Bidding box for home-played games. Use of bidding boxes has several advantages over oral bidding: it reduces noise in the room, prevents bidding being overheard at neighboring tables, allows easier review of the auction, and reduces the opportunity to pass unauthorized information to one's partner (intentionally or not) by the manner and intonation in which one makes one's bid. A bidding box is typically a plastic box with two slots, each containing a set of bidding cards. One slot contains 35 cards with symbols of bids (5 denominations—clubs (), diamonds (), hearts (), spades (), and notrump (NT)—in seven levels of bidding,
Design for Bidding Simon's earlier book "Why You Lose at Bridge", itself "widely perceived to be the best book ever written on Bridge." "Design For Bidding" "remains wonderful reading, because Simon argues persuasively for the Acol "state of mind" style of bidding." The book is divided into three parts: I, The Inexactitude of Bidding; II, Enquiry into Bidding; and III, Design for Bidding. Part I is a long general introduction, in seven chapters. In it, Simon sets out what he calls the "deciding factors" to be assessed before adopting a specialised meaning for a bid: Part I concludes with Simon's description of Acol