Law 15 - after play has started.
A situation from the tournament I am currently directing:
Bidding: E 1C, all pass.
S leads a small heart, dummy goes down and plays some heart, North plays AH.
At this point, E realises that both she and Dummy have 10C. It transpires that W has been bidding on the hand from the next board.
Law 15A1, W's pass is cancelled, as is N's pass.
Law 15A2b: W should pick up the correct hand and bid. The knowledge of N's withdrawn bid (and the withdrawn cards?) is AI to NS but UI to EW.
The thing is the play has already started. Law 15 says nothing about rectification only being possible during the auction period or before play starts.
Clearly if the play had advanced significantly it would be impossible to allow the board to play normally, but here the UI is small, and allowed to NS.
What should I do (and what in the laws guides me to this)?
Jeremy
Comments
Before delving into the details of para 246 sub clause Z we need a little more information.
How come W had the wrong hand? Did she take the cards out incorrectly? Had the dealer made an error, or the players of the hands on the previous round?
The over-riding principle that I use (rightly or wrongly), is to try and get a bridge result wherever reasonably possible. So I'd replace the W hand, take the N & W bids back, ask then to get on with it with warnings of UI, and see if the they call me back at the end. Quite often they don't, especially players also reasonable and pragmatic. As last resort the hand may need to be voided, but that may well be unavoidable here.
Gosh
Glad I am here drinking tea.
Only thoughts are that auction period is over (17D). I don't think you can let either board be played and scored because of so much information being available (defenders can't see a duplicate card!) and the AH is now visible [see Law 13A2 re extraneous info for a guide]. Suggest you do an adjusted score for both boards, see law 12 C2a. As GrahamC has suggested you will need to do a bit of detective work and find out what, how, who and why so that you can decide who was at fault and see if a procedural penalty should be awarded as well.
Of course I could be totally wrong but then I am still drinking tea.
Best wishes
CMOT_Dibbler
So in this situation, dummy (the hand that everyone's seen) is West from the second board, but not much is known about the hands from the first board. The second board pretty much has to be voided at this point; I don't see how you can get a useful result, as East knows West's entire hand on that board. (So that would have an assigned score, most likely Av+/Av- if one of the partnerships at this table were at fault, or Av+/Av+ if the fault belonged to someone at another table; the relevant Law here is 16D2d.)
On the first board, it seems possible to replay the hand starting from 1!c by East, Pass by South; West has the next call. The extraneous information that's held is: North is willing to pass out 1!c; South would lead hearts against 1!c; North has the A!h. That's not a negligible amount of information, but it's small enough that normal play should still be possible.
If neither side were at fault for the wrong hand being used, Laws 16C1 and 16D2c apply: the withdrawn information is AI, but if the Director thinks the result of the board was influenced by the fact that the information was authorised, the score can be adjusted (and given that both sides are non-offending here, it'd be quite possible for each side to get an adjustment that favours them). Meanwhile, if it's E/W's fault that West was playing the wrong hand (e.g. the boards were arranged correctly and West took the hand from the wrong board), then the withdrawn information is AI to N/S (Law 16C1) and UI to E/W (Law 16C2); any score adjustment on that board would thus be a rectification for misuse of UI.
For the record, I eventually got enough information to decide that both sides were culpable, and awarded AVE - AVE on the second board.
My eventual decision on the first board was to make them replay with the UI and W bidding from their correct hand. Unfortunately by the time I'd pieced the story together EW had looked at hand records and it was too late. Another AVE - AVE.
I agree that the second board is unplayable. If the hand from the second board was in the slot for the correct board, then neither side appears to be at fault so 60/60, and a PP against the previous table for misboarding. If W took the hand from the second board whereas everybody else took theirs from the first, then E/W are wholly responsible so 40/60.
As far as the first board is concerned, E had not called subsequently to the call by W with the wrong hand, so Law 15A2(a) does not apply to require an adjusted score. Clearly, however, it is possible to take the view that the information the players have which they should not have is such that normal play of the board is impossible, and that the board should be cancelled and an(other) artificial adjusted score awarded. But I guess the players won't want to lose two boards, so Law 16D3 should be applied, which leads to Law 16D2(c). In other words, you allow the bidding and play to continue, with the extraneous information authorised to N/S and unauthorised to E/W, but if anyone thinks that the information was just too helpful to N/S to allow a fair result on the board, then you have to cancel it after all.
Surely the hand records should not be available to the players in any competition at any level until after the last round. It is too open to abuse. In practice, of course, you have to trust the person who actually deals the boards. The practice in the club where I play and direct is only to make a hard copy of hand records available to a NPD.
This was in a 2 session all play all tournament, just before the break between sessions. Hand records were thus available.
The second board is clearly unplayable.
I think in theory the first board is too, but a ta club event I'd ask the pairs if they'd like to have another go, reopening the auction after 1C P.