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Laws and Ethics Discussion: February 2010 Revokes A revoke is a “failure to follow suit” (Law 61). It must be corrected – the revoke card is substituted by a legal card – if you become aware of it before it becomes ‘established’. If you correct it in time, the wrongly played card becomes a penalty card if you are a defender (See Law 50), but not if you are declarer – when it is simply returned to your hand – or dummy. Note that there is no penalty for a revoke by dummy - everybody should have noticed that! A revoke becomes established when the offender or his partner leads or plays to the following trick. After this it is too late to correct the revoke. The trick on which the revoke occurred stands as it was played, and there is a penalty: usually one trick is transferred, provided the offending side wins a subsequent trick; under the new Laws a two-trick transfer happens only when the revoke card wins the trick, in other words, when you ruff when you should have followed suit. The penalty is imposed to restore equity – if the revoke has cost the non-offending side more than one trick the Tournament Director is empowered to assign an adjusted score. The Revoke Laws (61-64) are not so simple that they can be easily memorised, and it is essential to consult them before assessing a penalty. One special case is a revoke at trick 12, covered by Law 62D. “On the twelfth trick a revoke, even if established, must be corrected if discovered before all four hands have been returned to the board.” We had a query about this end position
The contract was 4♥ by East At the twelfth trick E led the ♦4, South discarded the ♣9, E called for the ♥K from dummy, and North played the ♥A to win the trick. At trick thirteen North led the ♦9, and South won the trick by ruffing with the ♥9 North-South thought they might be entitled to both tricks because of the twelfth trick revoke rule. Not so: the twelfth trick rule means that there is no revoke penalty if the revoke occurs at trick 12, but the wrongly played card must be replaced by the card that should have been played. So when North led the nine of diamonds at trick thirteen he was required to correct trick twelve, replacing the ace of hearts with the nine of diamonds, so that each side made one trick as the cards intended. Suppose the North-South hands were reversed:
If South erroneously trumps the ♦4 with the ♥A, West and North discard clubs. Now when South produces the nine of diamonds he is required to correct trick 12 by playing the ♦9. West and North may also retract the cards they played after the revoke: so West ruffs the ♦9with the ♥K and each side makes a trick as before. There is no way to take advantage of the Revoke Laws – it would be unethical to try! |