Dear Martin,

Say a diamond is led in a spade contract and dummy goes down appearing to be void in diamonds (because a singleton diamond is underneath the cards of another suit). Declarer wins the trick with a trump from dummy and play continues for a couple of rounds and then the singleton diamond comes to light. What should happen now? And is there any penalty?

Thanks, Mike Ralston,

Reply Martin Sinot

Hello Mike,

First and foremost, the director must be summoned once the problem is discovered. He/she will then proceed as follows:

The diamond is considered to have been part of dummy’s hand all the time. That diamond should have been played at trick one instead of a trump. In other words: dummy revoked. Also, the revoke is established, because it is discovered some tricks later (to be exact: a revoke becomes established once the revoking side – dummy or declarer in this case – plays in the next trick). An established revoke is not corrected (unless it occurs on trick 12, hardly likely if the revoker is dummy), so the diamond is re-added to the hand and play continues.

At the end of play, the revoke must be evaluated. In this case the revoke was made with a card belonging to a hand on the table (dummy); that means, that there is no rectification (no tricks are transferred). The idea is of course that everybody could have seen that a card was missing from dummy, because dummy tabled only twelve cards.

That is, however, not the end: the director now examines whether the non-offending side is damaged by the revoke. This is done with all established revokes, including those not subject to rectification, such as this one. If the non-offending side is damaged, and this damage is not (sufficiently) compensated by the revoke laws, then the director determines what the score would have been had the revoke not occurred, and adjusts the score accordingly.

So applying this to your contract: if the end result is, for example, ten tricks (including revoke), and without the revoke declarer would have made at least ten tricks, then the table result stands: you are not damaged, and, as said, this revoke is not rectified.
But if declarer would have made nine tricks without the revoke, then you are damaged by the revoke and will get the score belonging to nine tricks for declarer.

And finally, as a side remark: some people say that 'dummy cannot revoke'. They are wrong: dummy CAN revoke, and did so in this case.

Regards,

Martin Sinot