[dkharty]

Red/red, matchpoints.

Pard opens 1♥, RHO overcalls 4S. You hold: ♠x ♥Kxx ♦98xxx ♣AKxx. What's your call?

FWIW, you are playing negative doubles through 4♦. Opponents are pretty sound.

[mike777]

dkharty, on Jan 8 2010, 09:09 PM, said:

Red/red, matchpoints.

Pard opens 1♥, RHO overcalls 4S.  You hold:  ♠x ♥Kxx ♦98xxx ♣AKxx.  What's your call?

FWIW, you are playing negative doubles through 4♦.  Opponents are pretty sound.

Pass

I never get these right.

Second choice double.

[bluecalm]

5♥. Partner should know we can hav weakish hand. 4NT here should be reserved for slam inviting hand with ♥ support. He won/t shouldn't take us to silly slam.
I think 4♠ OR 5♥ (or both) are making too often to pass here.
At imps I wouldn't consider it close. At MP's I am not that sure.

[pooltuna]

dkharty, on Jan 8 2010, 09:09 PM, said:

Red/red, matchpoints.

Pard opens 1♥, RHO overcalls 4S. You hold: ♠x ♥Kxx ♦98xxx ♣AKxx. What's your call?

FWIW, you are playing negative doubles through 4♦. Opponents are pretty sound.

I take the push since I was going to force to 4♥ anyway

[Fluffy]

I'd make a take out double if it was avaible, but since it isn't I have to take a shot and will try 5♥.


If opponents are conservative playing penalty doubles is clearly inferior to take otu doubles

[hanp]

Dave, stop torturing us with impossible problems that arise from your bad methods!

[DWM]

Playing negative doubles to 4♦, can we assume that we are playing optional doubles of 4 ♥/♠. In that case a double is clear (or at least it is in my all too often non correct eyes)

If double is penalty I dont like it as either partner typically has 2-4 badly placed spades or they have a 11 card fit. Although we can expect two tricks from our hand if we can expect more than two quick tricks in diamonds from P then we should really be looking more at slam rather than the 800. From this I would probably bid 5♥ as the hand is better than partner expects. Although its the shape they will expect and not too far off the point count it has very well placed offensive cards.

Not too sure if I am correct or not here, but I hope my reasoning would at least save me from too much grief in the PM.

[dkharty]

hanp, on Jan 9 2010, 06:38 AM, said:

Dave, stop torturing us with impossible problems that arise from your bad methods! 

LOL Han

They may BE bad methods. For a long time I have been in the habit of doubling with these hands, hoping the opponents will learn to keep out of our future auctions with iffy hands. Maybe it's working, because the opponents' hands haven't been very iffy lately!

-790.

Partner's hands was something like ♠xx ♥AQJxxx ♦AKTx ♣x. Both diamonds were onside so 6♥ was makeable. RHO had a nine-bagger. I'm starting to rethink my "light trigger" policy.

[jdonn]

5♥ wtp? When it's close, and you have support for partner...

[ggwhiz]

Quote

I'm starting to rethink my "light trigger" policy.

Exactly. Frequent opponents have a memory and you have to throw a change up once in a while to keep them guessing.

One of my casual partners used to go to every club game in town the week before our regional and play like an idiot. He called it "advertising".