Reverse Bids

1♦ from North and I'm going to bid 1♠. North bids 2♥ which is a reverse. What's a reverse? Well North has bid a new suit at the two level in a higher ranking suit than his first suit. It's a bit of a mouthful so let's try that again.

North has bid a new suit at the two level in a higher ranking suit than his first suit. Well hearts are higher than diamonds so that's the definition of a reverse and it shows a strong hand so at least 16 some partnerships even play it as 17 points. It's forcing, I can't pass and I don't want to pass because if North's got 16 17 points and I've got nine then we've got enough for three no trumps.

Club lead and I've got four club tricks. I've got to be a little careful though because if I let this run round to the queen and then play the king and jack of clubs I've got no way back to the ace so I've got to play the king of clubs and then the jack of clubs and the annoying thing about that is I really wanted to finesse the diamonds possibly twice so I sort of wanted to be in the South hand to finesse the clubs but I also wanted to play the clubs from the North hand to unblock the suit so I can get back and forth in the clubs so I'm going to go this way. You might decide to play it a different way and now I can finesse the diamond.

Maybe West has got Doubleton king of diamonds. Doesn't. That's fine.

You win the king. Now I can probably I can run the diamonds probably and play the ace of hearts or I could finesse the heart. Play a heart to the queen.

Hope West has got the king of hearts. The danger of taking that heart finesse is that if it loses then that spade suit isn't looking so flash so I'm going to hopefully yep so I'm going to get the diamonds and I'm just going to give up a heart. If West did have the king of hearts then well that's just too bad.

Well West did have the king of hearts so I could have finessed the heart but happy enough with 10 tricks. What do you think? Would you have finessed the heart? Any questions comments about that reverse thing do let me know in the comment section. It can be a bit confusing but you'll get there.

We'll get there together. There's all four hands. There's the reverse.