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,
Blank (playing card) immediately below the highest trump card, the Jack or Unter of Trumps (20 points) and above the Ace of Trumps (11 points). In most versions of Schafkopf, the 6s are also blanks. There are no blanks in games like Whist or Bridge, because they are plain-trick games where it is the number of tricks that counts, not the value of the cards won. Similar nicknames are given to very low-scoring cards. For example, in Tarock games, tarocks and pip cards score 1/3 of a point and are called "Glatzen" or "Glatz'n", "Skartindeln", "Skatindeln" or "Skartins"; and suit cards other than