[AL78]

5 card majors, weak NT, X-imps.

This was at the beginning of round 3 where a tedious bias in the hands was becomming apparent (slog slog slog to fail to generate anything, it took until board 13 out of 21 to get a game score our way). This was one of those hands which really annoys me. East on this hand is notorious for bidding on crap and I wanted to punish him for it.

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Partner led the ♣K and despite my best efforts and both of my diamond honors being tricks, we could not take more than four tricks. 11 imps out. East goes away with the satisfaction that overcalling on garbage suits works, doubtless he'll do it again against me in future .

[sfi]

You made the mistake of doubling without defensive tricks, which is not a great long-term strategy. You have one ace and a diamond holding likely to produce one trick. And possibly worst of all, your clubs are weak and partner might do something silly like blow a trick by leading from Kx. It is important to bid on the hand you have at the table rather than past frustrations - it helps partner's confidence in you and it really does improve results.

And yes, if I were East I would keep making these overcalls against you if it led to results like these.

[Douglas43]

Double is fine at pairs, but at teams the risk / reward is different and it's relatively riskier to double part scores and safer to double games

[pescetom]

NS are in some kind of 2/1 on 18 HCP. Not my system, but not so sure who is bidding on crap here either.
The double seems dubious, but if partner had led ♠Q the IMPs would have been different.

[AL78]

pescetom, on 2021-April-10, 13:06, said:

NS are in some kind of 2/1 on 18 HCP. Not my system, but not so sure who is bidding on crap here either.
The double seems dubious, but if partner had led ♠Q the IMPs would have been different.

We were not playing 2/1.

[pescetom]

AL78, on 2021-April-10, 13:45, said:

We were not playing 2/1.

I realise you were not, as I said "not my system": but perhaps you were pushing things a bit, or the system has some flaw.

[barmar]

I think South shares some of the blame.

Maybe he should pull the double, as only he knows that he opened on shape, and has very little defensive help. But if he does that, it could backfire if you have a diamond stack. You're supposed to trust partner.

So maybe he shouldn't open every 5-5 10-count. Put the King in the heart suit, then it's an opening hand.