[dickiegera]

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2♥ is Game forcing

Is this a penalty double or a support double?

Why?

East holds Q9,AKQxxx,Jxx,xx

[gordontd]

Support doubles are there to avoid bidding too much with what might be a 4-3 fit. As such they apply only when the overcall is below two of the suit that responder has bid at the one level.

Here responder has shown a five-card suit and the overcall has ensured that you couldn't stop at the two-level - leaving aside that you are forced to game in any case.

[whereagles]

Good thing I don't play supp dbls

[WesleyC]

People play this double as either Takeout or Penalties by agreement.

[aguahombre]

WesleyC, on 2014-December-02, 10:13, said:

People play this double as either Takeout or Penalties by agreement.

Actually, by agreement, they play this as takeout or they play it as penalty -- not either/or.

[aguahombre]

gordontd, on 2014-December-02, 09:33, said:

Support doubles are there to avoid bidding too much with what might be a 4-3 fit. As such they apply only when the overcall is below two of the suit that responder has bid at the one level.

Here responder has shown a five-card suit and the overcall has ensured that you couldn't stop at the two-level - leaving aside that you are forced to game in any case.

All true. 3CX=game.

[steve2005]

After a 2/1 should be Penalty especially if your playing 2/1 GF. Otherwise your giving free reign for opponents to overcall in an auction which is clearly yours.

[aguahombre]

steve2005, on 2014-December-02, 10:43, said:

After a 2/1 should be Penalty especially if your playing 2/1 GF. Otherwise your giving free reign for opponents to overcall in an auction which is clearly yours.

There should be a way of penalizing them. That is different from "double should be penalty". Yes, it is penalty in our style. But I can understand Double being a two-card "support double" leaving options open for Responder. That would leave PASS as heart shortness suggesting penalty and 3D as natural without heart support of any kind.

[jogs]

Support doubles is a convention better suited for 2/1. 1m - p - 1M - 2 whatever, X. We open one of a minor. Now the one of a major bid only promises four cards. We are less likely to wish to double a 2 level bid for penalties. X shows 3-card support. Pass does not deny 3-card support. ♠ Qxx ♥ QJx ♦ Kxx ♣ KJxx. 1♣ - p - 1♠ - 2♥, ? Your marginal opening hand has gotten worst. Pass.

[Vampyr]

I think you should be leery of trusting the answers to your poll, since people who would answer "neither" cannot answer.

[helene_t]

I think "standard" is penalty but I think I would prefer it to show a balanced hand without a club stopper.

[mikeh]

As others have noted, this is simply not the sort of situation for which support doubles were invented. Actually they were invented, iirc, because a former partner of Rodwell liked to respond to an opening bid in 3 card spade suits, so Rodwell needed a way to show spade support without committing to the dread mini-moysian 3-3 fit.

Since partner promised 5+ hearts, we can raise with 3, so we don't need to double to show 3.

I like double as penalty because it simplifies the auction.

We will on occasion hold a penalty double and unless double is penalty, we have to pass and hope partner reopens with a double. While he will reopen, with us being in a gf, there will be some hands on which he would not double because he has other features to show, and deems it more useful to show them than to assume we hold the low-frequency penalty double hand.

Thus there is some risk that we cannot get the penalty if we don't play it as such. On the flip side, if we have an unbalanced hand without a penalty double holding, we just bid our hand, and if we hold a balanced hand without much in clubs, we pass.

Partner will reopen and we can then bid 3N if that seems appropriate, showing a stopper or two but no interest in defending, or bid something else.

The gain from helene's preference, it seems to me, is that on occasion partner can convert our double, but generally speaking the hand under the overcall is less able to extract a penalty than is the hand over it. KJ9 behind the overcaller is probably 2 tricks. In front of it, rarely more than 1 and sometimes none, if an example were needed.

[mike777]

Just a small add here.

Support doubles are helpful in competitive auctions to distinguish between a 3 and 4 card raise. That means even if pard promises 5cards, you can show 3 or 4 card support.

It is very common to only play support doubles through 2h overcalls so in the OP it would not apply. IN this example it seems easiest to just play x here as penalty.

[MrAce]

I can live with this double being anything but support.

[mikestar13]

[quote name='mikeh' timestamp='1417553521' post='822615']
As others have noted, this is simply not the sort of situation for which support doubles were invented. Actually they were invented, iirc, because a former partner of Rodwell liked to respond to an opening bid in 3 card spade suits, so Rodwell needed a way to show spade support without committing to the dread mini-moysian 3-3 fit.

...

Rodwell was both the inventor of support doubles and the three-card spade suit bidder, back in his younger days, according to what I have read.

+1 for the great post.

[whereagles]

That was also the story I heard: supp dbl were originally meant for avoiding the dreaded "mini-moyisan" (3-3s).

In my opinion supp dbls are theoretically unsound because they waste the most flexible of bids, endowing it with near-zero information.

[Giangibar]

It really depends on style. I am an Italian player and I can tell almost nobody here plays support doubles at any level. I agree with what has just been said by whereagles: why should I sacrifice the most flexible bid for conveying almost no useful information?

In my partnerships, opener's second round double is due to show a strong hand in the context of the bidding so far, typically short in the overcaller's suit. Sort of an inverted double. Conversely, every time I have a penalty double of the overcall, I pass and partner is expected to reopen with a double more than 90% of the time. It can hardly be imagined how many times I could collect 1100+ for passing with balanced-ish hands and converting partner's reopening double, which is almost forced as I stated before.

Besides, if I dedicate opener's second round double to show 3-card support, two bad consequences happen.
The first is that I'm left with no bid too many times: for example, when I have 18-19 bal and no stopper in overcaller's suit, or when I have a 17+ 5431, or when I have a 17+ one suiter. In my partnerships, all these hands are too strong for a jump rebid or a reverse after an overcall, since those bids would show shapely but not HCP-rich hands.
The second is that, even when I use the support double, partner is likely to have 4 cards only and we are committed to play a bad partial in a Moysian fit while passing out and letting them play would have been so much better.

In the OP's hand, as I stated before, I would consider it an inverted double: strong hand, likely Club shortness. I think support doubles after a 2/1 are off by default.

[helene_t]

In forcing pass situations you can invert dbl and pass:

Pass = penalty OR some pass-and-pull hand, whatever that means (a common agreement is that pass-and-pull is stronger than a direct bid, but it may be more useful to distinguish between shapes, or between with/without club stopper). Partner now doubles with any hand that would have respected a penalty double, i.e. almost always
dbl = optional, i.o.w. a hand that would have passed playing standard methods.

This makes you defend doubled in exactly the same situations as you would if you were playing standard methods. The advantage is that opener, when he has a pass-and-pull hand, can be almost sure that responder will not make some bid that obstructs his planned action. So it is more efficient if you want responder to be captain and opener to describe.

[mgoetze]

None of the above. This is a generic takeout double for me. It's exceedingly rare that I would bid it with any number of hearts other than 2, though.

[The_Badger]

X is easy to interpret. Depending on methods used. What players forget is that doubles are either takeout or penalty, or lead directional occasionally (Lightner doubles, etc). A support double is just a takeout double in another form that shows 3 card support. As 2♥ in this sequence must show a 5 card or longer suit, there's absolutely no need to use a support double. If West has 3 card ♥ support just raise responder to 3♥s. So double must be for takeout if a partnership agrees that negative doubles are used at the 3 level, and for (a potential) penalty if they are only used at the 2 level. Sometimes a South will bid 3♣ mainly as a lead directional bid with a poor-ish hand, and every so often you need to punish him with a penalty if you feel that your own hands fit badly.