"Unfair" Established Revokes
I came across this situation twice recently.
E (declarer) plays last to a heart trick and trumps it, then leads a heart. "Hold it" says everyone.
The revoke has been established (Law 63A1).
But: it would be perfectly possible to correct the revoke without creating any UI, or putting non-offenders at a disadvantage, so a 2-trick adjustment / penalty seems unnecessary.
I can think of several similar revoke situations where little or no damage is done to the non-offending side.
Is there perhaps an opportunity to review the revoke law to remove such extreme cases?
(Yes I know players shouldn't revoke, but the laws are supposedly designed to redress damage to a non-offending side and to take away any advantage gained, and not to penalise - Law 12B1)
Comments
Every update of the laws seems to make the revoke penalty less significant. By 2037 we'll be rewarding players for revoking!
One objection to removing all the revoke provisions apart from adjusting in equity is that it would involve a lot more work for TDs.
I don't think there is any harm in including a deterrent element in the adjustments following revokes.
This particular case could be recognised by slightly delaying the Establishment of a Revoke law 63A 1 and 2 - the law could change from:
to:
This might even enable a simplification because law 63A2 (which seems specially to cater for dummy) could probably be removed - here's what it says:
That seems to risk ill-feeling if a defender is the one who can establish the revoke. I can imagine all sort of arguments based on whether or not the defender realised there was a revoke before establishing it. and whether or not they should draw attention to the revoke if it's not in their interests to do so.
Consider a similar situation where it is defender that trumps and then leads the suit that they trumped. If we undo, declarer has not been disadvantaged (indeed there is an advantage as defender now has a major penalty card).
In fact there is very little difference in practical terms between a revoker playing a heart to the next trick and then noticing, and them saying "oops I have a heart" and then showing it.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it becomes "unrectifiable" once the opposing side have played to the next trick, as they have given information away to the revoking side,
Under the proposed change, that would still establish the revoke.
You could probably get the desired effect by changing it to "A revoke is established if both sides have played to the following trick. A revoke by a defender is also established if that defender's partner has played to the following trick." The first half of this is pretty similar to the test used in Law 67, so it isn't without precedent.
I expect you could do that if you thought that was the desired effect.
I suppose they have - but under 16C they can't make use of it and they "may not" choose a call or play suggested by the information if there is a logical alternative - and if they do the TD can restore enquiry (and penalise the OS for breach of a 'may not' condition.
I had exactly this situation (different suit!) happen again yesterday at the North Devon Congress.
It still seemed just as unfair.
I think there is mileage in revisiting the revoke law - I will pontificate.
I have been thinking about this and I am unsure as to what can be done. On one hand I can see there might be some merit. However, having said that I do wonder about "It still seems just as unfair". I don't think we can assume that something needs correcting on that basis. Why was it unfair? Do we know that it will be unfair on every similar occasion?
Sometimes declarer would be winning those two tricks (the revoke trick and the next trick) without revoking and without pausing for breath. Sometimes they might win those tricks with a little bit of "deep" thought. Sometimes they have no right to win those tricks. So when the director approaches the table they can have no idea which of those situations might apply.
So until we get something to cover all situations we have to follow what the introduction to the Laws says "They are designed not to punish irregularities but rather to rectify situations where non-offenders may otherwise be damaged". So when Declarer revokes who knows how the defenders may have been damaged. Are they able to quickly "unwind" what happened, has their memory been confused (if so was it deliberate?)? Has their concentration been affected?(again is it deliberate?). Has declarer obtained some information when ruffing (Table presence)?
May be we need to see why the Laws were phrased in this way so that the declarer was included (as opposed to excluded) as I suspect that there must be some background to this.
I agree with both of Gordon's comments on 12th Feb.