Takeout Doubles

The most useful competitive call in bridge, and the one most often passed.

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A Double That Means "Bid Something"#

When an opponent opens and you double, you are not asking to defend. You are saying: I have an opening hand, I am short in their suit, and I have support for everything else — pick one.

Partner is obliged to answer, however weak they are. That obligation is the whole mechanism: it is what lets a hand with no five-card suit of its own get into the auction at all, and it is why the takeout double is the most useful competitive call in the game.

It is on by default in both systems here, and the robots both make it and answer it.

Three Hands That Qualify#

Most treatments give one shape. Rase's engine recognises three, and the difference between them is worth knowing because two of them are the hands people pass with.

The first is the one everybody learns. The second and third exist because the textbook shape is rarer than the hands that need to compete, and a rule that only recognises perfect shape leaves good hands with nothing to say.

Why the Second Row Exists#

The near-shape double was added to this engine because of a hand it could not otherwise bid at all.

Seventeen points, ♥A K Q 9 4 and ♦K 8, over a weak 2♠ opening. Every natural call failed: overcalls are capped at the two level, hearts rank below spades so 3♥ was out of reach, and the doubleton diamond failed the textbook shape test by exactly one card. The hand had no legal action and passed out a cold 5♥.

The principle that rescues it is an old one: double first, bid your suit next. With extra values the doubler is not promising to pass whatever partner answers — there is a second call coming, and it will name the real suit. That second call is what makes one doubleton among the other suits survivable, and it is why the shape requirement relaxes only once the strength has gone up.

The bar is deliberately narrow: two of the three other suits held properly, nothing shorter than a doubleton anywhere, and a full king more than the plain takeout double asks for.

Answering One#

You must bid, and the rules for choosing are mechanical:

• Never answer in a suit they have bid. Partner asked for a suit of your own; naming theirs answers a different question.
• Bid your longest available suit, preferring a major when the lengths are equal.
• Jump with about nine points or more. The cheap answer promises nothing at all — partner forced it out of you — so a jump is the only way to say you actually hold something.
• 1NT with ten or more, a balanced hand and a stopper in their suit. This describes a hand the suit replies cannot.

The cheap answer promising nothing is the part that trips people up. A partnership that treats it as encouraging will get too high on two hands that between them hold nothing, which is precisely the accident the obligation to answer creates.

The Two Times You May Pass#

The obligation is not unconditional, and both exceptions are in the engine because a real auction went wrong without them.

They bid again over the double. Once your right-hand opponent has taken a call, you are off the hook — with fewer than six points, pass. The auction will come back round if partner has more to say.

They have bid all four suits. A takeout double obliges an answer only while there is somewhere to take it out to. In a long competitive auction the opponents can name everything, and at that point there is no suit left that means anything. The case that forced this was a hand with four rags and no points which dutifully answered in 4♠ — the last free suit on a sequence where the opponents had bid the other three.

When They Double Your Partner#

The mirror case is worth having ready, because the natural instinct — carry on as though nothing happened — is wrong.

Partner opens, your right-hand opponent doubles for takeout, and you hold ten points or more. Redouble. Ten opposite an opening hand is more than the doubler can hold, so your side has the balance of the pack, and saying so immediately warns partner that defending and collecting a penalty is now on the table.

Below ten, bid naturally and treat the double as the interference it is. Rase's robots play it exactly this way, and it is worth noticing at the table: a redouble from a robot partner is a statement about the whole hand, not about trumps.

Where It Does Not Apply#

Two boundaries, both of which the engine enforces.

Through the two level only. A double of a three-level preempt is a different animal — the values required go up with the level, and the hand that would have doubled a one-bid is no longer safe.

Not over a no-trump opening. There is no shortage to have and no unbid suits to support: a double of 1NT is a penalty double, showing more than the opener can hold. That call is described on the Landy page, where it is the hand that is too strong to bid the convention.