I understand many of the issues around pauses and tempo, either in terms of disadvantaging yourself by giving information to opps, or by giving information to partner with a pause. Clearly it is desirable after trick 1 as declarer to play a fairly constant tempo and desirable for defenders to play a constant tempo.
However, I don't have real experience in real tournaments etc where I have had to think about it much until I came to this site and people at tables preferred much faster play than my less formal experience. I have a few questions for more advanced players
1. On leads is it acceptable for first lead to be slightly slower than other leads. Is it acceptable for later leads to have different pauses
2. Obviously declarer can take a reasonable pause when dummy goes down. I assume they have to try and forumlate as much of their plan as possible in that first pause
3. When is it acceptable to take slightly longer pauses during play. Obviously a declarer cannot communicate anything to advantage their partner dummy, and genuine pauses simply give information to defence, but defenders pauses can advantage or disadvantage the defence. I assume deliberate manipulation of pauses to mislead is frowned upon or is that part of the legitimate psychology of bridge??
4. Is it acceptable for each player to have their own tempo of play. That is not be forced into a tempo by declarer and play their own consistent rate all the time
Any thoughts on these and anything else I may have missed. I've read discussions from more advanced players on other forums relating to use of and interpretation of pauses and the ethics one way or the other of doing so
regards P
PS Just by way of light hearted comment I started observing and noting GiBs variety in pauses - based on various things including complexity of simulation but also obviously server load
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