Do you leave this double in?

[the hog]

I have seen this before but the 2 suited buds are misnamed. Rjo are always 5/5 or better.

[nige1]

[hv=pc=n&w=sat72h975d72cakt9&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=1h2s3h4s5hdp5sppp]133|200|

Yeah, our agreement is/was penalty. We were chatting in the post mortem because it was a tough decision. The actual hand is uninteresting because your partner was operating and/or had lost touch with reality. In this specific case I had made asemi psyched in a terrible anti-partnership bid because they were on tilt and I figured south had a big hand. The less said about my subsequent decisions the better (like why am I even doubling? If my three tricks cash no one else is going to have had this auction so I will get a top anyway).

South had a 5/5 two suited 20 count and there are always 10 tricks in hearts and 9 in spades. Obviously we were the only table to find the double fit so as soon as we bid 4S we had all the matchpoints. To be clear it is me, I am the lunatic who came up with two spades then double - partner is much more solid![/hv]

If you pass, then the Hog's argument might be useful to try to convince the director that you didn't simply field partner's psych :)

Nigel I have no idea what this means at all. Where is this concept of a psyche coming from. Pd made a bid, herd my and doubled showing Aces and some defence in their suit. As I don't play with idiots I pass.By the way op, Roman jump are NOT made on 5-4 shapes.

You might regard the 2♠ overcall as a deviaton but, IMO, it's a psych.

[MrAce]

And what do we do if we have a stiff club and NO defense?

 

"Having stiff in pd's side suit" and "NO defense" words don't go well together, unless you are also short in hearts, don't you think?

To me "NO defense" means " a hand which is very unlikely to score tricks in defense" When you consider the likeliness of scoring 1 or 2 tricks by ruffing is far from having a hand with no defense. No need to mention, even if you can not ruff, the values in that suit pd has becomes more defensive when you hold stiff, and it is not easy for opponents to get rid of those losers.

 

So there is huge difference, imo, between Jxxxx x xxx Qxxx and Jxxxx xxx xxxx x the latter being much more defensive than the former, despite missing a Q.

[Cthulhu D]

Yeah, we got doubled for -500, but it didn't matter because everyone else made 10 or 11 tricks in 4H.

 

You might regard the 2♠ overcall as a deviaton but, IMO, it's a psych.

 

Really? Like, while my actions on the actual deal are dumb and I have no defence for my thought processes (edit, well, I do, south who is normally pretty good just coughed up two 100% for no reason on the previous two boards, clearly was unsure whether to open it 1H or 2C, so you better believe I was bidding, but the double was stupid), I do have a two suited hand with spades and clubs. I should in theory have 1 extra black card, but who hasn't opened 1H or 1S 3rd in with a 4 card suit? It is not a 'gross' misstatement to be sure.

 

I'm still not sure what the double should mean - I tend to agree with mgoetze or The Hog that this should be three pretty firm defensive tricks, but partner likes a more action double. Plenty of food for thought.

[aguahombre]

For better or worse we play this - http://www.fernside.com/bridge/TheOvercallStructure.html more or less over a major which suggests frequent 5+/4+. I am pretty positive about being able to bid it with 5/4 hands, it's a a huge increase in frequency - 4.05% for the 5+/4+ OR 4+/5+ option vs 2.99% for 5+/4+ always vs 0.77% for 5+/5+ always. As you can see from the frequency numbers, while bidding it 5+/4+ is a big winner over 5+/5+ from a frequency perspective (380% more often) and a minimal information cost to partner, it's less clear that 5+/4+ or 4+/5+ is better as it's only a 33% increase in frequency but a much more significant information loss.

 

Those frequency calculations are back of the envelop though and don't include the effects of RHO having 5+ M and 11-20 ish HCP though.

I admire the attempt to weigh frequency of occurrence versus frequency of usefulness or detriment.

 

IMHO, the usefulness of any low-level competitive convention in direct seat is not in the bid itself, but almost totally in what partner will do as advancer.

 

Perhaps similar calculations should be done by people who:

 

--advocate doubling an opening 1-bid with their balanced 12-14 counts regardless of support for any unbid suit.

--advocate 4-card overcalls at the 1-level just because they have opening strength.

--show 2-suiters over 1NT with 4-4/4-5.

 

Certainly all of the above occur more frequently. But how often do they merely give more information to the other side, since partner cannot advance effectively.

[Cthulhu D]

For the 5\5 vs 5\4+ one it is the same argument as any aggressive pre-empt - partner is less likely to be able to advance but you are ~400% more likely to have actually preempted at all. Additionally as you have fewer pure hand types, it is harder for them to use the information in play. (1H) - 3C is a really tough auction for the opponents. It is less clear that 54 either way around is better as it is more difficult to advance.

 

However I recommend trying the 5+\4+ approach on a BBO bidding table some time. You can very easily cause intractable bidding problems, it is twice as frequent as the WJO and I would argue partner is better positioned than opposite a WJO because he knows about two suits. I believe in the assertion from partnership bidding at bridge that double fit auctions are critical, and describing your hand in 1 bid is of paramount importance to fully inform partner.

 

It works a lot better when both suits are specified though, because partner can get out faster when it is right to do so. I do not like being cavalier when both suits are not specified, we play (1C) - 2C as 5 diamonds + 5 of a major for example.

 

 

More interesting is to compare it to a WJO, playing the overcall structure' you lose some of these. I think you are being overly dismissive of Fout's work on the topic here.

 

With regards to playing it either way around, that may very well be bad, but we have mad the xoncious decision that getting both suits in the picture more effectively enables us to compete.

[Winstonm]

It never made sense to me to play 2-suited hands as potentially medium strength because so much room is claimed by our bids (and, as here, their bids). If my partner doubled after making this call, I would expect the big hand.

 

Abstain from bidding on present hand.

 

With bidding I feel I can trust, I am inclined to bid 6C.

[the_clown]

And what do we do if we have a stiff club and NO defense? Then we have to guess which of bid and pass will give us 5% of the matchpoints, and which will give us 0%?

 

Well as Timo said having a stiff club will increase the chance that we can get a ruff or that they will have several club losers. With a hand like you cant do anything but pass and hope they are going down. Obviously sometimes they will make and you get a 0 but thats life.

 

But imagine that you have a trick and short clubs. Now you are delighted that partner doubled and you will hope to score at least 200, probably 500 or more. Doubling yourself could be quite dangerous as partner is allowed to have a distributional hand.

 

Or when you have the actual hand you are also happy that partner doubled so you can pull to 5♠ and expect to make or be down 1.

[the hog]

Yeah, we got doubled for -500, but it didn't matter because everyone else made 10 or 11 tricks in 4H.

 

 

 

Really? Like, while my actions on the actual deal are dumb and I have no defence for my thought processes (edit, well, I do, south who is normally pretty good just coughed up two 100% for no reason on the previous two boards, clearly was unsure whether to open it 1H or 2C, so you better believe I was bidding, but the double was stupid), I do have a two suited hand with spades and clubs. I should in theory have 1 extra black card, but who hasn't opened 1H or 1S 3rd in with a 4 card suit? It is not a 'gross' misstatement to be sure.

 

I'm still not sure what the double should mean - I tend to agree with mgoetze or The Hog that this should be three pretty firm defensive tricks, but partner likes a more action double. Plenty of food for thought.

 

As the op normally plays 5-4 I would hardly regard this as a psyche. It is a poor bid though as the op recognises.

[Cthulhu D]

It never made sense to me to play 2-suited hands as potentially medium strength because so much room is claimed by our bids (and, as here, their bids). If my partner doubled after making this call, I would expect the big hand.

 

Abstain from bidding on present hand.

 

With bidding I feel I can trust, I am inclined to bid 6C.

 

A dead max has to be something like:

 

AQxxx

Ax

x

Axxxx

 

which feels pretty max to me - you're losing the A of Diamonds, and likely to lose a club or a spade. Would partner consider doubling with

 

Axxx

Ax

x

Axxxxx

 

I feel like that is even more likely to take 3 defensive tricks on the auction, but the 6 level is fairly unsafe. If you want partner to have bid 2NT to start with that would be different but he didn't so he doesn't have a big hand. That isn't considering any hand on which partner has two diamonds (Axxx A xx AQxxx