[gordontd]

 pran, on 2011-May-13, 05:49, said:

When all four cards to each trick are collected together and kept in front of one of the players on the side that won the trick then a defective trick is any such collection of less than or more than four cards in a pile. I don't know of any place where duplicate is played in this fashion. However, the term "defective trick" must be seen in this light.

Why must the term be seen in the light of a practice that doesn't occur in this game?

[pran]

 blackshoe, on 2011-May-13, 08:48, said:

What does "contains" mean in this context? Given that the four cards played to a not defective trick are not co-located.

Is a trick still in progress (not all four players having played to it yet) defective?

This question is immaterial - see Law 67A:

Before Both Sides Play to Next Trick
When a player has omitted to play to a trick, or has played too many cards to a trick, the error must be rectified if attention is drawn to the irregularity before a player on each side has played to the following trick.

1. To rectify omission to play to a trick, the offender supplies a card he can legally play.

2. To rectify the play of too many cards to a trick, Law 45E (Fifth Card Played to a Trick) or Law 58B (Simultaneous Cards from One Hand) shall be applied.

There is no further rectification (other than possibly a card becoming a penalty card) and therefore no problem in such situations.

[pran]

 gordontd, on 2011-May-13, 08:57, said:

pran said:

When all four cards to each trick are collected together and kept in front of one of the players on the side that won the trick then a defective trick is any such collection of less than or more than four cards in a pile. I don't know of any place where duplicate is played in this fashion. However, the term "defective trick" must be seen in this light.

Why must the term be seen in the light of a practice that doesn't occur in this game?

History reasons.

[blackshoe]

 pran, on 2011-May-13, 11:55, said:

This question is immaterial - see Law 67A:

Which question? I asked two.

[pran]

 blackshoe, on 2011-May-13, 22:53, said:

Which question? I asked two.

Sorry, I overlooked that there were two separate questions and thus only commented on the last one.

The way I now see it the first question specifically addressed

bluejak said:

If a trick contains a number of cards other than four it is defective.

and as I have already indicated in (I believe) several posts here this is a question that seems relevant only when all four cards to a trick are collected by a player on the side that won the trick, i.e. in typical rubber games as they were played historically.

[blackshoe]

I disagree with your comment as to the relevance of my question, but if you insist on refusing to answer it, so be it. It wasn't directed at you, anyway.

[pran]

 blackshoe, on 2011-May-14, 09:13, said:

I disagree with your comment as to the relevance of my question, but if you insist on refusing to answer it, so be it. It wasn't directed at you, anyway.

I believe there is reason for a concentrated summary:

When Bridge is played with the four cards in each trick being collected by a player on the side winning the trick and kept together as a trick in front of that player then a defective trick is such a trick that does not contain exactly four cards.

When Bridge is played with each player retaining control of his thirteen cards throughout the play (as in duplicate) then a defective trick exists whenever a player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of played cards (Law 67B). (Note that there is never any question of a defective trick so long as each player holds the correct numbers of cards in his hand and as played cards quitted in front of him regardless of the sequence in which he has his quitted cards placed.)

When, according to either of these definitions the existence of a defective trick is established before a player on each side has played to the following trick then the error is simply rectified as specified in Law 67A, otherwise Law 67B applies.

[gordontd]

 pran, on 2011-May-14, 12:39, said:

When Bridge is played with each player retaining control of his thirteen cards throughout the play (as in duplicate) then a defective trick exists whenever a player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of played cards (Law 67B). (Note that there is never any question of a defective trick so long as each player holds the correct numbers of cards in his hand and as played cards quitted in front of him regardless of the sequence in which he has his quitted cards placed.)

So I can play a card, put it back in my hand, play it again to a later trick, and then put two cards down as played to yet another trick, and you say there is no question of a defective trick?

[pran]

 gordontd, on 2011-May-14, 17:28, said:

So I can play a card, put it back in my hand, play it again to a later trick, and then put two cards down as played to yet another trick, and you say there is no question of a defective trick?

Correct (after you eventually have put down the two cards to rectify the number of cards held in your hand).

But then you will have violated enough of other laws to have all the fun taken away from you.

[iviehoff]

 pran, on 2011-May-14, 12:39, said:

When Bridge is played with the four cards in each trick being collected by a player on the side winning the trick and kept together as a trick in front of that player then a defective trick is such a trick that does not contain exactly four cards.

When Bridge is played with each player retaining control of his thirteen cards throughout the play (as in duplicate) then a defective trick exists whenever a player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of played cards (Law 67B). (Note that there is never any question of a defective trick so long as each player holds the correct numbers of cards in his hand and as played cards quitted in front of him regardless of the sequence in which he has his quitted cards placed.)

When, according to either of these definitions the existence of a defective trick is established before a player on each side has played to the following trick then the error is simply rectified as specified in Law 67A, otherwise Law 67B applies.

 gordontd, on 2011-May-14, 17:28, said:

So I can play a card, put it back in my hand, play it again to a later trick, and then put two cards down as played to yet another trick, and you say there is no question of a defective trick?

 pran, on 2011-May-15, 03:17, said:

Correct (after you eventually have put down the two cards to rectify the number of cards held in your hand).

I think we can go through the quitted cards in the duplicate method of play, and also discover from that there are the wrong number of cards in a trick. It seems very wrong if the director is restrained from ruling that there are defective tricks simply because a player has the correct number of cards in his hand and quitted cards in the table, when as a matter of fact wrong numbers of cards were played to certain tricks, or cards were returned to hand and played again later, and that is recorded in the sequence of quitted cards.

[pran]

 iviehoff, on 2011-May-16, 01:47, said:

I think we can go through the quitted cards in the duplicate method of play, and also discover from that there are the wrong number of cards in a trick. It seems very wrong if the director is restrained from ruling that there are defective tricks simply because a player has the correct number of cards in his hand and quitted cards in the table, when as a matter of fact wrong numbers of cards were played to certain tricks, or cards were returned to hand and played again later, and that is recorded in the sequence of quitted cards.

The Director should not bother with Law 67 in a (hypothetical) case like that, there is no inconsistency between the number of cards apparently played and still remaining to be played, and the number of tricks played.

However, the revealed ordering of the cards played will obviously be evidence of apparent violations of Laws 44 (in particular 44C), 47F2, 61, 65, 72B3 and 79 (possibly also other laws).

The Director will have power to apply rectifications and penalties that make the provisions in Law 67 seem very lenient and insignificant.

[dburn]

 bluejak, on 2011-May-12, 19:21, said:

If a trick contains a number of cards other than four it is defective.

At duplicate, it is meaningless to say that a trick "contains" any number of cards at all. There is no physical object, or aggregation of objects, that can be called a "container" that holds, or "contains", cards.

Instead, a trick is an abstraction that comes into (virtual) existence when four players in rotation play exactly one card. The winner of the trick is determined according to the relevant Laws, and the next trick is instantiated (or play ceases for whatever reason). Provided that a trick is properly initiated and properly completed, what happens later to the physical cards that comprised the trick is utterly irrelevant: the trick was played, it was not defective, and it cannot thereafter be rendered defective by removing some card from or adding some card to a non-existent "container".

By contrast, bluejak's trick of denying that he said what he said, because the words he used mean something other than what they mean, is grievously defective.

[pran]

 dburn, on 2011-May-16, 04:01, said:

At duplicate, it is meaningless to say that a trick "contains" any number of cards at all. There is no physical object, or aggregation of objects, that can be called a "container" that holds, or "contains", cards.

Instead, a trick is an abstraction that comes into (virtual) existence when four players in rotation play exactly one card. The winner of the trick is determined according to the relevant Laws, and the next trick is instantiated (or play ceases for whatever reason). Provided that a trick is properly initiated and properly completed, what happens later to the physical cards that comprised the trick is utterly irrelevant: the trick was played, it was not defective, and it cannot thereafter be rendered defective by removing some card from or adding some card to a non-existent "container".

By contrast, bluejak's trick of denying that he said what he said, because the words he used mean something other than what they mean, is grievously defective.

This is quite correct - up to a certain point. but it seems to me that it reveals a "defective" understanding on what constitutes a "defective trick" in duplicate (for which Law 67 still applies).

The Director must establish which "virtual" trick is defective, he does so by examining the quitted cards (for all four hands if necessary) in exactly the same way as he should examine the quitted cards in order to establish (for instance) a revoke.

If, for whatever reason, a card that originally was played to a trick finds its way back to the hand from which it was played so that by the definition in Law 67 there is a defective trick, the consequence is of course that a trick that originally was complete has become defective later during the play.

[iviehoff]

 pran, on 2011-May-16, 03:31, said:

The Director should not bother with Law 67 in a (hypothetical) case like that, there is no inconsistency between the number of cards apparently played and still remaining to be played, and the number of tricks played.

However, the revealed ordering of the cards played will obviously be evidence of apparent violations of Laws 44 (in particular 44C), 47F2, 61, 65, 72B3 and 79 (possibly also other laws).

We can also deal with all sorts of things, such as revokes, through laws like 41 and 44 if we don't have a specific revoke law. The advantage of the revoke law is that it gives a defined rectification for a revoke.

Law 67 seems to say it is a law about what happens when people don't play the correct number of cards to a trick. After all it starts "When a player has omitted to play to a trick, or has played too many cards to a trick..." It would be useful to have a defining rectification for such events, rather than scrabble around with more basic laws without defined rectifications.

But actually you have made it a law, at least in section B when both sides have played cards to the next trick, a law about whether a player has the correct number of cards in his hand, and the correct number of cards quitted on the table, regardless of how that occurred. This is a problem because (1) it actually says "when one player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of played cards", and to get that meaning you are interpreting "played cards" as meaning <cards quitted on the table, regardless of whether they were played or not, or whether the played card can be found somewhere else> (2) the rectifications only make sense if the reason for those incorrect totals are because "a player has omitted to play to a trick, or has played too many cards to a trick", and (3) in order to apply those rectifications, we have to look at which cards are in which tricks, so the assumption seems to be that we can identify which cards are in which tricks, and not merely count the total number of quitted cards.

As I said, it would seem much more sensible to have a law about "When a player has omitted to play to a trick, or has played too many cards to a trick...", regardless of how many cards in total we find in his hand and quitted on the table, and another law about what to do when a card has been played, but that played card has not been quitted properly. A law about what to do <when one player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of quitted cards on the table> would appear to be a law we don't really need.

But actually, we really already have that law, provided we take one small piece of reinterpretation. And taht is a good solution, because you needed one small piece of reinterpretation to get your version. Swap one for the other, and we have a sensible, useful law. All we have to do is assume that "when one player has too few or too many cards in his hand, and a correspondingly incorrect number of played cards" is an example of how we might detect defective tricks, rather than a determining definition. Now we have a law that works and is a law we actually want.

[iviehoff]

 dburn, on 2011-May-16, 04:01, said:

At duplicate, it is meaningless to say that a trick "contains" any number of cards at all. There is no physical object, or aggregation of objects, that can be called a "container" that holds, or "contains", cards.

Nevertheless, whenever we claim that there has been an irregularity in the play, such as a revoke, or playing the wrong number of cards to a trick, the examination and rectification of these situations by the director tends to revolve around examining the quitted cards, and working out which cards were actually played to which trick on the basis of those quitted cards. (Of course sometimes the quitted cards will be so disarranged, or players comments about what happened when so conflicting that the quitted cards make no sense in relation to what anyone is saying, that the director will have to rule on other information, but this is a rare case.) So I think it is reasonable to say in general that the cards located among the quitted cards in positions which indicate that they were played to a specific trick are the cards "contained" in that trick.

In general I find your position persuasive, but not this particular objection.

[pran]

 iviehoff, on 2011-May-16, 05:55, said:

Nevertheless, whenever we claim that there has been an irregularity in the play, such as a revoke, or playing the wrong number of cards to a trick, the examination and rectification of these situations by the director tends to revolve around examining the quitted cards, and working out which cards were actually played to which trick on the basis of those quitted cards. (Of course sometimes the quitted cards will be so disarranged, or players comments about what happened when so conflicting that the quitted cards make no sense in relation to what anyone is saying, that the director will have to rule on other information, but this is a rare case.) So I think it is reasonable to say in general that the cards located among the quitted cards in positions which indicate that they were played to a specific trick are the cards "contained" in that trick.

In general I find your position persuasive, but not this particular objection.

Law 66D explicitly states that if a player mixes his cards in such a manner that the Director can no longer ascertain the facts, the Director shall rule in favour of the other side.

[dburn]

 iviehoff, on 2011-May-16, 05:55, said:

So I think it is reasonable to say in general that the cards located among the quitted cards in positions which indicate that they were played to a specific trick are the cards "contained" in that trick.

It is reasonable to say that, yes. But is is not reasonable to say the converse: that a card not in a position indicating that it was played to a specific trick is not "contained" in that trick. As I have explained before, the truth of "if x then y" does not imply the truth of "if y then x".

Suppose that declarer calls for the three of hearts from dummy. And suppose that instead of turning the three of hearts face down in front of him when the trick is complete, dummy hurls the three of hearts out of the window by way of communicating to declarer that he ought to have played some other card (see some other thread for a discussion of the legality of such a manoeuvre).

The three of hearts has been played to the trick, and the trick "contains" (if such word has any meaning at all in this context) the three of hearts. The fact that on being defenestrated, the card was seized in mid air by a passing albatross who mistook it for a flying fish before spitting it out in disgust, so that it is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is neither here nor there. The physical pack of cards with which the players were playing has now become defective - but the trick to which the three of hearts was played has not.

[pran]

 dburn, on 2011-May-16, 07:13, said:

It is reasonable to say that, yes. But is is not reasonable to say the converse: that a card not in a position indicating that it was played to a specific trick is not "contained" in that trick. As I have explained before, the truth of "if x then y" does not imply the truth of "if y then x".

Suppose that declarer calls for the three of hearts from dummy. And suppose that instead of turning the three of hearts face down in front of him when the trick is complete, dummy hurls the three of hearts out of the window by way of communicating to declarer that he ought to have played some other card (see some other thread for a discussion of the legality of such a manoeuvre).

The three of hearts has been played to the trick, and the trick "contains" (if such word has any meaning at all in this context) the three of hearts. The fact that on being defenestrated, the card was seized in mid air by a passing albatross who mistook it for a flying fish before spitting it out in disgust, so that it is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is neither here nor there. The physical pack of cards with which the players were playing has now become defective - but the trick to which the three of hearts was played has not.

Legal "problems" can often be created by confusing laws that have nothing in common. Here Laws 14 and 67. The example is no problem.

[iviehoff]

 pran, on 2011-May-16, 07:30, said:

Legal "problems" can often be created by confusing laws that have nothing in common. Here Laws 14 and 67. The example is no problem.

Whether Law 14 applies depends upon whether you interpret "hand" to mean the sum of a player's unplayed and quitted cards, or just the unplayed cards. B1 refers to the possibility of finding the missing card among the played cards, which tends to suggest that only the unplayed cards form the hand for this purpose, and thus the arithmetic of "13 cards" refers to the number of cards in the hand before any were played. So Law 14 would not apply if a player had the correct number of unplayed cards, in view of the number of tricks he had contributed to.

It seems to me that this perhaps a point of interpretative disagreement between you and Bluejak, because Bluejak agreed that a quitted card dropped onto the floor made a trick defective. If you don't believe in assessing defective tricks according to what cards were played to the trick, but rather in relation to the arithmetic of the cards in hand and those on the table, surely you count the cards in the hand and those on the table; then the total (12) tells you a trick must be card short - that must be a defective trick. So if you are disagreeing with Bluejak on this point, it seems to me you aren't even consistent.

[pran]

 iviehoff, on 2011-May-16, 08:54, said:

Whether Law 14 applies depends upon whether you interpret "hand" to mean the sum of a player's unplayed and quitted cards, or just the unplayed cards. B1 refers to the possibility of finding the missing card among the played cards, which tends to suggest that only the unplayed cards form the hand for this purpose, and thus the arithmetic of "13 cards" refers to the number of cards in the hand before any were played. So Law 14 would not apply if a player had the correct number of unplayed cards, in view of the number of tricks he had contributed to.

It seems to me that this perhaps a point of interpretative disagreement between you and Bluejak, because Bluejak agreed that a quitted card dropped onto the floor made a trick defective. If you don't believe in assessing defective tricks according to what cards were played to the trick, but rather in relation to the arithmetic of the cards in hand and those on the table, surely you count the cards in the hand and those on the table; then the total (12) tells you a trick must be card short - that must be a defective trick. So if you are disagreeing with Bluejak on this point, it seems to me you aren't even consistent.

I just don't see the point (maybe because I am not looking hard enough?)

Law 14 applies whenever the total number of cards in use is found to be less than 52, whether the missing card (or cards) is found on the floor, in the Director's pocket, anywhere else or not at all.

Law 67 applies (at duplicate) for a player whenever his total number of cards is 13, but the number of cards he has in his hand is inconsistent with the number of tricks yet to be played.