[lalldonn]

barmar, on 2012-March-29, 17:30, said:

I think some people are suggesting that the description of the double should have been something like "Takeout, usually a weak hand with ♥ and ♣, but possibly ♥ and ♠ that he couldn't show previously".

But I'm not sure this is reasonable. Unless there's an explicit agreement that a bid is two-way, we often don't anticipate things like this. If I were East, I'd just assume it's a normal takeout. It's only when West bids over 2♦ that I'd be forced to try to figure out what's going on, and then I might conclude that he had ♠. If East didn't anticipate this, how can he possibly be expected to include it in the description?

EW both claimed there was no way the double could include hearts and clubs because west didn't double a round earlier. It's still not clear to me which hands would start with double for that partnership, but it seems like any combination of suits that is not hearts+clubs.

Since you refer to a double there showing hearts and clubs as "normal takeout", and since this EW pair could never have hearts and clubs for their double, it seems you would agree that "takeout" is not a good explanation, even prior to the later bidding.

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2012-March-29, 17:30, said:

It's only when West bids over 2♦ that I'd be forced to try to figure out what's going on, and then I might conclude that he had ♠. If East didn't anticipate this, how can he possibly be expected to include it in the description?

In such a situation, shouldn't East alert the 2♥ bid? Is it "knowledge generally available to bridge players" that West might do this?

[qwery_hi]

Would you have bid 2C if the double was explained as penalty with good spades? If yes, then the incomplete explanation did cause damage IMO.

lalldonn, on 2012-March-29, 14:55, said:

So for all those who says something like "it's a takeout double because it was intended to be taken out", is a double of a 1H opening bid a takeout double if the agreement is it shows 10 solid spades? Certainly the doubler expects his partner to take the double out.

FWIW, I asked quite a lot of players about this at the tournament and found an interesting divide. Most (but not all) Americans understood this auction to show hearts and clubs. Most (but not all) Europeans understood this auction to show the majors. In most of these cases, the other meaning didn't even particularly occur to the player, ie everyone thought his or her interpretation was obvious. So in my opinion, it's not reasonable to fault NS for failing to ask further questions since they had no reason to suspect anything was other than normal.

Now, I appreciate that comment can certainly be turned around to suggest that EW did nothing wrong since they believed their explanation was complete. But that doesn't mean it was complete. To me the bottom line is that it's up to the explainers to make sure the explanation is understood. I once got in (mild) trouble for explaining a bid as "minors" rather than "clubs and diamonds". It didn't matter that I could reasonably expect my opponents to understand what I meant, because if they don't realize that they don't understand then they have no cause to inquire further. If "minors" sounds exactly like the word that means "red suits" in their language, then I couldn't really have foreseen that, but as I understand it I am still at legal fault.

[Trinidad]

qwery_hi, on 2012-March-30, 02:36, said:

Would you have bid 2C if the double was explained as penalty with good spades? If yes, then the incomplete explanation did cause damage IMO.

What makes you think the double meant: "penalty with good spades"?

Rik

[gnasher]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-29, 21:58, said:

In such a situation, shouldn't East alert the 2♥ bid? Is it "knowledge generally available to bridge players" that West might do this?

Josh's poll suggests that it's "knowledge generally available to bridge players" in some parts of the world, but not in the part of the world where this event took place.

[wank]

bluejak, on 2012-March-29, 08:49, said:

There is no doubt that double was a takeout double, since it was intended to be taken out.

how do you know what was intended? the man's got 5 of dummy's suit. to me that looks like a penalty double.

[blackshoe]

gnasher, on 2012-March-30, 04:49, said:

Josh's poll suggests that it's "knowledge generally available to bridge players" in some parts of the world, but not in the part of the world where this event took place.

Then it would seem to me to meet the legal criterion for an alert where the event took place.

[bluejak]

Trinidad, on 2012-March-29, 17:21, said:

The point is that there was only a question about the double. At the point that the question was asked, there was no clarifying context yet. At that point, the double was a generic scrambling action that could be made on "anything". This vague meaning was made reasonably clear to reasonable opponents by using the appropriately vague word "takeout".

I am not sure that is true. A large proportion of opponents think takeout means 'showing the unbid suits'. If, as you say, 'the double was a generic scrambling action that could be made on "anything"', why not tell the opponents this?

[barmar]

lalldonn, on 2012-March-29, 17:48, said:

EW both claimed there was no way the double could include hearts and clubs because west didn't double a round earlier. It's still not clear to me which hands would start with double for that partnership, but it seems like any combination of suits that is not hearts+clubs.

I simply don't believe that claim. It's GBK that direct doubles require more strength than balancing doubles, so his hand could be the same shape as one that would double in the previous round, but he wasn't strong enough to do so.

But it's also fairly common that players take more liberties regarding shape when balancing -- they're desperate to prevent the opponents from playing in a comfortable contract.