[Free]

Whatever it's called, Dbl shows my hand and is pretty obvious imo.

[Fluffy]

Jlall, on Jan 13 2010, 05:28 AM, said:

How do you resolve that with doubling with this hand? Well in my view we often beat 4S when we have this many prime cards, sometimes beating them 2. They also often make it. It my opinion, this is not a big deal either way. We usually beat them, but we lose slightly more imps the times they are making. I would consider the times partner passes to basically be a wash (but given that I feel I almost always have a cardplay advantage, I certainly don't shy away from this). However, the times that partner BIDS over our double are clearly a huge huge huge gain. It won't happen that often given my spade void, but when it does we are gaining massively, possibly a double game swing. Ergo doubling is super obvious to me, and not inconsistent with my general style.

sorry if I missunderstood something

seems to me that you think that we are often beating 4♠ but that if partner pulls 4♠ we are often making 5x

with the strenght even around the table (and I'd rather bet RHO is stronger than anyone) seems like you think we make more tricks than them if declaring.

So I understand that for you, our 3 suiter has more trick potential than the 4 spade opening.

Given that the only suit on wich the honnor allocation is know to favour someone is spades (partner is finessed), I think this is very wrong.


There is however a point for bidding here not raised, and its because 5♠ -1 being the final contract is something reasonable at least.

[FrancesHinden]

Jlall, on Jan 13 2010, 05:28 AM, said:

Maybe I am wrong about terminology, so I will try to clarify how I play it.

I would only pull this double with a hand that expects to make something at the 5 level, and a hand that has shape (would always pass with a balanced hand pretty much, except maybe 5332 with 3 small spades). Ergo, I end up passing the double a lot.

Do you mean "and" or "or"?
I pull this double with a hand that expects to make, OR a hand with shape.
I think you mean the same (surely you'd bid on a 2227 0-count?)

I claim to play this double as "take-out" even though partner will often pass with a balnced hand, even without trump tricks. I think one key to understanding this is that, along with many other people, I play 4NT as two-suited; so all 3-suited hands double.

I would double on this hand for the reasons stated by Justin. At the vul, I'm slightly nervous about it, but I still do it. At the opposite vul it's truly a wtp.

[hanp]

I think that this is the best possible vulnerability to double.

[helene_t]

Pass but it's thisclose.

I call this double t/o but basically I expect p to pull it with a 6-card suit if he has two spades, and with a 5-card suit if he has one spade. Of course with two 5-card suits he bids 4NT even with two spades. Maybe that should be called an optional double.

If I expect p to pull with a 5-card suit and two spades, I would double.

[jdonn]

I definitely consider this double takeout, in the sense that a takeout double is "shows the unbid suits with the two caveats that the better my hand is and the higher the level the more I can fudge on the shape." Doubling on balanced hands with values at this high level is still takeout to me under a definition like that. Yes it's a bad name in the literal sense that partner won't usually take it out, but I don't take the name that literally, I just use it to define the type of hand I should have.

[Jlall]

FrancesHinden, on Jan 13 2010, 07:13 AM, said:

Do you mean "and" or "or"?
I pull this double with a hand that expects to make, OR a hand with shape.
I think you mean the same (surely you'd bid on a 2227 0-count?)

I guess I meant neither heh. I kinda meant with something like a 5422 0 count I would pass, but with a pretty good 5422 I would bid 4N over the double. But I would always pull with lots of shape, like a 5-5 0 count or a 7 card suit 0 count.

I also claim to play X as takeout Frances, but I tend to call doubles either takeout or penalty and ignore all of the other terminology (like what is a responsive double, and why is it different than a takeout double?).

Fluffy, I don't understand what you're saying, but yes I expect to make very often if partner bids. This doesn't mean I think our hand is better than RHO's, but I do think our trick potential is very high if we have a big fit. If partner passes the double I expect to make 4 tricks pretty often compared to their 9...I don't think this means we have more trick potential than RHO, it is just the nature of how high the bidding is.

Even if we go down if partner bids, I expect they were probably cold. It seems rare that partner bids and it's wrong.

[ggwhiz]

I play similar to the above and thought that standard (or at least most popular) practice was to play the double as takeout ONLY to be taken out to something you think has a live shot to make.

[billw55]

I would definitely pass, because (a.) partner is a passed hand and (b.) so is lefty! With a passed partner righty's hand need not be weak.

[Jlall]

John Hurd at a recent regional had x KQx Axxx Axxxx and it went 4S p p and he didn't double r/w. He also said on a different hand that after p p 1H 4S p p ? he thinks its right to not X with x AKxxx Axxx Kxx.

I thought both of these were "crazy" but it goes to show that a great player can strongly disagree with my general philosophy and still be very successful/mor successful player (and I consider Johnny both a great player and undoubtedly more successful than me so far in our bridge careers).

Basically just posting this to say that even though I think this X is LOL obv, I am not necessarily right of course, or even a majority view (though I do suspect it is a majority expert view).

[Siegmund]

Just tossing in my two bits about terminology.

We do have more names for doubles that we really need. Negative and responsive might as well be called takeout (interestingly the term "negative double" appears in some very old bridge books for the then-newly-invented classical takeout double, negative=denying values in the suit doubled.)

For me the distinction in names for these higher level doubles depends a lot on our promised holding in the opponent's trump suit. If someone says their double is "takeout" I expect it to deny a trump trick; "optional" to promise at least one trump trick on defense, often semibalanced, pulled well under half the time; "penalty" implying even more in the trump department. "Cards" is, in principle, showing strength without saying anything either way about trumps, but in practice half the people who use this word think it means "very slightly offshape takeout" and half think it means (what I call) optional.

This came up in another thread about doubling a 5D opening this week, where a bunch of people all called the double by the same name but had wildly different expectations for doubler's holding.