I wonder if there can be a crash on the first launch, a la  bug 314804 , that later launches work fine on.

CC tedchoc for triage; I'm not sure how to label this type of issue.

Newton just rewrote the bookmark widget on the later versions, so "maybe" this is fixed.

newt@ did you see anything like this in your rewrite?

I haven't seen this, and can't reproduce it currently.

mpearson: What device are you using? Does this happen reliably? Have you tried on another device? Also, could you attach the log output (adb logcat) from when this happens? Thanks!

newt:
I'm using an LG G2.
It happens reliably.  Sometimes it's two clicks or three, but if I make sure Chrome is closed in between the first click is always ignored.
I tried looking at the logcat yesterday and didn't see anything.  Literally, nothing.  It's like the first click is ignored (no message printed to logcat at that point).

Hmmm, and what channel of Chrome are you using?

Could you upload to Google Drive the result of "adb dumpsys" and "adb logcat" after tapping on the widget the first time? There should hopefully be some clues in the list of intents fired in dumpsys.

Oops, correction to comment #6.  For this bug, I'm on an tablet (Nexus 6, second generation).

I'm running the stable release of Chrome provided to googlers.

I have shared the adb results on drive with your google account.

This is what I did right before running those commands.
1. Opened Chrome.  Saw that the open page was bookmarked.
2. Pressed the home button.
3. Pressed the recents button and closed the (single) chrome window open.
4. Opened the launcher to widgets and dragged the bookmark widget to my home screen.
5. Tapped the single bookmark in the widget.
6. Noticed nothing happened.
7. Tapped the Google Authenticater app to verify that I was tapping with the right pressure and speed.  The app opened.
8. Returned to the home screen and tried tapping the bookmark in the widget again.
9. Notice nothing happened.

Run
adb shell dumpsys
and
adb logcat

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to finish investigating.

Ian, could you take a look?

After clicking on the widget, there should be an intent fired for BookmarkWidgetProxy (This intent is created in BookmarkWidgetProvider.performUpdate()), which then starts ChromeLauncherActivity. The problem is probably one of two things:
 1. The intent isn't being fired after clicking on the widget, or
 2. the intent is being fired, but BookmarkWidgetProxy is taking a long time to handle the intent (or crashing), or after BookmarkWidgetProxy forwards the intent to ChromeLauncherActivity, Chrome is taking a long time to start or is crashing.

Looking at the logcat and dumpsys, it should be possible to figure out where things are failing. dumpsys shows all the intents that have been fired, which component handled the intent, and how long before the intent was handled.

I can't repro this locally.