[VixTD]

I've only had to apply law 57A a couple of times in my directing career, and I'm still waiting for the following situation to arise (South declarer):

Sequence of players playing to a trick goes either: (1) S - E - N - W or (2) S - E - W

If South now calles the director to say that East played out of turn before West, the director should presumably apply law 57A and allow declarer to insist the highest or lowest card of the suit led be played by West, and the card actually played before the ruling was given would become a major penalty card.

Has anyone ever done this? Did any difficulties arise if the interval between West and East's plays was argued to have been very short or even non-existent?

[ahydra]

I've seen this a few times but it's only at times where it doesn't matter, eg dummy has a singleton and West already showed out, so we just let it go. Never seen the TD called for such a thing - I imagine if it did matter (eg East played the Ace while West was thinking what card to play) there would definitely be a call for the TD, even at the very friendly club I play at.

ahydra

[barmar]

I think I've committed the infraction a few times, and it's basically as ahydra described. It can happen when declarer is running a suit, and I just get in the rhythm of playing to it, and unthinkingly play the next card too soon.

I'm pretty sure they've always been "no harm, no foul" situations, and declarer never complained.