After A Revoke

What Not To Do

(I don't think we can use the deal diagram for this one, since it involves an illegal play that might confuse the program that displays it...)

This deal was played in a club game, West leading the Q♠︎ after a competitive auction ending in 5♥︎ by East. South saw the singleton spade in dummy and switched to a club at trick two, won by declarer East with the ace. East began pulling trumps, but South showed out, revealing a 4-0 break. With many entries to dummy, South could play trumps for only one loser by leading twice from dummy. South went to dummy by ruffing a spade and led the 9♥︎. North played low and South did as well, but to everyone's surprise, West won with the queen. West had revoked at trick three, and won a trick with the card that should have been played under the A♥︎. Now what?

What happens at most tables just shouldn't ever happen. As soon as someone says "revoke" or the common malapropism "renege," players at every level think that the first thing to do is to turn played cards face-up until the revoke is discovered. As a director I can always tell when a revoke has occurred because by the time I get to the table there are three or six or ten or more cards face-up, from every player, even those not being accused of revoking.

And this is the first thing to learn. Doing this is not allowed. A claim of a revoke does not give everyone the right to an instant replay. The correct thing to do is to leave the cards face-down and call the director.

The section on revokes in the Laws has changed slightly with each of the last three versions, but this notion that you can flip over the cards and replay a deal in progress persists, and has never been true. Mostly it is players who have revoked accidentally, shocked at the accusation, wanting to find out what actually happened so they can pay the correct penalty. The problem is that it takes some time to get all these needlessly-exposed cards back face-down, and ensure that we are at the right point where the revoke was discovered, with everyone holding the correct number of cards. Getting all this to happen, often against players who turn even more cards face-up to try to find the problem, makes it difficult for players to remember what the situation was when things are finally sorted out.

In this case, it is clear that there has been a revoke and that it has been established, making it too late to correct it and West's Q♥︎ wins the trick, at least for now. West has not won the trick on which the revoke occurred, so the Law says one trick will be transferred back to North-South at the end of the play. This is the minimum penalty; if the revoke damages South further, more tricks can be transferred to restore equity. Play must continue though, and you can see a clear difference here:

If South called for the director upon seeing West play the Q♥︎, the director would arrive and instruct the players to explain what happened (without facing any played cards), and would explain the minimum penalty and ask that play continue with a lead from West. A small interruption, but South should still be able to focus and win as many tricks as possible.

But if the director arrives and there are multiple cards face-up, the first job is stop this from happening, then find out what actually happened. This usually takes much, much longer, and when play resumes everyone will be distracted, and it will be harder to remember which cards had been played and what the general plan was.

West continued by leading the J♦︎ and South ducked in dummy, winning the queen in hand. Next was a diamond to dummy's ace and a club ruffed in hand. Declarer now led the third diamond to be ruffed in dummy, but East had pitched a diamond on the previous trick and was able to overruff with the J♥︎, for a fourth defensive trick. At least dummy had a trump left over to take care of the spade led back, and declarer ended up down two.

The real question is how should the Director rule? The Laws says that the basic revoke penalty transfers only one trick back, and South is still down one in 5♥︎. But the Director is allowed to adjust further if the revoke causes more damage than the default penalty fixes. The question is, was it the revoke itself, or declarer forgetting to count trumps and pull the last one, that caused the extra trick to be lost? And was declarer's failure to pull that last trump affected by the extra cards turned face-up and the time needed to restore the actual position? Can we even make rulings based on this distraction factor? I was sympathetic but thought not.

Sometimes you get lucky and the aggrieved pair wins the game anyway, which is what happened here. But the real lesson is not to try and solve revoke problems yourself. Call the director and leave the cards face down. Even if you find out where the revoke was, you're not always allowed to correct it, and you need the Director for those situations when you can. In most cases, play can just continue with the non-offending side assured that, if we confirm at the end of the play that there was a revoke, the Laws will protect the revoke from allowing them to make less tricks than they actually make. In more complicated cases, the director can look at the cards played, without revealing them to the players to confirm whether a revoke took place.

But flipping cards up to run an instant replay only confuses the issue, and often makes it difficult to continue play effectively after the needless distraction makes the rest of the hand a foggy guess. Just call the director, and take no action until he or she arrives.

(At least one reader out there will be looking to respond that West "won a trick with a card he could have played to the revoke trick", making it a two-trick minimum penalty. That would have been true in 2016, but the 2017 Laws removed that provision.)