Appeal No. 1

Italy v Portugal

It is no longer standard to publish the result of all appeals, but they are still numbered to reflect the order in which they were considered.

Appeals Committee:

Steen Møller (Chairman, Denmark), Nissan Rand (Israel), Stefan Back (Germany), Halil Atalay (Tyrkey) and Henrik Røn (Denmark)

Juniors Second Session

Board 7. Dealer South. All Vul.
	ª A K 8 7 © 10 ¨ K J 6 5 2 § A K 3
ª Q 5 2 © K J 4 ¨ A 10 3 § Q 6 4 2		ª J 9 6 4 © A 8 6 5 2 ¨ Q § 9 8 7
	ª 10 3 © Q 9 7 3 ¨ 9 8 7 4 § J 10 5

Contract: Two Hearts doubled, played by East

Lead: ten of spades

Result: 7 tricks, +200 to North-South

The Facts:

The redouble was part of an escape system and asked the opening hand to bid two clubs. The double of two clubs was explained by North to East as showing strength and the double of two hearts as for take-out, but showing two or three cards in hearts. There were no alerts and therefore no explanations of the doubles on the other side of the screen. North won the first trick with the king of spades, cashed the ace of clubs, South following with the jack, took the ace of spades and gave South a spade ruff. Now South played the club ten, covered with the queen and king. East won the third round of clubs, took the ace of hearts and tried to drop the queen, playing for the hearts to be 3-2.

One down.

The Director:

The TD found that there had been misinformation and changed the score to Two Hearts doubled, making. +670 to East-West. The TD applied Law 75.

North/South appealed.

North explained that when he and his partner after having made a penalty double of one no-trump tried to catch the opponents they used take-out doubles, but promised not to be very short in the suit so that partner did not need to be very long to convert the double into a penalty double. The situation was not completely normal here due to the special escape system, but North felt that the situation was very similar and that his partner would expect him to have two hearts at least. Although he only held a singleton he chose to double to cater for (???) a possible penalty double in partners hand and he felt obliged to tell what his partner would expect from him. South stated that in his opinion they did not have a special agreement in this situation, i.e., North’s double was take-out.

East said that he would have finessed in hearts had he not been given the explanation by the player who told about his own hand.

The Committee:

The AC was sure that North was honestly explaining what he thought that his partner would expect of his heart holding, but the AC also believed that this bidding sequence was more or less undiscussed in the partnership. The AC therefore said that North should have explained that there was some doubt of the understanding of the double. Being given such an explanation East might well have made the finesse in hearts, but the AC would not allow him always to make the contract and decided to reduce the score of 13 IMP (North making three diamonds in the other room) only to 6 IMP.

The Committee’s decision:

The Portuguese score on the board changed from 13 IMP to 6 IMP

Relevant Laws:

Law 12C3, Code of Practice.

Deposit: Returned

Committee’s note:

The AC also made some allowance for the fact that junior players are less experienced in giving correctly phrased explanation. As mentioned above, a correct explanation, in the ACs opinion, could be “We have no precise agreement about this specific situation, but I believe that the following agreement, which we play in similar situations, also applies here”. If the same situation had arisen in the Open Teams, the AC would probably have rejected the Appeal.