Law 25A Unintended call
F2F bridge.
The auction:
W N E S
1NT P 2H Announced as "transfer to spades"
P (without pause)
North now pulls out the pass card without pause for thought. He then immediately says "Oh no I meant 2S"
I happened to be watching. Everyone was surprised to see the pass card, and the player was not distracted by anything, nor was there any evidence of a lack of concentration.
Is it a mechanical error? Whilst 2S is not near P, it seems very much like the physical equivalent of "a slip of the tongue". It is clear to all that "he has not made the call he intended to make".
I think WB 8.25.2 agrees with me on this: “What did you intend to call at the moment your hand reached out to the bidding box?”
Thoughts?
Comments
It doesn't sound to me like a mechanical error. It sounds much more likely that he was just trying to do the automatic thing and was confused into thinking that was to pass, "a loss of
concentration regarding the intent of the action". I doubt he had thought "I need to bid 2S" and in the process of reaching for the 2S card took the pass card instead.
I'm pretty sure this isn't a mechanical error – I agree with Gordon Rainsford, it definitely seems like a lapse of concentration to me too.
I do think the current Laws may be a bit harsher on this sort of thing than they really should be, though. It's hard to see how N/S could get an advantage from S pulling the wrong card while distracted and then correcting it in this situation – in a sequence like this one, 2S basically doesn't show anything, and all P shows is either a system forget or a temporary mental blackout. (I guess you could argue that "maybe the pass shows a weak hand with lots of hearts that psyched 1NT", but the odds of that in today's game are very low.) So although I agree that the current Laws disallow correcting this sort of thing, I wonder whether the game wouldn't be better off with a laxer standard. (That said, simply trying to word what such a Law would look like can be quite difficult!)
Well bridge is supposed to be a "mind sport" so not paying attention to your partner's calls is akin to having a weakness outside the off stump or being an English batsman (but I repeat myself), slow acceleration or a relatively weak left foot.