[pran]

I think Frances sums it up pretty well.

[WellSpyder]

 pran, on 2016-December-04, 13:04, said:

I think Frances sums it up pretty well.

So do I.

To return to the original question, I don't think the first pause demonstrably suggests anything. Most likely the player was thinking "If I bid 4♥, will partner interpret it as natural or a splinter?", but there is no way to decide what conclusion he reached. (Incidentally, this is an auction that I do have agreements with opposite most of the people I play with, but the agreement differs with different partners, so there is still the chance of a pause while I try to remember what the agreement is with this particular partner.) The second pause might mean different things - as someone has mentioned, it might be because a redouble is being considered. But if there is any doubt about the meaning of 4♥ then it seems much more likely to me that the 4♥ bidder was thinking "I have to assume partner interpreted my natural 4♥ bid correctly and still took it out to 4♠, so do I have a hand that is prepared to play in 4♠ on that basis or not?" That might well suggest to opener that 4♠x isn't a good place to play if he originally bid it assuming there was spade support opposite.

[mycroft]

We have a few pairs who like to hide behind "no agreement", and, because they have no agreement, they have no Alertable agreement (and, of course, since it's "just bridge", they don't have a regulatable agreement (should the sequence, if agreed to, be part of a prohibited agreement)). They can keep this up for *years*. Therefore, the regulations (and Laws) are written so that you don't have to talk about it for it to be disclosable; your experience with this partner or your shared playing environment is also subject to regulation.

And, of course, the partner (who "guesses" very well, thank you, because it's all "reasonable"), is in much better shape than random opponent who is frequently in Frances' situation of "if I ask, either I pass a lot of UI to partner which might constrain him, or I get the 'right' answer and may not want to do anything anyway; either way, the opponents get a good look at my hand" (which is, ostensibly, AI to them). And some of these players are very very good at working out why people would ask things, and playing around it.

I know I'm prompting (preempting?) blackshoe's story, but I once asked about an entire auction (before the opening lead), because I wanted to know about one call. "Which call do you need to know about?" of course, and I insisted on "everything." The looks I got as the first couple of rounds (which were just "standard", and everybody knew that) were nasty, but eventually they just told me everything. At the end of the hand they asked why I didn't just ask about the relevant call - to which I straight up said "because I didn't feel like telling *you* what I was interested in." Luckily this same pair is of the opinion that it is stupid *not to use* information from partner's questions or answers, so at least they wouldn't yell for the TD if I asked about one call and partner took advantage of the question - not that I would want that, either.

[blackshoe]

 mycroft, on 2016-December-06, 10:38, said:

I know I'm prompting (preempting?) blackshoe's story…

I imagine a lot of us have similar stories.