[VixTD]

---

They're obviously not very good at following suit at my club. This one was from last night:

East was declarer in 4♠ on the lead of ♣8. She won in dummy and led ♠A, South discarding a club (revoke). She now abandoned trumps and eventually made ten tricks, and was given one more for the revoke penalty.

She claimed she had not been sufficiently compensated for the effect of the revoke, and that if South had followed suit she would then have led a second trump to the king and made two overtricks.

What do you think? Should the director do more to restore equity?

[RMB1]

VixTD, on 2012-February-28, 07:54, said:

and that if South had followed suit she would then have led a second trump to the king and made two overtricks.

What do you think? Should the director do more to restore equity?

SA, SK, CQ, DA (H), HA, HK, CA (H), H ruff ... Is a good line whether or not SQ drops, so I think you have to give some credence to "a second trump to the king". If that was declaer's plan then I think (some of) 12 tricks is appropriate.

[ahydra]

Robin - I think you missed the CK. But otherwise I agree (and would award 50% of 11 and 50% of 12, if I can do such a thing, since it seems perfectly sensible to finesse spades).

ahydra

[Cyberyeti]

ahydra, on 2012-February-28, 08:29, said:

Robin - I think you missed the CK. But otherwise I agree (and would award 50% of 11 and 50% of 12, if I can do such a thing, since it seems perfectly sensible to finesse spades).

ahydra

I think that at MPs you go for 13 and only fail because the heart is overruffed with a routine 12 if trumps are 3-2.

Q♣
K♠
A♠
J♣
A♦ throwing ♥
A♥
K♥
K♣ throwing ♥
♥ ruff and only the overruff prevents 13, you'd be making 12 if the Q♠ was outstanding.

I see Robin also said this, but this looks like the line, finessing the spade is not good as may gain little if it wins unless trumps are 4-1.

Hooking the spade and losing always costs a trick over playing for the drop, hooking the spade and winning doesn't always gain one.

[ArtK78]

Declarer is entitled to 12 tricks. A normal line of play is ♠A, ♦A pitching a heart, ♠ to the K, club, heart A and heart to hand, top club pitching a heart from dummy, heart ruff. If this wins, then a diamond ruff, pull trump and claim. As North can overruff the third round of hearts, declarer makes 12 tricks.

Sorry - I am the third person to point out this line.

[Trinidad]

I agree. 12 tricks are fairly normal.

If I were the TD I might act ignorant and ask South why she wouldn't take the finesse in trumps, just to check. If she says that she plans to leave a high trump out then I believe her immediately.

I would not give a weighted score. I would rule 12 tricks 100% of the time.

Rik

[aguahombre]

VixTD, on 2012-February-28, 07:54, said:

They're obviously not very good at following suit at my club.

I was starting to wonder about that. Good preempt

[Cyberyeti]

VixTD, on 2012-February-28, 07:54, said:

They're obviously not very good at following suit at my club. This one was from last night:

Could be worse, at mine, the last 2 sessions I've played we've had:

1st round of trumps: A, x, x, shows out
2nd round: x, x, 10, discards again "oops, I have a trump"

when it was done against me I had a situation where I had 9 trumps to the AKQ109 between the 2 hands, and after the double revoke, the offender won my marked finesse with the J. The penalty meant I was the only person in the room to make a 50% slam when the finesse was wrong.

[VixTD]

Trinidad, on 2012-February-28, 10:31, said:

If I were the TD I might act ignorant and ask South why she wouldn't take the finesse in trumps, just to check. If she says that she plans to leave a high trump out then I believe her immediately.

I did this, although I wasn't acting. (I'd missed the same line and gone off in 6♠.) I gave her several opportunities to explain why she would play the king rather than the jack, but she was unable to. I wasn't persuaded she would have done this, so I left the score at eleven tricks. I did go away wondering if I was putting players who have difficulty articulating their motives at a disadvantage. Maybe she would have played that way instinctively, without being able to explain why.

[bluejak]

ahydra, on 2012-February-28, 08:29, said:

Robin - I think you missed the CK. But otherwise I agree (and would award 50% of 11 and 50% of 12, if I can do such a thing, since it seems perfectly sensible to finesse spades).

Certainly: sometimes people forget that Law 64C refers to adjusted scores, so weighted scores are the norm, except in North America.

ArtK78, on 2012-February-28, 08:58, said:

Declarer is entitled to 12 tricks. A normal line of play is ♠A, ♦A pitching a heart, ♠ to the K, club, heart A and heart to hand, top club pitching a heart from dummy, heart ruff. If this wins, then a diamond ruff, pull trump and claim. As North can overruff the third round of hearts, declarer makes 12 tricks.

Sorry - I am the third person to point out this line.

Trinidad, on 2012-February-28, 10:31, said:

I agree. 12 tricks are fairly normal.

If I were the TD I might act ignorant and ask South why she wouldn't take the finesse in trumps, just to check. If she says that she plans to leave a high trump out then I believe her immediately.

I would not give a weighted score. I would rule 12 tricks 100% of the time.

Rik

I do not understand why declarer would adopt this line. There seem to me to be a number of possibilities that a club declarer might adopt, certainly including finessing in trumps. The fact that the best line leads to 12 tricks is insufficient reason to give 100% of 12 tricks [even assuming it is true: I have not checked].

The idea of an adjusted score under current Laws is to give a weighting of each reasonable possibility. Thus to give 100% of one score the likelihood of that particular score must be extremenly high, at least 85%, and I do not believe it is in this case.

[StevenG]

bluejak, on 2012-February-29, 19:26, said:

The fact that the best line leads to 12 tricks is insufficient reason to give 100% of 12 tricks [even assuming it is true: I have not checked].

The idea of an adjusted score under current Laws is to give a weighting of each reasonable possibility. Thus to give 100% of one score the likelihood of that particular score must be extremenly high, at least 85%, and I do not believe it is in this case.

This argument guarantees that someone good enough to find the best line is not given equity.

[blackshoe]

You assume that "equity" is that anyone "good enough to find the best line" will always do so. That is demonstrably not the case. Even World Class players make mistakes (although far fewer of them than the rest of us).

[StevenG]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-01, 08:53, said:

You assume that "equity" is that anyone "good enough to find the best line" will always do so. That is demonstrably not the case. Even World Class players make mistakes (although far fewer of them than the rest of us).

But if you give, say, 12 tricks 70% of the time and 11 tricks 30% of the time, then 70% of the time the weighted score is worse than would have achieved at the table, purely because of the opponent's infraction. This does not seem fair to me.

OK, 30% of the time you've done better, but why should you not get lucky sometimes if the opponents break the rules? Do you really need to be given equivalent bad luck to balance it out?

What's more, that assumes the 70% and 30% are correct. In practice they are arbitrary numbers invented by the TD.

[blackshoe]

I think "invented" is not right. The TD uses his judgement; that's what he's supposed to do. Also, I'm not sure you understand the purpose of weighted scores. "In order to do equity, and unless the Regulating Authority forbids it, an assigned adjusted score may be weighted to reflect the probabilities of a number of potential results." So when the TD assigns 70% of 12 tricks and 30% of 11 tricks, he's saying that in his judgement declarer will make 12 tricks 70% of the time and 11 tricks the other 30% (roughly). Generally, in assigning probabilities, the TD will increase a bit those more favorable to the NOS. So in this case perhaps the TD felt that declarer would really only make 12 tricks 60 or 65% of the time. IAC, it's his judgement. Yours may differ, and if you're making the ruling that's fine. But I don't think you can say the TD is wrong just because his judgement differs from yours (unless it's a really radical difference). And if you're a player of the NOS and you disagree with the TD's judgement, you can appeal.

[StevenG]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-01, 10:51, said:

I think "invented" is not right. The TD uses his judgement; that's what he's supposed to do.

But does he have any methodology other than plucking numbers out of thin air?

blackshoe said:

Also, I'm not sure you understand the purpose of weighted scores.

True. It seems to me that the effect of weighted scores is to give some NOS pairs less than they deserve, whilst giving others more, aiming to give a net gain of zero. The traditional method gives all NOS pairs at least what they deserve. So, is the purpose to protect the offenders?

[Trinidad]

bluejak, on 2012-February-29, 19:26, said:

I do not understand why declarer would adopt this line.

It is a very safe line to 11 tricks with a sure 12 tricks if the queens happens to drop. If the queen doesn't drop there is a very good chance of making 12 tricks anyway with trumps 3-2. If trumps are 4-1 it hardly matters whether you finesse now, or on the next round after entering dummy in clubs.

If you take the finesse and it wins, the odds of getting 12 tricks are about as high as when you don't finesse and the queen doesn't drop. If you take the finesse and it loses, you have much less of a chance to get 12 tricks.

bluejak, on 2012-February-29, 19:26, said:

There seem to me to be a number of possibilities that a club declarer might adopt, certainly including finessing in trumps. The fact that the best line leads to 12 tricks is insufficient reason to give 100% of 12 tricks [even assuming it is true: I have not checked].

The idea of an adjusted score under current Laws is to give a weighting of each reasonable possibility. Thus to give 100% of one score the likelihood of that particular score must be extremenly high, at least 85%, and I do not believe it is in this case.

I fully agree with you, except for the last part. In my opinion, not finessing is a hard line to find. But once you think of the possibility of not finessing, it is not that hard to determine that it is a better line than finessing.

Obviously, here the TD needs to make a judgement at the table: How likely is it that East will find this line? As I understood the OP, in this case East took the initiative of telling the TD that she would not finesse and she would make 12 tricks. A declarer who wouldn't have seen this line might well have said: "The queen was off side, so I never would have made 12 tricks."

If the declarer can explain the rationale for not finessing straight away at the table, I do not see any reason why I wouldn't believe her. I would be fairly sure (>>85%) that 12 tricks would have been the result if South would have followed suit. That is why I wrote that I would act ignorant for a while: to get declarer to explain why she wouldn't finesse. That would help me in judging how likely it really was that declarer would not finesse.

(It seems that she wasn't able to explain, but that only came to light after I posted that I would give 100% of 12 tricks if declarer would explain the line.)

Rik

[gordontd]

StevenG, on 2012-March-01, 17:18, said:

It seems to me that the effect of weighted scores is to give some NOS pairs less than they deserve, whilst giving others more, aiming to give a net gain of zero. The traditional method gives all NOS pairs at least what they deserve. So, is the purpose to protect the offenders?

We use "sympathetic weighting" in an attempt to err in favour of the non-offending side, so the purpose is not to protect the offenders.

[blackshoe]

StevenG, on 2012-March-01, 17:18, said:

But does he have any methodology other than plucking numbers out of thin air?


True. It seems to me that the effect of weighted scores is to give some NOS pairs less than they deserve, whilst giving others more, aiming to give a net gain of zero. The traditional method gives all NOS pairs at least what they deserve. So, is the purpose to protect the offenders?

Using judgement is not "plucking numbers out of thin air".

No, the purpose is not to protect the offenders.

I'm not sure whether you genuinely don't understand how the TD does his job, willfully don't understand, or are simply trolling. If it's the second, you need to think about why it is so, what's stopping you from understanding. If it's the third you need to stop. Immediately.

[StevenG]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-01, 19:50, said:

Using judgement is not "plucking numbers out of thin air".

No, the purpose is not to protect the offenders.

I'm not sure whether you genuinely don't understand how the TD does his job, willfully don't understand, or are simply trolling. If it's the second, you need to think about why it is so, what's stopping you from understanding. If it's the third you need to stop. Immediately.

I am not trolling and I am insulted that you think I am.

But you have not explained how a woolly word like "judgement" means you arrive at specific figures.

[blackshoe]

StevenG, on 2012-March-02, 03:47, said:

I am not trolling and I am insulted that you think I am.

But you have not explained how a woolly word like "judgement" means you arrive at specific figures.

I thought you might be, but if you deny it, fine.

How else would you implement weighted scores? Perhaps you would rather go back to 12C1e rulings. Those aren't very good at restoring equity, though. Certainly not as good as weighting.