Takeout Doubles are (Nearly) Forcing

At our table, I passed for 100% of the matchpoints. The only other table that duplicated the auction to this point passed also. East tried to save in diamonds, but was doubled for 87.5% of the matchpoints.

One other table played in diamonds, undoubled, for 50% of the matchpoints.

North/Souths who declared did not, in general, fare well. 3C-1 by south was a common result.

Normally, partner's double would have forced me to bid. With 7 strong clubs, I was happy to make a rare exception.

Simplicity

Board 10 from Monday's Matchpoints game. Almost everyone is in 4 hearts. A low spade is led to east's queen:



I won with the ace, and the ace of hearts showed that trumps are no worse than 3-1.

At this point, I think, there's a pretty trivial play to try for an overtrick. At the table, most found it, and 4H+2 scored 75% of the matchpoints, while 4H+1 only scored 18.75%.

I drew 2 rounds of trump ending with the king, and cashed the king of spades, discarding a club. One player discarded a diamond, which is wrong. I then played the Ace and King of clubs, and ruffed a club, everyone following. Now I played a diamond to the ace (one player had cashed the ace of diamonds earlier, leaving no entry to dummy). Now, I played the thirteenth club, and discarded a diamond (one player got this far then ruffed a spade).

Granted, clubs being 3-3 is only something like a 36% chance of happening, but there was no harm in trying. Would you have found this at the table? In a 12 board ACBL game, finding this play adds over 4.6% to your final matchpoint score.

Sorry, But....

Playing in the Sunday IMPs league, I had this awkward bidding situation:



Maybe you agree with my pass, maybe not. Certainly, playing with a new partner, I felt that any other bid was going to be a lie, and I trusted partner to reopen. Ok, so partner reopened, now what?

It's really easy to foresee losing the first 5 tricks in 3NT. I have some spade length, but even IF partner has 2 spades Notrump isn't going to go well. If not notrump, then what?

Well, hearts might be right, but 3 card support with a 4333 is not great news for partner. In fact, it's not impossible that partner has only 3 hearts himself.

On the other hand, partner probably has passable clubs. He opened clubs instead of diamonds, and is shortish on spades, so clubs is probably a real suit.

I opted for 3 clubs, which got passed out. Partner held:



30 HCPs, and no game to be had. At first, I felt like apologizing to partner, but as it turned out stopping short of game was going to be worth IMPs, 6 as it turned out.

Despite the awkwardness of the situation, this bidding was easy, I think, right or wrong. It was a good reminder, though, that there's more to life than high card points.