Tales from the North Devon Congress #2
Claim situation
Contract is 4 hearts, Declarer is on lead
Declarer says "They're all mine" with no statement of line of play.
Opponents ask if it can be played out (or similar). Declarer refuses and calls the director.
If I deem DJ to be led, then E will win one trick (DQ, diamond return being ruffed)
If I deem H8 played then JD, E can take 2 tricks
Is it irrational to play the trump first?
Comments
I will be interested in the expert comments on this. I find it odd that declarer refused to play it out as this would be to their advantage.
There is no outstanding trump and there is no line of play that "depends upon finding one opponent rather than the other with a particular card". Therefore, if declarer said that it was blindingly obvious that they would take two spade tricks, ending in dummy, and discard the diamond on the club, maybe that is OK. If there is suspicion that declarer had forgotten the QD, for example, that is another matter. It all hinges on how low "careless or inferior" can go, my understanding is that it does not mean playing inexplicably badly so I think the standard of the player still matters. But others will know better than me.
It does strike me though as unreasonable that declarer refused to play it out. If declarer knew what they were doing, that is simple courtesy to opponents that needed to be convinced. If declarer did not know what they were doing but were hoping to avoid having to remember exactly what spades the opponents hold, for example, then maybe 2 tricks lost is right.
I agree that perhaps declarer did not act in his own best interest but doesn't the law(68D) say that play ceases after a claim?
It is suspended (48D).
It may be resumed if all four players agree (48D2b1), otherwise play has ceased.
There's no obligation for declarer to play the claim out, I don't agree that there's discourtesy there. They should have stated a line though and it does seem to underline that they think the J!D is a winner.
I think if they think everything's a winner they could rationally play them in any order. The exception is sometimes if a suit is top down, as referenced in the white book. I guess the suggestion that you wouldn't play a trump first is faintly similar. But I'd class it under careless myself.
It's not beyond careless to play the trump first - indeed it might be the best play when your opponents have objected to your claim. Two tricks to the defence.
Doesn't declarer have four top tricks here? (SQ, S9, CQ, H8). As such, I would be looking for evidence that declarer might be aware and/or unaware of which of their tricks were good – it doesn't actually matter whether declarer plays the trump first or not, unless declarer tries to cash DJ, so the most important thing to determine is whether declarer thought DJ was good or not (which is hard to tell for certain, but you can often get clues by, e.g., looking at the previous tricks).
When I'm declaring, I normally try to avoid this trouble by either explicitly stating where my good tricks are in the claim statement ("discard DJ on CQ" would be enough), or by cashing the potentially dubious tricks first.
He said they all were, and that's not true.
Indeed, and I would go further and suggest that the declarer was extremely courteous to have the TD brought in in this way. A comment that I make on TD courses about Law 68D (introduced in 2017) is that it is always against one side's interests to allow play to continue, and it could be said that that Law actually discourages play to continue.
Credit to declarer on this occasion! :)
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live