[Quartic]

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Playing Acol with a weak NT, I pick up this hand after partner opens, and get a tricky 2nd bid decision.

What's your call, and what do you expect partner to have?

[JLOGIC]

6H assuming double is not just penalty. A bit of a gamble. If I were to just slam try the typical way of doing so is 4N followed by 5H over 5C. Of course if partner bids 5D this sounds like clubs and hearts. An agreement I have with all of my regular partners is that direct 5H bids in these auctions are slam tries, and 4N then 5H is weaker, which solves that problem. That said, I think my hand is too good to just slam try.

[the_clown]

6♥. Partner has extra values and I have a monster. I would not consider anything else, but again I am junior and tend to overbid.

[whereagles]

Overbid??? Come on, 6H is totally obvious given pard's dbl.

[Quartic]

I chose 6♣ at the table, which I realise now is clearly inferior to 6♥.

Unfortunately, partner's double was not what I expected:

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We were down 4 as clubs didn't break, and partner was unable to run my hearts. 6♥ (by north) would be 3 off on best defence, but probably just 2 off in reality (requiring an underlead of the ♦A).

[whereagles]

Can we please stop these threads where pard makes a random bid and we have to bid on wrong premises?

[Quartic]

whereagles, on 2012-January-15, 11:02, said:

Can we please stop these threads where pard makes a random bid and we have to bid on wrong premises?

I was trying to check my intuition about partner's double, which is why I included the question about what you expect the double to show. I also thought the decision for the north hand was interesting whether my partner has bid correctly or not.

[whereagles]

Well, it's not a matter of intuition. This sort of dbls must show some extras, not just a couple of would-be trump tricks.

[Quartic]

whereagles, on 2012-January-15, 13:23, said:

Well, it's not a matter of intuition. This sort of dbls must show some extras, not just a couple of would-be trump tricks.

That's what I thought, but at least two players at my club doubled with that hand, so I'd become a bit uncertain.

[Zelandakh]

I think this double can reasonably be agreed as either "take-out" or "values". Within an Acol context the latter would typically be a strong balanced hand. When you have a weak hand with values in their suit you have to pass whichever your agreement is.