Re: Drawing Trump

"Tony Musgrove" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.games.bridge.laws
Message-ID <[email protected]>
 
 
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Hills
Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2016 1:57 PM
To: Bridge Laws Mailing List
Subject: [BLML] Drawing Trump
 
Yuge! 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump is a retrospective collection of comic strips by Garry Trudeau featuring The Donald. In an interview with the New York Times the author described the Republican presidential candidate as "the gold standard for big, honking hubris".
 
Recently my RHO declarer claimed, on the basis of cashing side-suit winners in dummy, then having trumps in hand. Unfortunately for declarer my pard still held an undrawn trump. Unfortunately for our side pard had to follow to dummy's winners, so the only way our side could get a bonus trump trick would be either if declarer chose to under-ruff, or if declarer chose to lead trumps from bottom-up instead of top-down.
 
So the Director ruled under Law 70C3 that the defence could not score its trump with any "normal" play. The footnote defining "normal" states:
 
"For the purposes of Laws 70 and 71, 'normal' includes play that would be careless or inferior for the class of player involved."
 
My pedantic objection to this footnote is that it lacks a ceiling. Thus my suggested 2017 revision is:
 
"For the purposes of Laws 70 and 71, 'normal' includes play that would be careless or inferior (but not ridiculous) for the class of player involved."
 
Best wishes,
 
Richard Hills
 
I get this a lot and this is the way I always rule.  I bend over backwards to give a trick
to an outstanding trump if at all possible, but I do not allow “ridiculous” plays,
even for the bunnies (who didn’t know there was a trump out).  So, no change to
the rule book, but just include this canonical example.
 
Cheers
Tony (Sydney)

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