is this a forcing pass

[Apollo81]

Should x AQxxx AKxxxx x make a forcing pass or should it bid 5♦?  I would have made a forcing pass on this hand and sat for a double.

I'd bid with that hand.

 

If partner has ♥K and out we have excellent play for 5♥.

 

The problem is that I expect partner to double with random balanced hands when I make a forcing pass in this auction. Usually my 4♥ bid is based on values and partner will not think "wow I don't have any defense, maybe we're not beating 5♣, I should bid." Here I'd expect that partner doubles almost any time he doesn't have singleton club (which means almost every time I hold a 1561 pattern). This will be the wrong decision most of the time given the actual 5-6 hand.

 

I know it is popular to make forcing passes with a very wide range of hands because we can then blame partner for the final decision if it goes poorly. In fact a while back, I started a thread about what a forcing pass "showed" in various auctions and everyone pretty much refused to answer! But realistically, we have to gauge the odds that partner's action will be correct. Here I think partner will expect something on the order of a strong balanced hand or 1453, and will double on a lot of patterns where 5♥ is cold and 5♣ is making or only one off.

You're not worried at all that partner has something like 5-3-3-2 shape and decided to sit 4♥ out? I guess making a forcing pass is a blame transfer like you said, and that this hand should just suck it up, bid 5 over 5 and hope for a decent dummy.

[awm]

You're not worried at all that partner has something like 5-3-3-2 shape and decided to sit 4♥ out? I guess making a forcing pass is a blame transfer like you said, and that this hand should just suck it up, bid 5 over 5 and hope for a decent dummy.

This is why I tend to bid 5♦ and not 5♥...

 

Obviously if a forcing pass said "double if you have three hearts, bid 5♥ if you have four" then a forcing pass would be a great call on this hand. But my expectation is that partner will double much more often than this including many hands with four hearts where 5♥ is cold.

 

Of course you could have a different agreement (and note that when I had that thread about agreements, no one would specify). You could say that double from opener shows a balanced hand with extras and responder is supposed to remove it with a fifth heart and/or club shortage. In this case making a forcing pass with the given hand is perfectly reasonable. But my suspicion is that a lot of forum posters will make a "forcing pass" with basically any hand where they can imagine defending might be right opposite something partner could have, but where they don't hold trump tricks themselves. This means they will basically always make the forcing pass, and I don't hold high hopes for partner making a lot of right decisions in that case... although certainly partner will get the blame for the frequent wrong decisions.

[jdonn]

I agree with Adam. x AQxxx AKxxxx x should bid 5♦ (arguably 5♥?), why make a forcing pass with so much shape? You were arguably even too good for the 4♥ bid, though there may have been no reasonable alternative.