Opener's Rebid: Strong Rebids

The best general bidding philosophy is to just bid your suits naturally and worry about showing strength at the end. However, sometimes it is right to show extra strength at your first rebid. Let's look at the few main categories of hands where this applies.

The jump rebid of your suit: invitational with a 6+ card suit.

On this hand we want to rebid our very decent 6 card heart suit. Rebidding 2♥ shows approximately a 11-14 hand, whereas 3♥ shows 15-17 range, with 6-7 hearts.

This is a frequent bid with a very natural meaning. It is not forcing, but partner will typically raise with 2 hearts (likely does not have 3 or else would've supported immediately), and a decent hand, say 8+ points. Partner may choose to pass without a fit and a minimum hand, approximately 7 or less points.

The reverse

I have done an article on this, but basically this is a hand with two suits that shows extra strength immediately. It is a good bid because apart from showing strength, we are also bidding our suits naturally. So the bid is achieving two things at once! Please check out the article on more specifics about reverses.

The Jump shift.

The jump shift shows a game forcing hand. Let's begin with an example.

3♥ is a game forcing bid. Contrast this with 2♥, which can be up to 17 points (for more on that see Opener's Rebid: Just Bid Your Suits). So 3♥ is 18+ points.

Some partnerships play that a jump shift has to have 5+ in both suits, however those partnerships might use complicated systems to handle the 5431 shape hand. My suggestion is to just play a jump shift as showing 4+ in the second suit, it reduces the need for complicated system.

In summary: Our goal should just be to show our suits naturally, or to rebid our long suit. Occasionally we can and must combine naturally showing our suits with also showing points. These common rebids are good to be familiar with because the high point count hands too come along from time to time.