aguahombre, on 2014-February-21, 09:57, said:
IMO, this should be a quick and practical "down one, no harm, no foul" situation. I further believe that the usual suspects will try to make it more complicated.
When you make a ruling, Aqua, you can't, in spite of the tendency of many, many ACBL (and other?) TDs to do so, just wave your hands and say "this is how it is". You have to be able to cite the particular laws and regulations under which the ruling is made. That is particularly true here, where we are trying to teach people to understand the rules. So....
Law 63A3 is indeed the correct starting place. It says that a revoke becomes established "when a member of the offending side makes or agrees to a claim or concession of tricks orally or by facing his hand or in any other way". West claimed (see Law 68A). North accepted the claim. So the revoke is established. Now we look at the claim. Absent the
♦J, declarer has eight tricks: four clubs and four trumps. However, the
♦J is the top outstanding trump, so South would get that trick, and West would be down one. However, there was an established revoke. Law 64A2 applies, and one trick should be transferred to the offending side. Now West makes his contract.
Is this "more complicated" than Aqua's hand waving? I suppose so but it has one other aspect as well; it is the correct ruling. South has "lost" a trick he could not, absent the revoke, possibly have lost. Tough. One function of the revoke laws is to punish revokes, in the hope that such punishment will deter future revokes. We can debate how well that works, or whether it should be in the laws at all (in the "Changing Laws" forum, please) but that makes no difference to the ruling under the current laws.
If North says or does nothing to accept the claim, and South contests it, the revoke is not established, because the condition in Law 63A3 is not met. Ignoring for the moment that there has been a claim and that therefore "play ceases" (Law 68D), If South has become aware of his revoke, he
must correct it (Law 62A). Now he's on lead, and he has a major penalty card (the spade he originally played to this trick). So he leads the spade, and West get the remaining tricks, for down one. If South claims to be unaware he revoked, I would rule the same way, but I would give South a PP for failure to pay sufficient attention to the game (Law 90, Law 74B1). I would do this because, frankly, I don't believe him unless he
isn't paying attention*. Ah, but there's a claim outstanding, and play has ceased. No matter. In adjudicating a claim, the TD considers how the play might have gone (Law 70), and that's all we're doing here.
Once the claim is made, play ceases, and the revoke cannot be corrected - in fact,
nothing can be done - until the TD arrives (Law 68D), and then everything that is done is done by the TD's instruction.
*IMO this is the right ruling, but if I'm convinced he's simply trying to gain advantage somehow from not correcting his revoke, I would not give him a PP for paying insufficient attention. I would give him a PP (more than the "standard", which is 25% in the ACBL) for violation of Law 62A, failure to do what he
must do correct his revoke. But this would be pretty rare.
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