[cherdano]

Actually I meant a director call on an instant pass in a non-skip auction and partner taking advantage, sorry should have taken a second more to write the post up there. (On an instant pass over a skip bid even many LOLs in the clubs I have played in would call the police.)

[awm]

In a national swiss, I had one where my RHO made a skip bid. I hesitated about 8 seconds (with nothing really to think about) and then passed. Later during the play, RHO had to figure out how to play KT9 in dummy opposite xxx in hand for one loser. He started with low to the nine, losing to the queen and a side suit came back. Then he played low and I played low in tempo. He put up the king because (his own words) I had thought for so long over his skip bid in the auction, so I must have a good hand!

His partner was ready to concede down one, but turns out I had Axx and partner the QJxx, and declarer guessed right.

I guess in future, I should be less obvious about my "thinking" during the auction.

[rbforster]

A few matches back I found out an additional benefit of using the stop cards before your opening skip bids - when you're about to make a bid out of turn, your partner can stop you from making the actual bid! I'm not sure what the penalty is for a "Stop out of turn" but it turned out to be nothing on the hand in question and certainly much less than an actual bid out of turn. We were playing precision so there are several "opening" hands (2♣,2♦) that would also use the stop card so there wasn't a clear inference that I had a weak hand. The auction was started with RHO as it should have (who passed) and I made my intended bid so this didn't turn out to be a complicated situation.

[blackshoe]

barmar, on Feb 11 2008, 02:23 PM, said:

And lots of players routinely refuse to pause regardless of whether the stop card is used. The problem is so rampant, in my experience, that I consider it futile to call attention to it. Most of these players are set in their ways, so no amount of complaining is likely to solve the problem.

Particularly where the club's attitude is "we don't issue procedural penalties".

[blackshoe]

Heh. Ran across this just now: http://llbbl.com/dat...al/target7.html

[finally17]

blackshoe, on Feb 11 2008, 08:51 PM, said:

barmar, on Feb 11 2008, 02:23 PM, said:

And lots of players routinely refuse to pause regardless of whether the stop card is used.  The problem is so rampant, in my experience, that I consider it futile to call attention to it.  Most of these players are set in their ways, so no amount of complaining is likely to solve the problem.

Particularly where the club's attitude is "we don't issue procedural penalties".

The annoying problem in my experience is when my RHO has refused to pause after partner's stop card, and then when I take a few seconds to decide how I am going to handle my partner's skip, my RHO tries to call me on being out of tempo...Even with explanation some people don't seem to grasp that the failing was in their instant pass.

[jtfanclub]

blackshoe, on Feb 11 2008, 08:51 PM, said:

barmar, on Feb 11 2008, 02:23 PM, said:

And lots of players routinely refuse to pause regardless of whether the stop card is used.  The problem is so rampant, in my experience, that I consider it futile to call attention to it.  Most of these players are set in their ways, so no amount of complaining is likely to solve the problem.

Particularly where the club's attitude is "we don't issue procedural penalties".

Partner got called on it a week ago...I'd mentioned it politely to him a couple of times, but he still refuses to pause after skip bids.

He got a warning. We'll see if it works.

[mycroft]

Justin:

Okay, so I'm hooped. I follow the Laws and Rules, and that's wrong, I have to think, and you win because partner can't use that information, but you can. Where I don't have to think, the same rules apply.

Sorry, sir, you have enough of an advantage over me. You don't get that one.

No, I don't tank 10 seconds after 2NT-3NT. Partner does, and I use that time. If I don't, then the pause is clear, and you get to use it, and partner doesn't. My fault.

I really could care less how upset you get by me doing my best to follow Law 73A2 and D1 (clearly, nobody can be in their "standard" tempo 100% of the time, but I do try). I understand it; it disrupts your flow of the game, and you get fewer reads. But I am both allowed and expected to create a tempo that allows me to, 95+% of the time, bid in the same rhythm whether there's thinking time or not; provided I don't slow the game down to the point where I am habitually late. By the way, in a club that runs 6 minutes a board, I'm one of the catch-up pairs...

Also, by explicitly setting my own tempo, it is a lot harder for players to run me to their tempo. And yes, there are players who try to fast play opponents, because they can think at that speed, and their opponents can't. I bet I drive them nuts, too.

Re: partner reading? Oh, possibly, and if it happens he or I will likely be the first to point it out. However, the three times I've had the TD actually called by the opponents for my "hesitations", view of the hand showed that I had *nothing whatever to think about*. Take that for what it's worth.

And the 7 solid? If partner has x K7xxx Jxx Txxx? Isn't standard "let's hope I hit partner's suit, cause I'm never getting in to run mine"? Oh, and I'll have several witnesses that say "Oh, yes, he does that all the time. It's really annoying." Of course, in that case I was playing for the first time with that partner (but have played against him or as teammates for several years), so it's a lot less likely that he can read tells my opponents get wrong.

(And yes, I've said to opponents "for him, that's slow", or "for him, that's fast" when it's clear to me that partner has breached his normal tempo in an auction where the opponents might just think that there's no problem. Funny how rare that is).

Michael.

[barmar]

Jlall, on Feb 11 2008, 06:51 PM, said:

The whole thing is your tempo should be the SAME always. The arbitrary 10 second rule is silly, some auctions should have a much faster tempo. Why is 2N p 3N not a 10 second tank but 1N p 3N is a 10 second tank? That is completely silly. Why would you break tempo with 7 spades to the AKQT, you have an easy double.

Yes, ideally your tempo should be totally consistent. But that's an unrealistic expectation -- some auctions require more thought than others.

Yes, the skip-bid rule is a bit silly. There are certainly other bids that should probably have mandatory hesitations; for instance, I'd recommend a mandatory pause over 1NT openings, since there are many times when you might have to think about whether to employ your artificial defense (there's a recent thread about what to do after partner hesitates before passing in (1NT)-P-(3♣).

The rule we have is clearly a compromise. Trying to enumerate all the places where a mandatory pause should be required is impractical (it would be almost has hard to remember as the alert rules), so they picked a common situation, jump bids. Again, it would be impractical to distinguish which jump bids the mandatory skip is really useful for (weak 2's, strong 2♣) from those where it's not so useful (opening 2NT, Jacoby 2NT, late-round jumps in uncontested auctions, etc.). So the rule is deliberately kept simple.

HOWEVER, TDs are gnerally allowed some latitude in enforcing the rule. The distinctions I make above, based on common sense, tend to guide the actions of the TD, even though they're not written down in the rule. This is why I think you're unlikely to see anyone penalized for failing to hesitate after an opening 2NT, for example.

[TimG]

I don't think "even tempo" means that each call (or play) takes the same amount of time. But rather that calls (or plays) made in similar situations are made in similar amounts of time.

[blackshoe]

Jlall, on Feb 13 2008, 01:14 PM, said:

I think that taking 10 seconds on that auction every time is assinine regardless of the skip bid rules.

[snip]

I will never use the stop card, and I will never routinely think for 10 seconds in auctions where you clearly don't need that much time even on a problem hand (which you have less than 1 % of the time).

I hear you Justin - but what I hear is "I think this rule is stupid, so I refuse to follow it."

What if everyone did that? What if they picked rules to defy that you think aren't stupid?

Not using the stop card is (in the ACBL, anyway) your option. Not pausing is not your option.

If you're willing to defy the rules in this case, how is anyone to know you aren't willing to do it in any case?

[blackshoe]

If you don't think the rule makes sense, come up with one that does make sense, and then lobby the SO to adopt it.

As to the question of your ethics, you opened the door to it. FWIW, from what I've heard, and read on these forums, I think you're an ethical player - but your position on this does leave that door open.

[jdonn]

blackshoe, on Feb 13 2008, 01:36 PM, said:

I hear you Justin - but what I hear is "I think this rule is stupid, so I refuse to follow it."

Exactly!

Quote

What if everyone did that? What if they picked rules to defy that you think aren't stupid?

Who cares what if - they don't! If they did, that would be their problem!

Quote

Not using the stop card is (in the ACBL, anyway) your option. Not pausing is not your option.

Because of a rule that would be stupid for people who know better to follow - see point 1,

Quote

If you're willing to defy the rules in this case, how is anyone to know you aren't willing to do it in any case?

Why should he care what anyone else thinks they know about things that they don't really know about?

[awm]

The really serious issue is people who sometimes use the stop card and sometimes don't. This is also very difficult to do anything about, since you need a lot of observations of the person in question, and mentioning it to a director won't do anything right away.

There's at least one good bridge player in my area who is inconsistent with his use of the stop card. I don't think he is "trying to cheat" -- instead, my suspicion is that when he has something to think about he uses the stop card and when his bid is "obvious" he forgets. Unfortunately the upshot is that when he uses the stop card he has something "unusual" like a 2M opening with a 6-5 hand, or a 2NT rebid with a singleton in partner's suit. If I've noticed this in the course of occasionally playing against this fellow, what are the odds that his regular partners (who've been playing with him longer than I've been alive) have noticed too? And what can I possibly do about the situation?

Because of this issue, I sometimes think we'd be better off without the "stop card" altogether.