'False' doubling.

Agenoria

Is it legal to double your opponents with the express purpose of getting them to change to another suit which you have a better chance of defeating? One person in our club often seems to do this and will 'double' with only a couple of poor cards in the suit doubled, but with a hand strong in the suit which he hopes the opposition will revert to. This seems like dirty play to me.

RMB

This is a difficult question to answer.

It would only be illegal to double like this if the person (lets call them X) had an agreement with his partner to do so and there were regulations that did not permit such agreements. But it sounds as if X doubles like this regardless of who his partner is, so there is no real partnership agreement, just X's individual style. And most regulations allow any agreements about doubles (after the first round of the auction).

If X's partner is aware of this style of doubles then the partner should explain it to the opponents. If the club find that X's style of doubles is disruptive they could ask X to change.

My advice is if you play against X, explain to your partner about X's style of doubles, and suggest that you should be reluctant to "run" when X doubles; and learn to redouble!

Robin

Daisy

Depending on how frequent these doubles are they may be subject to an alert. If X's doubles are properly disclosed, I do not see how a club could legally ask him to change his style.

Jeremy

If the opponents double you why should your first thought be to switch to another suit? If this player is well known for what he does then even more reason to stand the double. There is no case at all for alerting the double however frequent it is. If it happens at the game level then it is not alertable anyway as a matter of regulation. If partner is expecting an off centre double because they happen quitew frequently then there is only a problem if he acts on this knowledge and does something unusual. I would have thought that for every success he has with his "method" he will have more than one failure so enjoy the good results.