This page discusses problems directors face. It would be good if all TD's could consider letting me have details of anything interesting that cropped up at the Club.

LAW 45B Declarer plays a card from dummy by naming a card.

LAW 45C 4a A card must be played if a player names it.

LAW 45C 4b A player may change an unintended designation if he does so without pause for thought. The new Laws (2017) remove the reference to 'without pause for thought'.Declarer may correct the unintended designation until he next plays a card, whether from his own hand or dummy.

It is possible to name a card from dummy which is 'unintended' and correct the error 'without pause for thought', but the TD would need to be sure that the original call was 'unintended' and not a change of mind. So if you lead a card from hand, intending to ruff on table, and after you have called for the trumping card you realise that defender has ruffed and you are underruffing, then that is tough -  just take on board the lesson that you need to see what defender has done before making your commitment. Calling for the trump might be careless, and you might wish you hadn't done it, but it wasn't 'unintended'.

This account is from David Burrows:

I played in the Great Northern Swiss pairs one weekend, and had to call the director!

I led a little ♥ from hand;  everyone was expecting me to ruff in dummy, but instead I chose to thow a loser, and called for a ♣ . Partner Dummy) played a trump, and RHO produced a low card leaving my little one as the top card. When the director arrived at the table, my LHO agreed that I did indeed call for the ♣, so that is the card played from dummy. RHO can now withdraw the little card and substitute a winner: the card they played first is not a penalty card, but is Unauthorised Information to their partner, in the (probably unlikely) event that this would make a difference.

It's quite common for declarer to lead a card from the wrong hand. Maybe it's careless, or maybe they planned a sequence of plays and just forgot where they were up to.

Many players are under the misconception that declarer must lead from the the hand which won the last trick, and a lead from the wrong hand MUST be corrected. This is not the case. 

Play from the wrong hand is an irregularity, and dummy should not draw attention to irregularities. It can be a fine line, because dummy can seek to prevent declarer leading from the wrong hand:  'you are on table, partner' is fine before declarer makes his move, but when the card hits the table (or indeed he calls for a card from dummy), the play is made, and if it's from the wrong hand dummy should keep their own counsel. The same applies to any irregularity: for example, if dummy spots a revoke, he must say nothing until play of the hand has ended.

Once the card has been played, defenders have the option of accepting this lead, or requiring its retraction and the lead to be made from the correct hand. In the latter case, declarer plays as they like. There is no question of the card led being a penalty card, or any requirement that declarer should lead the same suit.

Some of us have quite complicated bidding systems, and occasionally, we forget. David Burrows recounts a typical example: My opening bid was 1♠,  and my LHO overcalled 3♣, intending this as a Ghestem bid, which in this case shows two suits,  (♣  & ♥ ). Overcaller’s partner forgot they were playing this system, taking it as a natural overcall;  to further complicate matters, he got asked about it, and explained that it was an intermediate jump overcall (opening strength + six clubs). 

In the bidding the overcaller has the UI (unauthorised information) that his partner has not understood his bid, and was duty bound to lean over backwards to bid as he would have done if partner had alerted the bid and explained it correctly.

In the event, the contract ended up as 4♥ by the opponents, and now the player who made the 3♣ overcall, wrongly explained by his partner, should explain what has happened before the opening lead. If not the defenders might be able to get an adjustment, if they feel they got off on the wrong foot due to being misled about the meaning of a bid. 

A bid is made when the card is drawn from the bidding box and should not be changed without the director's instruction.
 

If your opponent revokes, you don't get recompence unless you notice (obviously). But suppose you accept the score and then notice, is it too late to claim?

The LAW 64B says it's too late if you have started play on the next hand,  which means member of the non-offending side has made a call in the auction. If it's the last hand of the round then it's too late after 'the end of the round'. Actually the end of the round is not completely clear: it might not be when the machine announces 'Round over - please move', because the revoke might not even have happened at that point if your table is a bit behind. But when your Bridgemate has advanced to 'Round Complete' and you have passed the boards to the next table, that's probably conclusive.

David Burows writes:

Some members have been bending my ear about 'signals'. Opponents are just entitled to know about your bidding system - they are also entitled to know what your carding signals are.

Once I was playing at a local (non-EBU) club, and partner discarded 8♥. Declarer asked me about our signals, and I said we are playing McKinney discards, whereby a high card would suggest interest in a high ranking suit, and a low card in a low ranking suit. Then she asked if the 8 was high card? I replied that I am not telling, because I might make a judgement from the cards in my hand,  and you can't ask me what cards I have. What was she asking for? I have to judge if the card is high or low, and we certainly don't have any agreement that certain middle cards are neutral. She got quite stroppy, but I had nothing else to tell her. At the end I was quite amused to find that she could see all the ♥ below the 8, so she knew (and I didn't) that that 8 was partner's lowest ♥!  I guess I could have made a case that her aggressive questioning was illegal deception on her part, but more likely it would have been blind ignorance.

Another issue is carding on partner's lead. For example my convention card says on an Ace, signal attitude as first choice, or McKinney suit preference if that seems appropriate. An obvious case would be dummy coming up with a singleton, so partner would now be more interested in finding the best switch, so I'd signal suit preference rather than attitude. There may well be other cases, so declarer and partner both have to work out what my signal means, but neither needs to tell the other the conclusion which they reached.

Your opponent has revoked, and you expect to extract a penalty. What you should do is call the director, and explain clearly what has happened. What you should not do is demand a penalty from your opponents. The LAW is not so much interested in awarding penalties as much as being fair to both sides, and in this case it's not fair if a player gains a trick by a revoke.

To make life easy for hard-pressed TD's there is an automatic transfer of one trick if the offending side score any trick after the revoke. Now if the player claims that the revoke led to the offender winning a trick in later play which would not have been available without the revoke, so that there is effectively no 'penalty', what happens?  Well, in the eyes of the LAW (64C), they have been sufficiently compensated, and the revoking side have not gained from the infraction. So there is no further rectification.

A "psych", or making a psychic bid, was much more popular in the past than is fashionable at the moment. Nevertheless, it is a perfectly legal ploy.
Whether it is a good idea, in terms of building partnership confidence, is another question. 

David Burrows recounts hearing of one of our members playing at another (non-EBU) club, who opened 1♠ with 5pts and Axxx in Spades. A clear psych! Apparently it caused quite a lot of comment at the table. In fact, the psych was perfectly legal, but commenting at the table is definitely against the rules. If an opponent psychs against you, and you have have any concerns about it,  avoid ill-feeling by calling the TD for a ruling, rather than getting into an argument.

After three passes, the player who made the final bid bids again. The players start to play this 'contract', and during the play someone realises that something odd has happened and calls the director.
LAW 22A applies: one or more players having bid, three passes in rotation end the auction, and the final bid becomes the contract. In this case the auction was  

    pass   1NT   2S   pass   3H   pass   pass   pass   3S   pass   pass   pass

so the contract is 3H, but the players have been playing in 3S. 

Unlike a bid out of turn or an underbid, there is no provision in the Law for this bid to be accepted. The auction must end after the three passes. Clearly we cannot wind back and require 3H to be played, as by now, players have all seen opponents’ cards. The right thing to do now is to award a reasonable score for 3H. Fortunately, in the event, it’s not critical how many tricks 3H is likely to make, but if it is important in the circumstances, it’s possible to award say 50% for 3H= plus 50% of 3H+1, where for example the extra trick depends on which way you finesse against a Q.