Hand played out with 51 cards

Board 2, Match-Pointed Pairs Format, Played on 28^th July 2011, Dealer East, NS Vulnerable. Computer dealt

The hands:

The bidding:

Astute observers may notice that the West hand above has only 12 cards, and that the 5 of clubs is not held by any player.

South led the H7, North played the HJ, and Declarer won the trick with the Ace. The Ace of Spades was followed by a small spade to the King, which drew all the outstanding trumps. The C9 was played to the queen, and then the CA was played, discarding a diamond from Dummy. Declarer then lost a heart and two diamonds, but then claimed the rest, yielding ten tricks, for a score of a score of +420.

It was after the end of the event when North was undertaking an 'inquest' that it was realised that the hand had been played out with 51 cards at this particular table. No other table had complained about a missing card, and indeed at the conclusion of the event the board contained all 52 cards, with the C5 added to the West hand that is shown above – as indeed was expected by the hand-sheet for the event.

Analysis

Primarily, it was West's responsibility to count his cards before looking at them. It is assumed that either the C5 had been left behind in the wallet (most likely explanation), or that it had become 'stuck' behind another card – less likely, if only because the deck of cards in use was relatively new. On the other hand, all four players had the opportunity to notice that Dummy was only displaying 12 cards before the first trick was quitted, yet alone before the board was played out.

It is very unlikely that West would have bid 4S had he held a doubleton club.

There were two ways of looking at this hand:

1 When Dummy failed to follow to the second club, a revoke occurred, and when Declarer played to the next trick, the revoke became established. The normal resolution of a revoke is not possible after the event has been closed, but the 'rules' say that the result should be adjusted to reflect what would have happened had the revoke not occurred – i.e., adjusted to 4S-1.

2 The board was 'fouled' and the result must be 'scrubbed'. Given that NS could - and perhaps should - have noticed the error they were partially to blame, and so a 50 / 50 artificial score is appropriate. However, given that it was primarily due to West's error in counting the cards, it is appropriate to apply a 'procedural penalty' on EW, yielding an outcome of 50% to NS, 40% to EW.

Opinions were divided as to which of these two interpretations was most appropriate, but option 2 was selected.

Follow-on Action

Emphasise the need to count the cards, both to the players involved, and to the wider club membership.

Reflections

As it happened, the 'leader-board' was extremely close for this particular event; when originally scored with the 4S making score showing, the top five places were separated by small fractions of a percent. By scoring this board as fouled, there was a minor change in the scores for all the pairs who played it, either up or down by tiny amounts, but by enough to change the top 5 placings dramatically. Players really should remember to count their cards – and also to count Dummy's hand when it is faced.