How to Respond to a Reverse

A reverse is when opener for her second call bids a suit at the 2 level that is higher ranking than the suit that she opened at the 1 level. Example: You open 1 Club. Your partner responds 1 Spade. You bid 2 Diamonds. Diamonds is higher ranking than Clubs, and you have bid them at the 2 level, so you have reversed. It also promises more cards in your first bid suit than in your second, either 5-4 or 6-5. 

A reverse promises that you have at least 17 HCP and is forcing on your partner for one round. In other words, if you reverse, your partner must bid again, no matter how weak her hand. In today’s modern bridge, almost everybody plays reverses.

As a caveat, if your hand is 6-5, you need only an opening hand to reverse and you show your hand by bidding the second suit twice, for example

South             West   North             East

1C                   P         1H                   P

2D*                 P         2N                   P

3D**

*Reverse    

               

**shows 6 clubs and 5 diamonds and at least 13 HCP

When inexperienced players have a five card major and a six card minor, they often open the bidding with the five card major. This is a mistake because once you do that, you can never accurately describe your hand. Although there might be a few rare exceptions, you should always open the bidding with your longest suit.

The difficult question is, what do you rebid when your partner has reversed (and most reverses involve a 5 card suit and a 4 card suit)? Here’s a hand that arose recently:

North

♠ 853

♥ KJ5

♦ AJ7

♣ T953

Here’s the bidding:

South        West         North        East

1C             P               1N              P

2D*           P               ?

*Reverse           

 

What’s your call? You have to bid again and you have a pretty good hand. Partner has reversed, showing at least 17 HCP and you have 9 HCP. You should have game somewhere, but where? Obviously no trump is where you want to be, but you don’t know where partner’s points are.

This is where communication in bidding arises. You should show partner that you have a stopper in hearts with your KJ5 by bidding 2H. Even though you only have three hearts, partner knows you don’t have 4 or more because you bypassed hearts to bid 1N.

If partner has the other suit stopped (spades), she can bid 3N.

Here is the actual hand:

        North

        ♠ 853

        ♥ KJ5

        ♦ AJ7

        ♣ T953

West         East

♠ T6          ♠ AQ972

♥ QT964    ♥ 8732

♦ T843      ♦ Q5

♣ KJ         ♣ 84

        South

        ♠ KJ3

        ♥ A

        ♦ K962

        ♣ AQ763

With this holding, South can confidently bid 3N because she’s got a spade stopper but would be worried about a heart lead if you had not told her that you had hearts stopped.

Here’s the correct bidding:

South        West         North        East

1C             P              1N            P

2D             P              2H            P

3N            All Pass

In the actual hand, North did not bid her heart stopper. Instead she bid 3C. South invited with 4 clubs and North went to 5, for down 1 when it sails 3N.