Law 73E2 - failure to play in tempo ruling

00488172

here's a situation that came up in a game on BBO - I was a playing director. I ruled against myself, in favour of the opponents but think this is an overly generous judgement.

hand record: (played on BBO)
[https://tinyurl.com/2krkoglz]

The facts:
Uneventful auction to 3NT , south is declarer, West (me) leads a spade.
Declarer wins trick one in hand and leads a heart to trick 2.
Significant hesitation by West (me, director), long pause before playing a heart to trick 2. (I’m still thinking about the spade position on trick 1 – and I wanted to review the cards played, so I delayed my play to trick 2).
Play continues, no player makes any comment about the agreed hesitation during the play.
Defence wins 1 heart, and 3 clubs, Result at the table 9 tricks.

At the end of the round I apologised to declarer for the hesitation and she questioned my actions and requested a ruling.

I eventually discussed the hand afterwards with declarer.

Declarer’s case is that , following trick 2 , after East ducks the heart finesse , declarer can see 10 tricks (2 hearts, 4 spades, 4, diamonds) but is inclined to play for an additional overtrick by finessing hearts a second time. West's hesitation at trick 2 has misled declarer that west had the KH. Without the hesitation declarer would have cashed the winners and settled for 10 tricks.

I ruled in favour of declarer , adjusting the score from 3NT= to 3NT+1.

Later my partner called me and questioned my ruling. His point is that declarer was likely to repeat the winning finesse anyway, once East had ducked the first time, as this suggests that west has the KH, so the hesitation has no bearing on the play, the second heart finess is lost and 9 tricks would have been the result. The hesitation is, in his view, immaterial.

I think I may have been overly harsh on myself here. Is there a case for a weighted ruling (50% of 3NT= and 50% of 3NT+1)? What’s your view?
(I've consulted 3 top TD's and had 3 different view so far)
Mark Humphris

Senior_Kibitzer

I had a problem with clicking on the link, possibly because the end bracket was part of the URL.

Try https://tinyurl.com/2krkoglz

This ruling comes down to bridge judgement and some weighting of 3NT= and 3NT+1, even if 100% of either! I assume this was MP Pairs so the overtricks are important.

It would have been worth typing before following suit something like "Sorry for delay due to reviewing first trick" (which would have been clear at F2F as you would have delayed turning your card over).

It was also unfortunate that partner didn't take HK immediately and then switch to clubs!

So, what are the arguments? South has cause to be afraid of a club switch. If East had taken the first heart and West had C10, then 3NT could well have gone off when declarer could have cashed 9 tricks off the top. When South led HQ, was he always going to run it? He seems to have said he would. So when HQ wins, would he really avoid finessing HJ without the hesitation? Either West made a mistake in not covering HQ with HK, or else East had HK and has ducked. What is more likely? I think there is a good case for deciding that West has not made a mistake.

I would probably give 20% of 3NT= and 80% of 3NT+1, but I could easily agree with 100% of 3NT+1

There is an interesting UI aspect that East has the UI that South may think that West has HK, and that might have caused East to duck HQ, but he does better to not do so.

ais523

How quickly did declarer play the first card from dummy? In theory, that card's supposed to be delayed in order to give both defenders time to think about the hand, even if the declarer doesn't need the thinking time.

(I try to consistently give the opponents time to think at that point in the hand, although I'm currently not perfect at doing this and forget sometimes. For online play, it would make sense for the software to impose, e.g., an automatic 30-second pause before the first card from dummy is played.)

I know that some players advocate artificially slowing down the game by, e.g., refusing to turn over a trick in situations where they need more time to think about the hand as a whole. This is IIRC somewhat controversial, and online playing platforms like BBO don't provide any mechanism to do it.

ManchesterRambler

RealBridge does have this facility.