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Playing Smith you have to decide in advance if you want to encourage or not. In an Danish case a player playing reverse Smith had to discard from 3 small cards, but he had not decided whether or not to encourage in the suit of the opening lead. Declarer was missing only one honor in the suit currently being played and concluded from the opp's hesitation that that the opp had the honor. Based on that conclusion he planed his play erroneously. The TD and appeals committee adjusted the score, because you are not allowed to hesitate with only small cards in the suit played.
Smith - playing in tempo
#22
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Posted 2011-April-30, 01:07
But since you know that partner doesn't have as much to go on at trick 2, how much inference can you take from a hesitation at that time?
But maybe it's a quick Smith that gives away UI -- if he doesn't have to think much, the situation is clear and you can be more confident that his signal is honest.
But maybe it's a quick Smith that gives away UI -- if he doesn't have to think much, the situation is clear and you can be more confident that his signal is honest.
#23
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Posted 2011-May-03, 04:21
kenrexford, on 2011-April-26, 17:10, said:
Sometimes I wish the rules would allow any tempo signalling you want. People could come up with silent counts to signal precisely what they have. Very sexy methods would be allowed. Fine. At least the playing field would be even and the nonsense would stop. It would be kind of funny seeing how on sync people's internal clocks were, as a fun aside.
Having played at a high level a card game where intentional hesitation was tolerated, I can assure you that distinguishing between at least "no hesitation", "short hesitation", "normal hesitation" and "extra-long hesitation" is very much doable.
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision"
-- Bertrand Russell
-- Bertrand Russell
#24
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Posted 2011-May-03, 04:58
mgoetze, on 2011-May-03, 04:21, said:
Having played at a high level a card game where intentional hesitation was tolerated, I can assure you that distinguishing between at least "no hesitation", "short hesitation", "normal hesitation" and "extra-long hesitation" is very much doable.
There is a (confirmed) story about two Norwegian brothers (top level players they were in the 1930'ies) who used a tactics of spending time. One of them once spent 10 minutes before passing. The story-teller disliked this very much and began thinking. After 20 minutes he called the waiter and ordered a pint, drank it while he continued thinking. Eventually - after half an hour - he passed.
The other brother banged his cards on the table and passed immediately, thereafter all the boards were played in normal tempo.
Do we really want to accept intentional hesitation?