[blml] tempo

[Alain Gottcheiner]

At 19:20 9/07/2006 -0400, Ed Reppert wrote:
>North, dealer, opens 3 spades (with or without a "stop" card, as I
>don't believe that makes any difference). East promptly (1-2 seconds)
>passes. South, whose normal tempo is about 3-4 seconds, pauses for
>about 12 seconds before calling. Has he broken tempo?

I'd say he hasn't. If I were South (with a normal tempo of less than 3-4 
seconds), the first 10 seconds would have been spent looking severely at 
East ; one might think this is not a valuable bridge reason, but surprise, 
or even deliberating whether to call the TD, could.

SMOn, I think the stop procedure is there to protect everyone from giving 
away and receiving information, including the skipper's partner. That is, 
South can use East's forced tempo to decide what he would do over East's 
most common calls (if East doubles 2S, do I go all the way with a 4S bid, 
or would 2NT or a fit-jump be better ?). He was deprived of that 
opportunity, ergo he may use the 10 seconds he was entitled to. If this 
helps North, to bad for East, who is responsible for that.

Best regards,

    Alain