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,
History of contract bridge to the rules of the game dates from 1886 and calls it "Biritch, or Russian Whist". The game featured several significant developments from whist: dealer chose the trump suit, or nominated his partner to do so; there was a call of no trumps (biritch); and the dealer's partner's hand became dummy. There were other similarities to bridge: points were scored above and below the line; the score could be doubled and redoubled; scoring a game in one deal required 3 in no trumps, 4 in hearts, or 5 in diamonds (although it could not be done at all, undoubled, in