Bidding Over Weak Notrump

If you play DONT perhaps you bid 2◊ to get into the auction. Probably you pass. One thing I wouldn’t do is make a “penalty” double even if you play it shows an opening bid plus. At the table I (South) passed which forces redouble and West passed as well. Do you have an agreement about how you play the pass by fourth hand? Discussing it in the car today with Mark Horton who is visiting from England, Ray and my son Colin we decided that most people haven’t discussed this auction. Our consensus with some doubters (like me) was that a pull of the double by West should be from weakness. I argued that a pull of the double should be from shape. We also talked about the meaning of a jump bid by West in the auction: 1NT-DBL-Pass-?. Anyway, the point is that it was clear that this is something worthy of discussion with your favorite party. At our table the auction went like this: West Sylvia East Linda 1NT (10-12) Dbl pass* pass redouble* all pass You just know this is not going to be a fun hand. As it turns out you can hold it tight if you manage to cash your tricks but our defenders didn’t work it out and Sylvia made two uptricks for an embarrassing –960 on a partscore hand. The hold hand was:

In the end the morale of this story is there is really no need to bid on the East hand.  Some people just get too active over weak or very weak notrump. 

Over a very fine Indian meal Ray recounted this story which happened when we played against Paul Soloway and client in a Nationals.  One of us opened a weak notrump and Pau’s partner doubled on a balanced 13 count.  We redoubled for penalty and they had nowhere to go (except for a number).  At the end of the hand, Paul turned to his partner and said: “It’s because of people like you who double on a balanced minimum that is the reason that I play weak notrump.”