Action Doubles --what do they look like?

Action X's appear in a variety of sequences. Mostly instigated by responders to opening bids, they can roughly be described as communicating the following: "Partner, this is our hand, I have invitational strength but no clear direction, please help"
Responder usually has some values and has marginally described the nature of his/her hand previously in the auction.

Witness this: you hold AJ,KT5,AJ43,T932 and open 1D. Lefty overcalls 1H, partner makes a neg X and rho bids 2H. You pass having no clear call and partner X's. Given your heart cards, this X is not made on a heart stack. Partner is saying "I have invitational strength and have no clear direction as to where this hand belongs".

The other day, partner held this hand. AJ3,AT,KQ875,943 and opened 1D. I bid 1N and it gets passed to the balancer who bid 2H. I X that contract. I surmise that my X was not based on a heart stack, I denied four of them with my 1N bid. Thereby my hand is limited to 6-10 hcp. Presumably if I want to continue this auction I have about 10 hcp. So this X also says "We have the majority of the points here, pard, we need to compete, but I have no clear direction for this hand, can you help?". Another auction might be (1H) 1N (P) P, (2H) P (P) X. In this case, advancer has clearly defined his/her hand somewhat --less than invitational strength, and certainly no appreciable spades. Certainly the 1N overcaller holds all the hearts. So this bid is saying "We have the majority of the points, but I have no clear direction, what are your thoughts, partner --we should be competing somewhere".

With all these X's it is easy for opener to convert to penalty if opener has a really good holding in opponent's suit. It's not so easy if opener has a marginal holding in opponent's suit. With the marginal holding, opener has to decide whether to go for the golden 200 at mp or whether to risk 2HX vul making (perhaps on less than optimum defense) at imps. In other words, watch the type of scoring and vulnerability when making these decisions.

With the hand up above AJ3,AT,KQ875,943 (1D 1N, P (2H) X) you may wish to competed to 2N at mp. (+120 is a great score) and you probably won't beat 2H more than one trick. (+100 nv). At imps, one might want to compete to 3D which has less risk of going down!

These auctions are important to practice within you partnerships and your low level defense needs to be solid. I made a "no direction X" once against vul at mp in a major event. I tracked a trump on the opening lead and walked away with +200 and almost all the matchpoints. My friend at the other table had the same auction, tracked her minor suit and opponents scored up 2SX making.

Look for opportunities to field these auctions! Fielded right and defended right, these auctions will get you lots of mp and imps. Trust me, I know.

Warning! The discussion above has nothing to do with what folks call "Do Something Intelligent Doubles". Please don't use that phrase with me. My doubles are clearly defined as to shape and strength. I may ask for "cooperation" dependent on what you hold but you won't have any guesses as to "what's intelligent" for the most part. I've seen huge errors made on this concept. Define your doubles, precisely in every sequence possible! Makes "so-called intelligent" decisions" a lot easier!

I hope this is helpful! And please ask if you have further questions.