Losing the Ace of Trumps?
It has always been a puzzle to me how, for example say a 7H-Doubled contract (with the AH in a defenders hand) can be made with the defence accidentally revoking by ruffing with the AH.
I know they are the Laws and the prescribed Trick-Penalty awards the extra trick to be transferred (Contract made). No doubt 100%.
Of course this is impossible when playing online.
I once asked an experienced TD many years ago, and his advice was to Lead the AH at trick one to prevent this happening.
One would have thought, logically the Ace-of-Trumps could never be lost to a trick in these circumstances.
I know they are the Laws and the prescribed Trick-Penalty awards the extra trick to be transferred (Contract made). No doubt 100%.
Of course this is impossible when playing online.
I once asked an experienced TD many years ago, and his advice was to Lead the AH at trick one to prevent this happening.
One would have thought, logically the Ace-of-Trumps could never be lost to a trick in these circumstances.
Comments
To change the Laws so that you don't lose tricks you can't normally lose would create other problems. While the OP is one end of a spectrum where would you draw the line? We don't want to create extra work for TDs.
I can see a potential rule along the lines of the rules for cancelling concessions (i.e. if you score 0 tricks as a consequence of a revoke penalty, you get the same score that you would if you had claimed 0 tricks and then attempted to cancel the concession).
Actually, this suggests that the same problem could happen in reverse: suppose, against 7HX, the defence concede immediately after the opening lead (partner not objecting), and subsequently discover they have the Ace of trumps. I would assume this would be scored as 1 trick, being a trick that they could not lose. But due to the possibility of a revoke, there are theoretical situations where they could lose it.
I suspect that this is all theoretical, though; impossible concessions are very rare, and those early in a hand even rarer (and in most cases, the opponents will reject the concession, given that you're not allowed to accept a concession of a trick you could not win).
Maybe rare at F2F, but I frequently do Law 71 rulings online. Declarers claiming in the middle of a trick can fail to claim the trick in play, or they make some other mistake when selecting how many tricks to claim.
That may seem reasonable, but I can't find any specific Law that says so. I find generally that if declarer concedes the remaining tricks, defenders don't go looking for tricks that declarer can't lose. That seems reasonable to me. What then tends to happen is that declarer is surprised by his bad score and there is general agreement that something wasn't right with the concession, and I get a Law 71 request.
On the OP, I agree with Manchester Rambler.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
The Law saying that you can't accept a concession of a trick that you can't win is Law 79A2 (although it conditions it on "knowingly accept", which allows for accidentally accepting the concession, or possibly even being wilfully ignorant).
Well spotted! I won't miss that again! :))
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live