[bd71]

---

Matchpoints. Agreements include forcing passes.

Your call?

[billw55]

Instant pass for me. If partner was in doubt, he would have passed. By doubling, he says he has a definite preference to defend. I trust my partner. (A side suit ace doesn't hurt either.)

[CSGibson]

pass. I may not have been making 4♠ if partner has club values, I'm certainly not going to try for 5.

[aguahombre]

Will take your word for it about the FP situation, even though you made no attempt to create one. So, partner has expressed a preference to defend. Defend.

[Phil]

"Agreements include forcing passes"

Here? Really? I would hate to have bid 4♠ with a lot of spades and not a lot of defense. Why should I choose between -500 and -550.

Anyway I pass.

[mikeh]

I agree with those who suggest that it is atypical to play this as a fp situation. Responder hasn't shown that he bid game on hcp or power....this jump to game is often made on little more than a lot of shape.

But no matter what it shows, bidding now is a real insult to partner.

Wouldn't surprise me to learn this was a UI situation, with opener tanking over 5♣ and OP wanting to see whether bidding got any support. It shouldn't..this one ought to be unanimous.

[ahydra]

Despite my ideas on FP situations being different to everyone else in the whole world (oops, lol), I still pass. We don't even have anything extra that might warrant bidding on - the 10xx diamonds may actually work against us (more likely the opponents have a ruff).

ahydra

[rmnka447]

Pass. Your partner has expressed an opinion on whether to bid on and you should respect it. If pard had any doubts whether to defend or play, it could have been passed back to you. You've got a defensive trick outside the ♠ suit.

The only reason to pull partner's double is because you have a defenceless hand, a highly distributional hand, or a hand where you expect to make 5 ♠.

[neilkaz]

Easy pass. I've bid my hand and have a defensive trick outside our suit and maybe my J♣ could help.

[bd71]

So I will freely admit that this partner and I are likely unsophisticated users of the forcing pass.

The limited nature of our discussion was along the lines of "when we freely bid a game NOT under duress and they further interfere, forcing pass is in play." So forcing pass was clearly applicable here, and neither of us disagree on that.

Having said that...does someone have a more sophisticated -- but still reasonably short -- set of rules to suggest for when forcing pass should be in play?

Some have suggested that under a more sophisticated approach East could have "set up" the forcing pass in this auction...would that be with a 3C cue-bid after 2S, later followed by 4S?

[aguahombre]

Yeh, something like that. The key, IMO, is when there has been a hint of competition we must anticipate more and do something other than jump to game in order to "create" a FP scenario. The given hand for responder was correct to just jump to 4S and not create a FP ---if that were the case for you, bidding on after pard's double would be just plain silly rather than wrong.

BTW: we treat new suit bids when competition has been started and we have a fit as merely descriptive to help partner decide whether to compete. They, also, don't create a FP.

1D-1S (2c)
2S-3H...here, even if we later "accept our own alleged game try", it merely shows we were preparing for more competition rather than shooting for slam. We would have to make another non-spade bid along the way in order to create a FP or slam-try auction.