Law 73 Variation in Tempo
Two rounds of a side suit have been played, all following. Declarer now holds T65, the defence K2 and dummy one trump.
Declarer, who can't afford a loser, plays 6. There is a slight but perceptible hesitation by LHO before playing 2.
(This was subsequently agreed by RHO, but LHO is unaware of it.)
Declarer runs the 6. It loses to the K . TD is called. How do you rule?
Both players are experienced Grand Masters.
Declarer says LHO had no reason to hesitate with one remaining card and had been misled.
First thoughts are this is true, and thus the score should be adjusted.
However a little more thought indicates that neither had LHO any reason to hesitate with two remaining cards!
And this situation is NOT analogous to hesitating with singleton on the first round.
Law 73D1 states that players must be extra careful when they might benefit their side, but OTHERWISE unintentional hesitations are not infractions, and opponents draw an inference at their own risk.
All accepted that LHO's action were unintentional.
Since arguably that action would not benefit his side; was the inference at declarer's risk, thus no adjustment?
Comments
Doesn't 73E2 apply here? If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a question, remark, manner, tempo or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have been aware, at the time of the action, that it could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score.
It only requires that there is a hesitation (break in tempo), and that there is no demonstrable bridge reason for it. Both of which have been stated as being the case. It does not require intention, nor does it require the player to be aware that it could work to his benefit, only that he could have been aware.
I think this is correct. There was a question along these lines in the entry test at the recent EBL course, and this is consistent with the answer to that.
Basically you are saying 73E2 trumps (!) 73D1.
TD at the time (I was RHO) was unsure. He read all of L73 and decided these two paragraphs seem to be contradictory!
Eventually it was decided that the 'otherwise' in 73D1 was a key consideration, and thus 73D1 was not applicable.
However I raised this because there seem to be two further considerations.
Firstly, as I explained in my first post, the hesitation does not work to that players benefit; so it is not 'otherwise.'
(If anything it ensures he will get a bad score: declarer doesn't call TD if the ruffing finesse works, cries foul if it doesn't.)
Secondly, do Headings (in the Laws) have any significance?
73E2 is under 'Deception.' No-one thinks LHO was trying to be deceptive.
The interplay between these two laws is something that many people find hard to clarify in their minds. I think you are correct that "otherwise" is a significant word here.
Yes, the headers do have significance, but deception is certainly possible without intent.
I don't see how you can say that hesitating cannot work to the players benefit when it did work to his benefit.
I think it is logically clear that if a player breaks tempo with only one card left in the suit led, then:
(a) there can be no demonstrable bridge reason for doing so;
(b) the player could have known that it would (albeit unintentionally) mislead an opponent into thinking that the player had a choice of cards to play; and
(c) anything that misleads an opponent about the layout of the unseen hands has the potential to benefit the player's side.
Accordingly, whenever an opponent knows that there is more than one card outstanding, and his play depends on placing the location of unseen cards, then Law 73E2 is engaged.
Yep - the phrase "could have known" is there to protect the player who made the play out of tempo, since it means that the awarding of an adjusted score does not cast any stain on his escutcheon.
Which is why I said "mislead" rather than "deceive": although Gordon's point that deception can be innocent is quite right, misleading sounds less "bad" than deceiving.
I think the "risk" in Law 73D is that the opponent had a bridge reason for their variation in tempo and it if the player assumes a different bridge reason then the laws give them no protection,
If the opponent had no bridge reason for the variation in tempo, the player can draw an inference and will be protected by Law 73E.
This seems like a good summary.
No, I believe we have case law to that effect.
It seems to me that the best thing to do if you catch your self hesitatiting is to sit there doing nothing for as long as it takes for someone to point out that it is your turn? Would that take away the hesitation?
No, there are occasions when it's necessary to decide which card to play because it might have a material effect on the ownership of tricks. On your second point, I'm not sure why you would want get out of this in such a way. If you find yourself hesitating with nothing to think about, you could say so if that would avoid misleading your opponents.
After seeing a very experienced player do it, if I catch myself daydreaming or, for example, not realising that it was my turn, I usually throw out the words, "Sorry, nothing to think about. I didn't realise it's my turn to call/play" or something similar.
You can (and probably should) do it when you're declarer. It's a bad idea to do it when you're the defence.
It's not a bad idea when the alternative is to mislead declarer, especially if you are going to resent being ruled against. Of course if you give your partner UI in the process that's another potential cause for an adjustment, but you essentially gave away getting the benefit of these positions when you broke tempo without a bridge reason.
Hmm, is this a similar situation to correcting your own MI during the bidding? That gives (further) UI to partner, but avoiding misleading declarer is considered a more important consideration.
In this situation, you're giving misleading UI to partner and misleading AI to declarer, so correcting it gives more accurate UI to partner and more accurate AI to declarer. Presumably half the reason to correct it, therefore, is actually to prevent your partner performing the action that's counter-suggested by the UI (which, given that the UI is not accurate, would presumably be to your side's benefit rather than detriment, and thus would gain you an unfair advantage).
I've been meaning to make a topic about "what to do when you realise you've already given your partner UI" for a while, and this reminded me, but it'd better go in a different thread.
I don't agree, ais532. UI would otherwise arise from my delay and there is no UI to be had other than that I was not paying attention. Everyone is on a level playing field. If partner cares to take notice of and act on something unauthorised than we deserve an appropriate penalty or adjustment but there was no UI to be had in the situation.
This can often arise when I'm directing and I hear a discussion at another table which might require my attention (slightly raised voices or whatever). I'm distracted and maybe miss that RHO has already played a card or I don't realise that it's my turn to call. It can also happen that I simply don't realise that I'm dealer and I'm sitting there waiting for someone else to call and then see that I'm dealer. Better to let everyone know what the situation is than mislead everyone at the table.
I remember discussing this with a friend quite some time ago and he told me that in a similar situation he had heard Zia Mahmood say to the opponents 'I am thinking about the rest of the play, please don't read anything into this'.
That's fine if it's accurate, but I should probably have said earlier that if you say it without considering what is in your hand you could easily end up looking a bit fishy if your hand is such that you might have been thinking about the play to this trick.
As an example, I think that if it is clear that your signalling methods strictly require you to play the 9, pausing to assess whether you can actually afford to play the 9, or whether it might blow a trick in the suit, is a demonstrable bridge reason. Generally not blowing tricks is more important than giving clear signals to partner, although giving slow signals will always provide UI to partner, of course.
In both cases it is more important to give accurate information to opponents than to worry about giving UI to partner, which is not an offence (unless deliberate and/or gratuitous). If the UI constrains partner's actions to the detriment of your side, you must take your lumps.