[Gerben42]

Great, good to know that partner has ♦ or ♥. Oh I don't know? Too bad, love DONT *g

What would 2NT here be? Pick a minor, i.e. bid ♦ if you have them and ♣ if not? Confusion abound!

[Kalvan14]

Gerben42, on Dec 2 2005, 07:46 AM, said:

Great, good to know that partner has ♦ or ♥. Oh I don't know? Too bad, love DONT *g

What would 2NT here be? Pick a minor, i.e. bid ♦ if you have them and ♣ if not? Confusion abound!

But you know, gerben: pard has 0 or 1 spade, and has promised a 2nd suit (ok, if there are 18 spades in the deck, the hand will be dealt again ).
3♦ would be certainly to play a red suit; 2NT depends on your pair agreements. Mine are for the minors, as you guess.

Must be DONT bashing week
I wonder why I never had the sort of troubles you guys appear to have had

[ArcLight]

>It has been at least ten years (probably longer, but memory is the first thing to go once you reach my age) since I doubled a partscore into game and they made it. It is far more common for me to score up +200 or even +250

Mike, I think I read somewhere (Mike Lawrence?) that if you never get burned by making a penalty double (you double them into game), then you aren't doubling enough.

In securities trading (on Wall Street) one of the adages is if you haven't taken any losses, you aren't taking enough risk.

Might there not be more benefit in making more doubles, if you gain more points, even at the expense of an occasion bad result (doubling the opps into game)?
Provided you come out ahead. And you can always tailor the bid to the situation.

[Robert]

Hello everyone

I think that Goren said that if the other pair does not make about one in six of their doubled contracts against you, you are not doubling often enough.

That seems about right for MPs. At IMPS I try and avoid doubling them for a one trick set(which might go wrong and be a disaster) Two tricks set for IMPs is closer to the standard.

If you can defeat vulnerable part scores at MPs five times out of six, you should do very well indeed.

Regards,
Robert

[Winstonm]

ArcLight, on Dec 3 2005, 06:54 PM, said:

>It has been at least ten years (probably longer, but memory is the first thing to go once you reach my age) since I doubled a partscore into game and they made it. It is far more common for me to score up +200 or even +250

Mike, I think I read somewhere (Mike Lawrence?) that if you never get burned by making a penalty double (you double them into game), then you aren't doubling enough.

In securities trading (on Wall Street) one of the adages is if you haven't taken any losses, you aren't taking enough risk.

Might there not be more benefit in making more doubles, if you gain more points, even at the expense of an occasion bad result (doubling the opps into game)?
Provided you come out ahead.  And you can always tailor the bid to the situation.

An interesting, though usually undiscussed aspect of this debate is length of match.

In a short Swiss match, a single board can easily win or lose the match - and if you double the opponents into game you lose 11.

In a longer match, such as a 26 board K.O., there is more time to recover.

In the big matches, where 90+ boards are played, there is more time still.

And imp pairs is a whole story in itself - kind of a mix of MPs and imps.

But it all comes down to risk/reward at team imps.

If you double 3H vul and it makes, you lose 11.
If it goes down 1, you gain an additional 2 imps: 3 verses 5.
Break even point is close to 6 good doubles to 1 bad. As the object of the game is to go plus, breaking even like this isn't the answer. For me, I think I'd like to get this up to more like a complete game swing: about 11 good to 1 bad. I would gain 22 on the good and lose 11 on the bad for an overall pickup of 11. Add to this the chances of down two and the reward increases while risk decreases.

So, at team imps I'd want to be about 91% certain of a 1 trick set with realistic prospects of a 2-trick set before I'd pull the trigger - and even then I'd be nervous.

Winston

[bridge2k]

double.

[Blofeld]

Pass. Double should be P/C on general principles.

I'm willing to take the '1 in 6' line on doubles.

[han]

Winstonm, on Dec 4 2005, 02:05 PM, said:

An interesting, though usually undiscussed aspect of this debate is length of match.

In a short Swiss match, a single board can easily win or lose the match - and if you double the opponents into game you lose 11.

In a longer match, such as a 26 board K.O., there is more time to recover.

In the big matches, where 90+ boards are played, there is more time still.

And imp pairs is a whole story in itself - kind of a mix of MPs and imps.

But it all comes down to risk/reward at team imps.

If you double 3H vul and it makes, you lose 11.
If it goes down 1, you gain an additional 2 imps: 3 verses 5.
Break even point is close to 6 good doubles to 1 bad.  As the object of the game is to go plus, breaking even like this isn't the answer.  For me, I think I'd like to get this up to more like a complete game swing: about 11 good to 1 bad.  I would gain 22 on the good and lose 11 on the bad for an overall pickup of 11.  Add to this the chances of down two and the reward increases while risk decreases.

So, at team imps I'd want to be about 91% certain of a 1 trick set with realistic prospects of a 2-trick set before I'd pull the trigger - and even then I'd be nervous.

Winston

Winston, I think that you have this all backwards . In a short match with VP-scoring it is more appealing to double the opponents. In a long match the percentages are as you say.

Consider a 6-board match with 5 flat boards. If you double and they make it, you lose by 11 IMPs, which is some number of VPs. If you double and they go down, you win by 2 or 3 IMPs, which is a smaller number of VPs, but not proportionally smaller (say -4 instead of -10). So at the 6-1 rate that you mention, the doubler is a huge winner at 30-VP's 6-board matches with no other swings (after 7 matches you'd be at +14 instead of the 0 you'd get by passing).

In very long matches however, it is only the IMPs that count and the 6-1 ratio is exactly right. So that means that you optimize your pay-off by making all doubles that appear to succeed more than 6 out of 7 times. There might be psychological reasons for making only 11-1 doubles, but no logical reasons.

Note that this discussion is a bit flawed because it assumes that the opponents are in the same spot undoubled. However, the lesson is correct, in swiss tournaments with short matches and VP-scoring the optimal strategy is more aggressive than in long knock-out matches. (of course, in extremely short knock-out matches it pays to make speculative doubles).

[han]

As I said, the discussion is flawed.