Dear Ed & Peter,

When my partner doubles the opponent am I required to bid or can I pass?

Thanks, Betty

Reply Ed Hoogenkamp (South)

Dear Betty,

That all depends on the meaning of the double. Basically there are two types of doubles:
- take-out doubles (in many varieties)
- penalty doubles

Take-out doubles ask you to bid. In general partner shows a hand with no specific long suit or preference and he asks you to choose a suit.
Penalty doubles are meant to defeat opponents in the contract they bid to score double points. On these doubles you pass.

A partnership has to have definitions when a double is penalty and when it is take out.
That is not always easy.

The last six doubles of Peter I passed were all take-out doubles. When I bid over his penalty doubles, he wasn't happy either. Those Norwegian agreements.... hard to understand.

Un saludo, greetings from Barcelona

Reply Peter van der Linden (North)

Dear Betty,

Here is the common (not Norwegian, Ed) agreement about whether a double is for take-out or penalties A double on a bid in a suit is for take-out if:
- That bid is natural
- And it is the opponent's first or second bid suit (occasionally the third)
- And partner hasn't bid so far (a pass is not considered to be a bid).

A double is for penalties if:
- If it is on a notrump bid (any notrump bid!)
- It is on a suit the doubler had the chance of doubling earlier on, but did not do.
- It is on an artificial bid suit.
- It is on a game bid in a suit that is clearly meant as the contract, after at least two bidding rounds.
- It is clearly not for take-out!

However, this is only the basic approach. There are many situations on which partnerships have to agree.
Furthermore there are many sorts of doubles nowadays, some of which are a mixture of take-out and penalties! But don't bother about those, they are for experts. And even they sometimes suffer big accidents using them.
My advice: keep it simple.

And so I've told Ed. But any agreement consisting of more than two lines of text is beyond him. And so we do coin-doubles: upon hearing partner double, we flip a coin. Heads means take-out, tails means penalties. Or was it the other way around? I'll ask Ed...

En hils, greetings from Orkanger.