On hesitations...

....It was thus, I was deep in thought about the entire hand, my proposed defense and our carding methods. I held two clubs in my hand. I hesitated on the first club play but the real 'call the director' error was the hesitation on my second club play (my one and only card left) Here, is my guidance regarding that incident and the suggestion for rectification.Much too good not to share with the rest of you! Enjoy learning from my mistake.************

From John...

There are times when it is appropriate to do one's thinking about the hand on defense and other times when it is not (or when if you do, you must tell declarer that you are thinking about the whole hand, not this trick). Obviously, when you are on lead you can think all you want to before leading. You can also generally think all you want when you are deciding whether to win a trick (if you have a choice of plays) or when you are deciding what to discard (although it would be improper to hesitate simply to make declarer think that you have a discarding problem), or when you have a decision about whether or not to cover declarer's card (although again, only if you have a real choice of plays). And it's OK to take some time at trick one as opening leader's partner to think about the hand, although it is courteous to announce that you are thinking about the hand if that is what you are doing.

But there are some 'time-sensitive' situations when you simply must play in tempo when you have no significant choice of plays from the standpoint of trick-taking potential. Those include the following:

1. Declarer has or may have a 'finesse or drop' guess, as in this case (and yes, once she played the ace on the first club trick, it was apparent that it was at least possible that she had such a guess).

2. Declarer leads a card that you may or may not want to cover, e.g., dummy has K9xx and declarer leads the 10, or dummy has the A10xx and declarer leads the J.

3. Declarer leads low toward a holding like the KJ.

In those situations, when declarer leads at the critical moment and you hesitate, declarer will reasonably think that you have something to think about that is germane to a decision about what to play to this trick. If you find that you have hesitated about something else than what to play to this trick, the ethical thing to do is to say before playing or as you play 'I have no problem on this trick' or 'I was thinking about the whole hand, not this trick' (assuming that this is true--of course one should not say this if declarer has caught you napping in a cover/noncover situation). This is particularly the case if you hesitate when you only have one card in your hand that you could legally play to the trick.

Now Smith Echo creates some choices on defense that are a little different from standard signalling. I can understand your confusion about whether to echo in this situation--I can see arguments in both directions. The best time to be thinking about this would be at trick 1, i.e, don't turn your own card over until you have decided whether to echo on what declarer leads. However, having not done so, it was probably, but just barely, OK to do so at trick 2 when declarer led the ace, since obviously you were not going to be taking that trick. Note that it really wouldn't have been OK if declarer had led low toward the KJ10, since now the hesitation would have suggested that you had the club A. So if declarer had led low and you had hesitated about what to play from 85, that would have been potentially problematic, although not necessarily, since your hesitation might not affect declarer's play, particularly if she had the ace.

The point I am trying to make here is that in these time-sensitive situations, declarer will interpret a hesitation as meaning that you have something to think about that is germane to trick-taking, not that you are thinking about whether or not to give count or whether or not to make a Smith Echo. And if it turns out otherwise, declarer is going to be justifiably upset and may call the director, at all levels of the game. And if it turns out that you hesitated when you had only one legal card to play to the trick, that is really going to cause a problem. So if you find yourself hesitating when you have no trick-taking issue, and particularly when you have only one card you could play, you need to say something to make sure that declarer is not deceived.

So one thing about playing Smith Echo is that you do have to be on top of it, and thinking all the time about whether you are going to echo or not. Now against declarers who understand Smith Echo, they are probably going to understand what you are thinking about when they lead the A and you hesitate, so you probably have no problem there. When you hesitate on the second round, that is a whole other kettle of fish. I understand the argument 'why would I hesitate with the Q?' But the other side of that is 'why on earth would you hesitate when you only have one club left?' And I have seen plenty of people hesitate with Qx left in hopes that declarer would prematurely call a card from dummy or play a card from his hand.

If you want to read the bridge laws about this, you can look at Law 73.D on the ACBL website. They basically say that we should all try to maintain a steady tempo, that we should be particularly careful in positions in which variations may work to the benefit of our side, but that declarer draws inferences at his/her own risk.