Change of Call
A call is considered to have been made when the call is removed from the bidding box with apparent intent.
North opens 1C (Precision, strong and forcing), East passes, South starts taking the pass card out of the box when he notices his partner's bid and tries to change his call.
At what point in the process of removal of the pass card can it be said that the call was 'made'?
What about 'apparent intent'? The apparent intent was to pass if partner had not called. So the change of intent was not a reconsideration of action as such but a change of intent after noticing his partner's bid.
Let's bear in mind that the TD will not be present when the action takes place and will have to rely on the (conflicting?) descriptions given to him about the removal of the pass card.
Comments
Apparent intent simple excludes accidents leading to a card coming out of the box without intention. In your case the player intended to pass.
We consider it to have been removed from the box when there is space between the bottom of the card and the top of the remaining cards. If necessary, ask the players to show you how far out the box they think it had come.
As a further example, last night at the club was a wonderful one for TDs - At our table a player 'alerted' a bid using a 'pass' card. i.e. not only did he take it out, he waved it to both opponents in the usual manner. No 'apparent intent'
I've seen that fairly often, weejonnie, both with pass cards and with Stop cards. I make my bid and partner starts waving around some random card from the front of the box. It never gets old.
Many clubs also have laminated cards in their bidding boxes to act as coasters for tea and coffee mugs during the break. I remember once pulling one of these out of the box and using it to pass with.
Does anyone else remember No Smoking at this Table signs in bidding boxes, from the days when smoking was permitted?
I do, but then I'm older than you are. B) I also remember the tremendous fight one club committee had to get the players to agree to try bidding boxes in the first place. There was a large and vociferous minority against. Once they had tried them out, a very large proportion of the vociferous minority loved them, and it only took a couple of weeks.
I'd categorise it as an unintended card. The removal of the admittedly wrong card from the box was intentional.
I remember an auction which appeared to go something like:
N: 1NT
E: Pass
S: Pass
E: 3 !c
East had, of course, used the Pass card instead of the Stop card. She was initially furious because she didn't know the Laws and thought that I knew what had happened (I was S) and had somehow contrived to stop her making her desired call, so I just called the TD and got him to apply Law 25A.
Just last week, the White Book attempted to clarify this regulartion
There's still a No Smoking card in one of the bidding boxes at Sheffield BC! :)
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
Antiques Roadshow 2068 . . .
Presumably he allowed the change.
Indeed he did.
Playing a Pass card instead of a Stop card is a very plausible mechanical error (they're very near to each other in most bidding boxes), and nobody intends to legitimately play "pass, 3!c" on the same turn. As such, any instance of "Pass instead of Stop" is either a mechanical error or outright cheating, with the former being much more likely. (The pass wouldn't stand in any case; a mechanical error can be corrected, and cheating would be punished an entirely different way.)
Forgetting the Stop card altogether is different, because it's plausible that the player had meant to make the bid in question and didn't realise it was a jump bid.