My thoughts on this problem were basically identical to those of Mike and the hog. One of the first things I learned in bridge, from a Culbertson book no less, was that one should expect to beat the opponents' contract by at least 2 tricks before making a tight double. Of course times have changed but here it seems clear that the most likely result is -1, with = possible and an outside chance of -2. To me, that makes the risk of -730 way too high when the normal result is simply converting +100 to +200. Naturally, at MPs the double is a no-brainer.
Anyway, my reason for posting this hand was that I started to wonder whether a penalty double actually makes sense on a hand like this makes much sense under the given conditions - Team game and expert opps. But does takeout make any sense either? A sample comment from an expert in the first thread suggests no:-
HeartA, on 2013-April-08, 11:23, said:
both are penalty, of course. take out? for what? If pd has a minor worth to bid at 4 level, bid it.
If only life were so simple. Imagine holding a 1=0=6=6 hand. Would it not be better to give partner a choice of the other 3 suits than punt one and hope? Sure, it is a small target, but so is the penalty double. And once we add the club to the bag, we can relax a little bit - 11(65) for example?
But perhaps we can also try to climb 2 horses at once with an optional double, showing willingness to penalise - 4 decent hearts, say - and also willingness to compete to 3
♠/4m. This is surely going to come up much more often than either of pure penalty or takeout. And it seems reasonably useful too.
So, after thinking about this a little, my conclusion is that it really does not seem such a good bet to keep this double as penalty at IMPs against good opponents. Even when it seems completely obvious at first glance.
Oh yes, as an aside the German Bridge Magazine did tell us how the hand turned out in reality. South holds 12 red cards including
♥KQT9xxx and 3
♥X makes comfortably. Despite this, X received 10 points while Pass got only 3. I am still convinced that this is backwards!