Zelandakh, on 2015-March-24, 09:50, said:
Surely the main advantage of double comes when we catch partner with the rest of the hearts? Reaching a diamond or spade fit instead of playing in a club misfit is a nice extra. Do you think these combined to come to less chance than finding partner with 4 diamonds and a club fragment? Or are you more worried about them making 4♥ on too many hands with partner passing? Or is the main issue reaching a doomed slam?
The last of these should be somewhat mitigated if we have agreed to double-bid on these types of hands. It is circular I know but so are a lot of competitive agreements. The other events do not seem to me as likely as the positives. That makes 5♣ seem like the small target and doubling a larger spread - so I am interested in more details of your thought process here.
we hold the K of a suit opened at the 4-level. The odds of partner holding heart tricks are very, very low.
As for finding our spade fit, I can't imagine doubling and passing 4
♠, and note that PK explicitly said he wasn't planning on doing so either. While one doesn't pull 4
♠ x to a 4 card suit, and one doesn't pull 4
♥ to a 4 card suit at the 5-level, I consider it normal to pull to 4
♠ on many hands with 4 spades.
So the chances of a double leading to our finding a playable spade fit are also tiny....even if we have one....say partner holds QJ10xxx......we aren't planning on staying in spades when he bids them. Now, if he jumps to 6
♠, as one remote possibility, we will pass, but good luck waiting for that to happen, and better luck making it when he does.
I am not overly worried about defending when partner has crap. Yes, I expect they will often make their contract when that is the case, but it's not as if 5
♣ is going to be a walk in the park either. I think that if we are in disaster country, then there isn't a lot to choose from between 5
♣ and double. Maybe double has a slight edge, in that we might score the heart K and eke out a 1 trick set, but otoh if partner has something like xxx xxx Qxxx Jxx, we rate to get out for 300-500 against their 590 or 690, so I think it is pretty much a wash.
I think the main advantage to double is that we might play diamonds and diamonds might play better than clubs. However, this isn't the type of hand on which the 4-4 fit rates to outplay the 6-3 or even 6-2 fit, or at least not very often, and there are layouts on which clubs will outplay diamonds, so this isn't a huge factor.
Bear in mind that partner will not be bidding 4N if his 2-suiter includes spades....he will bid 4
♠ (altho 4N then 5
♠ is an interesting issue), so he will show the 2-suiter, only if he has minors (and we will play clubs then anyway, so the double doesn't gain) or then he has slam interest, and bids 5N. I think all too often we will be too high then.
So the main chance of finding diamonds is when he has a lot of them, and again I think that to be low odds. With say 4 spades and 5 diamonds, I expect him to bid spades first, and it is far from clear that our then pulling to clubs will get him bidding diamonds...he may or he may not, depending on his hand and view of the world.
As for the circular argument that we can avoid my feared bad slam by agreeing that double then clubs can be this hand: you're right....the argument is circular. That doesn't make it automatically wrong, but it does render it difficult to show as being 'right'. After all, by defining double then clubs as weaker than I would, you will miss some slams that I will reach. it is more or less a wash, even after trying to allow for what that does to the definition of a 5
♣ overcall. You would presumably define it as limited on the upper end by the failure to double, so my partners may push too high when I hold what for me would be a minimum, and my partners cater to a maximum.
I don't claim that I see this hand as clear cut. I can readily see many holdings on which double will work. I just happen to feel, rather than calculate, that 5
♣ is a slightly better action.
At the end of the day, these sorts of decisions cannot be resolved by any amount of simulation or argument, since the outcome is often dependent on partner's view of the situation, and that depends on how partner thinks we think, etc...not to mention being dependent on the opps. My experience informs my view, and I know enough about my game to know that my view isn't infallible.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Help
