[Walddk]

For those of you who may not know, Sancho (Matthias Schüller from Germany) is a European Bridge League certified director.

Roland

[FrancesHinden]

I would pass 3S with or without a hesitation: I've shown my hand already.

FWIW, double is clearly suggested by a BIT.
I think 4H is as well, because partner's generally don't make a "penalty" pass smoothly.

One reason to let the result stand might be the tempo of the auction so far. You are looking at some balanced 4-count (or whatever) and the auction starts

1S x 2S

you pass with no interest

1S x 2S P
P 3H

Oh! that's unusual: partner's more normal auction is either to pass 2S out or to double again. Double-then-bid hands are very rare (at least, they are for me).

While I'm still thinking about this, RHO has bid 3S, which is also rather unexpected (responder usually gets their hand off their chest over the double, rather than bid once and bid again).

So a slight hitch here doesn't necessarily give any UI at all.

15 seconds would.
5 seconds may not.

[helene_t]

I've seen "normal tempo" defined as approximately 4 seconds. So 5 seconds gives you no UI. Significantly less, say 2 seconds, would have given you UI. My personal impression, FWIW, is that unusually fast bidding is a more frequent problem than unusually slow bidding.

[blackshoe]

"Normal tempo" is idiosyncratic - it varies from player to player. There is no "one size fits all" definition. IME "undue haste" occurs at least as often as "undue hesitation", whatever "normal tempo" is, but is questioned by the NOS far less often. Perhaps it should be questioned more often. <shrug>

[nik1998]

Pass!
Nikolai

[helene_t]

jillybean2, on Mar 11 2007, 10:15 PM, said:

It is my understanding that once UI has occurred the player must not chose an option that could have been suggested by the UI. It doesn’t matter if the majority of players would bid 4♥, if pass is a LA you cannot bid 4♥.
(I realise this is not the likely outcome of this hand!)

"The majority" is not enough, of course. If a significant number of players vote "pass", then pass is a LA.

I'm not sure what constitues a "significant" number. Some older Dutch law texts mentioned 20% but I think current practice is stricter.

Asking forum members what their 2nd, 3rd etc option is, or what they considered, is inadequate. Even if everybody considered pass and everybody had it as second option, it would not be a LA.

[blackshoe]

What constitutes a significant number depends, generally, on the jurisdiction. In the ACBL, it's about 30%. In the EBU it's 20 or 25%, I think. Online, who knows? (practically speaking, it's up to the sponsoring organization).

[barmar]

Is there really much point in distinguishing 20%, 25%, and 30%? How many people would you have to poll to bring the margin of error below 5%? How many players do TD's typically poll? I can't believe it's much more than 5, which means that the only possible numbers are 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%.

[blackshoe]

The possible numbers are whatever the regulating authority says they are. Since the choice is arbitrary, that one authority picks one number, and another a different one, is relevant only to TDs and ACs who work in both jurisdictions - and only in that they have to keep straight which number applies in the jurisdiction in which they're currently working.