[hiatus]

The possibility of finding partner with 5 hearts and 2 spades is a big advantage of doubling.
Another advantage is that when you instead bid 2D or 2H partner can take a stronger inference that you have ten cards in two suits.

[bluecalm]

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How do you come to that conclusion? Are you passing or something? If you bid 2D, you have the exact same problem of having a wide range, but you have described your hand less. Having wide ranges in 1M p 1N auctions is part of life in 2/1/SAYC like systems.

It might be the fact of life for standard systems in NA.
I recently spent some time going through Italian pairs bidding and it's not fact of life for them (as all 16+ go into 2C so 2D/2H are limited to 15hcp). I believe they do something similar in comp and I like it a lot.
There are two questions: "what is best" and "what is expected in standard". I am expressing my opinion about the first of those questions; seeing how wide range calls cause a lot of trouble for standard bidders (even world class ones) and how it's solved in Italian systems (some Polish pairs do something similar by introducing transfers). If I just agreed standard I would probably double as if 2D is expected to be 12-18 then I won't benefit from limit nature of that call anyway.
Oh and I am for sure not passing. With perfect (imo) agreements I would pass with 5-3-3-2 12-14. Bid 2D/2H with 4 of them in 11-15range and double with great 15's an up.

Anyway, I still don't know how 2 opponents bidding influence this situation. Maybe shape is the most important here as game is more distant target now. I could easily be convinced that it's a double in such situation.

[Nabooba]

Double should be played for takeout, but that is not a good call here. You have an excellent Diamond suit and we should let partner know that.

[MrAce]

bluecalm, on 2012-February-29, 16:51, said:

I think double should be stronger. Partner is in 5-11 range and if we hope to ever bid reasonable games here he needs to make forward moving action with (8)9-11 opposite our double.

Where is this 5-11 coming from ? Why would someone bid with 5-6 hcp and no fit over a double ? I always thought, if 1NT is natural after a T/O double that it is about 8-10 hcp.

Some may argue that 1NT can have preemptive effect on doubler's partner but in this auction thats not the case either, we opened 1♠.

i.e 1♥-X-1NT disables 1♠ bid or 1m-X-1NT disables both 1 major bids etc...

[bluecalm]

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Where is this 5-11 coming from ? Why would someone bid with 5-6 hcp and no fit over a double ? I always thought, if 1NT is natural after a T/O double that it is about 8-10 hcp.

I am stupid. I was thinking about 1S - p -1N 2C all the time and all the remarks are to that.
OP situation is completely different obviously, sry for confusion.

[HighLow21]

I think I understand the merits of the double, but with three bad hearts and 4 good diamonds, I would bid 2♦. One thing partner knows for a fact about my hand is that I am short in clubs, unless the opponents are playing ELCD's or some such thing. We also can be fairly certain that RHO is short in spades. If my red honors were in the 3-card heart suit, I would definitely double. But partner will hopefully be able to figure out, based on the auction, that I have to have heart tolerance or a rebiddable spade suit here.