[kennel7]

East robot pass, Me south open 1c, west robot pass, northrobot 1d, East Robot now 2s ( has 6 spades ,7 points ,weak) , so me South Doubles wanting Robot North to speak and he passes with this hand ,
Spades 9
Hearts qj7
D 9876432
C q5

So I get a 0% as we are not in 3D . Why did robot pass my double ?

[smerriman]

The description of double shows that it is for penalty (which is pretty standard I believe).

[Stephen Tu]

Hasn't been standard penalty in decades. Surely it should be good hand DSIP above support double level.

[smerriman]

Interesting. When I posted an almost identical hand on BridgeWinners a while back for what I should do in opener's position with 4 good spades, the vast majority was to double, presumably for penalties.

But maybe you mean that it's penalty oriented that can be pulled with unusual hands like GIB's, which is what I meant by penalty.

[Stephen Tu]

No, I think it's way more likely you have some say good 2335/2425 type hand than a hand that wants to saw the opps off almost no matter what partner has. That has been the modern trend in doubling for ages, you just don't run into suicidal opps that often, and sometimes you can get them with a trap pass if partner can find a balance. Maybe 40/50 years ago ambiguous doubles were penalty by default, but these days at least if you aren't playing ancient methods then I think assumption of most doubles relatively early in auction is "I have a good hand but don't have a better call, help me out".

[smerriman]

If that were the case wouldn't 3NT be much more popular than double in my poll? Given in that case there clearly is a better call if you know partner won't be leaving 2S in for penalties. Or did people have another reason for doubling?

Incidentally I did pass on that hand thinking double was more like what you suggested (but partner wasn't on the same wavelength and passed it out), but the poll and advice I got from someone else both changed my perspective. Now I'm not so sure.

[Stephen Tu]

Well, there are no qualifications for voting in a poll in bridgewinners. Maybe you want to make a poll with a hand from the other side interpreting what the double means.

Perhaps some percentage are snap doubling in the poll on instinct without pausing to realize that double may not be interpreted as penalty. On that hand you really, really want double to be penalty!

I'm pretty sure I've seen lots of polls where people double just showing a good hand, not really wanting partner to pass regardless. They have a good hand, they double, what else would you do with some good hand and no good other bid? I wouldn't be surprised if some portion of the people reflexively voting double in that poll would also vote double on the entirely different hand type some weeks apart forgetting they are being inconsistent.

It also depends if you are playing with young/youngish (in context of bridge, not society) expert or a dinosaur or an int-.