Undos on card played.
In the Sky Blue Book (cool name, excellent publication) 4.3 states that "In all EBU events, there are no UNDOs in the play". This is the online application of Law 45C - so often stated as there "is no such thing as a unintended play" (c.f. Law 25A: Unintended call).
The more I think about this, the more I think this needs a more nuanced approach.
Law 45C has definitions of a "played card" that are very much rooted in real world bridge: eg
Declarer is deemed to have played a card from his hand if it is:
(a) held face up, touching or nearly touching the table; or
(b) maintained in such a position as to indicate that it has been played.
Neither of these apply in online bridge. Since we don't want it to be impossible for people to play cards, we have to interpret this in a way that applies to the online world. Click a card, it appears, card played.
BUT laws 48 and 49 admit the possibility of cards being exposed accidentally. Is this not what a (genuine) misclick is? 45C refers to deliberate actions, not accidental ones. A fumbling of cards, dropping one (IMHO) equates to a fumbling of the mouse, and I submit that laws 48 and 49 are the ones to apply for a (again genuine) misclick.
What does this mean? For declarer, the undo is allowed. For defender a penalty card is created. If not an honour it will be a minor penalty card and the requirement to play much less onerous than a major one , which would have to be played anyway.
Note that law 50 also allows for director discretion: "A card prematurely exposed (but not led, see Law 57) by a defender is a penalty card unless the Director designates otherwise". I can't immediately think of a situation where it would apply, though.
Comments
If I reach in to my hand to play a card but take out the wrong one by mistake, perhaps due to poor hand-eye co-ordination, and put it on the table, the card is played. That seems to me to be closer to the online situation than dropping a card when you weren't trying to play one at all.
If it was the card next to the one you meant, then I agree - it's a lack of accuracy. If it's a card over the other side of the hand that you've fumble clicked as you're moving the mouse to the card you want, then I don't.
I have recently been thinking the same as Jeremy myself. Indeed to Iogged on today intending to start a post on the topic.
Presumably clubs dont have to follow the SkyBlue book and could try the suggestion themselves.
The rule in the SkyBlue book is of course much easier to implement.
The protocol I have recommended to my club is:
There is no equivalent of law 25A for the play, and in principle undos are not allowed during play. Among the reasons for this are:
1) A withdrawn unintended bid gives no information away, whereas a withdrawn unintended play does (and for defenders there would be UI)
2) The ability to withdraw a play could be more easily abused
However since mis-plays are more likely in online bridge, we should be mindful to avoid extreme situations.
Exceptionally, the director may allow an undo where they determine that the player's different intention is incontrovertible (equivalent to accidentally dropping a card) and the opposing side is not put at a disadvantage.
If the director does allow an Undo during play, then for defenders it normally becomes a penalty card (minor if it is below an honour). However, Law 50 allows for director discretion: "A card prematurely exposed … by a defender is a penalty card unless the Director designates otherwise".
It's possible to avoid the "fumbleclick" by turning on "confirm bids and plays".
It's also possible to avoid the BBO re-shuffle before opening lead issue by (i) not trying to play too fast, (ii) using hand diagrams rather than pictures of cards
I don't believe there is any fundamental reason why mis-plays are more likely in online bridge than at the table
What does happen more (perhaps) is that people play the wrong card more often due to lack of attention or concentration; in theory those mis-plays shouldn't be allowed an undo.
If your club wants to 'allow' that (or even encourage it) in the way you describe then that then no-one's going to stop you, because as you point out it is effectively legal to do so, but I agree with the EBU approach of no undos during the play.
There is also the practical point that, on BBO at least, there's a hard stop on round timings, and I hate the way the TD ends up deciding the result of incomplete hands, it's a significant factor in why I won't play in pairs events on BBO at all. Dealing with Undo requests - and particularly if they lead to a major penalty card with subsequent lead penalties etc - might take up significant TD time and lead to the board being incomplete, which feels like another reason not to do it.
p.s. there has been significant hard feeling in non-EBU events when a defender has asked for an undo on their opening lead after dummy has hit and it appears to be a super-unfortunate lead. The poor TD has to decide if it's a mis-click or not, and either way people get upset.
It is, at least, usually easier later in the play to decide if it's a genuine change of mind or not.
Had the rules of no-undos been in effect, it would have put him off entirely playing in 7C not 4H or playing AD instead of ruffing.
I agree that an opening lead is far more difficult to correct for, something being difficult should not be the reason for some rule or other.
As it happens, I tried him with a mouse for the second week and he is much better now with only a couple of misclicks.
As he is a long term bridge player of 50+ years and executive of the club since its inception, finally getting him to try online bridge had been a huge win. To think of making him play a card that was clearly in error would just be inappropriate.
Playing in the county, or more serious events, there is an expectation and requirement that player be moderately good with a computer and BBO/RealBridge. Playing in a club environment is a different kettle of fish.
I just got caught out by the opening shuffle on BBO. Instead of leading out a doubleton in partner's suit against 6C, the system played the King of trumps for me for a difference of around 25 imps and turning what I think would have been a 20-0 win into an 11-9 one. It's a rather egregious issue.
When you say "the system played the King of trumps for me" do you not mean "I played the King of trumps because the system rearranged the cards as I was selecting my lead"? If so, there are two counters to this: the obvious first one is to deliberately take time over making your lead and the second is to select diagrams rather than pictures of cards and then it won't do this.
No that's not what I mean at all. I played the spade, as in that was the card I pointed at and clicked on, but the system threw out the King of trumps for me. I certainly didn't "play" the King even though it might have seemed that way to anyone watching.
I didn't feel that I'd rushed my click but, of course, I'll consider your suggestions.
My point was that you had clicked on a card, not that the system had played one without you trying to play.
I appreciate what you are saying, Gordon. My point, however, is that the card I clicked on was not the card that the system played to the first trick. It played a card that I had not clicked on, a card other than the one I had clicked on.
Now, I appreciate that, as things unfurl in real-time over the Internet, the various computers involved and I might not be in perfect synch. I do know, however, that on my screen my mouse was over the spade I intended to play when I pressed the button on the mouse. The system might already have done its own internal shuffle-around but the result was that I clicked on a card to play it and found that another, different card was played, one that was nowhere near the card I clicked on.
A deeper point, though, is that this is a genuine and non-trivial issue. I am now highly aware that I might need to count to five before making an opening lead but the "bug/issue" caused a high-level and lucrative contract to make when I had already executed all the required Bridge work and logic to take it down.
I'll also add that I was initially primarily responding to the comments from @Frances above.
I believe there is.
Playing a card from hand is a multiple step process. Move hard to card, grasp card, pull card out, place card on table. All the time automatically visually checking you are doing what you expect. Plenty of opportunities to identify if you're trying to play the wrong card and correct.
On the other hand, playing online (without confirm bid and plays on), it's single action. A single click or just a touch (or too close hover) and it's all over.
Those suffering from misclicks usually have limited manual dexterity, and are perhaps not as technology aware as many. Tablets are worse but even using a mouse needs a considerable amount of dexterity that those of us used to it take for granted.
Yes they can (and should) turn on "confirm bid and plays", but quite a few have problems with this as well, and end up getting frustrated, focussing on making the second press/click rather than checking the call / card.
This is I suspect a problem more familiar to club directors than congress ones.
I think there's a large element of not understanding what "unintended" means. Of the undo requests I get, I reckon about 2/3 are inappropriate. People who never made unintended calls (or plays) before are now doing so. Because they'd never come across the rules, and because we were very generous with undos in the early days of realbridge, they think they're entitled when they're not.
I shoud perhaps add that I only play / direct on Realbridge, so all my comments relate to that platform.
I'd never heard of the BBO "opening shuffle" and for me it gives another reason not to play on it.
Just to clarify what the BBO "opening shuffle" is: in face-to-face play, there's a requirement for dummy to put the trumps on the left from declarer's point of view (law 41D). BBO misinterprets the requirement and somehow ends up forcibly resorting every hand to put the trumps on the left from the point of view of whoever it is that can see them (so dummy's and declarer's hands have the trumps on declarer's left, the defenders' hands have the trumps on their holder's lefts). This happens at a predictable time every hand (just after the final pass of the auction), so if you're used to it it's possible to play around it. However, it's all too easy to decide on what your opening lead will be while you're waiting for partner to make the final pass, and hover your mouse over your lead in preparation to play it, forgetting that it's going to be somewhere else at the time you're actually allowed to lead it.
For what it's worth, I play using a touchpad with tap-to-click, which has the property that you can "cancel" a mistaken click by immediately replacing your finger on the touchpad and holding it there (this turns the click into a drag, which BBO does not interpret as playing a card as long as you slide your finger a sufficient distance before releasing); this is an unnatural action, but after using a touchpad for a few years it becomes second nature – almost a reflex action – whenever you realise you clicked on something that you didn't mean to. I don't think I've ever actually misplayed a card as a consequence of the BBO shuffle, but I have on occasion needed to cancel a mistaken card play in this way. I think this is probably the equivalent of detaching a card from your hand and then replacing it (except, of course, that there are no UI implications).
I wonder whether something similar would make sense for online platforms as an alternative to confirming plays. (I don't use "confirm bids and plays" because getting into the habit of double-clicking cards to play them isn't going to prevent you accidentally double-clicking the wrong card.) Instead of asking players to confirm, it would make sense to give an easy way to cancel after playing the wrong card (by adding a delay in the software before your partner/opponents are shown the card you played, during which you could, e.g., click anywhere to unplay the card). This would probably also make directing easier – it would be easier to distinguish an actual misclick from a thinko or other similar noncorrectible play.
I'd like to ask a related question. If we are to allow "undo's" for cards played in error due to a misclick is there a reasonable time limit to require for the request to be made? I was thinking along the lines of "no pause for thought" but with possible response time issues and searching for the button that is difficult. This is only relevant to Realbridge as my club doesn't allow Undos on BBO and we could require a verbal request but not everyone has a good microphone. In a recent incident the next trick had been started before the Undo was requested.
There are two questions here:
1) What is the time limit for withdrawing a card?
2) What determines whether the play was truly unintended? (the "without pause for thought" aspect)
For 1) I would look to law 45C4b since this is the closest to unintended play, and this allows correction before that side has played another card. It also has all the protections the non-offending side need.
For 2), I think the test for undos during play needs to be much stricter than during the auction (e.g. the player's different intention is incontrovertible).
Law 49 (EXPOSURE OF A DEFENDER’S CARDS) also needs to be applied if it was a defender who withdrew a play.
Hello all,
My nick on BBO is coffee3 and I am a BBO TD probably since 2003. I was a part of different BBO clubs, I ran my own tournaments and competitions until, I believe 2010-2011. I stopped simply because at that time even world class players were caught of cheating, which is a different topic. I backed to direct tournaments since the first Lockdown in UK was introduced and with the pure mission to preserve the bridge in the North East of the UK. Since March 2020 I ran probably above 100 tournaments under the EBU umbrella for 3 clubs in the North East - Castle Morpeth BC, Brunton BC and Whitley Bay & Tynemouth BC.
I will write a short post today, but on Saturday will write a very long post why Undo Requests should be allowed at any time during the bidding/playing and under which conditions the Undo Request meet the criteria of a "Genuine Misclick" or is an attempt of the player to achieve a better score, shortly called "Change of your Mind".
Will start with the obvious difference between Face-to-Face and Online Bridge. The two books (White and Blue Book) are written to meet the needs for Face-to-face bridge. Online Bridge requires to be used:
And all of you know pretty well while working on a computer and if you make a mistake, you use the Undo Button to reverse the action with one step. BBO is using Microsoft software today (BBO the original version was their own software and in my opinion is the best of the following versions and I am still using it). The idea is the same - you want to reverse the last action by requesting Undo. From this point of view this is a pure mechanical error. While on Face-to-Face bridge you can't make such type of mistake. Just think about that.
Moreover, the Majority of EBU members are pensioners with different types of vulnerabilities like eyesight deterioration, shaking hands and more. In the clubs I play just a few are below 60 years of age. And pretty much all of us wear glasses. EBU should have a Mission to support its members while they play Online rather than impose restrictions and punish them when they make misclicks. On top of that the majority of these new players on BBO are not good at all with computers, internet and other devices (I made lots of Guidances to help them).
I will give you an example - I played for Castle Morpeth BC vs Wearside in NEBA Interclub Teams. My team won one of the Sessions due to a misclick by the opponent in the 4th seat - I was the Declarer, playing 3NT which if the 4th player hadn't made the misclick should go 1 off. But because of the EBU current ruling, he denied to request Undo. And I was the TD as well on that match. The case was that there was a 13th winner card in one suit and I have to give a trick in the Clubs, hoping that the player who is going to win that card into circulation, won't have tat 13th card winner. In my hand I had Kxxxx of Clubs vs A10x of Clubs into the Dummy. Jx was in West, Qxx in East. West didn't cover, I put the 10 of Clubs from the Dummy, not covered with the Queen! I am not happy at all to win such matches due to a pure and quite obvious misclicks. I believe than none of you will be happy of such a situation at all. I not only made the contract, but I made it with a extra trick - 11 IMPs.
As a summary - Undo Requests must be introduced at any point under the verification of the TD. Or at least the Organiser must have the flexibility and the experience to allow Undos. At Level 4 at least on Club nights (on EBU Tournaments, 12 boards, EBU may decide to continue without Undos during the playing or may have at least one tournament with Undos allowed - run a test for 1 month period and then make a decision) the tournaments are more like socialising and friendly rather than competitive. And all of you know that as well.
Undo Requests
Today there’s a large variety of computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices, including touch-screens and is quite easy to make a mechanical error by pressing or clicking on the wrong button or card. Moreover, the Majority of EBU members have different types of visibilities and vulnerabilities and lack of IT skills and experience with Online Bridge. To solve the problem Undo Request Button is installed to reverse the action on BBO.
Undo can be requested at any time once the player recognizes that he or she has made a genuine misclick. However and the best practice is all to stop playing and call the TD and let the TD to take the decision either to allow Undo request or ask you to continue bidding/playing because too much information is revealed. The late Undo Requests may be viewed as “changing your mind” so timing for Undo request is important. Bear in mind that your opps may realize faster than you that you have made a misclick and will take the advantage of that by bidding or playing fast. There are five situations related to Undos on BBO:
Undo Request (UR) during the Bidding action
All of you know that with each new bid more and more information is revealed to all the players. Undo Request, when triggered at a very late stage, possesses a risk to scrap the whole board altogether. UR must be triggered by the player within a few seconds, no more than 5-10 seconds the mistake is being recognized and ideally the Undo is requested before two or more players have bidden (i.e. not too much new information is being revealed). In most cases the Undo has to be requested before and no later your partner places his/her bid (because your partner may bid naturally a second suit or NT for showing distribution or limitation to the hand – the late UR may require your partner to make another bid, i.e. too much information is revealed and the board has to be adjusted). Your LHO will recognize your error faster than you and will take the advantage of it by fast bidding.
In any cases when you have made a genuine mistake and request an Undo - trigger it and call the TD to check and decide whether to proceed with/without Undo. Any player from the table can call the TD once UR is triggered.
Generally, undo Request during the Bidding is acceptable and ideally should be requested immediately and no later than 10 seconds of the actual Bid.
Undo Request On the Lead
This type of Undo request is to some extend unethical because once the card is played by the player who is on the Lead, the cards of the Dummy become visible to all 4 players. However, because the cards automatically rearrange after the end of the bidding action, the player on the lead may not pay attention and may pick up the wrong card. This type of error doesn’t occur often, but it happens. Luckily, it is possible to distinguish whether this is the case or the player “has changed his mind” on the lead by viewing the Dummy, the TIME for Undo Request is recorded on BBO. The Undo Request must be triggered within 3 seconds from the actual lead. The TD must be called immediately, must check the Table History and allow/reject the Undo request. For such a short period of time is not possible to analyse the dummy and 3 seconds are enough to realize your own mistake and ask for Undo.
However, call the TD to check and verify this before continuing to play.
Recommendation to the players:
Wait for the cards to rearrange first. Please take your time (up to 30 seconds) and then pick up your chosen card for your Lead. Try to avoid Undo Requests on the Lead as the Dummy becomes simultaneously visible with the card being lead and this represents Ethical and Moral issues. Always call the TD if Undo request is triggered on the lead!
Undo Requests By the Declarer (Misclick by the Declarer while in the Dummy and Misclick by the Declarer from His/Her Hand)
These types of situations occur fairly often. I have created two gifs which illustrate these genuine mistakes and Undos should be accepted. Files1&2. The criteria are that if there’s a genuine misclick – if so, there’s no reason Undo request to be rejected.
Undo Requests By the Defender
The situation is pretty much the same as if the Declarer makes a misclick. There are various reasons why a defender can make a misclick (waiting for a longer than usual time the declarer to make a move and accidentally touching the screen and playing a wrong card), but quite often this may due to intentionally slow play by the Declarer who is hoping that the opponents may lose concentration. “Slow play on purpose” is a strategy quite often used by strong players vs weak or elder players even on real competitions. Online the aim is the defending side to do a misclick. In this case the Undo Request is reasonable and should be accepted.
When it is obvious that it is a change of the mind
Such situations should be avoided. The last gif File3 is an example when the Declarer “changed his mind” as recognizing that the LHO holds the trump Kx and the K will win the second trick, but the opps will make only 1 instead of two tricks in the trump suit if 10 of Spades is covered by the Q. The Undo request should be rejected or the TD will force the player to play the Q. There are cases when the player rejects to follow the TD guidance. There are various types of punishments starting from adjusting the board to temporary ban of the player. This is a different topic and is not one of the objectives of this guidance.
CONCLUSION
The TD is for that - to solve these conflicts. The TD must make a decision and no matter if the Undo Request being accepted/rejected, the cards should be played under the TDs supervising. At the end of the board the TD must ask the players if they are happy and accept the Outcome. The TD must take into the account the already revealed information BEFORE the Undo Request what all the 4 players know and if there’s a damage to the action to force the players to play the board and then to do the adjustment. The Defending side has the superior right to reject that score and goes for the Average in the case of Damage.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The best practice is in events of Undo Requests, the TD to be called immediately. The role of the TD is to be the mediator and verifies whether the misclick is genuine or is “change of the mind”. The TD must take everything into account – bidding system, table chat, table history and already revealed information to all 4 players on the table and investigate what type of damage may occur. If there’s no damage and the misclick is genuine (in the majority of the cases) the Undo Request should be accepted. The majority of the players are polite and understand the TD decision. The players trust and believe that the TD will take a fair decision and will follow his/her guidance.
2nd of February, 2021
Author: Hristo Toshev
(because the pictures can't appear on the Forum, on request I will send the original text and access to My Drive so you can see the gifs, screenshots and the flow chart. You can always speak to me on BBO by sending a message to coffee3.)
I fully support a relaxed approach to UNDOs. The regulations I use for the games I run are
I am not keen on specifying time limits, and want to be sure we can cover the cases where the annlouncement that goes with the bid clearly indicates a different bid was intended - however long it took to notice.
I suspect on BBO, at least, 98% of any problems relating to the wrong card and an undo would go away if the double click to confirm option was selected. If people don't wish to use that for whatever reason then they take the risk. I don't think you should need to be in the position of having to accept for a "genuine" misclick.
well, the trouble is, that if you opt in for "Confirmation of your Card" you literally add more time and double the clicks. For inexperienced players that would be a better option, but then you have to increase the time per board. And for fast players like me, who is typically have to wait between 6 and 8 min per round, I prefer rather to do something else instead of playing into such a tournament.
Another problem has arised in the last month - I have players who are suffering/recovering from Covid19. These players NEED SUPPORT and BREAKS even on 12 boards tournaments. We're not living in normal times so we have to be more supportive and adaptive to the current situation which looks may continue until Christmas and beyond. There are more important things than the competitive part of the game.
There's still no getting away from the fact that there are always some people going to be caught out by what is, essentially, a bug in BBO of the "unexpected action" variety, as the cards are re-arranged prior to the first trick. A player clicks on the card they wish to play and the system plays a different card. The players aren't desiring an undo; they are wanting the card they selected to be played.
If the EBU holds events on BBO then there ought to be some acceptance of responsibility for the situation that a fault in the software places people in. At the very least, there should be a notice from the TD of the session, such that we can claim that players were warned.
(Yes, I'm still smarting from having had a slam make due to this problem)
This is exactly my point - because you play the card using a Software, i.e. indirectly, you should be given the opportunity to correct the genuine misclick under the supervision and consideration of the TD. Yesterday I ran Blue Points Swiss pairs, was annoying not to let a player to go for Undo in the middle of the game just because of the current EBU rules at Level 4 events. Online bridge differs from the face-to-face bridge.
Moreover, just because online and face-to-face differs the punishments are also different. On the same tournament has occurred a "long hesitation" from one player. That's fine, you can take your time thinking. Unfortunately, this gives more time to his partner to guess and do the very unusual lead on 3NT with the A from Ax and to catch a 7 card suit in his partner. If this happens on face-to-face bridge, this is a clear pass of UI information. The case is not the same online - there are various reasons for the delay - from thinking to data exchange (could appear a delay from the internet, BBO slag, etc) and you can't clearly define this.
That's why I am banging and giving evidence why Undo Requests should be allowed to the Organisers to decide for their tournaments and leave the players to choose. Is as simple as that.
Event organisers can allow undos if they wish.
The extra time taken by choosing to confirm cards is minimal.
UI rulings can still be given online and the example you give looks like one that should have been considered.
for UI - online there are extra factors to be taken into account as:
the machines exchange data in between. And timing for that may vary. So you can't conclude that there's the case of passing UI or the reason is technical. So you must take into the account this. Of course, the online bridge is moving towards video chat, so you can watch the body language and other things. But in my case what has actually happened - the Defender 1 spent 54 seconds before bidding Pass in the action - 1NT - Pass - 3NT - (54 seconds thinking, having 7 solid Spades starting from the KQJ, 4 little Hearts, two singletons) Pass. The lead was fine, in 14 seconds, A of Spade, and the natural lead should be from Kxxxx in Diamonds or safe from the other two suits. If this occurs life, we know what will be the ruling - passing UI, the board will be adjusted 3NT+1 as this will be the common outcome if the lead is not A of Spade followed by another one. But for Online bridge, bearing in mind that there might be a lag of passing the data (BBO was lagging for quite a long time, I think now is solved this because they finally took down the original BBO version) and that pair will be warned. The player on the lead had enough time, followed by the longer time spent from his partner thinking, to guess the lead. Is not unreasonable, is in their agreement to lead from 2/4 in NT. I would accept that if there wasn't "Long Hesitation" before bidding the Pass. Once again - the reason for the longer taken time could be either Thinking or Software lag. Or he might answer to a family member, whatsoever doing at home. We don't know that. So the punishments should be soften. I am giving to you this example as an evidence the difference between Online and Face-to-Face bridge. I hope this example will help others in their directing.
Thanks Gordon that you confirmed that the TD or the Organiser has the priority to decide about Undos and how they can be applied.
I think that should be the ruling online too.
Because is impossible to identify the Truth the Average score is the most fair solution. And this is what I did - 50% to both. The Defenders have the agreement to lead from Shortness on 3NT which also includes Ax or Kx or Qx. And they have announced that at the beginning of the round. On the other hand, just because online I can check the table history and can see and identify the "long hesitation" (on the half of the tournament the rest were playing 4 Spades with double, so the Defender who might have spent the time whether to pass or go to 4, that's fine. There are simply concerns of "passing UI", cannot be verified online.. His partner might have followed what they have agreed or might get the idea as a result of the longer time his partner has spent thinking. Adding the factor that there's a possibility of a BBO lag before the bid came out and being recorded, is a very heavy punishment to assign 3NT+1 from 3NT-3, the actual score. For 3NT-3 they have 98%, for others who made 3NT+1 they got 80%. Because is really impossible to determine UI and there are just concerns (for me the case is clear - the Defender on the lead realises what he must lead because of the extra time spent thinking from his partner and there's no extra "passing UI") I gave them Average - 50%. The Defenders were punished, but less than what would occur in Face-to-Face bridge. The Declarer was satisfied with the decision.
Rulings are made on the balance of probabilities.
Score adjustments are not intended to be punishment.
Artificial scores are not legal when a result has been obtained on a board.
Probabilities are assigned only if the case is clear. When you have unclear factors or can't identify then with certainty, you can't judge based on Probabilities or Likelihood.
Because could be either way - 1) partnership agreement - was announced; or 2) because of the long hesitation - longer time spent thinking; and 3) as a result we have a Lead which can be viewed either ways - you can't adjust the score in one or another direction. The Average score was accepted by both sides. BBO adjustments are designed in this way - Ave=50%, Ave- is 40%, Ave+ is 60%. You can't assign different score than this.
You still continue to view Online Bridge as the replacement of Face-to-Face bridge, Gordon, which is entirely wrong.
If they have an announced agreement to lead from shortage, wouldn't a hesitation suggest leading contrary to agreement, rather that following the agreement?
As the lead was as agreed, where is the issue?
I have an agreement to lead S against NT unless I have a good reason not to (S bid by declarer, void in spades, great top of a sequence lead, being such good reasons)
So much so, I am happy to lead a singleton S against 1NT - 3NT bid games.
I too have given hesitations at the start of the bidding, mainly because I will be looking at the previous result and results at difference tables. I normally hang fire until after I have bid, but occasionally I will think that the last board was the last in the, or I thought my LHO was dealer. This is similar to staring into space at the bridge table until someone says, "your turn"