All News

Passing Penalty Doubles, perhaps: Part 1.

How are you feeling as this slightly unusual auction developed? Everyone seems to have thrown away their “pass” cards!

 

You are playing Teams. Maybe you should have made a take-out double of 2 though unless your partner had four hearts, then you are probably where you would like to be. Six diamond tricks, a spade hold and surely partner can find a couple more tricks for his strong no-trump overcall.

However, North was not hanging around in 3NT. Your partner’s penalty double to 4 came as no surprise but what now?

At our table, West was edgy about passing this double. East just could not have more than 2spades. Everyone at the table knew that North had some unusual shape to bid on to game. The vulnerability was very much in their favour. They were either bidding to make or as a sacrifice. West decided to pull the double to 5. Let’s see if they were right to do so:

 

They picked a good dummy. North led Q which would have been a great lead on many days. West ducked this as did South and the defence could only take the A allowing West to make their contract. West could also have tried 4NT where there were 10 top tricks even on a neutral red suit lead. That A was certainly the key card.

What though about the defence to spade contracts, 4 or even 5? Defending 5, presumably doubled, when East knows their partner has a diamond suit may help but had West stood the double of 4, East has a really tough opening lead.

They would guess that North may well want to use dummy’s trumps for ruffing but a trump lead from East would be hugely risky and would cost one trick, though there would be compensation here in that North would be able to ruff less hearts. In a vacuum, East may well start with a top heart. We can see that they need now to switch to a low diamond for West to lead a spade but if they cashed A, then East-West are really in trouble.

Declarer could ruff two hearts in dummy comfortably. There is no point in  East ruffing the fourth round of hearts as declarer’s 5^th heart is already established. Indeed, there is this slightly unusual ending with the defence only having taken 2 tricks:

With the spades 2-2, North should only lose one trick and would now make 4, doubled or not. 

That is what would and indeed did happen on "normal" defence. Best defence is a low diamond at trick 1 to be followed by a trump from West. It does not matter if declarer finesses or not as when they play a first round of hearts, the defence can play a second round of trumps. North will then lose 3 heart tricks, a spade and a diamond for down 2 in 4x. Had East started with a top heart and switched to a low diamond, they will score only 2 heart tricks, i.e. with 4x down 1. 

So, West did well to pull to 5…much less stress and a better result playing this contract than defending 4x.

Of the 20 tables in play, 6 East/West pairs played safely in 3NT or 5. 3 East-Wests played in heart contracts, 2 bidding and making game. The rest of the East-Wests were defending spade contracts. 10 tricks were made by North 7 times, 4 of which were making game contracts. North made 9 tricks 4 times. No defence got the full 5 tricks to which they were entitled.

We will look at another interesting hand tomorrow which involved the pulling of a penalty double.

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items