Action when Opponents Make a Takeout Double of the Opening Bid
The EBU Acol files advice is as follows:
With no support for opener
With up to 6 HCP - Pass
Balanced hand, 7-10 with high card stoppers in other suits bid 1NT
With 6+ HCP and a reasonable suit you can bid at the one level; with 9+
HCP at the two level
With at least 10 HCP and fewer than four cards in opener’s suit the options are:
Bid a new suit, natural and forcing
With good defence Redouble. After a Redouble all further Doubles by the Redoubling side are for penalties
If opener bids in front of the Redoubler this shows a hand unsuitable for defence.
Except when opener has shown a minimum hand, by bidding in this way the Redoubler
promises to bid again.
With support for partner
They suggest you “shade” your raises meaning stretch a bit upwards.With a genuine
raise to the three level or higher of opener’s suit, you bid 2NT,which has no meaning in a natural sense, since you would
Redouble with a balanced 10+ points.
This is all very sound advice but it misses one good opportunity.
If you make Redouble mean any hand with 10+points,
except where you have at least 4 card support for Partner, all the above still stand
except
1NT becomes 7-9
Any suit bid is 7-9 regardless of level bid.
You could make the Redouble mean any hand of 9+ points and then any suit bid (alerted as non forcing)
or 1NT would be 6-8 .
This warns Partner and gives a very quick indication of the total point count and quite often makes it
difficult for the opposition to communicate accurately.
As you would Redouble with any hand that is worth a genuine jump shift (and they would be very rare)
it is a wasted bid so it is quite popular to make this mean at least a six card suit
and less than 8 points (very pre-emptive)
e.g 1 ♥ -Double- 2 ♠ would
show at least 6 Spades and 6 or 7 points
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