When the requirement to play a major penalty card at the first legal opportunity results in damage to the non-offending side, under which Law may we adjust?
None. It's impossible for 72C to apply, because if you knew that leading this card would be to your advantage, you could just lead it! No need to create a penalty card of it.
AFAICT such a scenario will typically only create advantage by accident. For example, say West is planning to lead a diamond as opening lead (and the diamond is the obvious lead: almost everyone will lead it), but accidentally drops the Queen of Spades face up, and East sees it. The Queen of Spades is a major penalty card (being an honour) and thus West is forced to lead it. If it turns out that a diamond lead would fail and the Queen of Spades is a killing lead on the hand, the "offending" side have profited from the penalty card.
OTOH, a situation like this is essentially a fluke; it's impossible to set it up intentionally, because if you knew it'd help you'd just lead the card directly.
That said, I think it is possible for a partnership to take advantage of being forced to play a penalty card in weirder situations. Suppose you're leading from AK tight against a notrump contract, and your partner has shown length and probable strength in that suit during the bidding. You don't want a signal about that suit: nothing that your partner can tell you about it will affect your play there, but any card that partner signals with might be a high card, which might potentially be valuable. In most systems, there's no way to ask your partner not to signal, so either an A or a K lead could end up losing a trick when partner signals; OTOH, you pretty much have to unblock the suit. However, if you accidentally play both cards at once, you've gained an advantage: one is the lead, the other becomes a penalty card, and your partner knows that you have no choice but to continue the suit regardless and thus has no reason to signal encouagement or discouragement (the rules for playing penalty cards are not UI, so your partner's allowed to take advantage of this information by playing low). In this case, it's the opening leader's partner that gets an advantage from knowing that the opening leader will be forced to play a particular card; the opening leader can (and in fact would) play that card voluntarily, but their partner might misplay in the meantime due to not knowing what would inevitably happen next.
I think there is a much simpler case when damage might result. While following suit to a trick, a defender accidentally drops an honour card in another suit. The card dropped is a major penalty card. He wins a trick while the MPC is still exposed, and has to lead the penalty card. It's not a card he would normally have thought of leading at this point, but it happens to be the killer.
But I agree that he could not have known that to drop an honour card could work to his advantage. Normally it would work to his disadvantage. And I am not sure that you can apply Law 72C anyway to something that was totally accidental (by this I mean to distinguish something like dropping a card when playing another, or mispulling a bidding card because the cards are sticky, in contrast to something where a mental process is involved, albeit a flawed one, such as making an IB because one hasn't seen the bidding properly).
It seems to me that Law 12B2 applies to the MPC scenario:
"The director may not award an adjusted score on the grounds that the rectification provided in these laws is unduly severe or advantageous to either side."
The use of the word "either" makes it clear that it covers something advantageous to the offending side.
If you don't have to show encouragement/ discouragement then you may be able to keep a card that turns out to be important later on. However I can't see that a player (unless HH) could have known that playing the penalty card would enable you to keep such an important card.
@ais523 said:
That said, I think it is possible for a partnership to take advantage of being forced to play a penalty card in weirder situations. Suppose you're leading from AK tight against a notrump contract, and your partner has shown length and probable strength in that suit during the bidding. You don't want a signal about that suit: nothing that your partner can tell you about it will affect your play there, but any card that partner signals with might be a high card, which might potentially be valuable. In most systems, there's no way to ask your partner not to signal, so either an A or a K lead could end up losing a trick when partner signals; OTOH, you pretty much have to unblock the suit. However, if you accidentally play both cards at once, you've gained an advantage: one is the lead, the other becomes a penalty card, and your partner knows that you have no choice but to continue the suit regardless and thus has no reason to signal encouagement or discouragement (the rules for playing penalty cards are not UI, so your partner's allowed to take advantage of this information by playing low). In this case, it's the opening leader's partner that gets an advantage from knowing that the opening leader will be forced to play a particular card; the opening leader can (and in fact would) play that card voluntarily, but their partner might misplay in the meantime due to not knowing what would inevitably happen next.
This sounds distinctly plausible, and I can think of other such situations. Of course 72B1 and 72C would apply. The nice thing about 72C is it doesn't require intention on the part of offender.
Has anyone ever seen it happen at the table, and if so did you consider applying 72C?
@SteveFoster said:
To go back to the original question, doesn't L50E4 cover it?
"4. If following the application of E1 the Director judges at the end of play that without the assistance gained through the exposed card the outcome of the board could well have been different, and in consequence the non-offending side is damaged (see Law 12B1), he shall award an adjusted score. In his adjustment he should seek to recover as nearly as possible the probable outcome of the board without the effect of the penalty card(s)."
I'm not so sure that it does. E1 talks about information arising from the penalty card. I always thought this Law was to cover the situation where (typically) the partner of the player with the penalty card defended differently because he knew one or more of the following:
(a) that partner held that card;
(b) that it was a penalty card;
(c) that it would have to be played at the first legal opportunity; and
(d) that there would be lead penalties if he got the lead before the penalty card was played.
If the offending side gained by the different defence, which would not likely have been found had the penalty card not been there, then the score should be adjusted.
If the director could adjust the score because the operation of the rectification provisions of Law 50D themselves had damaged the non-offending side, I would have expected Law 50E4 to mention this.
@JeremyChild said:
This sounds distinctly plausible, and I can think of other such situations. Of course 72B1 and 72C would apply. The nice thing about 72C is it doesn't require intention on the part of offender.
It doesn't sound plausible to me. It doesn't require the player to have intended this outcome, but it does require them to be able to foresee it and I'm not at all convinced that is so. Maybe I'm just lucky in having partners who wouldn't create losers by signalling with winners - no need to go to extraordinary lengths for this.
Has anyone ever seen it happen at the table, and if so did you consider applying 72C?
@JeremyChild said:
This sounds distinctly plausible, and I can think of other such situations. Of course 72B1 and 72C would apply. The nice thing about 72C is it doesn't require intention on the part of offender.
It doesn't sound plausible to me. It doesn't require the player to have intended this outcome, but it does require them to be able to foresee it and I'm not at all convinced that is so. Maybe I'm just lucky in having partners who wouldn't create losers by signalling with winners - no need to go to extraordinary lengths for this.
Has anyone ever seen it happen at the table, and if so did you consider applying 72C?
I would be very surprised if they have.
I tend to agree.
But the essence of ais523's scenario is that the partner of the player with the penalty card would signal differently knowing of the penalty card from the way he would have signalled otherwise. That is a subset of the "defend differently" scenario I outlined above. So Law 50E4 covers it in the unlikely event that damage ensues to the non-offending side. Why do we need Law 72C?
Comments
None. It's impossible for 72C to apply, because if you knew that leading this card would be to your advantage, you could just lead it! No need to create a penalty card of it.
AFAICT such a scenario will typically only create advantage by accident. For example, say West is planning to lead a diamond as opening lead (and the diamond is the obvious lead: almost everyone will lead it), but accidentally drops the Queen of Spades face up, and East sees it. The Queen of Spades is a major penalty card (being an honour) and thus West is forced to lead it. If it turns out that a diamond lead would fail and the Queen of Spades is a killing lead on the hand, the "offending" side have profited from the penalty card.
OTOH, a situation like this is essentially a fluke; it's impossible to set it up intentionally, because if you knew it'd help you'd just lead the card directly.
That said, I think it is possible for a partnership to take advantage of being forced to play a penalty card in weirder situations. Suppose you're leading from AK tight against a notrump contract, and your partner has shown length and probable strength in that suit during the bidding. You don't want a signal about that suit: nothing that your partner can tell you about it will affect your play there, but any card that partner signals with might be a high card, which might potentially be valuable. In most systems, there's no way to ask your partner not to signal, so either an A or a K lead could end up losing a trick when partner signals; OTOH, you pretty much have to unblock the suit. However, if you accidentally play both cards at once, you've gained an advantage: one is the lead, the other becomes a penalty card, and your partner knows that you have no choice but to continue the suit regardless and thus has no reason to signal encouagement or discouragement (the rules for playing penalty cards are not UI, so your partner's allowed to take advantage of this information by playing low). In this case, it's the opening leader's partner that gets an advantage from knowing that the opening leader will be forced to play a particular card; the opening leader can (and in fact would) play that card voluntarily, but their partner might misplay in the meantime due to not knowing what would inevitably happen next.
I think there is a much simpler case when damage might result. While following suit to a trick, a defender accidentally drops an honour card in another suit. The card dropped is a major penalty card. He wins a trick while the MPC is still exposed, and has to lead the penalty card. It's not a card he would normally have thought of leading at this point, but it happens to be the killer.
But I agree that he could not have known that to drop an honour card could work to his advantage. Normally it would work to his disadvantage. And I am not sure that you can apply Law 72C anyway to something that was totally accidental (by this I mean to distinguish something like dropping a card when playing another, or mispulling a bidding card because the cards are sticky, in contrast to something where a mental process is involved, albeit a flawed one, such as making an IB because one hasn't seen the bidding properly).
It seems to me that Law 12B2 applies to the MPC scenario:
"The director may not award an adjusted score on the grounds that the rectification provided in these laws is unduly severe or advantageous to either side."
The use of the word "either" makes it clear that it covers something advantageous to the offending side.
If you don't have to show encouragement/ discouragement then you may be able to keep a card that turns out to be important later on. However I can't see that a player (unless HH) could have known that playing the penalty card would enable you to keep such an important card.
This sounds distinctly plausible, and I can think of other such situations. Of course 72B1 and 72C would apply. The nice thing about 72C is it doesn't require intention on the part of offender.
Has anyone ever seen it happen at the table, and if so did you consider applying 72C?
I'm not so sure that it does. E1 talks about information arising from the penalty card. I always thought this Law was to cover the situation where (typically) the partner of the player with the penalty card defended differently because he knew one or more of the following:
(a) that partner held that card;
(b) that it was a penalty card;
(c) that it would have to be played at the first legal opportunity; and
(d) that there would be lead penalties if he got the lead before the penalty card was played.
If the offending side gained by the different defence, which would not likely have been found had the penalty card not been there, then the score should be adjusted.
If the director could adjust the score because the operation of the rectification provisions of Law 50D themselves had damaged the non-offending side, I would have expected Law 50E4 to mention this.
It doesn't sound plausible to me. It doesn't require the player to have intended this outcome, but it does require them to be able to foresee it and I'm not at all convinced that is so. Maybe I'm just lucky in having partners who wouldn't create losers by signalling with winners - no need to go to extraordinary lengths for this.
I would be very surprised if they have.
I tend to agree.
But the essence of ais523's scenario is that the partner of the player with the penalty card would signal differently knowing of the penalty card from the way he would have signalled otherwise. That is a subset of the "defend differently" scenario I outlined above. So Law 50E4 covers it in the unlikely event that damage ensues to the non-offending side. Why do we need Law 72C?