[rhm]

Is that not a book situation where you have to DBL to protect your equity at matchpoints?
If they make 3♠ you will not get many matchpoints anyway.
Of course partner can and should overrule the DBL with his actual hand.

Rainer Herrmann

[Phil]

rhm, on 2015-July-14, 04:23, said:

Is that not a book situation where you have to DBL to protect your equity at matchpoints?
If they make 3♠ you will not get many matchpoints anyway.
Of course partner can and should overrule the DBL with his actual hand.

Rainer Herrmann

And sometimes we have to accept our 30% board.

[karlson]

I'm really confused by this whole discussion. To me, any hand with a spade void is an automatic 4♥ bid over 3♠, and most reasonable hands with stiff spade should also bid. So I would double with some confidence. Certainly even if partner passed with spade void he will never sit for the double, as rhm says.

In fact I typically play that pass is forcing here (though I think the arguments are similar even if you play it's NF).

[gszes]

The minority report comes in with a thunderous

4h

The opps are at a monstrous disadvantage with this bidding and the vulnerability. They have both expressed doubt about being able to make game and we are the only unlimited hand at the table. The opps will have something like zero reason to assume they can set 4h so we can safely go down 2 and possibly even 3 (if they can make 4s) and still be better off unless they cannot make 3+ spades. With a 9+ card heart suit our defensive abilities seem severely limited especially opposite a p not interested in game (and probably short in spades). Heck 4h might even make and the danger of the opps suddenly pushing to game seems rather remote when they could easily have been running scared with 3s.

[rhm]

Phil, on 2015-July-14, 08:56, said:

And sometimes we have to accept our 30% board.

Certainly, but this is not one of those.
I rather try for 100% when opponents are vulnerable than accept 30% whether they make it or go down one.
Even if chances are even whether they make or go down one, in the long run investing 30% of a board to gain 70% or slightly less is a good investment.
My other investments do not give me such good odds.

Rainer Herrmann

[MrAce]

rhm, on 2015-July-15, 03:06, said:

Certainly, but this is not one of those.
I rather try for 100% when opponents are vulnerable than accept 30% whether they make it or go down one.
Even if chances are even whether they make or go down one, in the long run investing 30% of a board to gain 70% or slightly less is a good investment.
My other investments do not give me such good odds.

Rainer Herrmann

When you look at it as an investment you may have a point. But to me dbl here looks like more of a suicide than investment.

• You have opponents who bid to 3 level (voluntarily) red vs white, agreed that does not always mean they have a great hand.
• You have a LHO who could have doubled 2♠ to show his support with a mild hand, yet he chose to bid 3♠.
• You do not have 1 single value in your hand that says "HEY! Rely on me, I can make a trick!!" Your ♠ Q and ♣ K are your best candidates but I doubt Q will do much of a job if you double.
• Why do we even think that 3♠ will bring % 70 to them anyway? I think Phil meant % 30 for us at worst. On this hand I see a lot of tricks for their side in spades. And that they did not bid game because my hand is full of so many garbage hcps that they can not figure out how good their hand match together. And they probably do not know our side has 9 card fit.
• As I said how little I expect from our side in defense, there will also be hands which we can defeat but not single dummy. A simulation will work great in favour of defense in this type of hands where lead and continuation matters a lot.

We are asking to opener, who already said he can not accept if I have game invite, that we are willing to play 3♠ doubled unless he has a reason not to.. And in this context I find Jx AQxxx xx Axxx a VERY defensive hand. Having no idea that responder has 11 balanced with 4th ♥ and total junk of hcps with no single trick in his hand in defense!

I am actually taking my last sentence back!
I do not think there exists an opener hand which will initially reject the game invitation but suddenly decide o bid game at MP when I double them in red at 3 level. It may have a merit to it once every blue moon and/or seeing 4 hands but does not make much of a sense the rest of the time. He should pass 99% of the time.