[mikestar13]

Mikeh's exchange with Stephen Tu brought something to my mind. Let's contrast 1♠- Long Constrictive Auction-4NT-5♥-6♠ with 1♠- Long Constrictive Auction-4NT-5♥-7♠. Does anyone pause the "required" ten seconds in the latter auction? Does anyone expect someone else to? (Incurable Secretary Birds excepted.) The only pause rationally possible is contemplating an unlikely lead-directing double, and that applies equally to both cases. But the letter of the law requires a 10 second pause in the 7♠ case. My point is that context matters, and if some pauses are shorter in cases like this, does anyone care?

[sfi]

Australia doesn't use the stop card or cater for a longer pause after jumps (or any other auction for that matter), so my recent experience is modest.

However, it was introduced here briefly about 15 years ago when Australia hosted an Asia-Pacific tournament. At this tournament, exactly one person used the stop card and it was to show how ridiculous it was when the auction went 1NT-3NT. What he didn't realise is that I needed all 10 seconds to decide that I didn't want to double for a spade lead, so it was really quite valuable in that instance.

Since then the entire concept was abandoned in Australia - few people even know why some bidding boxes have the card. But yes, if there is an expectation that there should be a pause then it really should be enforced. Sometimes people have odd decisions to make.

[Stephen Tu]

I actually do intentionally pause the full 10 over potential auction ending jumps no matter my hand exactly for the potential Lightner double reason even though Lightner is very rare, because I want to protect myself from transmitting UI in the rare cases I do need to think about it.

I don't pause the full 10 for jumps in the middle of opp's uncontested auctions where I've passed already in situations where my I think my non-pass frequency is zero and I don't really think there is potential for any UI.