Collected minor Laws errors
Every now and then, we notice an obvious (if minor) error in the Laws. I don't want them to get forgotten, so am making this thread to keep track of them.
"Cancelled"/"Withdrawn"/"Retracted": these have a circular definition in the Laws ("cancelled" and "retracted" are each defined as "withdrawn", and "withdrawn" as "either cancelled or retracted"!). Luckily the normal English meanings of the words seem close enough, but we could do with an actual definition somewhere. There's confusion about these elsewhere too, e.g. Law 25B3 talks about calls "withdrawn or cancelled" which is by definition redundant.
Law 40B3a: rectifies the score if players fail to disclose the meaning of a call or play, when required to do so by the Laws. There is, however, no such requirement. It should rectify the scores if players fail to disclose the agreed meaning of a call or play.
Law 11A: should have an exception for cases where the non-offending side is unaware that the irregularity occurred. For example, a defender revokes in 7NT and the declarer – who is not good at counting out the hand – fails to later notice the defender playing the card that they should have followed suit with earlier. However, the declarer has won every trick so far. Eventually, the declarer takes a trick 12 finesse because they think it's the only way to make the slam, the finesse is offside and the slam goes down two. Normally, the Director would adjust to 7NT-1 due to the revoke penalty. However, if the declarer does not know what the revoke penalty is, a literal reading of Law 11A prevents the offending side from gaining (all the tests are met: there was an irregularity, declarer acted before summoning the Director, declarer didn't know the relevant Law, and if declarer was aware that they would get an automatic trick they could have cashed a trick at trick 12 rather than taking the finesse). So the adjustment is to 7NT-1 for declarer but 7NT= for the defenders. This seems utterly arbitrary to me, because the four tests in Law 11A were for mostly unrelated events (because declarer missed that the revoke occurred, whether or not declarer knew of the revoke penalty should be irrelevant; declarer wouldn't be thinking about revokes at that point anyway).
Comments
Law 25A1: "If a player discovers that he has not made the call he intended to make" should be "If a player discovers that he has made a call he did not intend to make", in order to cover the situation where a player makes a call, but did not intend to make any call.
I don't see this as an error, but as intended. Certainly in live bridge I cannot see how someone can make a call without intending to make any call. One might think it possible online.
(Without getting too nerdy)
It is possible to put out a pass card instead of a stop card, when you had not decided how high to jump. (Especially if you are a player who puts out the stop card and then waits 10s before making their call!) The player intended to make a call but there was not an intended call (if their intention was to bid one of 2H, 3H, 4H).
Good point! Then the question becomes whether it would be an improvement to allow such corrections by changing the wording of the law.
I think it would be good to allow changing a call to an intended action (involving the bidding box) which need not be a call - the STOP card, the ALERT card (or the TD card?)
But surely the laws should apply just as equally to online bridge as to F2F - so the suggested wording is better.
The current laws were not written for online bridge, but at the next revision I imagine its existence will inform any proposed changes.
Law 44C states that the obligation to follow suit takes precedence over all other requirements of the Laws. This seems like an overbid – a literal reading implies that you should, e.g., pick up cards you've already played, and play them again, in order to avoid showing out.
I would like a reference to Law 16D1 added to law 24 (unless it is designed for sadistic TD trainers)
Note that 16D3 does not refer to law 24 - which it should - otherwise the director applies 2c or 2d i.e. can overlook law 24 entirely.
Law 68D2 states that Law 70 applies if a claim is doubted by any player, including dummy, causing the claim to be resolved as a contested claim.
Law 69A states that a claim is considered to be agreed if the opponents agree to it (and does not consider the possibility where partner disagrees – if the claim was by a defender, Law 68B2 undoes the claim, but there's no corresponding Law for the case where the claim was by declarer).
The consequence of this is that if declarer claims, and the opponents agree to the claim but dummy contests it, the claim is (by a literal reading of the Laws) both agreed and contested, giving us contradictory instructions for what to do about it.
(I'm not sure whether dummy was intended to be able to contest a claim by declarer, or only a claim by the defenders. It'd likely be an improvement to have consistent rules for what to do if dummy is the only player to contest declarer's claim, though, even if it's just "dummy can't do that".)
I think one has to take Law 68 in sequence. Law 68 D1 says "If the claim or concession is agreed, Law 69 applies." and 68D2 does not come into effect. Probably an addition to 68D1 could be added so that it now reads "If the claim or concession is agreed by all players, Law 69 applies. However, i think that might be "overkill" as 68D2 says "If it is doubted by any player (dummy included); ".
So on that reading if the claim is not agreed by any player, you cannot progress to Law 69.
CMOT
I agree. I don't think it's problematic as it is.
Law 45C1 allows intentional deviations from announced understandings by a player whose "partner has no more reason than his opponents to be aware of the deviation". This appears to accidentally ban (or at least not actively allow) psyches when the psycher's partner happens to hold a hand that's incompatible with the psyche. (For example, if you open 1S as a psyche with short spades, but partner happens to hold ten spades, this appears to be a Law 45C1 violation because partner does have more reason than the opponents to know that you deviated from the agreements – partner has ten spades but the opponents don't.) An ideal wording of this Law would probably differentiate prior knowledge from the currently held hand, somehow (although I can't think of an obvious improvement).
Following problems online, I would prefer that the claimer has time to give his explanation. The laws allow for any person to doubt the claim at any time.
I claim the rest, I...
Player with two trumps objects - and can now claim that the claimer didn't state in their statement that they would have finessed - and if the claimer continues with "will finesse the nine of trumps" then they can argue that this has only been added because the dispute has made the person aware of the possibility. How do you resolve this?
Online this is exacerbated because the partner of the claimer doesn't know what has happened, so can't give evidence - but both opponents do.
So I would like a law stating that "No one may interrupt the claimer until they have completed their claim statement"
The "at once" is also a problem for the claimer.
"I claim the rest." "I object"
There should be a fixed time perhaps set by the RA to allow the claimer to commence their statement.
How about using the stop card?
I've had conversations with Robin Barker and David Stevenson about this and I think we all agree that a claim statement is not considered made until it has been completed. Of course the TD needs to judge whether or not that is the case, but it does mean that someone who realises in the middle of making a claim, without prompting from anyone else, that the claim is not good, is free to change it or even to withdraw it altogether.
Interrupting a claim would certainly not result in the claimer being held to the incomplete claim.
Reading through old threads in this forum, I stumbled across another, clearer example of this happening at the table – accidentally alerting a call with a pass card rather than an alert card. If RHO called very quickly after partner's alertable call, it's quite possible that it's your turn to call at this point, and removing the pass card from the box is in theory passing, but if you picked it up instead of the alert card, that doesn't indicate any intention to (at that moment) make a call.
There's a contradiction between the introduction to Law 50, and Law 50B. The introduction states that the Director can declare an exposed card to not be a penalty card, whereas Law 50B states that exposed cards become either a minor or a major penalty card, without any discretion for the Director.
Presumably, Law 50B shouldn't apply to cards that the Director designates not to be penalty cards.
I don't see any contradiction. It starts with an "unless" and then describes the usual situation. Just like 46B starts with "except..." and then describes what usually happens.
I think the intention is reasonably clear but I don't think it is well worded.
For example, it would be clearer if 50B started with "A penalty card below the rank of an honour and exposed unintentionally (as in playing two cards to a trick, or in dropping a card accidentally) is a minor penalty card."
Alternatively, Law 50 could be "A card prematurely exposed (but not led, see Law 57) by a defender is a penalty card and laws 50A to 50E apply, unless the Director designates otherwise (see Law 49 and Law 72C may apply)"
I make the suggestions to show where the current wording is lacking - I don't think the "unless" works quite as well as Gordon states. By contrast, Law 46B (Gordon's example) is couched in the way I suggest for law 50.
This may be a pedantic issue but when replacing an insufficient bid with a comparable call under Law 27B1b, there is reference to Law 27D. So far, so good.
However, Law 23C (which is admittedly virtually the same as Law 27D) says that it should be referenced in such a case, and Law 26A backs it up.
Law 27B1 makes no reference to Laws 26A or 23C, nor should it need to do so. It might seem sensible to amend Laws 26A and 23C accordingly? Or have I missed something?
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
L27 refers to L27D
L30, 31 & 32 refer to L23
L23 tells us that "comparable calls" exist in L27, 30, 31 & 32
I agree that this is imperfect but not likely to cause a problem in practice.
Law 49: "when a defender names a card as being in his hand, each such card becomes a penalty card (Law 50)". This produces an easy way for a defender to determine where a particular card is, or to create a penalty card in declarer's hand or in dummy, by claiming to hold a card that they don't actually hold.
This almost certainly isn't intentional, especially as there aren't many rules relating to what happens with a penalty card in declarer's or dummy's hand – the Law should be worded to have different consequences if such a statement by a defender is inaccurate.
Law 50 and Law 49 both give mechanisms for creating a penalty card, and Law 49's isn't limited to defenders. This is almost certainly a mistake, and penalty cards are almost certainly intended to only be for defenders, but the purpose of this thread is to point out that sort of wording mistake so that we remember it / can get it corrected (the WBF is looking for feedback on this sort of thing at the moment, after all).
I don't understand this comment at all: the title of the law and every reference in it limits its application to defenders.
LAW 49 - EXPOSURE OF A DEFENDER’S CARDS
Except in the normal course of play or application of law (see
for example Law 47E), when a defender’s card is in a position
in which his partner could possibly see its face, or when a
defender names a card as being in his hand, each such card
becomes a penalty card (Law 50); but see Law 68 when a
defender has made a statement concerning an uncompleted
trick currently in progress, and see Law 68B2 when partner
objects to a defender’s concession.
As written, this isn't limited to cards that actually are in the defender's hand. The Law assumes that they are without actually checking.
I think any other interpretation is outlandish!
In the event of a defender naming a card in his hand that he doesn't have, it can't then become a Penalty Card as it is not in his hand to become one. The situation can be covered by the UI Law 16B and/or Laws 73D2/E2, not to mention a fine if deliberate.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
Pointed out on BridgeWinners recently: Law 20G1 forbids asking a question for which the sole purpose is to benefit partner – but with a sufficiently pedantic reading, this is pretty much impossible to violate because helping your partner to play better improves your own score in addition to your partner's. It should probably instead prohibit asking questions primarily for the purpose of informing your partner about the answer to the question.
Law 68B2 attempts to apply Law 16C to information arising from a concession made by one defender that is contested by the other defender. The problem is that Law 16C is written assuming the existence of an offending and a non-offending side, and yet neither side has actually offended here (there having been no irregularity). As such, this produces the wrong result (in theory all the resulting information is authorised to both sides!).