Robert (Bob) Crosby, who died in 2012, was a bridge player of Edmonton, as well as being a coach and a prolific bridge writer. In this series of articles we pay our tribute for their fruitful and generous work, in which he shared his knowledge of bridge with everyone. Source: The Bob Crosby Memorial Library
Friday, August 09, 2002 3:30 PM Forcing Pass – D.S.I.P. (Do Something Intelligent Partner)
PITBULLS:
Tactical bidding by the opponents bring in the element of judgment with penalty doubles . O.K. I am going to get up on my soap box here because I feel very strongly about this . In rubber bridge quite a few ( all ? ) of your partners lack judgment in penalty double situations. For them a platitude like ” you never pull my penalty doubles” will earn you money in the long run i.e. you do not have to trust them to use judgment that they do not have . For a good partnership to have this understanding that “you never pull penalty doubles” is down right insulting . Sometimes partner wants penalty doubles to be pulled .
These type of doubles are called Do Something Intelligent Partner and require partner to be at the table as well as using good judgment . These doubles occur when you are just competing but can also occur in forcing pass situations. Rote rules or platitudes just do not cut it when you are playing with your regular partner at expert levels. The penalty double is an ambiguous bid in Bridge . Ambiguity like in a language needs clarification from the context it was used to define its meaning. In Bridge this means that the auction sometimes determines the meaning of the penalty double. In other words , thought is required rather then blindly adhering to rote rules.
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