When someone claims to love spinach, they always describe all the ways they like to eat it. If you pay attention, you'll see everything requires a heavy disguise... hot bacon dressing (I would eat road tar if you put hot spinach dressing on it!), vinegar and chopped eggs, cream sauce with nutmeg. No one says, "I'll take mine plain and boiled."

We can all agree that spinach can be a metaphor for things that are good for us, but not really liked.

We're going to take it a bit further today, and use it to stand for bidding that we can't live without, but many don't much understand/like.

And that brings us to the Dreaded Reverse. Why do Reverses cause so much trouble? Maybe they can't see through the disguise. A reverse can quickly be identified because a) it is a two-level rebid IN A SUIT RESPONDER BYPASSED, and b) the second named suit is HIGHER RANKING than the first.

A reverse promises a fat intermediate hand or more, and the first named suit MUST BE LONGER than the second named suit. And a Reverse is forcing for one round.

So let's take the disguise off the spinach and see if we would reverse with these hands or not.