Exploring the ‘Double’ bid

In previous articles, we have talked about a number of bidding conventions, all taking up some bidding space. This time, I would like to explore the interesting bid of “Double” – this is a penalty double … or is it something else?
Let’s say you hold 14 points with a 4-3-3-3 distribution – no 5-card major and not enough for a 1NT bid, so you want to bid 1 Club or Diamond using the Convenient Minor convention. But, before you can bid, your RHO (right hand opponent) opens 1 Diamond – stealing YOUR BID! With no 5-card suit, you can’t really bid a Heart or a Spade, and you are uncomfortable bidding 2 clubs which implies you hold 5 clubs. So, what now? Enter the Takeout Double.
Since most contracts at the one-, two-, and three-level are relatively easy to make, the Bridge Gurus came up with another meaning for the traditional penalty double – they call this bid a “Takeout Double”. In this situation, when you double, you are asking/ordering partner to bid his strongest suit in any of the remaining three suits, and you are promising Partner that you hold a hand of opening strength (or nearly so) and at least three cards in each of the three unbid suits. The benefit of using this convention is that partner can safely bid his 5-card suit, even with a relatively weak hand, KNOWING that the partnership will at least hold the “golden eight” in trump which gives a decent chance to make your contract. The whole point of the Takeout Double is to give you an added tool to communicate with partner when your opponents have entered the auction and potentially messed up your line of communication.
When your partner invokes the Takeout Double, there are only two things that relieve you of your responsibility to bid: (1) the intervening opponent bids, thereby removing the double and your requirement to bid, and (2) you believe that you can single-handedly defeat the doubled contract. If neither of these exclusions apply, then you MUST BID ….. even with ZERO POINTS. If the intervening opponent does bid, you can still bid if you have a good suit. I know this can be a bit scary at times, but you simply must trust your partner … and bid!
In the above example, we doubled opponents’ bid of 1 Diamond to invoke the Takeout Double. We should note that the Takeout Double applies to ANY opening bid made by an opponent, all the way up to 3 Spades! For example, if your RHO opens 2 Spades (weak 2-bid), it is now very risky to try to find a good suit when you must start at the 3-level. Once again, the Takeout Double helps solve this problem by telling partner to bid his best suit – pretty neat suff.
Good luck and good bridge.
Are you interested in learning more about bridge? Visit www.SouthCountyBridge.com for information on a friendly place to play, conventions and bridge classes in progress now. For entry level instruction or duplicate play, contact Al at al********@ya***.com or (408) 779-7122. For beginning and intermediate level, contact Linda King at lr****@hu****.net or (831) 801-9257.