{I suggest you save this file and read it later.}
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
I wonder if it has struck you how the call "Double" affects even the simplest of auctions. Its basic natural meaning has been subverted, to make it mean almost anything you think it might be useful to mean. There are take-out doubles, negative doubles, Sputnik doubles, co-operative doubles, even DOPE doubles, to mention only some.
These doubles are a far cry from the original Bridge concept when there was no bidding as we know it, but each time you doubled, or redoubled, or re-redoubled, or re-re-redoubled, the stakes went up inexorably. Even in Contract Bridge it used to be that a double was considered to be for penalties unless it was specifically announced otherwise. Such has been the development of Competitive Doubles that, in Duplicate Bridge, the pendulum has swung the other way. A low-level double is usually assumed to be not for penalties unless specifically announced, or is "obvious".
The original idea of doubling was more akin to the use of the double in Backgammon. There, if you feel you are doing well enough, you can say "double", and turn over a cube (the "doubling cube") to show that the stakes are doubled if the opponent wishes to play on. If the other player accepts the double, then play continues. Later you may double again; or the opponent may, if your fortunes have changed for the worse. Then again the cube is turned, to the next higher number. The object is to pressurise opponents so that rather than playing on, and risking double, quadruple, or whatever stakes, they resign, to use a term borrowed from chess, cutting their potential losses.
Contract Bridge has become so popular, and hence so disciplined and well organised, that although systems and other forms of ethical communications have evolved, the game itself has ceased to evolve significantly. I therefore have made a some evolutionary suggestions earlier Here is another, much more far reaching, borrowed from that Backgammon concept.
I suggest that you be able to double your own partner's contract! You would perforce only be able to make such a self-double of your partner's bid if your right hand opponent (RHO) Passes. The double would bar your partner from bidding for one round.
At present you may only double an opponent's previous bid if either your LHO has bid, and there have been two Passes, or directly over your RHO's bid. If the double is Passed out, nothing different happens in the play. The same person leads, the same person is declarer, as if you had Passed. It is only when the score is entered that the double takes effect.
If your self-double were Passed out, you would become the opening leader, your RHO would become declarer, your LHO would become dummy, but your contract would remain the same. Let us suppose such a contract were 2 Spades from partner, doubled by you.
Essentially you have challenged the new declarer, RHO, to defeat you by making at least 6 tricks with Spades as trumps, with the advantage of seeing partner's hand as dummy. The advantage to you would be the opening lead; the disadvantage would be that you could not see partner's hand.
I am confident that such a scheme would eventually improve normal undoubled defensive play significantly. The occasional new "defensive declarers" would learn, by experience, what situations can produce the odd extra trick from limited resources. The new "contract defenders" would have to maintain their concentration on partnership communications in more detail and for longer. They would be trying to make more tricks than "defenders" usually expect to need.
The idea should also improve competitive bidding. There is a school of thought that believes to achieve what is known as the par result on any hand, one side or the other should be playing in a contract of 2 Spades or higher. If players are allowed to double their own partner's contract, then the opponents now have to consider whether to stand the double. They may well decide to bid on, either as a sacrifice, or to push the opponents into a riskier higher contract that will not be self doubled. Bidding could become much more exciting, and yet more precise. I leave to your imagination what rules might be developed for the corresponding "redouble"!
Finally, I suggest that we resolve conclusively which doubles are for penalty and which for takeout. Amongst ordinary players this ambiguity causes more heartaches and misunderstandings than almost any other bidding situation, not to mention the proliferation of "alerts". Let us make all doubles and redoubles mean what they say, and only what they say: a doubling, or similar increasing, of scores and penalties.
The development of bidding over the past 70 years,however, has shown a real need for takeout bids, for which purpose double has been subverted. Let us be honest. Let us create a new bid simply called "Takeout". It would have the same position in the hierarchy as a Pass, but it would require partners to bid, unless their RHOs bid. Partners would be allowed to convert the takeout to penalty by bidding "double". There would have to be some ruling should partners actually refuse, or forget, to bid. Say, declarer could have the option of playing in the contract doubled or undoubled.
That's it. I suspect that is more than enough for the time being. Perhaps you think Contract Bridge is perfect and needs no alteration. On the other hand, perhaps you are conscious of other anomalies in the fundamentals of the game and you have other, or further, suggestions. If so, now is the time. Surprising as it may seem there will not be another millennium for another 1000 years!
IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS OR IDEAS FOR IMPROVING THE GAME I WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR THEM. YOU CAN CONTACT ME: