[tkass]

Scoring: IMP

---

w n e s
1he p 2he p
4he p p dbl
p 4sp p p
x p p

when i said to pard: i cant take-out over 2he how can i over 4he: he said i was in direct seat over 2he and i balanced over 4he so for him it is a take-out.

for me it was a obvious penalty but i may be wrong. i realise that the penalty dbl was risky but we played against enterprising opps who often go 2 or 3 down.

what a dbl in this position should be?

[HeartA]

penalty, of course. But as you said, the dbl was risky (very bad actually).

[jillybean]

penalty but Ive had many such partnership misunderstandings

jb

[jtfanclub]

tkass, on Sep 6 2006, 04:14 PM, said:

Scoring: IMP

---

w n e s
1he p 2he p
4he p p dbl
p 4sp p p
x p p

when i said to pard: i cant take-out over 2he how can i over 4he: he said i was in direct seat over 2he and i balanced over 4he so for him it is a take-out.

for me it was a obvious penalty but i may be wrong. i realise that the penalty dbl was risky but we played against enterprising opps who often go 2 or 3 down.

what a dbl in this position should be?

On the one hand, it's Penalty. On the other hand, if you're going to X with that, I can understand why your partner pulled. If he leads a trump, and you don't find the club switch, they're making an overtrick. I'm not sure that you can set it against good defense.

[Free]

Clear penalty, whatever else is rubish! After 2♥ you're in direct seat, so what?? You can prebalance right?

[mikeh]

Your explanation of your double was entirely correct: which is precisely opposite description of the silly double itself.

[Free]

Imo it doesn't matter how silly the double was: penalty is penalty... Next time you'll have ♥KQJT9 and your partner will still take it out, which is unacceptable.

[Codo]

Of course it was penalty, even to think about alternatives is insane.

For the double:
1. There had been a chance, that declarer plays the hearts wrong.
That gives you +100. With your double, there is no chance that he will play any suit wrong, which transforms you + 100 in a - 790 or worse.

2. You sit in front of the strong opener. How mayn tricks will you take after you told him, that you hold a decend hand with trumps? One? Maybe two?
Do you believe, that pd can add 3 tricks to defeat this contract?
Maybe he had doubled in that case?

[P_Marlowe]

The dbl is for penalty, reopening the bidding
is a concept which occurs on the 2 level or
after they open with a preempt.

Regarding the quality of the dbl: I am nice,
and would they, that you are a nice person,
giving declarer a hint, how to handle the trump
suit.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[SoTired]

The dbl is obviously penalty.

If the auction went 1H p 2H p 3H p 4H and you held ♥AJ10x, then that would be a great double. The opps have barely enough strength to bid the game and are getting a terrible trump break. Dbl is a reasonable risk.

But when the auction goes 1H 2H 4H, they may even have excess strength. Plus your ♥AJxx in front of the heart bidder is not a safe 2 tricks. Worst, the double reveals the heart position for the opponents allowing them to make a contract that without the double would fail.

With your meager trump holding, 4H is unlikely to go down more than 1, especially when the opps are forewarned. So you hope to gain an extra 100 but risk 170 or 890.

Although the 4S bid was bad, the double of 4H was equally bad.

[inquiry]

Assuming you play OBAR (opponents bid and raise) bids, you would "prebalance" with short heart and takeout shape by doubling 2♥, so the double over 4♥, even in the "balancing seat" is never a balacing takeout double.

This double clearly has to be penalty. And even if you don't play OBAR, it should be penalty anyway.

To see if how much support your partner has, I ran a BridgeBrowser examination of the auction....

1H - P - 2H - P
4H - P -- P - DBL

and found in the one database this auction occurred on 114 deals. On 113 of them, the contract was either 4Hx of 4Hxx. This suggest that overwhelmingly that the double was left in. I examined the first 60 deals visually. Of these, most of the doubles were clearly for penalty or takeout, but a few were very odd doubles. I classified them, however as "penalty" or "takeout" oriented (some were truly remarkable decisions.. read curious). Anyway, of the 60 hands I examined, 12 were either clearly takeout or curious leaning towards takeout, while the other 48 were clearly penatly or leaning towards penalty. But again, notice, only one of the doubles got removed (out of 114).

This might suggest that roughly 20% of the players play this double for takeout like your partner suggested, and 80% play it as penalty, but sadly, people who play it as penalty might have choose not to make a double on many reasonable or speculative hands to do so. I think the telling statistic is the fact that it is almost never "pulled" regardless of what the doubler meant.

[whereagles]

Even without OBAR, it's logically impossible that someone who could not bid over 2♥ now suddently has extra strength to double 4♥ for take-out, at 2 levels of bidding higher.

It just doesn't make sense. This is penalties.

[inquiry]

whereagles, on Sep 7 2006, 09:00 AM, said:

Even without OBAR, it's logically impossible that someone who could not bid over 2♥ now suddently has extra strength to double 4♥ for take-out, at 2 levels of bidding higher.

It just doesn't make sense. This is penalties.

While I agree this should be penalty (note, I did say that, I was just introducting OBAR due to the "balancing" discussion). However, the vulnerabilty is such (they red we white), that a "save" might be suggested to some people. In fact, on the hands in BridgeBrowser that I found where the player did double with a "takeout" hand pattern (all of which I would have used an OBAR double on earlier, BTW), at these vulnerability conditions, it looks like the save would have been profitable on five of them (nearly half) (I did not search by vulnerability conditions).

Of course, people can play that double anyway they want, but penalty is clearly the "traditional" and may I add, rational, method.

[neilkaz]

The double simply has to be penalty and should be based on a very unpleasant surprise for opener who has bid game freely. Here, all the double does is to pre-alert opener that trumps split poorly and he then knows to finesse your J or take another line.

[kenberg]

This reply is sort of much ado about nothing since I agree with everyone else that the double is a bad penalty double. However, if N leaves it in and leads a spade, I suspect declarer will go down. A reasonable line from his viewpoint is to rise with the ace, run the queen of diamonds (small all around), run the 8 of hearts (small all around) and then to think "For his double I suppose S has the ace of clubs. If I now lead a club he can rise and kill the ruff by leading two rounds of trump, or duck and let me win my king. The I lead another club threatening a ruff unless he clears trump. Either way, I lose two clubs and one heart or two hearts and one club." However, the club goes to the king and the Ace, and N plays two more clubs forcing a ruff. Declarer still holds the ace of diamonds in his hand which strangles any trump coup. He will lose to both the ace and the Jack of hearts, I believe. He can solve this problem, perhaps, if he places the cards correctly early on, but I doubt he will.

Not that this makes the double a good double. But poster said he was rolling the dice, and if his partner lets it be I think he will collect.