[Hanoi5]

A maximal double is used in competitive auctions to distinguish between a hand competing for the part-score and a hand inviting to game, for example:

1♠-2♥-2♠-3♥
X

Double being an invitation to game and 3♠ just competing.

Now, is this different?:

1♦-1♥-1♠-Pa
2♠-3♥-X

[aguahombre]

I am probably in the minority; there are those who would never have the audacity to suggest penalizing an opponent who steps out of line.

But, I have the old fashioned idea that if the same opponent bids twice, unsupported, in front of me....I get to penalize.

By the way, I only showed 4 spades, so that might make a difference.

[JLOGIC]

Not different

[MrAce]

Here is how i play it;

When there is no space between our suit and theirs, only way to make an invitation is DBL.

It is totally different story for example if their suit was ♦ pd opened 1♣ and ours was ♠, then u can use 3♥ as game try and DBL as penalty.(or dbl as balanced game try and passable, 3♥ game try and not defensive hand)

1♣-1♦-1♠-pass
2♠-3♦-DBL for business, 3♥ for game try and has nothing to do with ♥ suit.

[Free]

For me it's not different. Like MrAce I prefer the in-between bids (if there are any) for invites. If we don't have the space, I use Dbl as INV and supporting as competitive. Sadly you can't always Dbl for penalties.

[Phil]

In general, when our auction is 'moving forward', and they've bid the suit below ours, double is maximal. However, when we've stopped and they compete then double is either dsip or penalty.

[aguahombre]

Phil, on 2011-April-08, 09:24, said:

In general, when our auction is 'moving forward', and they've bid the suit below ours, double is maximal. However, when we've stopped and they compete then double is either dsip or penalty.

As agreed by most people, I am sure. And when it is "their" suit, rather than just one player's repeated suit, the frequency of usage seems to lean heavily toward MOD. It is the one-sided opponent's competition which might be more prone to lucrative penalty.

[dake50]

Now, is this different?:

1♦-1♥-1♠-Pa
2♠-3♥-X

What's the top for 1S?
Would partner make a Q-bid raise with 4-support?
Does partner have strong bids?
I have a scheme of bids over 1H that suggest this suit +4+S - expanded neg-X.
Now I know try penalties(bonanza) on our misfit.

[FrancesHinden]

I treat them differently (as mentioned on a different thread).

If we have bid and raised a major (or done so by inference e.g. after a negative double), and the opponents have bid and raised a suit, and there is no room between their bid and three of our major, then double is 'game-try' (which seems to be the English name for a maximal double).

Otherwise double is penalties. The auctions where one player bids and rebids a suit with no support in a live auction are quite a good source of penalties compared to the quite limited utility of distinguishing between a hand that is worth bidding at the 3-level, but doesn't want to invite game, and an invite.

[gnasher]

I've given up game-try/maximal doubles. I like having a penalty double available on this sort of sequence, especially at matchpoints. When I have an invitation I'm usually happy to bid game and see if it makes.

[FrancesHinden]

I was mildly interested to see on another thread that Justin assumed it was obvious that we would be playing "maximal" doubles after 1C 1S x P 2H 3D.
A week ago I played a set with gnasher when his partner was late with not much discussion. I see that we would both have thought that double is penalties. Good.

[MrAce]

gnasher, on 2011-April-10, 16:23, said:

I've given up game-try/maximal doubles. I like having a penalty double available on this sort of sequence, especially at matchpoints. When I have an invitation I'm usually happy to bid game and see if it makes.

Interesting, i thought people would want to stick to their invitation auctions in mp rather than penalty doubles which seems less frequent to me, and i am known to DBL a lot for penalties in mp. Because each time an invitation hand comes in competition, you are contrasting yourself from majority of the field. I would never wanna take that risk that often, unless of course i have a particular reason to play in different contracts than majority.

[Hanoi5]

MrAce, on 2011-April-11, 17:28, said:

Interesting, i thought people would want to stick to their invitation auctions in mp rather than penalty doubles which seems less frequent to me, and i am known to DBL a lot for penalties in mp. Because each time an invitation hand comes in competition, you are contrasting yourself from majority of the field. I would never wanna take that risk that often, unless of course i have a particular reason to play in different contracts than majority.

Quite the contrary! In Mp's you prefer to have a penalty double available, while at teams reaching a game is more important in the long run so you'd rather have the maximal available.

I thought this would have a unanimous answer but now I see it's a matter of discussion.

[MrAce]

Hanoi5, on 2011-April-11, 18:10, said:

Quite the contrary! In Mp's you prefer to have a penalty double available, while at teams reaching a game is more important in the long run so you'd rather have the maximal available.

I thought this would have a unanimous answer but now I see it's a matter of discussion.

Thats quite interesting, in IMP you are supposed to bid a vulnerable game with % 37 or better odds while more non vulnerable. Trial bids and/or invitations are used way less compared to MP. You dont mess arround with games in IMP. Thats totally the opposite in mp. If u bid games like Andy suggests, and play it very good and bring home u obviously get a great result, however most of the time if u play it partscore and play it very well, u still get a decent score. (i am talking about the hands thats not obvious to bid the game) You go head and figure what happens if game doesnt make

I agree with you that it is important to be able to DBL in mps. It is ironic though, if u go back and check your mp records (if available) you will find that maximal doubles being converted to penalty brings good scores as well as penalty doubles, if not more, which you would not be able to do so if u were playing it pure penalty (which comes very rare) Most players will tell you that opponents are punished much better with cooperation of us rather than 1 of us thinking they go down or one of us have a trump stack.

In general i find it extremely unprofittable to play any sort of "pure penalty" in partscore competition, since they seem to prevent us from doubling them when we both wanna double them but none of us have the oportunity to ask pd for it, because it would be "penalty" and put all the responsibility on the doubler.

[awm]

I don't think there's much difference in the usefulness of invites at IMPs or MPs. Obviously at IMPs you want to be somewhat more aggressive, but a single raise has a very wide range and there are still plenty of hands where you want to look for game but not blast it. Game needing a lower percentage to be effective just slides the window down (i.e. some hands that would invite at MP bid game at IMPs, some hands that would not bother to invite at MP should invite at IMPs).

The big difference is in the usefulness of penalty doubles of partscores. At IMPs you rarely want to penalty double a partial (especially 3-level); the problem is that if you double them and they make you lose a huge number of IMPs, whereas the typical down one (or maybe down two nonvulnerable) is just a small win for doubling. So at IMPs there is nothing to lose by playing double as maximal; the normal penalty meaning is not all that useful. At MPs you quite often want to double three-level partials for penalty (because the difference between down one and down one doubled can be a top vs. bottom swing). A lot of times if you double and their partial makes, your zero would've been well below average if you had just passed it out anyway (people not competing as high as your opponents, people pushing another level on your hands and not being doubled, etc). It's important to remember that some of these MP doubles are rather "speculative" -- at MP a double doesn't have to be "I have a huge stack of trump and they are going for 800" it can just be a hand with a bit extra defensively that expects to usually nick them a trick.

[han]

These auctions look the same to me.

[mycroft]

At IMPS, you want to be in a 37% game vulnerable *if you are not going down more than 1*. If that possibility exists, then the numbers change somewhat - especially if it's not a difference between 100 and 200 (or 100 and 500), but between +50 and -200 or...

Yes, I know we all know this, but we sometimes phrase it without that caveat, and without changing the numbers.

The relevance to the discussion at large is questionable.