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,
Five-suit bridge joker but this is discarded before play as it is not used. Sixteen cards are dealt to each player with the remaining 65th card (the "widow" or "kitty") being dealt face up on the middle of the table. This card would go to whoever made the highest bid who would then discard a card that must be exposed. Five-suit bridge Five-suit bridge is a late 1930s variation of contract bridge played with a deck of 65 playing cards divided into five suits. In the summer of 1937 in Vienna, Walter W. Marseille, with the help of Paul Stern, published rules