BBO Discussion Forums: is it support double? - BBO Discussion Forums

the bidding goes:

1♣-1♥-1♠-2♥
dbl

playing negative dbl, the 1S bid is known for 5 cards. do you think opener's dbl is a support dbl?

I always thought support dbl was made when responder could have 4 or 5 card. But I am told the dbl here is support showing 3 cards and a rebid of 2♠ showing 4 card.

if responder is known for 5 card ♠, why not play 2♠ rebid by opener for 3 card support, 3♠ rebid for 4 card support(LOTT) and leave the dbl for penalty?

What is your thought?

Welcome to the forums, MarilynLi. Unfortunately, you seem to have found the wrong subforum. This post is much more suitable for the "Intermediate/Advanced" forum or the "Natural Bidding Discussion" forum. Note that posting in these forums does NOT mean you won't get answers from experts. On the contrary, they will be much more willing to give you helpful, detailed explanations there.

(My thought, by the way, is that double should show 2 spades and some diamonds.)

mgoetze, on 2013-January-31, 12:56, said:

Or maybe 1-2-4-6. With extra strength (above a minimum opener, of course).

If we assume a strong NT and a partner who will open 1NT with 2-2-4-5 in anticipation of contination problems, we can start to eliminate everything else.

With spade support 3+, she will raise spades. So, double doesn't mean that.
With long clubs and strength, she will rebid 3C.
With long clubs and mere competitive desire, she will good/bad with 2NT.
With a huge hand she could also rebid 3D naturally.

That pretty much leaves the double to show extra strength but not a mountain, 4 Diamonds, and longer clubs.

Penalty doubles of a suit bid and raised at the two-level are not really worth consideration.

mgoetze, on 2013-January-31, 12:56, said:

I understand the desire to keep this forum for topics that are of interest to experts. While this particular topic has been discussed at length, I still know experts who are on different sides of the question.

Mgoetze, do you claim to be an expert? What's your role here? The moderator appears to be Inquiry, but you've set yourself up as someone who "welcomes" or has some sort of ownership here and also an adjudicator of what is or isn't an expert topic. Please think about how you come across anyway.

You did the same for my topic yesterday. I admit I'd debated between which forum to post in and decided that it was worthwhile posting in the expert forum. My bad apparently, but while there was consensus for one answer there were several posters who suggested different answers. In fact, you said you thought there would be expert consensus but didn't know what that would be! So perhaps not the most interesting hand, but at the end of having my thread moved to the A/I forum I feel just a bit offended. I guess you don't mind that.

The reason people don't play as you describe is that you would lose 3 spades invitational if you had to bid it just because you had 4 of them.

Spades is the boss suit - you can bid 2 then 3 later happily enough.

Btw even if it wasn't support it wouldn't be pens - it would be take-out/extras.

There was a time, in the ancient past, when it might well have been penalty.

I imagine generic extras is the most common meaning now. I have seen a few people who use X for 3 and any raise with 4, even though 1S showed 5 (and some people who don't play that 1S promises 5.)

I personally like using this X to promise a doubleton honour, and several of my partners have tried it and liked it, but it's not something you should assume when you agree support doubles.

As you say, many/most people do bid 2S on 3 cards here.

straube, on 2013-January-31, 14:11, said:

I actually thought mgoetze's post was in very good taste. Usually when a non-expert topic is opened in the expert forum, the result is outright ridicule and not a polite post explaining why the thread is likely to be moved soon or to not receive serious consideration. The latter is preferable IMO when the poster is new and doesn't necessarily understand that the expert forum is a forum for expert-level questions, and not the only forum the experts here read.
Then again, you got 3 upvotes and michael got zero, so it's possible I'm out of synch.

My observation is that the gatekeepers are deciding what is an "advanced topic" for which the poster is requesting expert discussion or consensus; and this decision is quite arbitrary.

Worthiness of a topic for the EC forum seems more based on who the OP is, and how "expertly" he/she words the questions.

Edit:

For example: consider the advanced nature of two topics.

One asks what the nature of a certain double should be in a competitive auction; one asks what to do when 4m is doubled by partner and you have QJTX in a major.

Which one of those two questions was acceptable for the EC forum to the gatekeepers?

I realize that I run the risk of coming across as the guard of this discussion. I am no moderator of any kind.

But I started a new topic in the Water Cooler forum, where we could discuss the forums ethics, so we could use this place to actually discuss the merits of support doubles in the auction 1♣-1♥-1♠-2♥; Dbl.

Rik

I have played 3 versions

- A raise shows three card support, the double shows 2 card support. Other calls deny 2 card support.
- A raise shows four card support, the double shows 3 card support. Other calls deny 3 card support.
- A raise shows three card support, the double shows 2 card support and a hand that cannot make a decent other bid. Other calls may contain 2 card support.

In my opinion, the last method works best. It works even better when 2NT is played as artificial, containing -among others- a three card invitational raise. This leads to:
1♣-1♥-1♠-2♥:
Dbl: 2 card support, nothing else noteworthy about the hand
2♠: 3 card support, minimum
2NT: Good/Bad 2NT, including an invitational or better three card raise.
3m: Natural (good hand) could hold 2 spades
3♥: Invitational or better four card raise
3♠: Minimum four card raise
3NT: to play
4♣: 4 card support, good club suit
4♦♥: Splinter raise
4♠ To play

Rik

Edit: I have replied to straube's post in Trinidad's new thread in the WC.

Forgetting all the personal issues, continued in the water cooler, I believe the only reason this particular thread was moved was because the poster made support doubles an issue in a competitve auction where partner has shown five.

If the OP had presented the same auction and simply asked for expert opinions about Double, 2NT, 3-bids, etc., IMO the thread would have been in the right place. It is certainly a more advanced topic than some I have seen in EC.

Some of us have attempted to answer the OP in that vein, glossing over our collective opinion that support doubles should not apply ---focussing on the steak instead of the peas.

aguahombre, on 2013-February-01, 09:37, said:

Adressing the question of why double should NOT be penalty here also doesn't seem very advanced to me.

I still see value in a support double showing 3 and bidding showing 4 - it helps partner evaluate what to do over future competition. Of course, it might also encourage opponents to accurately value what to do over 2S.

MarilynLi, on 2013-January-31, 09:49, said:

Welcome, Yes if you play support dbls...then x shows 3s and 2s promises 4s and 3s promises 4s and extras. Again yes that means you cannot play penalty double here by opener. In general to make a low level penalty dble you will have to pass and hope partner can make a balancing takeout double. The thinking here is it is much more important to show your length of support for partner EVEN WHEN 1Spade Showed Five in a competitive bidding situation at the risk of losing a penalty double or other meaning. As you point out LOTT is the reason players do this. Of course many other players may not put as much stock in LOTT but that is another thread.

If you dont play support dble there are other possible meanings for what dble could mean and other posters have commented on that. Again Welcome to the forums.

mgoetze, on 2013-February-01, 09:44, said:

Yep, that too. And for the record, I recognize that vegetarians and vegans might feel differently about my insensitive comment above.

I don't think it matters what you play, provided you agree with partner (assuming this is not a scratch one-off partnership). I know some prefer support X to be always with 3 and to bid the suit with 4, but my partnerships play support X shows one fewer than needed for simple support according to LOTT, and also shows that the partnership holds at least half of the hcp in the hand. This then enables partner to make a later penalty X more easily.

So in your example, with partner showing an agreed typical minimum 6hcp sort of hand, the X is 2 spades and a 14+ count. An immediate 2♠ would be 3 spades.

I don't like doubling opponents for penalty at the 2 level when they have supported, as there is often an option to pass if partner reopens with X on a goodish hand. A support double makes it easy for him to take action when he has more than 5 spades. However, if in this situation partner would jump to 2♠ with 6, rather than bid 1♠, then there is an implication of just 5 spades, and the support double is of not much use. I would then prefer it to show 2 spades and some diamonds, saying nothing about strength -ie takeout with tolerance.

MarilynLi, on 2013-January-31, 09:49, said:

Lots of differing ideas on what Double should indicate here.
I am another who plays it as showing 3 cards, with the raise showing 4.

We had the same question posted one year ago and Justin Lall stated he plays it as support. I assume he meant showing 3 rather than 2 card support.

Definitely a question to cover with your partner.