The Take-out Double
It may not seem like it to you as a player but the Purple Carapaced Dungeon Masters (DMs) try their honest best to give fair and equitable rulings. Nevertheless they all make mistakes (I’ve broken out in a cold sweat in the car on the way home once or twice). It happens that one of the YC members has been on the wrong end of a couple of these aberrations recently so I used the Horn of Communication to converse with the Mighty Ayatollah Xing-ho (M.A.X.) at EBUHiQ (a small city not really on this planet) to see what he would do.
[M.A.X is Max Bavin, Chief TD of the EBU, and an excellent Tournament Director in his own right]Try this one
Partner doubles an opening bid of 3 clubs and it’s your go with opponents Vulnerable and you not. You hold xxxx, xx, AKxx, xxx. You decide that plus 200 beats plus 140 (which is about what you expect if you bid 3 Spades), and make a Match-point pass. It goes for the proverbial 4-digit telephone number when partner holds AQxx, Kxx, xx, K10xx. Where’s the problem? Well the doubler is heard to say "I don’t mind what partner does, it’s Optional as far as I’m concerned" The card says "SYC" - Standard Young Chelsea, where even Penalty doubles are for take-out.
The nub of the argument is that if the Passer knows that they play Optional then the double should be alerted. (Apparently responder can’t bid his 8-card Heart suit over a take-out double as it agrees clubs!) There is undoubtedly some degree of co-incidence here, in that the Doubler has the classic I have 13 cards optional double and his partner has passed for penalties. But WHERE is the infraction? Doubler is not a strong player- he evidently thinks his hand is a take-out double. That is his agreement. His partner, a much stronger player, takes the Match-point view to pass. If I adjust the score I must also record a "red" psychic bid against doubler’s partner, as I would be saying she had fielded in the knowledge her partner makes optional doubles, when the card clearly says take-out. There is NO evidence of fielding here, just a bad T/O double that got a good result so I ruled "Result Stands". M.A.X. was quite comfortable with this but how would you have ruled?(*)
Footnote (*) On appeal the score was unanimously adjusted to 3hearts - 1. I was gob-smacked Although the committee established that the doubler thought this double was a take-out double (which it clearly isn’t) they totally failed to establish that doubler’s partner knew this and thus there is no illicit agreement and thus there is no infraction and thus they don’t even have jurisdiction to adjust the score. I think it’s a mega-monkey. (Vide Chaos and the UNT)