REVERSE DRURY CONVENTION



ABOUT THE DEALS

You will always be in the South position. Either you or partner may open the bidding.

The first page (or two) of each Deal shows only your hand. The initial bidding is given and you are asked to decide what you would bid, then click the word BID up in the bidding table. The next page will then appear showing the recommended bid and continuing the auction. On the final page of each Deal partner's hand will be shown.

ABOUT REVERSE DRURY

Does your partnership open "light" in third seat?
If you do not do so now, and do not intend to start, then you can just skip to some other lesson - Reverse Drury is only for those light-opening partnerships.

That said, suppose you have passed with this hand:
   ♠ K 10 8 5    ♥ Q 9 3    ♦ A Q 3    ♣ 9 6 2
and you hear partner open 1♠ in third seat.

If you knew partner had a full-blown opening hand you would jump to 3♠ as a limit raise. But what if partner has made a light, third-hand opening with:
   ♠ A Q 9 7 3    ♥ 10 2    ♦ K J 8    ♣ 8 4 3
As you see, 3♠ is too high.

Drury 2♣:

Douglas Drury came up with the idea to use a 2♣ bid to allow the passed hand to ask whether the third-hand opening of a Major suit was sound or was light.

 LHO  Pard  RHO  You 
 pass 
pass1♥/1♠pass 2♣ 

The 2♣ bid is completely artificial, and asks Opener to further describe his hand.

 OPENER REBIDS AFTER REVERSE DRURY 2♣
 return to 2 of the Major  light opening 
 2♦  sound opening 
 jump to 4 of the Major  sign-off, no slam interest 
 anything else  sound opening, descriptive and forcing 

By the way, the reason for REVERSE in the convention name is that in the original Drury the meanings of the "return to 2 of the Major" and "2♦" bid were switched. Some people still play the original format, but more have gone to the meanings shown here and called it Reverse Drury.

Later bidding:

Basically the passed hand has already described his limit-raise hand pretty well with the 2♣ bid. Some partnerships build on this by having his next bid indicate whether he holds 3 trumps or 4 but this is not a universally agreed upon method.

More often, Opener just takes control of the auction after his rebid.

Since the passed hand will always use Drury 2♣ when holding 10+ points with support for the Major suit, that means that a jump to 3 of the Major is preemptive, showing LESS than 10 points and at least 4 trumps.

The price for using Reverse Drury:

Consider this bidding:
 LHO  Pard  RHO  You 
 pass 
pass1♠pass ?? 

And you holding this hand:
   ♠ 6 5    ♥ 10 2    ♦ J 10 3    ♣ A K J 8 4 3
Don't get carried away and bid 2♣, that meaning no longer exists in your arsenal.
Instead you would have to bid either 2NT or 3♣.


The 8 Practice Deals can be considered the equivalent of 8000 more words.

 Deal 1