[gnasher]

Trinidad, on 2013-March-13, 05:43, said:

Clearly the lawmakers were aware that a player might show his hand to his opponents (they mentioned it in the footnote of law 74C5). If the lawmakers wanted to outlaw this wouldn't they have simply added a Law 7B4, establishing correct procedure for holding your hand?

I don't think that the lawmakers did intend to outlaw showing the opponents your cards.

The laws forbid infractions, but they don't forbid irregularities. I'm arguing that showing the opponents your cards is an irregularity.

[c_corgi]

74C5 is an example of violation of procedure. The footnote makes it clear that when the player shows his cards deliberately without claiming we are out of violation of procedure territory. If the showing of cards was deliberately misleading, we are into 73D2 territory. This means one of two things:
1. The list in 73D2 does not explicitly include the situation described in the 74C5 footnote, but the footnote has been included to make it clear that 73D2 nevertheless applies.
2. The list in 73D2 does include the situation described in the 74C5 footnote and the footnote was included purely to assist navigation. In this case the deliberate showing of cards falls into one or more of the categories in the 73D2 list. It is not clear (IMO) whether it belongs under "gesture" or "purposeful deviation from correct procedure".

The link between deliberate showing of cards without claiming and violation of procedure is absent in case 1 and seems tenuous in case 2.


Edit: cross-posted with Trinidad's last post; there is significant overlap.

This post has been edited by c_corgi: 2013-March-13, 06:25

[barmar]

gnasher, on 2013-March-12, 08:51, said:

No, of course not. When did I say I was offended?

You said "my problem is that when people do this to me....". If it doesn't bother or offend you, why is it a "problem"?

Is it just an annoyance, like card-snapping?

[barmar]

All this talk about misleading opponents seems to be a red herring. I think the comment that prompted it (post #14) wasn't about misleading the opponents, but declarer gaining information from the opponent's reaction.

If you show your cards to the opponent, and he concedes because he can see that none of his plays make a difference, there's no problem. The problem comes when he DOESN'T concede. Now declarer has learned that the cards are not laid out as he expected, and he can revise his plan accordingly.

[gnasher]

barmar, on 2013-March-13, 07:04, said:

You said "my problem is that when people do this to me....". If it doesn't bother or offend you, why is it a "problem"?

When did I say I wasn't bothered by it?

I'm not, in fact, very bothered by it, and if it were only ever used in the way that Josh described I wouldn't be bothered at all. I'm mildly bothered by someone wasting my time, by failing to claim when they should have claimed.

Similarly, I'm mildly bothered by people putting words into my mouth.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2013-March-13, 07:23

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2013-March-13, 07:04, said:

You said "my problem is that when people do this to me....". If it doesn't bother or offend you, why is it a "problem"?

Is it just an annoyance, like card-snapping?

I can see where Andy's coming from, because I don't really like it either. I don't think it saves time -- how is it more efficient than claiming and letting the opponent see both concealed hands? Also, when the opponent that is shown the hand concedes, his partner sometimes is not given the chance to see partner's or declarer's hand -- and it certainly does not save time when this player demands his right to see the cards and the other two hands have to be taken out of the pockets. Also it can intimidate less-experienced or -confident players. Perhaps declarer and/or defender on lead have forgotten something, and the other defender has a potential trick, but doesn't want to feel foolish by asking to see the other hands, assuming that the other two know better -- or the defender on lead may show his hand in turn, giving the declarer the information that he supposedly (but maybe didn't) knew all along. Perhaps these last (and barmar's similar situation above) seem to be less of a concern as it doesn't happen often, but as the gesture is kind of show-offy, it may be imitated by those who don't actually know what is going on.

[gnasher]

barmar, on 2013-March-13, 07:10, said:

All this talk about misleading opponents seems to be a red herring.

It's also a red herring of your own making. Nobody has suggested that the action in the original post might mislead someone.

[Zelandakh]

Barry, I think the 73D2 link covers both situations nicely. Since it establishes that showing cards is included in the list used for Law 73 (remarks, manners, etc) we can presumably use 73D2 for the case where this is done to mislead and 73F for the case where it is done to gain information. We could also use 74C3 but it seems better to use the Law that is specifically referenced. In any case, there seems to be enough there to say that revealing your hand to speed up play is ok but if you gain from it then you are open to be ruled against. Gain might come in the form of misleading opps, obtaining information from which opponent reacts, or simply from getting some sort of tell reaction. And if there is no way to gain, the player showing their hand was almost certainly in a position to claim.

[Trinidad]

I will readily admit that there are declarers who will throw in LHO and then show LHO their cards. In that situation it amounts to a claim.

But there may also be situations where it is immaterial what LHO does, but where RHO (or even declarer) still has a genuine decision to make. If LHO then goes into the tank, then I think it is certainly ok if declarer shows him his cards to cut the tank short.

This occurs a lot in IMP or rubber scoring: Declarer knows that the contract is 100% safe and that we are playing for overtricks. He just doesn't know what overtricks he is going to get. A defender is thinking and tries to desperately come up with a layout where it is still possible to break the contract. Declarer shows him his hand and the defender says: "Ok. +1". In Dutch there even is a word for this: "inpakken". Alternatively, the defender knows the layout of the hand and comes up with a play and play proceeds normally, except that this defender knows the whole hand. Usually the play won't take a lot of time after this.

Rik

[GreenMan]

Vampyr, on 2013-March-13, 07:21, said:

I can see where Andy's coming from, because I don't really like it either. I don't think it saves time -- how is it more efficient than claiming and letting the opponent see both concealed hands?

Sometimes the claim statement would be something like "If you lead a club I can do A, if you lead a diamond I have a free finesse, if you lead a spade I can something else," possibly with longer explanations for each case. It's not always shorter to verbalize a bridge position than to display it, but displaying to both opps without a claim statement is dangerous. Occasionally the player at the table can work out the most efficient course of action better than armchair quarterbacks who haven't seen the hands in question.

[blackshoe]

Quote

gesture |ˈjesCHər|
noun
a movement of part of the body, esp. a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning: Alex made a gesture of apology | so much is conveyed by gesture.
• an action performed to convey one's feelings or intentions: Maggie was touched by the kind gesture.
• an action performed for show in the knowledge that it will have no effect: I hope the amendment will not be just a gesture.

Showing your hand is not a gesture.

[Vampyr]

GreenMan, on 2013-March-13, 11:46, said:

Sometimes the claim statement would be something like "If you lead a club I can do A, if you lead a diamond I have a free finesse, if you lead a spade I can something else," possibly with longer explanations for each case. It's not always shorter to verbalize a bridge position than to display it, but displaying to both opps without a claim statement is dangerous. Occasionally the player at the table can work out the most efficient course of action better than armchair quarterbacks who haven't seen the hands in question.

Your experience must be different to mine; when I see this behaviour it is normally a 2- or 3-card ending.

[barmar]

All I know is that the times I've done this, I couldn't make a clear claim; if I could, I would. As I said earlier, I'm usually inferring the layout from the player's difficulty in finding a play.

As a corollary to that, I would only do it with good players. Bad players often go into the tank for totally incomprehensible reasons -- if I try to take inference from it, there's a good chance I'm wrong.

[bluejak]

Zelandakh, on 2013-March-11, 09:36, said:

Would everyone be ok with this if Declarer needed to find a key card in the end position and could play either opponent for that card?

No. Deal with him using Law 23.

gnasher, on 2013-March-12, 04:51, said:

No laws forbids it. Law 23 relates to irregularities, not just to infractions. An irregularity is "A deviation from correct procedure inclusive of, but not limited to, those which involve an infraction by a player."

Having said that, Law 23 also uses the word "offender". Hmm.

If a player shows his hand knowing it may give him an advantage, he's committing an offence.

Trinidad, on 2013-March-12, 09:06, said:

In fact, these laws don't even say that a player is supposed to keep his cards to himself, so if a player does keep his cards to himself, that would be as much of an irregularity as showing the cards- following your reasoning. Phew, lucky that your reasoning is flawed.

Custom & practice decides much of what we do. Deviations from that are irregularities.