[FrancesHinden]

Hannie's article reminded me of this hand, which has admittedly been written up a few times before.

The pair in question were playing in an event called the 'entente cordiale' between British (then) junior, university, open, women's etc teams and the equivalent french teams. They were soon to go on and win the European and World Juniors.

One of them was looking at something resembling this freak (I can no longer remember the exact heart cards):

Scoring: IMP

---

LHO dealt and opened the bidding and the auction started

2♠  3♥  4♠  7♥  
x

At this point he was feeling overjoyed, and just waiting to redouble and watch LHO's ace of clubs get ruffed off.

What's the worst that could happen next?

That's right.

Partner pulled to 7NT.

This was also doubled on his left, and went for 1700.
7Hxx would have made (the double of 7H was insane)

That's the biggest swing on one bid we've* ever seen.

*'We' because I was playing for university team in the same event and got to hear about this at length, repeatedly

[han]

I don't have a story to match that, but I would say that the feel-worst auctions are when you get creative and partner makes you pay for it. I'm not thinking about something common like getting burned for a light balancing bid. No, examples where you rebid 2C on a 3-card fragment (haven't we all tried that) and partner drives to 6C.

I haven't told anybody about the following auction, I'm a bit ashamed of it. My only excuse is that it occured one day after a long flight to the Netherlands and I was not in great shape, bridge-wise. My partner was a good Dutch player but we were not on the same wavelength that evening.

I opened 1C on something like J10xx KQ10x - AQxxx, partner had perhaps AKx xx-AQJxxx Jx.

The auction:

1C - (Dbl) - Rdbl - (p)
1H - (p) - 1S(!) - (p)
2S - (p) - 3NT - (p)
4S - (p) - 4NT - (p)
etc.

I had no idea what 3NT was, I had no idea what 4NT was and when the dust settled we were in 6SX going for a number.

Partner didn't know if 1D was forcing, so redoubled. Over 1H partner still didn't know if 2D was forcing, and decided to bid a creative 1S, unluckily hitting my 4 spades. Certainly the most painful auction I have had recently.

[han]

Also painful was when I overcalled 1H over 1C in the Spingold holding x Jxxxxx Qxx Kxx red against white. LHO doubled and cherdano started his tank and finally bid 3NT.

It had a happy ending though because we ended up with 790.

[mikeh]

My worst was my teammates in the 2000 Bermuda Bowl. We played, at our table, a major suit game, going down one on bad breaks... it could have been made on double-dummy lines, but the lack of a double made the winning line unfindable.

Our teammates doubled.... which wasn't all that bad, since even then, the winning line was very obscure. The double was in 4th seat... a pass would have ended the auction. The opps didn't sit for the double.... they scrambled to a minor suit slam... cold on the lay of the cards.

I suspect that the doubler really felt ill.

[Fluffy]

appart from runnign from a making 6♣ X to not making 6♦, I remember one funny auction from my young days:

I psycked 1♠, partner psycked 2♥ and then we would rectify each other to the 5 level willing to play in partner's suit . At MP it was just a cold bottom.