[alsacco]

Whilst directing an eight table, four session, multiple teams, club tournament event, I was about to call for a move when I was summoned to a table where the two sides were disputing whether a two Hearts doubled contract was one down or two down.
When I arrived at the table, all four players had their cards faced upwards and in order, except for North’s last five cards.
As I went through the tricks, it was discovered that South (a defender) had revoked on the sixth trick. He won the revoke trick and his side had also won subsequent tricks. At this stage, the actual number of tricks won became somewhat academic because if the penalty for the revoke is applied, the contract makes and that is a huge enough swing. (Please bear in mind the usual problems of the playing director. All other players are pushing for the game to continue). At this stage I advised all four players that I need to investigate whether the revoke penalty is to be applied in this case and if so, the result will be contract making exactly. This was accepted by all four players.
Naturally, the offending side are arguing that since nobody noticed the revoke until the investigation of quitted tricks with all cards now showing, the non offending side do not have a right for a penalty. Had it not been for the dispute, they would have settled for one down and moved on.
My question is this. Neither player from the non offending side noticed the revoke, or indeed would have noticed it had it not been for this enquiry. The fact that a player had revoked surfaced as I was going through the quitted tricks. Had it not been for this problem, by now, I would have called for a move and it would have been too late for declarer or his partner to claim the revoke.
Law 64B5 clearly says that “there is no rectification ...... if attention was first drawn to the revoke after the round has ended”. So, strictly according to the letter of the law, in this case, the penalty should be applied. But was such a situation envisaged?

[crazy4hoop]

I found this on ACBLscore and hope it helps. My apologies if it does not:

LAW 81.C RECTIFYING AN ERROR OR IRREGULARITY (BIDS, LEADS, SIGNALS)
The Laws Commission issued some guidelines as to how Directors should
act under Law 81C:

The Director's duties and powers normally include the following:
6.Errors
To rectify any error or irregularity of which he becomes aware in
any manner, within the correction period established in accordance
with Law 79C.

A Director should not prevent a player from committing an infraction,
such as revoking. However, if a revoke is established and no one
notices it, the Director should wait until after the round is over and
then inform both sides what happened. He then restores equity.

If a Director is called to the table and asked to give a ruling on,
say, one part of an auction and he discovers an irregularity in another
part of the auction, he must consider the auction as a whole and
correct all irregularities.

Another example: If a Director becomes aware of a pair playing an
unauthorized convention, he must advise them and follow through to make
sure they do not continue to play it.

[blackshoe]

Another point: The round does not end at a particular table if there is a board still in play there - the round ends when "there has been a progression of players", meaning "when the moving players move" (Law 8B1). So even if you called the move, if they were not ready to move (still deciding on the score counts) the round is not over for them.

The offending side's argument that the revoke penalty should not be applied is wrong. You still have to determine the actual table result (down one or down two) and then apply the revoke penalty to that. So if declarer was down one before the revoke penalty, the penalty leads to making an overtrick.

There is a practice amongst many, directors and players both, to consider that the "right" ruling doesn't matter because, as in this example, "making is a big enough swing" already. Not sure I buy that.

[barmar]

The law that crazy4hoop's excerpt refers to says that the director's responsibility is "to rectify an error or irregularity of which he becomes aware in any manner." It doesn't matter that he was called to the table to resolve a different problem, he became aware of the revoke, and now he has to rectify it. There's nothing in the definition of a revoke that says that it has to be noticed by an opponent, although there's a general Law that says that a participant is not required to call attention to its own irregularities.