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,
Canapé (bridge) suit is held. Thus, eight-card or longer major suit fits are found right away and some otherwise difficult to bid hands are handled easily. If no major suit exists, the partnership can play in the opener's longest suit. Opening four-card majors frequently has a preemptive value because takeout doubles are less effective in cases where the opponents have not opened their longest suit. When four-card majors were popular in the United States, even the most adamant proponents of "natural" bidding opened four-card majors ahead of five-card minors on hands that presented rebid problems. The following examples apply to some canapé