[PhilG007]

Behold a common scenario. After a competitive auction,your partner doubles the opponents
latest bid,sending the message "They can't make it." A now all too familiar situation has
arisen. Do you pass and trust partner's judgement or take the double out thus
risking partners wrath if the double could have yielded a heavy penalty? The situation
is even more compounded if the partnership is a new or casual one.
I await the replies with interest.

[robert2734]

Yes you trust partners judgement and leave penalty doubles in.

[eagles123]

PhilG007, on 2016-April-22, 06:30, said:

Behold a common scenario. After a competitive auction,your partner doubles the opponents
latest bid,sending the message "They can't make it." A now all too familiar situation has
arisen. Do you pass and trust partner's judgement or take the double out thus
risking partners wrath if the double could have yielded a heavy penalty? The situation
is even more compounded if the partnership is a new or casual one.
I await the replies with interest.

totally depends, does partner just double, or does he double in a voice of thunder?

[billw55]

It may sound crazy, but I would look at my hand first. Maybe even review the auction. On a really wild day I might check the vulnerability.

[Zelandakh]

billw55, on 2016-April-22, 09:04, said:

It may sound crazy, but I would look at my hand first. Maybe even review the auction. On a really wild day I might check the vulnerability.

Not to mention that if the partnership is really new or casual it might not be a bad idea to think about whether the message really is "They can't make it" rather than "Do something intelligent partner" or, heaven forbid, "Bid something please". Sometimes the "obvious" meaning of a double for a player coming from a rubber bridge background is rather different from the expectation of a partner that mostly plays duplicate.

[Phil]

I would probably take out my partners x of 1C, but it gets awkward if we haven't expressly discussed this sequence and if I'm playing with a very old-fashioned player I can't really be sure

[barmar]

billw55, on 2016-April-22, 09:04, said:

It may sound crazy, but I would look at my hand first. Maybe even review the auction. On a really wild day I might check the vulnerability.

Sometimes looking at your own hand can mislead you, though. The following happened to us a few days ago. I was North.

---

I never asked partner, but I suspect he pulled the double because with his diamond holding and opener bidding them twice he couldn't believe that I had anything there, or maybe because he was ashamed of his overcall. 4♠ went down 3 (I had AJ, but West had KT932 -- I don't know why he didn't double), but 3♦ would have gone down at least 2, which would have been a top (there were 2 other pairs in 3♦, but they weren't doubled, probably because South didn't overcall).

[PhilG007]

eagles123, on 2016-April-22, 08:49, said:

totally depends, does partner just double, or does he double in a voice of thunder?

Doubling in a voice of thunder wouldn't be possible in a tournament using
bidding boxes(!)

[manudude03]

PhilG007, on 2016-April-22, 12:17, said:

Doubling in a voice of thunder wouldn't be possible in a tournament using
bidding boxes(!)

Sure it is, bidding cards hitting the table make different sounds at different speeds

[billw55]

barmar, on 2016-April-22, 10:01, said:

Sometimes looking at your own hand can mislead you, though. The following happened to us a few days ago. I was North.

---

I never asked partner, but I suspect he pulled the double because with his diamond holding and opener bidding them twice he couldn't believe that I had anything there, or maybe because he was ashamed of his overcall. 4♠ went down 3 (I had AJ, but West had KT932 -- I don't know why he didn't double), but 3♦ would have gone down at least 2, which would have been a top (there were 2 other pairs in 3♦, but they weren't doubled, probably because South didn't overcall).

You're doing it wrong barmar. You have presented a full hand, auction, vulnerability, and even a subtle allusion to the form of scoring. Not nearly vague enough!

[/snark]

But yeah, I'd say south was ashamed of his overcall here. By the way, how daft was east for his 3 level freebid?

Edit: haha, does GIB read the forums? example

[ggwhiz]

My own rule is to never pull such a double unless it is to something you think you can make, At least come close as you never lose the post-mortem after passing.

[PhilG007]

barmar, on 2016-April-22, 10:01, said:

Sometimes looking at your own hand can mislead you, though. The following happened to us a few days ago. I was North.

---

I never asked partner, but I suspect he pulled the double because with his diamond holding and opener bidding them twice he couldn't believe that I had anything there, or maybe because he was ashamed of his overcall. 4♠ went down 3 (I had AJ, but West had KT932 -- I don't know why he didn't double), but 3♦ would have gone down at least 2, which would have been a top (there were 2 other pairs in 3♦, but they weren't doubled, probably because South didn't overcall).

The problem with pulling the double is it's sending a message" I saw/heard your double,partner,
but you're a liar and I don't trust you." Hardly a recipe for partnership harmony(!)

[billw55]

Sometimes a pull can be right though.

I remember a while back, one of the top players at club accepted a game with me. On one board I held (roughly) ♠xxx ♥xxxx ♦Txxx ♣xx. Unfortunately I don't recall the full auction, but partner showed a strong hand with diamonds, then doubled the opponent's 3♣ call. It sure looked like penalty, but I reasoned that my hand was worth more declaring diamonds than defending clubs, so I pulled it. After looking over dummy for 30 seconds or so, he said "nice pull" and went off one, while 3♣x= appeared twice on the traveler up to that point. Was it right? I can't say for sure but it worked that time, and at least one good player approved of it. And I did not even have a stiff club which would make it even more clear to pull.

[1eyedjack]

If you only ever penalty double on hands which are so robust that partner may never pull, then you may be missing out on a lot of lucrative penalties.

I spend a lot of time playing with and against robots on BBO, which can certainly warp your sense of judgement. But I observe that GIB pulls penalty doubles with abandon. It sometimes gets that decision spectacularly wrong, but I find that, in more recent releases of the software anyway, it has a reasonably good hit rate for pulling when it is right to do so.

[PhilG007]

1eyedjack, on 2016-April-25, 06:41, said:

If you only ever penalty double on hands which are so robust that partner may never pull, then you may be missing out on a lot of lucrative penalties.

I spend a lot of time playing with and against robots on BBO, which can certainly warp your sense of judgement. But I observe that GIB pulls penalty doubles with abandon. It sometimes gets that decision spectacularly wrong, but I find that, in more recent releases of the software anyway, it has a reasonably good hit rate for pulling when it is right to do so.

A GIB is an automaton. An automaton cannot reason like a human can. It's only obeying what its been programmed
to do...like all cybernets.

[Zelandakh]

PhilG007, on 2016-April-25, 07:19, said:

A GIB is an automaton. An automaton cannot reason like a human can. It's only obeying what its been programmed
to do...like all cybernets.

And?...what? Only humans can play games at a high level?

[barmar]

PhilG007, on 2016-April-23, 05:47, said:

The problem with pulling the double is it's sending a message" I saw/heard your double,partner,
but you're a liar and I don't trust you." Hardly a recipe for partnership harmony(!)

I've since emailed him. He said he wasn't sure whether I meant the double as penalty or takeout. He pulled because he decided it was takeout, probably because his ♦ length made that seem likely.

East's hand was ♠5 ♥AJ83 ♦AQ8765 ♣K6. You decide the daftness.

[PhilG007]

Zelandakh, on 2016-April-25, 07:23, said:

And?...what? Only humans can play games at a high level?

The strongest bridge playing computer at present is Jack 6 which captured its 10th World Computer
Championship in Chicago on 15/9/15. I'd like to see how it would fare against an expert human pair.

[Zelandakh]

PhilG007, on 2016-April-25, 09:01, said:

The strongest bridge playing computer at present is Jack 6 which captured its 10th World Computer
Championship in Chicago on 15/9/15. I'd like to see how it would fare against an expert human pair.

And the strongest chess computer can compete and win at the highest levels. The same for go and computers in many other games are essentially unbeatable. There is nothing special about bridge, nor about human reasoning. With the correct programming, a computer could easily be the best at bridge too, especially if not hamstrung by rules laid down by the organisers of the mentioned WCC. And never mind an expert pair, I would quite like to see how you would fare against a half-decent computer!

[billw55]

barmar, on 2016-April-25, 08:56, said:

East's hand was ♠5 ♥AJ83 ♦AQ8765 ♣K6. You decide the daftness.

Vulnerable, with both opponents bidding and partner passing, I would say it is pretty sketchy, if not quite daft. There are a lot of gaps in that hand.