[cloa513]

1. A claim is the end of the game. Any other way gives UI.
2. Where a claim is stated a line of play must be stated that covers all possibilities, lines of plays involving if statements must be written so its clear unless the line of play is both insufficient and of the simplest form.
3. Where a line of play is insufficient or not stated, defenders should call the director.
4. Once agreed that the line of play is not stated or insufficient, the director must give defenders the maximum number of tricks that they can get limited by the line of play.
5. If defenders fail to call the director, declarer can get the maximum number of tricks possible.
Simple and clear cut, unlike other areas of bridge which are always going to have some grey area and judgement needed.

[AlexJonson]

Or just remove any mention of claims from the Laws.

Allow the players to manage it. I admit that a lot of entertainment would disappear from the forum, but would the game be the worse?

[nigel_k]

The point of claiming is to speed up the game. What you are suggesting would be slower than just outlawing claims altogether.

IMO the non-claiming side should be able to just put their cards away and move on to the next board without losing any rights at all. So the presumption against the claimer should remain until the expiration of the correction period.

[blackshoe]

 cloa513, on 2011-March-24, 18:30, said:

1. A claim is the end of the game. Any other way gives UI.
2. Where a claim is stated a line of play must be stated that covers all possibilities, lines of plays involving if statements must be written so its clear unless the line of play is both insufficient and of the simplest form.
3. Where a line of play is insufficient or not stated, defenders should call the director.
4. Once agreed that the line of play is not stated or insufficient, the director must give defenders the maximum number of tricks that they can get limited by the line of play.
5. If defenders fail to call the director, declarer can get the maximum number of tricks possible.
Simple and clear cut, unlike other areas of bridge which are always going to have some grey area and judgement needed.

What if it's a defender who's claimed?

[gordontd]

 AlexJonson, on 2011-March-24, 20:06, said:

Or just remove any mention of claims from the Laws.

Allow the players to manage it. I admit that a lot of entertainment would disappear from the forum, but would the game be the worse?

I had a claim called to my attention last Friday. Declarer claimed a number of tricks, the defenders initially agreed but then realised before putting their hands back in the board that declarer had failed to notice a loser that would develop. Declarer agreed with that, but claimed they were too late to get the extra trick.

I'm glad I had the claim laws to make it easy to deal with.

[Oof Arted]

 gordontd, on 2011-March-25, 03:04, said:

I had a claim called to my attention last Friday. Declarer claimed a number of tricks, the defenders initially agreed but then realised before putting their hands back in the board that declarer had failed to notice a loser that would develop. Declarer agreed with that, but claimed they were too late to get the extra trick.

I'm glad I had the claim laws to make it easy to deal with.

I assume you told Declarer it is an offence to Claim tricks which he is not entitled to or that could be lost through any 'Normal' play

[bluejak]

 AlexJonson, on 2011-March-24, 20:06, said:

Or just remove any mention of claims from the Laws.

Allow the players to manage it. I admit that a lot of entertainment would disappear from the forum, but would the game be the worse?

Yes, considerably.

Either you forbid claiming, slow the game down a lot, and add a quality of boredom to playing out non-hands.

Or you allow claiming without any Laws leading to interminable arguments, and TDs with no legal backing to do anything about it.

And what do you gain? At the moment well over 95% of claims - probably over 99% - are unchallenged. Of course forums look at interesting cases, but there are millions of claims every day of no interest and no TD call. There is no real problem over claims in practice, so you are trying to deal with a non-problem.

[AlexJonson]

 bluejak, on 2011-March-25, 10:31, said:

Yes, considerably.

Either you forbid claiming, slow the game down a lot, and add a quality of boredom to playing out non-hands.

Or you allow claiming without any Laws leading to interminable arguments, and TDs with no legal backing to do anything about it.

And what do you gain? At the moment well over 95% of claims - probably over 99% - are unchallenged. Of course forums look at interesting cases, but there are millions of claims every day of no interest and no TD call. There is no real problem over claims in practice, so you are trying to deal with a non-problem.

I believe that you are right about the percentage of claims handled by the players themselves exceeding 99% - in fact I suspect you could add a decimal point and a number of nines.

So I guess that the question is whether the apparent difficulty of legally codifying claims situations, leads on balance to a positive outcome. Some of the posts on these forums suggest that elimination of interminable debate may not be one of the gains.

But if you are saying that a major effort to rewrite claims Laws is a low priority, I would find it hard to disagree.

[barmar]

No matter what we do, there will always be cases not covered clearly.

For instance, the suggested rewrite refers to "of the simplest form". There we go, another judgement call: is the line of the simplest form?

Certainly any claim procedure that requires writing down the line is a waste of time, IMHO. Claims are intended to speed up the game, and requiring the claimant to start writing things down is contrary to this.

Quote

the director must give defenders the maximum number of tricks that they can get limited by the line of play

That apparently handles the case of an insufficient line of play, but what about when the line of play is not stated at all? More than 95% of claims in practice involve declarer simply facing his hands and everyone agreeing that he has the rest, or him saying something like "you get the club ace." I guess these are examples of your "simplest form", but then we're back to the judgement call if the opponents don't agree. And now, what does "limited by the line of play" mean if the TD sides with the defenders and there has been no explicit line of play? The current laws refer to "normal play", which is an attempt to be fair to a declarer who may have simply miscounted something and could be off by one in the number of tricks he gets. The proposed version would conceivably award the defenders tricks they could get by any irrational line, such as playing unestablished suits from the bottom instead of the top.

[cloa513]

With clear cut rules like this, director will never be called as every declarer is warned of the danger of an insufficient line of play.

[bluejak]

Sorry, that is completely wrong. Two reasons: first, many people will not accept the approach. Second, people get things wrong when there is a clear penalty, consider revokes.

[axman]

 bluejak, on 2011-March-30, 12:23, said:

Sorry, that is completely wrong. Two reasons: first, many people will not accept the approach. Second,

When taken in relation to WBF2008, the proffered remedy is not merely an improvement, but an immense improvement. That is not to say that it is the right thing to do, just as calling something wrong because you assert that many people will not accept the approach. If I could not attain the [in actuality] correct approach then I would be an enthusiastic supporter of the suggestion.

Why? because the suggestion has an immense amount of merit. What underlies the merit is the concept that if players know they are almost certain to lose a lot of tricks by being sloppy then they will take much effort to make perfect claims; the outcome? The dreaded remedy doesn’t see the light of day [very often]. And on that basis claimers will earn their tricks and that, my friends and enemies, is right-headed thinking- if not complete thinking.

But still, the fact is that the suggestion puts the ball in the adjudicator’s court rather than the players’ court. And further, there is no provision for the scales of justice to balance the actions of declarer and the defenders. And that is the reason that the suggestion is wrong- superior, but wrong.

[nige1]

IMO, claim law should

• Be short clear and simple enough for players to comply and for directors to consistently enforce.
• Encourage claims rather than deter them.
• Speed up the game, rather than slow it down.
• Rely as little as possible on communication skills and foreign language interpretation.

These aims seem easily achievable.

[blackshoe]

I've seen a thousand "the law should do this" or "the law should do that". I've seen zero suggested rewrites of the law that would (presumably) achieve these goals. Such a rewrite would at least provide a concrete platform from which to launch discussion, rather than the current vague pronouncements countered with other vague pronouncements.

[tbr]

The easiest way is to pull trumps, make all your discards, then push the claim button. This prevents premature claims. If you do it too soon, the opponents take forever.

[Vampyr]

 tbr, on 2011-March-30, 22:04, said:

The easiest way is to pull trumps, make all your discards, then push the claim button. This prevents premature claims. If you do it too soon, the opponents take forever.

Online claims present a different set of problems, since there isn't a director to adjudicate and play usually (as far as I know) resumes after a contested claim. Probably the online considerations are the subject of a separate discussion.

[AlexJonson]

 nige1, on 2011-March-30, 16:27, said:

IMO, claim law should

• Be short clear and simple enough for players to comply and for directors to consistently enforce.
• Encourage claims rather than deter them.
• Speed up the game, rather than slow it down.
• Rely as little as possible on communication skills and foreign language interpretation.

These aims seem easily achievable.

The continuation of your post, where you explain, Nigel,
the easy solution that meets your requirements,
is entirely missing.

What is the solution?

[nige1]

 nige1, on 2011-March-30, 16:27, said:

IMO, claim law should

• Be short clear and simple enough for players to comply and for directors to consistently enforce.
• Encourage claims rather than deter them.
• Speed up the game, rather than slow it down.
• Rely as little as possible on communication skills and foreign language interpretation.

These aims seem easily achievable.

 AlexJonson, on 2011-March-31, 14:19, said:

The continuation of your post, where you explain, Nigel, the easy solution that meets your requirements, is entirely missing. What is the solution?

There are many possible improvements to claim law but one frequently proposed suggestion that meets the criteria is:

The claimer claims by showing his hand to opponent(s), stating a number of tricks. and playing on, single-dummy, until his opponents(s) are happy. Opponent(s) may continue playing, double-dummy, until they accept the claim is valid.

(Edited: to avoid spurious references to "disputing" the claim)

This is similar to on-line protocol (which works well, in my experience). A drawback (in theory, at least) is that a claimer may embark on a "fishing" expedition against tyros but (as for other kinds of gamesmanship) fry can be warned to be wary of getting hooked..

[mycroft]

I show my hand.
Opponents object.
I look at the hand again, because the opponents aren't idiots, and realize that on a 5-0 break, I don't have all the tricks AKQJ. But if I play carefully (keeping all my relevant entries), I can find, and then pick up 5-0.
Hand made.
Fair?

Lamford's last hand (with all the bad minor suit breaks). Claim trick 1. They object. Rethink the hand. Auto-make 7. Fair?

Claim made and rejected.
Oh bugger, somebody's got a top I've forgotten about. If it's a trump, I can't play off my trumps, I have to play off my winners to keep control. If it's not a trump, then maybe I can play my suits in the order to pitch it (or, in just the "I'm sure this suit is good down to not sure" order). If it's not, really not, after two checks, a top, then it's almost certainly a small trump; better pull it before going after my winners. Again, fair?

Basically, you're allowing a lot more claims to make that in RL, with the current rules, would be considered faulty and score worse.

And that's the online version, where I don't know who objected. Face-to-face, there are lots of "fishing expeditions" that you can't but fall for, if declarer is good at reading, if you don't set a protocol on how to accept them (which will frequently fall afoul of "not looking at your partner" things) - many of which are of the "if they disallow my claim, then <suit> is breaking badly and I'll have to think about it. If they accept, I don't have to think" variety that (accidentally) I had above.

[nige1]

 nige1, on 2011-March-30, 16:27, said:

The claimer claims by showing his hand to opponent(s), stating a number of tricks. and playing on, single-dummy, until his opponents(s) are happy. Opponent(s) may continue playing, double-dummy, until they accept the claim is valid.
(Edited: to avoid spurious references to "disputing" the claim)

 mycroft, on 2011-March-31, 17:33, said:

I show my hand. Opponents object. I look at the hand again, because the opponents aren't idiots, and realize that on a 5-0 break, I don't have all the tricks AKQJ. But if I play carefully (keeping all my relevant entries), I can find, and then pick up 5-0. Hand made. Fair?

Mycroft's criticism is tair. I concede the point (I hinted at it myself). But with this protocol, (just as with current TFLB protocol) your opponents may "reject" your claim on a whim: Playing on does not imply bad breaks. A claim still speeds up the game because claimer's opponents play double-dummy until satisfied that the claim is valid. (I'm not sure about this but) perhaps blatant fishing expeditions deserve a disciplinary penalty.

 mycroft, on 2011-March-31, 17:33, said:

Lamford's last hand (with all the bad minor suit breaks). Claim trick 1. They object. Rethink the hand. Auto-make 7. Fair?

Same answer. They don't really "object" -- they simply play on until they are satisfied that the claim is valid. Auto-make? Doubtful. A defensive error is still possible but less likely defending double-dummy.

 mycroft, on 2011-March-31, 17:33, said:

Claim made and rejected. Oh bugger, somebody's got a top I've forgotten about. If it's a trump, I can't play off my trumps, I have to play off my winners to keep control. If it's not a trump, then maybe I can play my suits in the order to pitch it (or, in just the "I'm sure this suit is good down to not sure" order). If it's not, really not, after two checks, a top, then it's almost certainly a small trump; better pull it before going after my winners. Again, fair?

Same answer. Sometimes you confuse a small trump with "a top" and go down in a contract you would make, had you not claimed.

 mycroft, on 2011-March-31, 17:33, said:

Basically, you're allowing a lot more claims to make that in RL, with the current rules, would be considered faulty and score worse.

Mycroft is right. But that should encourage claims. So it may not be a bad thing. At least it does not deter claims as current law does. Also, under current law, some directors allow pretty dodgy claims.

 mycroft, on 2011-March-31, 17:33, said:

And that's the online version, where I don't know who objected. Face-to-face, there are lots of "fishing expeditions" that you can't but fall for, if declarer is good at reading, if you don't set a protocol on how to accept them (which will frequently fall afoul of "not looking at your partner" things) - many of which are of the "if they disallow my claim, then <suit> is breaking badly and I'll have to think about it. If they accept, I don't have to think" variety that (accidentally) I had above.

Same answer again. IMO, the proposed protocol is no panacea but it's a sound basis for an improved claim-rule that meets the stipulated objectives. It's not beyond the wit of law-makers to mitigate its flaws.

IMO, if the proposed protocol were law, it would encourage more claims and speed up the game. I think most players would be happier to claim were there no need to dot every "i" and cross every "t". And most players would welcome more frequent claims by opponents, especially if they like playing double-dummy against blinkered opposition.