With a balanced hand and no texture ...

Playing a team-match with a pickup partner and against good opponents, I was faced with a bidding decision:

E

Me

♠

A2

♥

A52

♦

K876

♣

A954

The hand is balanced and control-rich, but has no texture.  Playing 15-17 NTs, what would you do? Open this 1NT or 1D? As I was thinking about this, my RHO opened 1D.

So, it's now not a question of what to open, but what to overcall.  What do you do?

I think I was caught a little flat-footed. My best bid now is to pass, but ... this is what happened:

E

Me

S

South

W

West

N

North

—

—

—

1♦

1NT¹

Dbl²

Pass

Pass

RDbl³

Pass

2♠⁴

Dbl

All Pass

(1) Flatfooted

(2) Got ya (he had a 3-5-2-3 hand with 11 points)

(3) Compounding the error

(4) poor partner

2S doubled went down 3.  I think I could have played 1NT doubled for down 1 or perhaps 2.

With all the discussion on various blogs about bids-out-of-tempo, I have started to get more attuned to partner's hesitations.  The fact that this was a non-regular partner did not exactly help me on this deal from the same match.  I held:

E

East

♠

J72

♥

8543

♦

Q4

♣

10764

The auction to this point:

W

West

N

North

E

Me

S

South

—

Pass

Pass

1♣

1♦

Pass

Pass

1♠

Pass¹

Pass

?

(1) after hesitation

If partner had not bid out of tempo, I would have made a negative double here.  The fact that South has not jumped seems to indicate that partner has a fair number of points. I have four hearts and clubs and a tolerance/fitting-honor for diamonds.  But partner had hesitated, showing extra values, and I now felt bound to pass.  1S made, due to several defensive errors, for a half-dozen IMPs.  What do you think? Could I have still made a negative double?