If you hang around "OKbridge Discuss" or RGB, the Rec.Games.Bridge newsgroup, for a while, you'll notice that the questions most often asked are variations of, "What does this double mean?" If you asked that question of Charles Goren or Helen Sobel in 1935, the answer would usually be, "They ain't making it", but in these days of takeout doubles, negative doubles, responsive doubles, support doubles, and action doubles it's not nearly as clear.

Below is an article I wrote for the Bridge World maybe twenty years ago that answers that question by suggesting that you take an entirely different point of view.

I have a friend who is learning bridge. She plays rubber bridge with three other novices while I watch sports on TV, pontificate about the finer points of the game, and deliver indisputable, Olympian judgements from on high.

After doing this for a couple of evenings, I began to notice that no one ever doubled anything. Concerning penalty doubles this was understandable since to double a 4 contract they needed at least four natural trump tricks plus a side ace just in case. But why not takeout doubles, negative doubles, responsive doubles, and etc? They knew about them but they didn't understand when they were takeout and when they were penalty. An auction like 1-1-Dbl is clearly negative but 1-1-2-Dbl is penalty (Or is it?). 1-Dbl-2-Dbl is clearly responsive but 1-2-2-Dbl is penalty (Or maybe not). "Why aren't all the doubles the same?", they asked. I answered lamely that doubles were basically penalty except for certain specific cases where they were takeout. Not a very good answer since I knew that in virtually every case they gave me, the double would be better played as takeout.