[lamford]

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East-West were unhappy with my ruling at the end of the Specsavers Sunday Duplicate at the Stanmore Seniors Club yesterday. After a simple Blackwood enquiry North bid 7NT and East led the queen of hearts. Declarer claimed 13 tricks almost immediately and the opponents concurred. At the end of the evening they asked one or two friends if the grand had been bid against them, and were told it could not make. They asked for a ruling and I decided

a) there was no specific trick the defenders would "likely" have won. They might have won an early diamond or a club if the declarer miscounted or they might have won trick 13. Note that the law does not say "the total probability of all tricks must be above 50%".

b) although no single or double squeeze actually works, because the menaces are not correctly positioned, I could not in my heart of hearts decide that East-West would "likely" have won trick 13 had play continued, assuming declarer got that far. If they could not count to 13 when a claim was made, what chance did they have of defending the ending?

Do you agree with my ruling? There was a slight suspicion that North was a likely lad, trying it on, but I expect he just did not consider the minors both breaking 5-0.

[gordontd]

You seem to be arguing two different things: that because you don't know which trick they would have been likely to win, the conditions of the law are not satisfied; and that because they agreed to an imperfect claim they might well have misdefended. Which is it? If the latter, it just seems to me to be judgement question as to how likely they are to have misdefended. But the first point has been presented as though winning a diamond, a club, or trick 13 are separate possibilities, whereas the most likely time for the defence to win either a diamond or a club is at trick 13.

I thought the point of making up an example was to demonstrate a point in its purest form, without any external clutter to add confusion, but this one seems to me to lack clarity.

[bluejak]

Law 69B refers to "a trick that his side would likely have won". I do not think this needs to be a specific trick. If his side would likely have won "a" trick I think that good enough without it being specific. So it is just a pure judgement as to what might have happened with what frequency, and the question of how frequently it needs to be to be likely.

[lamford]

gordontd, on 2011-March-28, 09:51, said:

You seem to be arguing two different things: that because you don't know which trick they would have been likely to win, the conditions of the law are not satisfied; and that because they agreed to an imperfect claim they might well have misdefended. Which is it? If the latter, it just seems to me to be judgement question as to how likely they are to have misdefended. But the first point has been presented as though winning a diamond, a club, or trick 13 are separate possibilities, whereas the most likely time for the defence to win either a diamond or a club is at trick 13.

I thought the point of making up an example was to demonstrate a point in its purest form, without any external clutter to add confusion, but this one seems to me to lack clarity.

"making up an example" - what an allegation! I agree it is irrelevant which card the opponents would win trick 13 with, but there is also a strong probability that they would win an earlier trick, say trick six, when declarer tries to cash the entire diamond suit, or trick ten when he tries to cash the club suit after noting the diamond suit did not break. So, there are two issues - and you are right having just one might be better, but I was not the dealing program - what is the chance of an earlier trick being lost, and what is the residual chance of trick 13 being lost? The Law seems to require that either needs to be greater than 50% individually for a trick to be transferred - or as jallerton argues - quite a bit more than 50%.

And I have just seen bluejak's comment that he thinks that it just needs to be "likely" that the defence would have won a trick, considering all tricks collectively; that certainly is an interpretation.

[gordontd]

lamford, on 2011-March-28, 09:58, said:

I agree it is irrelevant which card the opponents would win trick 13 with, but there is also a strong probability that they would win an earlier trick

I don't agree that is a strong probability - more like a slight possibility.

[lamford]

gordontd, on 2011-March-28, 09:51, said:

the most likely time for the defence to win either a diamond or a club is at trick 13.

The least likely time for the defence to win either a diamond or a club is at trick 13. If declarer reaches trick 12 and he has noticed that both suits did not break and the opponent still has a winner in the suit, the diamond or club will be of no value as the defender is discarding after the menace.

[lamford]

gordontd, on 2011-March-28, 10:00, said:

I don't agree that is a strong probability - more like a slight possibility.

I would expect someone who claimed here to believe that either clubs or diamonds are solid. I would expect many intermediate players not to consider 5-0 breaks, so your "slight" possibility is far removed from reality.

[gordontd]

lamford, on 2011-March-28, 10:05, said:

The least likely time for the defence to win either a diamond or a club is at trick 13. If declarer reaches trick 12 and he has noticed that both suits did not break and the opponent still has a winner in the suit, the diamond or club will be of no value as the defender is discarding after the menace.

So, these players who you think are incapable of noticing that a defender discards on the first round of a suit, are bound to play a double-squeeze?

[gordontd]

lamford, on 2011-March-28, 10:09, said:

I would expect someone who claimed here to believe that either clubs or diamonds are solid. I would expect many intermediate players not to consider 5-0 breaks, so your "slight" possibility is far removed from reality.

Players often claim on the assumption that the worst break won't happen. It doesn't mean they wouldn't notice it if it did.

[lamford]

gordontd, on 2011-March-28, 10:15, said:

So, these players who you think are incapable of noticing that a defender discards on the first round of a suit, are bound to play a double-squeeze?

No, if they notice that the diamond or club is not a winner, tney will hope the heart or spade is. If play continued, for the purported player in question, I would estimate the chance of losing a diamond or a club by not counting correctly to be perhaps 25% each - the exact figure does not matter. If they notice at that time it is not a winner, they won't think it is of any value - because they do not think of squeezes - so they will discard it.

[bluejak]

Over the weekend two players on the edge of Camrose selection for Wales played a slam which required making 5 tricks with a trump suit of AT9 opposite K87xxx. Neither managed it for a flat board. I don't think any of the remaining players in either team were impressed. Everyone forgets bad breaks from time to time, ok, nearly everyone.

[WellSpyder]

lamford, on 2011-March-28, 09:34, said:

Do you agree with my ruling?

Yes, I agree with your ruling - but probably because I am not a TD! In my mind the burden of proof shifts a long way once the defenders agree to a claim, and although the logicians or grammarians may disagree I interpret "likely to have won" in much the same way as "unlikely not to have won". In this case I think there is too much chance of the defenders going wrong to accept that declarer would not in practice have made 13 tricks if it had been played out.

[dburn]

bluejak, on 2011-March-28, 09:58, said:

Law 69B refers to "a trick that his side would likely have won". I do not think this needs to be a specific trick. If his side would likely have won "a" trick I think that good enough without it being specific. So it is just a pure judgement as to what might have happened with what frequency, and the question of how frequently it needs to be to be likely.

I agree with the sentiments expressed above, but not with the reasoning.

If a ruling is given on the basis that a player has conceded "a trick that his side would likely have won", it is sufficient for an appellant against that ruling to ask "which trick?" or at any rate "with which card would the trick have been won?" On being told by the constabulary that "we don't know", the appellant can rest his case with complete confidence that he must succeed. There is no interpretation of the actual words of the Law that allows otherwise; in English, "a trick that [X]" must refer to some one specific trick of which X is true.

Of course, the actual words of the Law are not what the people who wrote them intended. They intended that a concession should be rectified if it involved conceding more tricks than the conceders would likely have lost. They should have said so, and perhaps in 2017 they will (changing "a trick" to "any trick" would suffice).

Meanwhile, if "likely" means "with probability greater than 50%", what does "at all likely" mean?

[RMB1]

dburn, on 2011-March-29, 12:41, said:

Meanwhile, if "likely" means "with probability greater than 50%", what does "at all likely" mean?

Difficult to know without knowing the (degree of) truth of the hypothesis (the first bit).

Regardless of the meaning of "likely" in isolation, "at all likely" means "possible".

[dburn]

RMB1, on 2011-March-29, 13:03, said:

Regardless of the meaning of "likely" in isolation, "at all likely" means "possible".

Does it, by golly? Is it therefore "at all likely" that if I buy a single ticket for the National Lottery, I will win?

[barmar]

Winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, etc. are things that are theoretically possible, but so remote that you can safely act as if they're impossible. Something like that is not "at all likely". If you treat it as actually possible, not just wishful thinking, then it's "at all likely."

You can't put a percentage on it (and how would you calculate the percentage of a defensive error, anyway?), it's a judgement call. But it's clearly significantly less than 50%.

The continuum runs something like:

impossible, practically impossible, remotely possible, at all likely, reasonably possible, 50/50, somewhat likely, pretty likely, very likely, surely

[lamford]

barmar, on 2011-March-29, 15:07, said:

Winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, etc. are things that are theoretically possible, but so remote that you can safely act as if they're impossible. Something like that is not "at all likely". If you treat it as actually possible, not just wishful thinking, then it's "at all likely."

You can't put a percentage on it (and how would you calculate the percentage of a defensive error, anyway?), it's a judgement call. But it's clearly significantly less than 50%.

The continuum runs something like:

impossible, practically impossible, remotely possible, at all likely, reasonably possible, 50/50, somewhat likely, pretty likely, very likely, surely

When likely is used as an adverb, I agree with jallerton that greater than 50% is right (or even higher it could be argued), but, under the current wording of the Law, it is absolutely clear that the TD can only transfer a specific trick that has a probability of being won greater than 50%. In the current ruling, if we accept gordontd's view that declarer will likely reach trick thirteen unscathed, with all 12 tricks having been won by declarer, and we, say, assign a probability to that outcome of, say 75%, we would now require there to be a greater than a two-thirds chance that the thirteenth trick would be won by a defender. It can then be transferred.

If declarer plays normally, noticing that diamonds and clubs do not break, the two defenders will need to appreciate that they both have to keep 765 of the major in which this is their holding, and discard from the other major, as a discard from the tripleton would be fatal. I would think that in the event in question, there was a greater chance of them being struck by lightning before then, in which case they would not reach trick thirteen.

[nige1]

Pretty paw, Paul! As Paul implies, if you switch a major suit seven with a four, the contract is makeable; Also, if declarer plays counter-clockwise or if the EW hands are reversed, his claim is valid on a double-squeeze (Now, you don't need threats in both majors: see simplifed variant, on left).
A director may judge this to be "Normal" play by any competent declarer
Remember Burn's great "double squeeze" poem

Pretty problem, Paul!
This is a standard faulty "claim". It does not specify that any particular cards take tricks, or in what order to play those cards.. Hence, it is impossible for defenders, belatedly, to dispute any particular trick. Perhaps, the law does cover such a typical case, implicitly? Or perhaps, again, we must replace the law with common sense? Either way, I think Paul's ruling (13 tricks) is correct.

It seems that current Bridge Law is

• Too woolly, ambiguous, and sophisticated to understand.
• Impractical to interpret, apply, and enforce, consistently, in real-life contexts..
• Over generous to offenders. Here, for example, if a more punctilious declarer had specified a complete line of play, then the delayed protest would be more likely to succeed.

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