ADVANCED COMPETITIVE DUPLICATE BIDDING

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Elmer Allen Knight
5 years ago
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1 This paper introduces Penalty Doubles and Sacrifice Bids at Duplicate. Both are quite rare, but when they come up, they are heavily dependent on your ability to calculate alternative scores quickly and bid in Tempo of the auction. All topics assume you know how to immediately, mentally, calculate the score for making or failing to make a contract, doubled or not and Vulnerable or not and then bid promptly. In Tempo means you know these numbers during the auction. Obviously, you can look at the back of the bidding box tab after the auction is over to see the correct score, but not during the auction. That s questionable because it theoretically gives your partner unauthorized information. Don t get the Director called on you. No doubt you know all this and can calculate every case, up or down, Vul and / or doubled instantly but, to be sure, go to Appendix A, page 9, to review your score calculating skills before reading the body of the paper. For example, what s the score for bidding and making 5 Diamonds doubled and vulnerable? What s the score for going down 2 on that same hand? In Tempo. So far, in our discussions of Competitive Bidding contracts, we ve agreed that doubles at the 1, 2 and 3-levels are conventions, not Penalty Doubles. They are artificial parts of our competitive bidding portfolio and therefore may be alerted. A quick review of our competitive bidding conventional doubles: Takeout Double. A 1, 2 or 3-level double of a suit bid is a Takeout: [1 - Dbl -???]. It means: Partner, I have an opening strength hand with support for the other 3 suits, particularly the majors. Negative Double. A double in 3 rd seat after 2 suits have been bid is a Negative Double, meaning: Partner, I have support for the other 2 suits and don t want to raise your opening suit: [1-1 - Dbl ] I have 4 Spades and support for Diamonds with 8+ HCP, I but can t raise your opener or bid 1NT. With 5 decent Spades, I would have bid 1 over 1. Negative means the unbid suits ; it s not a judgement. Balancing Double. A Balancing Double is a convention saying Partner, our opponents are trying to quit at a low level in an 8-card fit, but I have the unbid suits, especially unbid majors and some HCP and I want to compete to not let them get the contract. at that level. In other words, I m Pushing please bid something. 1

2 [1 - P P 2 - P - P - Double. ] Partner, I have 4+ Spades, although not a strong 5-card suit, some HCP and I want to force them to the 3-level as a competitive tactic. If I had a strong 5-card Spade suit, I would have bid 1 over the 1 response, but I don t have one and so I didn t overcall. Hopefully partner will bid 2 and force the issue. Responsive Double. When partner makes a takeout double and 3 rd seat bids, if 4 th seat can support more than one of the suit partner doubled for, she can the double herself a Responsive Double, meaning Partner: I ve got whatever you want. [1 -Dbl Double. ] Partner, I ve got both Hearts and Spades: pick one. But what if we want to penalty double our opponent s 2 or 3 level contracts? Why is that virtually never done, as I ve stated so many times? Because the penalty you might earn is only 50 or maybe even 100 points if they are down one. But, if they make it doubled, their scores are huge and yours are terrible: So as a rule it s much too dangerous. Examples of a Penalty Doubled 2 contract: If Vulnerable If Not Vulnerable Making Making Down Don t double them into Game, which can happen if you Penalty Double a 2 contract and they make it, as you see above. Winners The E/W pair scoring the best overall, regardless if they ever bid and make a game or not, are going to be the winners that day on the E/W side. Forget N/S got all the cards today : Even if it were true so what? We can compete against N/S Game bids, maybe deliberately going down 500 if we think that s a winner over their probable game. And the other E/W pairs our competitors - may or may not compete as well as we do: it s the reason we play Duplicate, no?. And every Pairs hand is separate: Hand 2 results aren t influenced by Hand 1 results; unlike Team Games where that may be the case. 2

3 CONTRACT TYPES PARTIAL COMPETITIVE CONTRACTS are the most common at Duplicate. The Declarer might be anyone at the table, but the final score depends on many things: A. The E/W partial score: Did it make? With overtricks? Go down 1? Down 2? Vulnerable? Not Vulnerable? Doubled? B. The same questions for N/S. C. A. and B. scores are just numbers: going down 2 for -100 may be the winning score if the opponents can make So the winner on every hand is the pair who makes the most or loses the least compared to their Competitors, not their opponents. It s not always a plus score, and it s only the competitor s score - E/W or NS at other tables - that matters when the session ends. So it s not obvious at the table which pair won as each hand is scored: E/W may be down -500, but still win the hand if N/S could have made a 620 vulnerable game and other N/S pairs frequently bid and make 620. However, if E/W go down -500 when N/W can only make 420, then they (N/S) win that hand at your table. But who knows what they will score when all 13 or 9 tables are scored up? Do 7 other E/W pairs also go down 500? If so, that s a pretty average score for N/S not an outright winner. Examples: N E S W 1 1 Dbl??? A few possible continuations after the Negative Double by South: A. B. C. D. N E S W 1 1 Dbl P 2 P P 2... N E S W 1 1 Dbl P 2 P P 2 P P 3... N E S W 1 1 Dbl 2 P P N E S W 1 1 Dbl P 2 P P

4 Final Scores? Look at possible scores for A. through D. there could be many more. E/W make 2 E/W down 1 - NV E/W down 1 - Vul N/S make 3 N/S down 1 Not Vul N/S down 1 Vul.A. E/W B. N/S C. E/W D. N/S /- 110 to +/ 100. But what if all those contracts were doubled? E/W SCORES N/S SCORES Making Not Vul Making Vulnerable Down 1 Vulnerable Making Not Vul Making Vulnerable Down 1 Vulnerable.A. E/W B. N/S C. E/W D. N/S Now it s +/-200 to +/- 730, and these aren t even Game level or Slam level contracts. N/S & E/W scores are opposite but see the vast difference if contracts make or not, and are Vul or Not Vul. We may have to double if pushed, but we might lose 730 points. If we take it up a level, we may go down 100; not make our 3. GAME LEVEL CONTRACTS Game level contracts are the usual 4 or 3NT or 5, etc. All the competitive Rules and guides are the same, but the numbers, plus or minus, from doubled and / or vulnerable scores can be dramatically bigger. This is because Games bid and made earn a 300 (Not vul) or 500 (vul) point Game Bonus in addition to trick scores. But, to counter that big bonus, it makes Sacrificing vs. opponents Game bids that much more attractive and common for Non Vulnerable opponents. With Favorable Vulnerability, the lower-ranking suit contract at the 5-level, even though down several tricks, may beat the Vulnerable Game pair s score: -500 beats -620, No? 4

5 SLAM LEVEL CONTRACTS Slams, Small or Grand, earn even bigger bonuses 500 to 1,500 points than Game Level contracts. However, Slam Level bidding is rarely competitive and very seldom are Sacrifices or Penalty Doubles seen as the final bid, so we will not consider them in this document. OK, so how do we win at Competitive Bidding contracts, assuming everyone at the table bids properly, defends properly and declares properly? (Has that ever really happened?) Is there any one answer to that question? No. Any partial answers? Yes several of them. And they are illustrated in the tables above. 1. A Plus score is not necessarily a winner if you could have scored more by defeating your opponents by 2 tricks, or even 1 doubled & Vul for The key Competitive Bidding factor is Relative Vulnerability. There are exactly four cases in Vulnerability in every Duplicate hand: a. Equal No one Vulnerable: All undoubled undertricks for both pairs are -50. b. Unfavorable: You are Vul and they are not: now your undoubled undertricks are -100 each but theirs are -50 each. c. Favorable: They re Vulnerable; you aren t: yours are -50; theirs are d. Equal Both Vulnerable: an undertrick is -100 for either pair. Notice that a. & d. are both called Equal, but d. is more expensive than a., i.e., -100 per undertrick vs. -50 per undertrick. Avoid the -200 Death Number. Relative Vulnerability is the key Competitive Bidding tactic because if you are risking only -50 by going down a trick, that means that you can be quite aggressive bidding that hand; but if you are Vulnerable at -100 per undertrick, that s different. But, if you risk -50 but push them into a 100 result, then who wins? Who knows? If you and they are Equal, it s a closer battle, and if you are Unfavorable, then they will Push you, so be careful. And this is irrespective of the possibility of being 5

6 doubled for penalty: a rare bid in partial level contracts; but possible. At the Game level, Penalty Doubles are fairly common, in a battle against opponents Sacrifices, as it s the common tactic for winning or losing 4+ level contracts. Sacrificing in Game-Level contracts means deliberately bidding higher than your opponent s game bid, expecting to go down doubled, but calculating that it might still be less that their Vulnerable game score of 600 or 630. This calculation is entirely dependent on Relative Vulnerability. Example: If you are competing Not Vul in Diamonds and your Vulnerable opponents bid 4, what are the numbers that help you decide about Sacrificing in 5 over their 4? If they make their 4 Vulnerable game, they score at least 620. But you can bid 5, expecting to go down doubled. (If they don t double you, then you win hands down: remember this when you are on the other side of the table.) How many tricks do they have to take if they double your 5 to score more than the 620+ they can make? All of this thinking is in tempo during the bidding, of course. But you can anticipate a possible Sacrifice situation early in the auction and be prepared to bid 5 from the beginning with no hesitation; i.e., In Tempo. Then, opponents don t know whether you actually expect to make 5 or are just Sacrificing, as you intended to all along, because you are Not Vulnerable and they are. Hint. If all this quick number-crunching seems intimidating to you, review the score formulas in Appendix A., page 9, again and again and again. Let s review an example competitive Game auction: Both sides bid confidently and vulnerable, and North bids 4, calmly looking forward to her +620 score. But then, immediately, in the East seat, a 5 bid appears. Rats! South, per his Partnership Agreement with North, doubles 5 with 2 Diamond losers or Passes with 1 Diamond loser or bids 5 with no Diamond losers. North now knows the exact Diamond loser situation in South, and, if he doubled or passed, the bidding level is still at 5. North then goes over all the numbers above and (1) passes South s double or (2) bids 5 herself with one or no Diamond losers or (3) passes after South s Pass if she isn t confident they can beat 5 nor make 5. 6

7 The range of scores she must consider in a few seconds goes from +800 for beating E/W by 3 vulnerable to 750 if E/W makes 5 doubled and vulnerable. Or, she can pass South s 5 bid or bid it herself if she thinks that trying for 11 tricks in Spades is the best choice, for a possible ( Take the Push, in other words.) All this because of East s 5 bid in tempo. North may have been surprised at East s 5 bid she was certainly disappointed but East saw this situation coming early in the auction and was mentally prepared to bid 5 immediately and confidently, expecting North to bid 4. Is he Sacrificing? Or Pushing? Or void in Spades with a lot of Diamond tricks, willing to go down 1 or 2 or even make 5 doubled? Who knows? The range of the resultant score can be over 1,500 points: -750 to Fun! North: do whatever is right. As if you can know what that is every time. All the techniques discussed for Competitive Auctions at the Game Level or lower are about numbers and that s legitimate. You have to get comfortable considering all those possible numbers in tempo. Not in a day or two, naturally: you must practice that number-crunching all the rest of your Duplicate career. Don t be discouraged by that sentence if you re not a numbers person. It s not Algebra or Calculus: it s just arithmetic and, in fact, there are relatively few numbers to remember: 400, 420, 600, 620, -100, -300, These 7 numbers cover probably 80% of possible competitive auction scores. And what s the difference between 400 and 420, or 600 and 620? Virtually nothing, so there s more like 5 numbers that cover the bulk of the whole score table in competitive auctions at the game level. I ll bet you re comfortable with those 7 numbers right now, no? And we ve agreed to not Penalty Double or Sacrifice in 1, 2 and 3-level contracts, so Partial contract score calculation is much simpler. Opponents will Push you, of course, but it s still a much simpler decision to Take it or Not. And you will do the same to them, of course. Let s be done with numbers, Bob! Isn t there anything else that matters in typical Competitive Bidding, especially at the Game Level? I m sick of number-crunching! 7

8 NON-NUMBER CRUNCHING COMPETITIVE BIDDING You ll be delighted to hear we ve already covered most or all of these techniques: Preempts, Balancing, Conventional doubles, (some reviewed above in contrast to Penalty Doubles), Weak Jump Overcalls and Weak Jump Shifts, Weak Direct Raises in Competition, TONT, Mini-Roman, Flannery and many more. Recall that we re not talking about [1NT P 3NT ] auctions. Those aren t Competitive. We re talking about auctions where 3 or 4 players bid at some point. Lots of factors, in addition to HCP, come into such auctions: Shape is a big factor, and now we have seen how Relative Vulnerability comes into those auctions too, regardless of HCP or Shape differences. We haven t used that term before, but it applies to sub-game level auctions, too. Not Vul vs Vul, we re going to be more aggressive, no? Push, Push, Push. It s built into the Conventions we have previously learned. Next, recall what our basic Competitive Bidding philosophy is: Don t bid just with HCP: that s for non-competitive auctions. With any shape and maybe just 6 HCP, make the bids we ve learned so far to Destroy as Much of the Opponent s Bidding Space as Possible with Preempts, Takeouts, Jump Overcalls, etc, etc. Although they are not intended to always get you the contract, they are intended to keep opponents from always getting to their best contract; certainly not easily as if we just sit and pass and let them bid slowly with no interference from us. And that s what takes the North / South are getting all the cards today discussion away. Even if true, so what? We know how we re learning how to confuse them and take bids away from them or Sacrifice because of favorable Relative Vulnerability and remembering those 5 scores at Game Level contracts. Interfere! Irritate! Become know as obnoxious pairs in Competitive Duplicate: you ll love it! And they ll hate it! Fun! 8

9 APPENDIX A. SCORE CALCULATIONS Made Contracts. - Partial level contracts score trick score points per trick made; 20 for minor suit tricks, 30 for major suit tricks, 30 points for Notrump contract tricks plus 10 more for the 1 st NoTrump trick: (1NT = 40; 2NT = 70). Additionally, all partial contracts made earn a 50 point Partial Bonus. A made 3 contract scores (trick scores) plus 50 (Partial Bonus) for a total of NT made is for a total of 120. Tricks made all score: they don t have to be bid. Bidding 1NT and making 2NT scores for 120. There s no Above the Line in Duplicate scoring, as in Rubber Bridge. You score whatever tricks you make, whether or not you bid them. Excess tricks are called Overtricks and score an additional 20 or 30 tricks score. - Game level contracts, made, count the same trick scores plus Game bonuses: a trick count score of 20 or 30 or 40 each, plus a Game bonus of 300 for Non-Vulnerable Games or 500 for Vulnerable games. A Game is the total of trick scores only, bid and made, totaling 100 or more. Thus, 4 bid and making 5, Vulnerable, scores 5 x 30 (150 trick scores), plus a 500 Game Bonus for a total of 650. Basic Game contracts: 5 of a minor 11 tricks for a 100 trick score. 4 of a major 10 tricks for a trick score of 120 and 3NT 9 tricks - for a trick score of 100. Any overtricks earn the extra trick score of 20 or 30; so making 11 tricks in a not vul, bid 4 contract scores 450 ( ). Note that to earn a Game Bonus, you must not only make enough trick scores to get to Game (100+), but you must have also bid them, unlike Partial contracts. If you bid 3 but take 10 tricks, you earn 120 (4 trick scores) plus 50 - a Partial bonus - for a 170 total, vulnerable or not. Had you bid 4, you would score 420 or 620 if vulnerable. Contract Type Score Calculation Typical Scores Partial Minor suit contracts 50 plus 20 for each trick over 6 70, 90, 110, 130 Partial Major suit contracts 50 plus 30 for each trick over 6 80, 110, 140 Partial Notrump contracts 60 plus 30 for each trick over 6 90, 120, 150 Minor suit Game - Not Vul 300 plus 20 for each trick over / overtrick Major suit Game - Not Vul 300 plus 30 for each trick over / overtrick Notrump Game - Not Vul 310 plus 30 for each trick over / overtrick Minor suit Game - Vul 500 plus 20 for each trick over / overtrick Major suit Game - Vul 500 plus 30 for each trick over / overtrick Notrump Game - Vul 510 plus 30 for each trick over / overtrick 9

10 SCORE CALCULATIONS Not Made Contracts. If you fail to make your contract, score calculation is much simpler than above. Here s the whole table: Not Vulnerable Vulnerable Undoubled -50 per undertrick -100 per undertrick Doubled -100, -300, -500, -800, etc. -200, -500, -800, -1100, etc. Note it s not dependent in any way on major or minor or Notrump contracts and there s no trick scores in undertrick scores. Etc. means the progression after -800 continues at -300 more for each additional undertrick. Down 5 vul, doubled = -1,400: almost a major suit slam score. But if your opponents could make 1430 on that hand, who wins that board? If you bid 5 over their 4, your book is 2 tricks: i.e., the first 2 tricks you lose aren t undertricks. But, after that, if you re doubled and down when Not Vulnerable: Down 1 = - 100; down 2 = - 300, down 3 = - 500; down 4 = (Oopps!) After your book of 2 tricks, to go down 4 more tricks means they have to take 6 tricks, playing in your trump suit. That means you only take 7 tricks: are they really going to take 6 tricks in Diamonds? Can you be even remotely thinking about a 11 trick Diamond contract if you can take only 7 tricks? But if you re down 3 for -500, you might win the hand over Vulnerable opponents making a game. Fun! If you are Vulnerable, let s look at the numbers for going down doubled at 5 : Down 1 = - 200; down 2 = - 500, down 3 = - 800: (again, a losing Sacrifice.) So being Vulnerable reduces your margin to going down only 2 because down 3 is the loser if you re Vulnerable. Notice it s only one trick difference, going down 800 vulnerable vs. not vulnerable. Notice too that you may voluntarily gamble on getting a -500 score and still beat your opponents. That s what Sacrifice means. But what if you make your 5 doubled bid? Not Vul, you score 550 or, if Vulnerable: 750. Wow! 10

WEAK TWOS, WEAK JUMP OVERCALLS AND WEAK JUMP SHIFTS

WEAK TWOS, WEAK JUMP OVERCALLS AND WEAK JUMP SHIFTS A hand that can be opened as a Weak 2 has other options in competition. For example, as a Weak Jump Overcall [1-2 ] or a Weak Jump Shift. [1 - P - 2 ]. All 3 choices show decent 6-card suits in a hand