[manudude03]

I had a bit of an interesting situation tonight. Full layout and play for first 9 tricks was approximately as below:

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When dummy hit the table, declarer started berating his partner for his misbidding and then proceeded to make a real mess of things. At trick 10, East leads a high heart to West's Ace and declarer revokes. He wins the next heart and claims the rest.

Q1. Am I right in thinking in that the correct ruling (under normal circumstances) is 3NT down 6?

Q2. When director is called, she makes no mention of the exception to the 1/2 trick transfer over which E/W argue that even a 2 trick transfer doesn't restore equity. She then replies that in all probability, it's going to be a top for E/W anyway and there is little point in looking into it. Can she legally make that decision? As it was, she was a playing director who had played the board the previous round.

Q3. During all the arguing, declarer then says something along the lines of "well let's just say I only won 1 trick" and proceeds to write in the traveler 3NT making 1 trick. Can anyone legally accept such a result?

[billw55]

1. IMO, yes.

2. The comment is wrong. The corrcet adjaustment should be made regardless of what TD or anyone else thinks the resulting matchpoint score will be.

3. I think not .. they already took three tricks legally.

[bluejak]

There have been many comments about playing TDs before. Competent playing TDs give competent rulings, and if they suffer thereby, tough. Unfortunately there is another class of playing TDs ....

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on 2011-December-06, 02:25, said:

There have been many comments about playing TDs before. Competent playing TDs give competent rulings, and if they suffer thereby, tough. Unfortunately there is another class of playing TDs ....

True but... our local club has three county-qualified TDs and three club-qualified TDs, plus some who are not formally trained but have attended the first of a series of seminars I plan to hold.

But is this typical for a smallish once-a-week club? I think that most clubs that use playing directors need to rely on a group of people with various levels of skill; if you call on the same one or two people week after week it will not be fun for them. It's not great for players when the playing director is incompetent, but nobody has, in my opinion, the right to complain unless they have availed themselves of whatever training course their NBO offers and are doing their share of directing.*

By the way, at our club there are people who are happy to pitch in, but do not have the skill or confidence to perform as TD. For this reason we have separate movement directors. It reduces the load on everyone, for the cost of one extra card fee per session.

*Before anyone misinterprets, this comment is in no way directed toward the OP but is about the issue of playing directors in general as addressed by Bluejak.

[blackshoe]

manudude03, on 2011-December-05, 19:08, said:

When dummy hit the table, declarer started berating his partner for his misbidding and then proceeded to make a real mess of things.

This is an infraction of Law 74A2.

manudude03, on 2011-December-05, 19:08, said:

Q1. Am I right in thinking in that the correct ruling (under normal circumstances) is 3NT down 6?

I would rule that a) the revoke was established when North played the ♥Q (Law 63A1), b) two tricks should be transferred to EW (Law 64A1), c) declarer's claim of the last two tricks is valid as the cards lie (Law 70). On this basis, the adjudicated result would be 3NT-5, however, d) had declarer not revoked, he would have been down 6, since West has the rest of the tricks, so the adjudication should be 3NT-6 (Law 64C). So yes, you're right.

manudude03, on 2011-December-05, 19:08, said:

Q2. When director is called, she makes no mention of the exception to the 1/2 trick transfer over which E/W argue that even a 2 trick transfer doesn't restore equity. She then replies that in all probability, it's going to be a top for E/W anyway and there is little point in looking into it. Can she legally make that decision? As it was, she was a playing director who had played the board the previous round.

If we normally adjusted the matchpoint result rather than the aggregate ("table") result, the director might have had a point. However, we don't do that, so she should make the best, i.e. the most correct ruling she can. Deciding not to bother because "it's going to be a top anyway" is sheer laziness, and director error.

manudude03, on 2011-December-05, 19:08, said:

Q3. During all the arguing, declarer then says something along the lines of "well let's just say I only won 1 trick" and proceeds to write in the traveler 3NT making 1 trick. Can anyone legally accept such a result?

No. First, players do not make rulings, directors do (Law 10A, Law 81C, Law 82A). Second, the ruling declarer is trying to make is illegal. Third, the opponents cannot accept tricks they have already lost (Law 79A2). I would caution declarer against trying to make his own rulings, unless he's known to make a habit of doing it, in which case I'd issue a PP (assuming that he's been cautioned before).

Regarding "all the arguing", declarer should put a stop to it as soon as it starts, if not sooner.

[mycroft]

When I'm a playing director, I'm (almost always) there as a director first, and playing only to fill a movement (there are exceptions, like when my regular "play night"'s director gets ill at the last minute and calls me at 1600. I'm not going to pitch my partner with 2 hours' notice).

My partners get told that the directing comes first, and if that affects my play, so be it. The playing TDs job, after all, is to make sure the paying customers get the monsterpoints :-)

I will do things like tell people that I will evaluate the hand, but only after I play it, so that I don't burn the board for my opponents; people are usually good about that. But it's still not for *my* benefit. It really annoys me when a playing TD is playing first.

On the other hand, TDs tend to get paid in North America (or own their clubs). On the other other hand, and especially where that is not the case, Vampyr's response in her second paragraph is very appropriate for those people who gripe about bad directing but won't take on some of the responsibility themselves.

[blackshoe]

"On the other other hand"? You need to read more SF. It's "On the Gripping Hand". See also The Mote in God's Eye and its sequel The Gripping Hand, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. "Mote" was nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best SF novel in 1975.