Seeing the players' hands
In a conversation earlier, I claimed that "The vast majority of rulings do not require the director to see the player's hands either before or during the play".
Upon reflection, I can't actually think of any that do. Are there any?
I'm excluding activites such as searching a 14 card hand for the bogus card, and activities that take place after play has finished - contested claims, "logical alternative call" rulings, (weighted) assigned adjusted scores.
Comments
27b1b
I assume you're saying that a comparable call needs a view of the hand.
I don't see why. A comparable call is a product of the bidding system only.
Also, it's not up to the director to rule at the time if a call is comparable - only to explain to the player what comparable call means. Yes I know we do at times but we should be careful: "Well if your orignal call showed 4+ spades and 12-15 points and the replacement shows 5+ spades and 12-15 points and denies 4 hearts then it is comparable".
I would be interested too if anyone can come up with an exception as I tell everyone at Club TD Training Courses that a TD never needs to look at any player's hands before the end of the play period, so if they start wanting to look at a player's hand, they are doing it wrong!
The only time I came close to wondering about this was when I was called to a table where South was declarer and I went to the SW corner of the table. South claimed that East had exposed :club: A so that West could have seen it, and East was denying that he had exposed any card. I just happened to catch sight of :club:A in the West hand, so I knew that East was right but I had to be very careful when ruling play to continue to not reveal that I knew that East didn't actually have the card he was alleged to have exposed.
The other reason for TDs to not look at cards is that they can inadvertently provide Extraneous Information to the players at the table
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
Funnily enough I heard it at a training course too. From a pig trader, of all people. :)
I know one director who in the case of an unintended bid claim, will not look at the hands but afterwards will look at the hand records and come back later if they suspect foul play.
Is declarer entitled to know that someone has revoked or not? Lets say the play of the cards by trick 6 makes declarer think that LHO revoked on trick 3... The players cannot check the cards as tricks have been played to since the suspect card.
Would declarer look at the tricks to check if a revoke took place or not, or should declarer say to continue play and check after, calling them back should there be an issue? Whilst looking at quitted tricks is not looking at the hand, it is looking at part of the original hand.
With claims of revoke, I have usually told them to call me back after they've played the last trick. It's not always a simple matter to resolve a revoke but, while play is still continuing, I also don't feel that declarer is entitled to the certainty of knowing whether there had been a revoke.
I was excluding checking played cards. Law 67B (defective trick) requires the director to review the played cards.
Interestingly 67B says nothing about whether information from the exposure of the cards is AI or UI. 16A1c suggests it is AI, but this seems wrong (as far as offenders are concerned). 16A1c does refer to 16B1 (extraneous informaion from partner) but I'm not sure this information is from partner (even if it is about his hand).
Agreed. Also, it is almost always in declarer's interest not to make defenders aware of their revoke.