Laws 62 and 63. Correction/Establishment of a revoke.
Happened at a club game yesterday.
North, declarer, leads a heart, East discards, North wins the trick and leads another heart.
East now says, sorry, I have a heart, takes a card (heart) from his hand and shows it.
Should we rule that the card has been played to the current (second) trick under law 45C1 and consequently the revoke is established?
Or can we take the view that the offender is allowed to correct the revoke on the previous trick because his intention in showing the card was not to play it to the second trick but to draw attention to the fact that he had revoked?
Comments
As described there is no "view" to be taken ... the revoke is not established. East has draw attention to the revoke. East's heart is played to the first trick and and his discard will become a major penalty card. Declarer can change his card to the trick: if he does so then West may also change their card BUT the withdrawn card becomes a penalty card.
Peter
Correct.
Given that N (declarer) was on lead to both tricks and E was the offender, declarer can change the card played from dummy (S) to the revoke trick (with the stated consequences for W), although he is perhaps unlikely to do so. He can also change the card he led to the second trick. This is quite likely: if hearts were trumps and there were two outstanding when we came in, the first trick has now drawn trumps, and declarer may not now wish to draw another round for lurkers. Or he may perceive an advantage in leading something else to take advantage of the penalty card, such as by crossing to dummy to lead the suit of the penalty card. (Or both).
You are both discussing this by starting with the position that the revoke is not established. But that is the very point on which I have a doubt. If the revoke is not stablished, the rest follows. But can we state unequivocally that it is not established?
pg10003 says that there is no view to be taken, East has drawn attention to the revoke. But in drawing attention to the revoke he has also taken an action, exposing his card which is in the same suit as the one led by North to the second trick, and could therefore be deemed played to that trick. The situation would have been different if North had not led a heart to the second trick but had led another suit, to which East could not have been deemed to be following suit with a heart. In that case East's exposure of the heart would be rightly considered as drawing attention to his revoke before he played to the next trick, the revoke would not be established and all what you both say would follow.
But when North leads a heart again and East exposes a heart, how would you convince North that the card exposed by East is not a played card under law 45C1? I am not talking logic or what is reasonable, I am pointing to the letter of the law!
Everything else follows from this determination.
From the point at which "East now says, sorry, I have a heart," then the revoke is not established. The fact that he then exposes the revoking card is slightly incidental, but does serve to become the card pleased to the previous trick.
Had he played the heart first, then everybody looks at it scathingly which East wakes up and says "I appear to have revoked on the previous trick" then it's all a bit different. The card was played.
As usual, I'm applying common sense, pragmatism and fairness as I don't have a rule book handy, so I might be wrong. But in any case, it's a matter of establishing facts so that the correct rule can be applied. The former is often harder; how often do we hear "I didn't hesitate, my pass was in tempo."
If you state before revealing a card that you're not playing it, then you're not playing it. So the second card isn't being played to the second trick. The fact that West has now seen the card means that it becomes a major penalty card (as East revealed it intentionally, Law 50B); East must therefore use it as the replacement card for the first trick (non-established revoke = you must attempt to correct it = you must play a card following suit, and penalty cards must be played as soon as legally possible). So it isn't a penalty card for very long.
West has also seen the card that East attempted to play to the first trick, but it couldn't legally be played to that trick, so it becomes a major penalty card without East being forced to play it. East will have to play it at the next legal opportunity (unless West ends up on lead and the declarer trades the major penalty card for a lead restriction).
So we rewind to the point at which East revoked, and require them to substitute the heart that they showed to West. North can replace South's card to the trick if desired; if North does so, West can also replace their card (at the cost of creating a penalty card of their own, because it was E/W's action that caused the rewind in the first place). The second trick is treated as not having happened, and the winner of the first trick (which might or might not be North again) can lead to it.
I'll give you a parallel example from football. Ball goes out of play over the touchline and a player is about to complete a throw-in, but then throws it underhand to a teammate so he can make the throw-in. Do you think the referee is going to rule the throw-in illegal and give a throw-in to the other team? No, of course, not. Everyone, including the parking lot attendants, can see the underhand throw was not an intended attempt at a throw-in.
And, back to bridge, everyone knows the player wasn't playing a card, even if he exposed it.
East's words, "Sorry. I have a heart", make the intention clear: it's not a card played to the current trick but a reporting of an irregularity on the previous trick.
The director might speak with the players with regards to having taken an action, such as exposing the unplayed heart, before calling for a ruling but there's nothing of interest here for the director but correcting the not-established revoke and dealing with the penalty card.
The problem with analogies from other sports is that they do nothing to help anyone who is not familiar with the game! I'm not even sure what sport you are referring to, since I know there are a number of games called "football" in their own countries.
It is completely clear from the wording of the OP that the revoke is not established. When E draws attention to the revoke by saying "sorry, I have a heart" he has prevented the establishment of the revoke by drawing attention to it, but he has to expose the card because all the players are entitled to know which heart it is that is going to go into the revoke trick when the revoke is corrected.
Even if E had said something as vague as "whoops" (or the infamous "Oh sh...") before exposing the card, I would be inclined to think that he was drawing attention to the revoke on the previous trick (thus preventing establishment of the revoke), rather than attempting to play to the second trick (thus establishing it).