Friday, August 06, 2004 9:32 AM

D.S.I.P. Jump to Game

PITBULLS:

One of the defaults for a penalty double is a pre-empt. If you or your partners pre-empt , old fashioned penalty doubles apply. When you open or overcall and partner jumps to game or makes a conventional pre-emptive bid at the 3 level , he is describing his hand as pre-emptive in nature. You know quite a bit about his hand already so D.S.I.P. doubles are not necessary. You know enough to take action yourself without his input as in all pre-empts he has described his hand pretty well already. This means that you are captain of the ship and can control the auction. If you double it is penalty and if you pass , it ends the auction for your side.

Stan Cabay gives a couple of auction that describes the above principle well. Both vul

W N E S

1♦ 1♥

1♠ 4♥ 4♠ ? You have xx AJ10xx Kxxxx x and are vul . You hear partner pre-empt to 4♥ and they bid their game . You are content so

you pass which ends the auction. You do not want partner making a D.S.I.P. double as you no longer want anything to do with this auction.

You are vul and they are not .

W N E S

P 1♥

1♠ 4♥ 4♠ ? You have xx Qxxxxx AQ AQx and after partner has pre-empted to 4♥ vul , you decide that defending a not vul 4♠ is a good

idea so you pass . This ends the auction for your side.

These hands point out that D.S.I.P. doubles are not necessary in every competitive auction. D.S.I.P. doubles are intended to help in variable ambiguous auctions. When partner makes a descriptive pre-emptive bid , old fashioned penalty doubles work quite well.

Eric Kokish says that after partner makes a simple raise and you jump to game regardless of the vulnerability, the pre-emptive rules apply. Forcing passes do not apply and neither do D.S.I.P. doubles. Eric contends that this is a captaincy situation and the crew can only make a penalty double. If the captain , doubles it is also a trump stack penalty double.

The above rule changes if the opponents bid slam .If partner pre-empts and they bid slam , a double by either partner is a request to sacrifice and not a penalty double. Making penalty doubles of voluntary bid slams makes no sense , so we play it s the “double/undouble” tool for preventing pseudo sacrifices.