoned leads OOT being mute].

[blackshoe]

axman, on 2012-November-27, 15:58, said:

As such, where S acted at E’s turn with the improper double, once the requisite calls have been cancelled the auction reverts to E as if there had been no irregularity. iow the -X-P-1N- have already been cancelled, the matter of concern being the subsequent P of E,S,W. The point being that when calls that are cancelled are considered to be cancelled as they are happening [as in double *cancelled* pass *cancelled* 1N *cancelled* the so called rotation is back to the proper player to call, namely east. And as E,S,W had passed [supposedly upon their own misunderstanding and thus not subject to recourse] the auction would thereby have ended in 1H. With the consequence of untangling who won which tricks [the matter of any condoned leads OOT being mute].

This argument makes absolutely no sense to me.

[gordontd]

blackshoe, on 2012-November-27, 17:14, said:

This argument makes absolutely no sense to me.

No surprise there

[BunnyGo]

blackshoe, on 2012-November-27, 17:14, said:

This argument makes absolutely no sense to me.

It was amusing.

[LH2650]

The board seems unplayable, with both sides at fault. I have visions of the auction continuing with 52 penalty cards face up on the table.

[iviehoff]

LH2650, on 2012-November-27, 18:25, said:

The board seems unplayable, with both sides at fault. I have visions of the auction continuing with 52 penalty cards face up on the table.

People who say this is unplayable are failing to see what actually happened. The players had no difficulty playing the hand to completion, without any penalty cards. They have no dispute over what contract was played out, who was declarer, nor the number of tricks scored. It isn't even apparent that there was any damage, though we don't have enough information to be sure.

52 penalty cards is impossible, the maximum possible number is 26, as only defenders can have them. If indeed we had got to a situation of ruling 26 penalty cards, then probably we would rule a hand now unplayable.

[iviehoff]

axman, on 2012-November-27, 15:58, said:

It has occurred to me that L36A operates without the presence of the TD much the same way that ‘A trick containing a trump is won by the player who has contributed to it the highest trump.

There are some differences, indeed such that I fail to find much similarity at all. They are both rules, that is probably the similarity you had in mind, as I can't see much else, but as rules go they are quite different. Probably the most important is that the first describes regular procedure, whereas the latter rule describes an irregularity, and the director must be called as soon as attention is drawn to it, and nothing further should happen until he arrives and deals with it. Another difference is that players usually know the first rule and can operate it themselves, whereas they rarely know the latter rule and must obtain the director to operate it.

An important observation is that, being rules, it is possible to mess them up. Players can play the wrong number of cards to a trick, or revoke, or attribute the trick to the wrong player. Players can fail to call the director and fail cancel an inadmissible (re)double.

But when these rules are messed up, then another important difference arises. In the case of messing up the first one, we have rules on rectification of revokes, defective tricks, and misattributed tricks that are capable of being applied at the end of the hand. We don't have rules on what to do when a call in the auction that should have been cancelled was not in fact cancelled, and once we have got into the play period we can't do anything about it. But I really don't think that going "oh this is far to difficult, cancel the hand, average minus all round" is appropriate. We have a result, and should look to rectify damage, if there was any, just as we should in any other case when there was an irregularity in the hand but a result was obtained.

[mink]

iviehoff, if you rule score stands, you implicitly rule that the inadmisible double at some point, maybe when they started to play cards, turned into an admissible double. I fail to find a Law that allows this.

If it was allowed, however, imagine the double was followed by a redouble and three passes. What is the correct score for the 8 tricks then?

Karl

[iviehoff]

mink, on 2012-November-28, 10:13, said:

iviehoff, if you rule score stands, you implicitly rule that the inadmisible double at some point, maybe when they started to play cards, turned into an admissible double.

No I don't. I rule that there were unrectified irregularities in the auction, but the auction still ended with a well-defined contract and declarer, and could therefore be scored up once it had been played out. If there was damage from the irregularity, we can rectify that with an adjusted score under Law 23, or even Law 12 in desperation.

It really is just the same as any other situation where a hand is played to a result, but there was an unrectified irregularity in the auction.

mink, on 2012-November-28, 10:13, said:

If it was allowed, however, imagine the double was followed by a redouble and three passes. What is the correct score for the 8 tricks then?

As I already said in a previous post, this would not be the same at all. Now we do not have a well-defined final contact and cannot score it up, so we do not have a result. This situation, where a result cannot be obtained, is precisely what artificial adjusted scores are for addressing.

[PeterAlan]

Removed: hasty reply with flaw I've recognised.

[blackshoe]

So many irregularities…

1. Inadmissible double…
2. Out of turn.
3. "Accepted" (by the next player, West, bidding over it).
4. A "completed" auction in which East never called. Was East even at the table? Okay, maybe "never" is too much - the OP does say the auction ended "all pass". It just boggles my mind that a player would not notice and object when his LHO "steals" his chance to call.

The basic question in the OP is "do we let the result stand?" having had our TD attention called to the problem after the play was completed. The attitude of most people wrt club games seems to be "get a result, score it, don't worry about the fine points". The attitude of most people wrt to tournament bridge (and more so perhaps at higher levels) seems to be "make sure the laws are followed". I don't particularly like that differentiation — I think the laws should be followed at all levels, and I don't see anything in the laws that suggests we should ignore them to "get a result". Now, we have a result, but it was obtained after an illegal auction. I don't think we should let it stand. If we aren't going to let it stand, we presumably must award an adjusted score. I don't think the result obtained was "normal" (since the auction was illegal) so I have no problem with an ArtAS, considered NS directly at fault. As for EW, are they "in no way at fault"? It doesn't seem so to me, but technically, the thing they didn't do was to call attention to the irregularity when it happened, and that's not illegal. So can we call them "directly at fault" or "partly at fault"? And if the latter, can NS still be "directly at fault" or must they also be called "partly at fault"? I'm tempted to rule both sides "directly at fault", but I'm not sure that's justified. OTOH, I don't want to let NS off the hook, even a little bit (by calling them only "partly at fault"). That leaves "directly" for NS and "partly" (or "not at all", which isn't really true, it seems to me) for EW.

I bet most of the club directors around here would rule "too hard, give 'em 'not played'".

[pran]

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-28, 12:10, said:

Are you just trying to test us, Pran, or do you have a disagreement with the answers to the test form? I haven't re-read the whole Law book, and so wouldn't want to give this as an exam answer, but I have the following thoughts. I assume that we're within the Correction Period.

What should have happened is clear: the Director is called, Law 36 applies (with appropriate nods to Laws 32, 19 and 35A), and everything is followed through properly from there. Since this hasn't happened, my first thought was that Law 84 meant that Director's discretion applied, and that there were plenty of good reasons (such as Law 11A) for deciding that the table result stands; otherwise, it's an adjusted score rather than cancel the board. But more directly you can say the auction should have reverted to E, W has then Passed out of turn, N has accepted this with the 1NT bid and the table contract and result therefore stand, and this is how I would rule in the circumstances.

The test form has not yet been issued.

I was approached by the author (a senior and very experienced director) who to his surprise had not found any law that seemed applicable so he asked for my opinion.

We discussed the situation and agreed that I should post a poll here. Although not a common situation it could very well occur and thus is a good test for a candidate seeking high level authorisation.

Of course the Director should have been called at the time of the irregularity, but we all know that players simply go on, either because they did not notice that there was an irregularity or because they just did not care at the time.

A qualified director should be able to handle also such cases properly, and in order to do so he must sometimes be able to "see behind the plain words of the laws" and understand what is meant by "objectives".