EDIT: I forgot to refresh the page before I posted, so I wrote the following without seeing posts in this thread from #17 onwards. Apologies if I am repeating things that have already been said.
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In responding to you, pran, I do want to note that you began your response to my OP with "Without having scrutinized this suggestion too carefully", and your response to iviehoff with "so many words which I could not bother to study". I would simply point out that a sensible debate may be more likely if you care to read and try to understand posts written by other people, even if they are somewhat lengthy. We might surprise you with a reasonable argument or two.
pran, on 2011-May-18, 07:18, said:
What is the real problem?
Not the number of tricks played and which side won each of them, this has already been agreed upon.
The real problem is that when a certain number of tricks are still to be played a player holds either too few or too many cards in his hand. That is an irregularity preventing "normal" play on these remaining tricks.
I think this is the root of the difference of opinion. In my opinion, an ostensibly completed bridge trick should consist of exactly four cards, of which exactly one has been contributed by each player; for it to be otherwise is an irregularity, and is "the real problem". A failure to hold the right number of cards is a common consequence, but that is something to be dealt with when we construct a sensible rectification. In other words, I do not care if North has ten cards in his hand with ten tricks yet to be played -- if he played two cards to trick 1 and no cards at all to trick 3, I think there
is a problem.
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I concur with most of iviehoff's posts at #11 and #14. I am not quite sure how I feel about the proposed extensions to L65 yet; on the face of it, they are sensible specifications of what
should happen, but I will need to think about it a little more.
iviehoff, on 2011-May-18, 04:56, said:
Actually, I think that the first words of 67A are a perfectly good definition of defective trick. "When a player has omitted to play to a trick, or has played too many cards to a trick..."
Actually, they are something better than a definition of a defective trick, they are description of the situation in which Law 67A applies. This is what we want most of all for a law, a description of the circumstances in which you apply that law.
Indeed. I more or less reached that conclusion myself, so in the actual draft of a new L67 (in my OP), you will notice that this wording is retained -- almost. The change I made was to consider a trick defective only when the player's side has played to the next trick. I'm not sure I like this now; I may prefer the current wording. At the time, I was thinking of something like the following:
South is declaring a spade contract, and leads the HK; West covers with the HA, North follows with the H3, and East pauses to consider ruffing with a worthless trump. Playing quickly, and assuming that the HA was holding, South, West and North all turn their cards and West leads to the next trick. Now everybody catches on and calls the director. What should happen? We require East to play a legal card to the HK-A-3, obviously, but what next?
Well, who is at fault? West, clearly, for he didn't wait for the trick to be complete before playing to the next one. (North and South to a much lesser extent for turning their cards early.) So it seems OK to apply the L67B rectification.
Now suppose the trick, beginning with South, was HA-2-3-(no card). Now it feels like it is South who is primarily at fault when he leads to the next trick, with East-west essentially not at fault (yet). So I think we should require East to contribute a card to the heart trick. If he discards, South's next lead stands. If he ruffs, South has now led out of turn and the defenders have the usual options.
But if West plays to South's lead, then East-West are back to being at fault, so we hit them with 67B.
Is that sensible? If not, what should we be doing? And what about the case where the trick proceeds:
South HA, West H2, North H3, East H4; South HK...
West: "Didn't you already play the H4 a couple of tricks back?"
East: "Oops, I suppose I did."
Director: "Well, you didn't actually contribute a card to the previous trick, so please face a card you could legally have played."
East chooses a trump. Now what do we want to happen?
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Finally, a less-related comment.
axman, on 2011-May-17, 14:13, said:
Theoretically, in the event that you construct satisfactory defective trick law [DTL], even good DTL, and were to displace the passage that occupies L67 the result would not be any more satisfactory than had you done nothing.
The reason is that there are upwards of 70000 issues concerning how L67 interacts with the remaining body of law. Issues being inconsistencies, conflicts, and such, which exist because of the way the remaining body of law was constructed and would not take into account the 'improvements' of the substituted passages.
First, that is not a sufficiently good reason to give up on trying to improve the law. Second, I would be interested in your list of the first 70000 such issues. I would settle for, say, the top 10.
axman said:
What you have to keep in mind is the importance of being consistent throughout the law and as such it is necessary to first know the definition of bridge. This is not an easy thing to know and from what you have written it suggests that you do not yet know what it is.
I appreciate that you wrote your words as encouragement and in good faith. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if you could (a) show at least a tenuous connection between my words and the idea that I do not "know the definition of bridge"; (b) contribute something constructive by, for example, identifying where you believe either the current law or the proposal is flawed.
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