Calling from curtain cards
A player has a habit of making his calls by looking at the curtain card, and only looking at his cards when play starts.
In round 4, after the auction this player notices his hand does not match the curtain card. It transpires that the hand was misdealt (it is a sim pairs and the curtain card is "correct").
The player complians - do they have a leg to stand on?
Comments
No.
LAW 7 - CONTROL OF BOARD AND CARDS
A. Placement of Board
When a board is to be played it is placed in the centre of the table where it shall remain, correctly oriented, until play is completed.
B. Removal of Cards from Board
1. Each player takes a hand from the pocket corresponding to his compass position.
2. Each player counts his cards face down to be sure he has exactly thirteen; after that, and before making a call, he must inspect the faces of his cards.
The introduction to the laws says the following (my emphasis), so it would be appropriate to penalise him on every hand where he does this, and he certainly should get no redress for being damaged by it:
'Established usage has been retained in regard to “may” do (failure to do it is not wrong), “does” (establishes procedure without suggesting that violation be penalised) “should” do (failure to do it is an infraction jeopardising the infractor’s rights but not often penalised),”shall” do (a violation will incur a penalty more often than not) “must” do (the strongest word, a serious matter indeed).'
I assume Gordon has missed out the word "must" from this sentence and it should say:
No, I didn't miss out the word "must" but I have edited what I wrote in an attempt to make it clearer. The whole of the final paragraph is the quotation from the introduction to the laws.