BBO Discussion Forums: CLAIM button - BBO Discussion Forums

The other day I was declarer in a perfectly straightforward 6♠. By trick 4, having lost one trick so far, I had an obvious claim for the remaining tricks, making my slam, so I claimed - and was surprised to see my claim rejected. But these things do sometimes happen, so I painstakingly played on, cashing all the winners. At some point one of the defenders posted in the chat-line "why don't you claim?" to which I replied "what happened to my earlier claim?".

It then transpired that, allegedly, I'd claimed not for all the remaining tricks, but for all but one of the remaining tricks, hence going one down. They'd rejected my 'claim' out of pure generosity.

Now, I'm perplexed by this. I would have thought it difficult to mishandle the CLAIM button, and it always suggests "Claim all remaining tricks" as the default. And I use a desktop PC with a mouse, and don't recall ever having mis-clicked on BBO.

So is there a possible bug in the CLAIM button?

Another possibility is that I had some sort of 'senior moment'. I am well aware that these things do sometimes happen, with me .

A third possibility is that this was all a deliberate wind-up by my opponents, with the intention of either (a) covering for their incompetence in rejecting a clear-cut claim, or (b) breaking up my concentration. Or both .

Is there a way of retrieving all that happened during the hand in question, including the chat plus any CLAIM attempts? Playing out the hand in 'movie' view doesn't reveal anything.

Anyway, I would not have suggested the 'bug' theory but for one other thing. In another, totally unrelated hand, I played out a not-too-difficult 3NT and was surprised to get an unusually good IMPs score. So I looked at how other tables had fared, using the Traveller facility, and came across this. It would appear that, in 5♣xx, the unfortunate declarer intended at trick 6 to claim all the remaining tricks, but somehow contrived to concede the remaining tricks (including the top trumps!!) instead. His opponents, it seems, were not so magnanimous, and the result was a whopping -23 IMPs!

So maybe there is a problem with CLAIM. Should I be wary?

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-03, 04:51, said:

Players make mistakes with claims all the time. More commonly you claim less than all of the remaining tricks but the defenders assume it was the rest. My guess is that your case was a mistake on their part. The other case was almost certainly a claim by declarer that got rejected and then one of the defenders accidentally claimed all of the tricks when meaning to make a concession. This happens quite often and there is no way for the defenders to give the tricks back once the claim was accepted.

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-03, 04:51, said:

If you hit the "Claim" button on a trick to which you lead (or led), the default is "I take the rest"; if you hit the "Claim" button on a trick to which your opponent leads (or led), the default is "I concede the rest". This is an unpopular feature, but one which BBO says they can't fix.

Bbradley62, on 2016-January-03, 09:09, said:

I can well believe that. Why can't it always default to 'I claim all the rest'? After all if you claim when you can't, the defenders will be obliged to reject - but if you concede winners, they might not.....

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-03, 10:22, said:

I don't know the technical issues. Search for Barmar's posts including the words "claim" and "concede".

Bbradley62, on 2016-January-03, 09:09, said:

LOL of course they can fix it, and it seems as if they should.

On an only slightly related topic, I sometimes enter a claim, valid but for the omitted statement of line of play, out of laziness, along with 99% of claims on BBO.. OK I am a naughty boy. So spank me. The claim gets rejected, possibly because the line is not obvious to the opponents, possibly because they don't trust me to know it. Whatever. Fair enough. No complaints. We play the hand out for a few more tricks and at some time prior to the conclusion of the hand it becomes obvious to all that the original claim was valid.

At this point the defenders usually say "claim again". Well, I don't. They are equally capable of claiming or conceding. In the time that it took them to type in "claim again" to the chat bar they could have entered their own claim or concession. So to answer the OP, when they ask "why don't you claim?" I suggest that one appropriate response would be "why don't you?"

Bbradley62, on 2016-January-03, 09:09, said:

That's only when playing against robots. When playing against humans, it always defaults to taking the rest.

1eyedjack, on 2016-January-03, 15:00, said:

I think some players don't realize they can concede on defense. Do you really need to be passive-aggressive? Just claim again like they said.

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-03, 04:51, said:

Unfortunately, we only log claims that are accepted, not claims that are rejected.

I looked at the chat, though, and nothing was said about you claiming too few. When you asked what happened to the earlier claim, the reply was "entries + ruff needed - no statement".

I personally think the opponent who rejected that claim was being very insulting to you. No one who has been playing the game more than a day could fail to take the rest of the tricks at that point.

For those who are curious, this is the hand in question.

If I were playing that IRL, I would claim as soon as dummy wins trick 1, saying something like "If the trumps are 1-1 I take all the tricks, otherwise you get the trump king". And I would be incredibly insulted if someone disputed that claim because I didn't go into details about all the ruffs I was going to take.

On BBO I would probably do it like you did.

barmar, on 2016-January-03, 15:26, said:

Errr - no. You've got the wrong hand there. The contentious one which I was alluding to in my original post, occurred earlier on - albeit with the same opponents.

Yes...i have problems with the CLAIM icon. When get to the point where the rest of tricks are mine, i press on CLAIM icon....the computer thinks i am conceding the remaining tricks !!!!...How can this be so? If i then press on Claim....i conced the remaining tricks (even though my remaining tricks are all winners) with the contract goes down !!!!

penguin007, on 2016-January-04, 06:59, said:

Please understand, this is not what happened to me. I was in a simple 2NT contract, I'd got to about trick 8 I think, having made only two tricks so far, but all my remaining cards were winners. So I claimed the remaining six tricks to make eight in total and my contract. But according to the oppos, I actually claimed only five of the remaining six tricks, hence I would have gone one down if they'd let it stand. I dispute that this is what happened.

Sometimes a clam is rejected despite opps accepting it. It should be impossible to lose tricks whch cannot be lost as at he table

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-03, 17:27, said:

The OP said it happened on trick 4 of a 6♠ contract.

oryctolagi, on 2016-January-04, 07:24, said:

I don't see any mention of a 2NT contract in the OP. Are you talking about the hand right before it:



The chat during that hand isn't as clear about what happened and where it was in the play of the hand (we don't log each trick, so don't know how the timing of the chat relates to the play).

West: r u sure?
West: 4C + 2S+D
You: ok play on then
North: well done p
West: 9 tricks

Not sure what he was talking about there, since he'd already taken 5 tricks.

barmar, on 2016-January-04, 09:59, said:

Errr.... sorry my mistake [If there was some 'plot' afoot to befuddle me, well it seems to have succeeded, at least as far as this forum is concerned... ]

In my OP I cited the wrong hand. It was indeed the previous hand that I'd meant to refer to.

Yes there were two hands, in both of which I ended up as declarer, both of them made exactly, and in both of them I made a claim. The first one was the 2NT and I think I claimed the remaining 6 tricks after I'd made 2 and lost 5. If this was indeed what I claimed, it was rejected for no earthly reason.

In the second contract, 6♠, I claimed after conceding a trick to the trump king. This claim too was refused. As barmar says, it is a bit demeaning, to say the least, when the only remaining trick which isn't an obvious high-card winner, is a self-evident ruff in dummy. But I didn't actually want to mention the second claim refusal in the forum, seeing as that seems to be too obviously accusing my LHO of a bit of skullduggery, maybe with the aim of messing up my game.

I didn't want to make trouble, but it seems the cat is out of the bag now.

All I actually wanted to know was, is it too easy to make a stupid mistake when claiming? That question seems to have been answered, thanks all. I shall be extra careful how I work the CLAIM facility, from now on.

barmar, on 2016-January-03, 15:07, said:

Extending the playing time of a single hand is a small price to pay if as a result opponents appreciate that they can claim or concede in defence in perpetuity thereafter.

It's usually defenders who get peeved when a hand gets unnecessarily played out. You watch them pausing to think about each discard, not realising that it's immaterial.

But after a rejected claim, they can see all the hands, so it becomes obvious.

My problem with the claim button is that it says "Claim rejected" both when the opponent(s) reject it and when the claimant retracts it (perhaps because opps were taking to long to accept it). In the latter case I would prefer if it said "Claim retracted".