low-level doubles

[y66]

fyi, Roy Hughes is discussing low-level doubles at http://www.bridgeblogging.com/roy_hughes/

 

nickf, thanks for mentioning this blog in the blog thread.

 

This is a difficult area for me and I am enjoying Mr. Hughes’ excellent discussion.

 

For more excellent discussion of this topic, see Partnership Bidding at Bridge (1993) by Andrew Robson and Oliver Segal. A pdf version is available, with the authors' permission, from Daniel Neill's website http://www.geocities.com/daniel_neill_2000/sys/.

 

Excerpt from Robson / Segal book:

 

Chapter 5 - Competing without a known fit

 

…

 

The take-out double - a commercial break!

 

OK: you’ve decided you must bid - you can’t or won’t risk passing. Remember, you are stepping into a minefield. How are you to avoid injury?

 

Flexibility is the key to competitive bidding without a known fit. You must aim to keep partner’s range of options as wide as possible. Enter the take-out double, which is the most flexible bid in your armoury. It does not raise the level of the auction; and it gives partner the option to defend the enemy’s contract. In fact, we give you this piece of advice: ‘If your hand is offensive and you want to bid, but there is no obvious bid to make - double.’

 

At this point, many of you will be thinking: ‘What the hell are they talking about? Most of my doubles are for penalties. I don’t want partner to bid over them!’ It may take a huge effort of will-power, but you must abandon this philosophy if you want to be a successful bridge player in the modern game. Later in this chapter we shall look at some auctions where doubles must be for penalties. For the moment, however, we are going to ask you to assume every double is for take-out unless you and your partner have found a fit.

 

The best way of justifying this approach is by looking at hands - and this we shall do. But consider these preliminary remarks. In a competitive auction, you should have one overriding concern: to declare when it is right to declare, and to defend when it is right to defend. When everyone is bidding, don’t be over-concerned initially with extracting a huge penalty. Just try to make sure: (1) that you go plus whenever the hand is yours; and (2) that you know how high to compete the partscore or when to take a save if the hand belongs to your opponents.

 

Putting it another way: concentrate initially on achieving your own ‘par’; don’t make it your first priority to punish the opposition when they fall below theirs. Playing take-out doubles is the best way to pursue these aims. They provide you with what you need most - a flexible method of announcing an interest in competing the hand. And it is far from clear that they prevent you extracting as many large scores ‘above the line’ as those whose doubles are generally for penalties.

 

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