[hsheng]

People use the double/redouble thing far too often, almost in a mechanical way. They forget a key purpose in the bidding process, that is, making use of any available spaces to give your parnter true information instead of giving opps' valuable space to find a good contract while leaving your parnters in confusion.

If you weak, why not immediately tell your partner "hi, man, I'm weak" by a pass; if you have support, why not support your parnter immediately by raising one, two or even jump to the game?

Like this hand in the photo:

I opened 1D and my partner doubled opps' 2S; I passed for no sure clue about my p's double due to the first-time partnership as in so many cases in a BBO tournament. The result was, 2S-1, 0%

---

Of course, my p would call me an idiot. But wait, isn't that a possibility that my p holds all remaining spaces, so that we would kick their asses in a hard way? And, what about I bid 2NT and it turned out that opps run their spaces in an unstoppable way? The real point is that my p didn't think in my shoes and jump to 3NT to avoid any partnership misunderstanding as shown so clearly in the bidding process ...

Indeed we can reach a good contract without giving our parnters a hard time to decide how to respond.

Thank you all guys for reading and commenting.

[helene_t]

I agree that South's double wasn't good. 3NT is better but 3♣ is best. I can appreciate that 3NT may be a safer bid when playing with a stranger but wouldn't you prefer your partner (even a stranger) to show you a little bit of trust?

I wouldn't pass the double with you hand. 2NT looks normal. You shouldn't assume that partner's double is for penalty and it's not like you have a difficult hand to bid. Balanced with a spade stopper. So 2NT it is.

[Phil]

At least its not in the Expert forum.

1) South has a clear 3♣ call.
2) I would bid 2N with yours.

 hsheng, on 2012-August-22, 08:26, said:

If you weak, why not immediately tell your partner "hi, man, I'm weak"

Many problems at the partnership desk can be avoided with this approach

[hsheng]

so everybody would bid 2NT? Then, I agree that I was wrong.

[EricK]

I think I would have preferred to bid 3♣ with the North hand rather than 2NT. I want partner to double on a 1-4-3-5 hand even if he is quite weak, so 2NT would show a much better ♠ stop.

Obviously the South hand is not a double in normal methods. But maybe South thought he was playing negative free bids in this position, so double followed by a ♣ bid is the only way to show a strong hand. Are there any places in the world where NFBs are commonly applied in this position (even if not by experts from that place)?

[Bbradley62]

 EricK, on 2012-August-22, 10:15, said:

But maybe South thought he was playing negative free bids in this position, so double followed by a ♣ bid is the only way to show a strong hand. Are there any places in the world where NFBs are commonly applied in this position (even if not by experts from that place)?

This hand was played in an Express Free Automated Fun tournament, meaning that all players allegedly agreed, as a condition of contest, to play the BBO GIB 2/1 convention card. Of course, many players don't understand this when they register. South is from India, btw.

This post has been edited by Bbradley62: 2012-August-22, 14:22

[billw55]

South should be thinking slam as soon as north opens the bidding. Because of this, I actually like double better than a direct 3NT which is almost certain to end the auction. But I far prefer 3♣ to either.

North passing the double is definitely bad.

[manudude03]

Yeah, pass is like 100x worse than the double. South has an easy 3C bid though. Make life nice and easy by showing what you've actually got.

[Quantumcat]

Why did South double? Maybe if he had four small hearts as well, he would have a reason, even if everyone still thought he should bid 3♣. I can't see any reason at all for the double. 3♣ is forcing and unlimited, he can't think he has to double first to show a good hand, surely?

[Stephen Tu]

Go to
http://larryco.com/B...x?articleID=553
and find the link for "negative doubles"
Read the PDF and have regular partners who don't understand negative doubles read.

Quote

But wait, isn't that a possibility that my p holds all remaining spaces, so that we would kick their asses in a hard way?

No. People stopped assuming penalty doubles (at least at the 2s level) some 45+ years ago, at least among duplicate players. Maybe some old-school rubber players at the local senior center still play penalty doubles of overcalls, but you basically never see penalty doubles among duplicate players anymore, except perhaps with the rawest of beginners who haven't yet reached the lesson on negative doubles and learned from an old book.

SAYC if that is your agreement with an online pickup partner specifies negative doubles through the 2s overcall level.

Good players almost universally play negative doubles through much higher levels, at least 4d, and at least "optional" (two-way values, not pure penalty) at higher levels, not guaranteeing 4-cd other major(s) at the higher levels.

[hsheng]

Thank you all for your comments, from which I have learnt a lot.

[billw55]

 Quantumcat, on 2012-August-22, 18:16, said:

Why did South double? Maybe if he had four small hearts as well, he would have a reason, even if everyone still thought he should bid 3♣. I can't see any reason at all for the double. 3♣ is forcing and unlimited, he can't think he has to double first to show a good hand, surely?

We could give south benefit of doubt, and consider that (as EricK says) he thought 3♣ would be a negative free bid. The alternative is to conclude that south is just a bad player.

[Zelandakh]

 hsheng, on 2012-August-22, 08:26, said:

People use the double/redouble thing far too often, almost in a mechanical way.

In my experience most players use double and redouble far too infrequently. Passing this double with the given hand was pretty bad. Indeed you were lucky to find partner with ♠Axx - usually they would have considerably less here.