[jdeegan]

Pass. It does look fairly close, but consider the following analysis:

a. By passing I am risking a probable 3-4 IMP loss if 5♠ makes versus a probable 10+ IMP gain if 5♠ goes down.
b. LHO figures to have either 8 or 9 diamonds or 7 diamonds and 4 or 5 clubs. Our defense of 5♦ doubled is likely to pick him clean (possibly with a club ruff or two), so +500 seems likely imo.
c. The play at 5♠ is sure to run into bad breaking suits. I could end up with two slow heart losers, or handling charges from 0-5 spades to name the two most likely horrors.
d. Finally, the way I am used to playing, pard does not guarantee a pattern hand, but rather enough defensive tricks to beat 5♦. I am not terribly worried that pard would table a doubleton spade, but imo it will happen often enough to affect my decision here.

It is bidding after a preempt which is, of course, always a crapshoot. I have no doubt that once in a while we will have +1430 available versus only +300 defending.

[mikeh]

Chamaco, on Mar 23 2006, 02:59 AM, said:

A question to the experts here:
can you provide some concrete examples of the hands that pard might have for his double ?

The problem with doing this is that it is easy to construct hands to support either pass or 5♠. Unless one is GIB (and can very quickly simulate several thousand hands), a better idea might be to compare poorly fitting but still doubling hands with well fitting doubling hands and then assess the upside/downside.

Would we double a 3rd seat 5♦ with Axx AQxx xx KQxxx?

If so, then bidding will likely be a disaster.

Certainly partner could have AQxx AQJx x Axxx and we will likely regret passing: but will he bid 6♠ then, over your 5♠? If he does on that, will he do it on AQxx AQJx x KQJx?

Imagine Axxx Axxx x Axxx: throw in a Q in one of the suits: certainly we'd all double with Axxx Axxx x AQJxx

5♠ probably makes, but 5♦ is going to do pretty badly as well.. so there is not much one way or the other.

To me, the risk of 5♠ being the wrong spot is too great on this hand... with the slight extra chance that when 5♠ works, we may overreach to 6♠

[cherdano]

Thanks everyone, interesting discussion.

The actual hand doesn't matter, since partner (he agrees) didn't really have a double, and 5S doubled was a bit painful. Still, the decision from my side was interesting I thought.

[FrancesHinden]

I would also pass partner's double.

I am starting to pass in more of these auctions than I used to.

The difficulty is that while we'd like to say that partner's double is "take-out", it doesn't show a classical take-out double hand: all we can say is that it has high cards that aren't in diamonds, and would expect 5D to be going down most of the time.

So a hand like this would double 5D:

Ax
AQxx
x
Axxxxx

Partner should merely be happy that if we pull to a 6-card suit then we will have play for the contract.

Obviously as mikeh says it's easy to construct hands where 6 (or 7) of a major is cold.