Penalty Doubles (part 1)

I've written a lot in these blogs about cooperative (two-way) doubles which are primarily intended to discover shape information.  Quite often, these are converted to penalty doubles by passing.  What I want to talk about here is the true penalty double.  This is the first of two parts.

I've identified five types of penalty double: (1) lead-directing, (2) equity-preserving, (3) penalty-increasing, (4) psych-exposing, and (5) tactical.  Let's start with the first type, the lead-directing double.  There are two sub-types: (a) double of an artificial bid and (b) double of the final contract.

Because the first type occurs before the natural conclusion of the auction (at least you think it's not yet over), it can serve both as a lead-director and as a proxy bid, suggesting values in the suit doubled.  Partner might use this information to sacrifice later on or, if he ends up on lead, then he will normally lead the suit doubled.  One of the advantages of this type of double is that it's "free".  But we all know that there's no such thing as a free lunch!  I learned this the hard way many years ago in my first Flight A Swiss.  Playing a pair of Grand Life Masters (yes, I should know better), I doubled a Stayman 2♣ bid for a club lead.  LGLM redoubled and RGLM passed.  There was no way to defeat 2♣ and one of those special scores got burned into memory: 760.  This was "only" a 4-imp loss as our teammates made 600.  But overtricks, if there had been any, would have been exorbitant – additionally – 7, 3, 2, etc. imps.

But I digress.  The second type of lead-directing double is when the (expected) final contract is doubled to ask for a specific lead.  First introduced back in the early days of bridge by Theodore Lightner, this double is intended to create a penalty where none existed before.  In other words, if you make an unusual lead, partner, this contract is going down, otherwise, it will be making.  Because this type of double doesn't simply increase the penalty but instead defeats a contract, it is generally the most profitable of all doubles.  Because the margin of error in slams is so small, the Lightner double was first described as a defense to slams.  Imagine the opponents have bid to 6♠ while you hold ♠A2 and a side void, you know that the slam is going down – if only you can persuade partner to lead your void suit.  It is of course just possible that declarer has a void in the same suit and your plan may go awry but that would be unfortunate to say the least.

[In a distant aside, that actually happened to my opponent in a bizarre incident that occurred just before I gave up bridge for 18 years.  The scene was the 1980 NABC in Detroit, my first tournament of any kind, soon after I'd learned the game.  I was in 7♥ which was doubled for a diamond lead.  The opening lead was a diamond and I claimed (there were approximately 15 tricks on view and I was void in diamonds).  The director was called and it was ruled that, because I didn't explicitly say in my statement that I would over-ruff my RHO, I was down one.]

Back to the present.  Again, there are dangers with lead-directing doubles.  The most likely thing to happen is that one of the opponents will pull the contract to no-trump.  Now, your precious ruff just evaporated and if they can still manage 12 tricks you will have helped them go from a failing contract to an impregnable one.  Your partner will undoubtedly point out that he was going to lead your void suit without your silly double.  The next danger is that partner won't know which of the other three suits to lead.  If he is long in dummy's suit, that should be pretty obvious.  But dummy doesn't always oblige by bidding a suit.

This is where experts invoke the following rule: if you have bid a suit during the auction (or made an earlier lead-directing double) and you subsequently make a lead-directing double of the final, freely-bid suit contract, you definitely do not want partner to lead your suit.  You were expecting that lead and there would be little point in doubling simply to increase a penalty that was already coming.

Of course, there are the usual dangers.  You might be incorrect about your ability to defeat the contract.  Partner might not recognize the difference between a lead-directing double and one of the other two types of penalty double.  One of these situations arose recently in a pairs game.  I should note in passing that the strange mechanism of scoring used in pairs games complicates the entire business of penalty doubles. I held ♠ – ♥ 952 ♦ AJ7432 ♣ AQJ5.  My LHO opened 1♥, partner passed and RHO bid 3♦ showing a four-piece constructive raise of hearts.  Assuming my opponents were bidding honestly, that left partner with at most one heart.  I wanted to show my diamonds, force the opponents to game, make a lead-directing double and hope that partner could work out to lead spades (and come up with a fourth trick).  In retrospect, I'm not at all sure why I was so optimistic!  Since we play two-way (cooperative) doubles, I had to trigger penalty doubles with either a lead-directing double of the 3♦ call, or make a bid that showed a good suit (similar to a preempt) with 4♦.  I chose the latter (which, had I bought the contract, would have been down 1).  LHO obliged with 4♥ and it came back to me.  Now to spring the trap (so I hoped).  I doubled confidently and awaited a spade lead.  I got a diamond.  There was still a chance though.  I won the ace, cashed the ♣A and led a low club to partner's ♣K.  At this point, a passive lead would have resulted in down 1.  Unfortunately, partner tried to give me a club ruff.  There was now no way to defeat the contract and so we went from a potential +800 (this would require a spade lead, plus a double-dummy defense of me leading a club to partner's T at trick 2) to -790.  Quite a swing! 

We had some friendly discussions about which would be the better club to continue at trick 3, whether it would have been better to double 3♦ or bid 4♦, and so on – but it is nevertheless an instructive hand.  The essential problem was that it wasn't clear to partner which type of penalty double I was making.  I think the only contenders, based on the auction, were types 1 and 3 (lead-directional and penalty-increasing).  Had I doubled 3♦ then I think type 2 (equity preservation) might have been possible also.

Now, here's a test to see if you've been paying attention.  This hand actually occurred today in the seventh match of a sectional Swiss.  Your hand is:  ♠ 83 ♥ QJ98 ♦ 62 ♣ J9754, red against white.  Hold on to your hat.  You won't experience this auction everyday!  Starting with partner, it goes 1♥–2♥–p–2NT; 3♦–4♦–4♥–p; p–5♥–p–5NT; p–6♠–p–p; X–p–p–p.  What do you lead?  Answer in part two.

In the next part of this series, I will try to show that, while penalty double type 3 (penalty-increasing) may be the traditional interpretation, the species is actually less common at duplicate bridge than one might expect.