Poor bridge can occur in a wide variety of situations as is explored regularly on this site. However the most spectacular examples of this art often occur when the hands have reached the dizzy heights of the slam level — and the poor bridge can switch from one side to the other very quickly. Two such examples form the basis for this article.

The scene is a teams of eight match, you're playing in a partnership that hasn't played together seriously for over four years and therefore in your five minute system discussion you have agreed to play a simple no-frills system that you believe will minimise the risk of misunderstandings and poor bridge.

You pick up the following hand as dealer at red vs green:

Not a bad hand by anyone's standards. You make the standard opening bid of 1 and LHO overcalls 3 (weak). Your club void is starting to look even better than before, and you get even more excited when partner bids a forcing 3 (and RHO passes) — surely with your void club, four card support, six card side suit and lots of controls slam is just around the corner? In a tried and tested partnership a good bid here would be 5 — showing a void in clubs, spade support and asking for key cards not including the A. However in a less experienced partnership a simple 4 cue bid seems sensible — inviting partner to cue bid at a sensible level.

Partner co-operates with a 4 cue bid, you continue with 4, and partner now bids 4NT RKCB. Unless you have specific agreements about how to show key cards with a side suit void it is usually best to make your normal response and hope for the best, so you bid 5 to show 2 key cards and the Q.

Partner now bids 6 (clearly not natural). What does this mean? Presumably despite hearing your key card response and your cue bids partner still does not know what level to bid to and is asking you to decide. Since he has made this bid at the 6 level he presumably wants us to choose between a small and grand slam — otherwise he would pass 5 or bid 6 or 7 himself, wouldn't he? Having worked this out consider your hand in the context of the bidding:

Seems good enough to bid a grand slam (in spades) you would think? At the table I did find this bid, which was passed out. The A was led and I prepared to put my hand down as dummy, reckoning that 13 tricks should be easy. Perhaps now would be a good time to look at all four hands:

Lead: A

So not a bad contract at all — barring the minor point that the ace of trumps is offside! Some feeble excuse about miscounting key cards and "wanting to cue the K" (at the 6 level) was given. Amusingly the player with the A decided not to double "in case we ran to 7NT" — not nearly as poor but still ridiculous. Curiously we gained imps on this board as our teammates sitting the same way as us bid the sensible small slam and our two pairs sitting the opposite way lost small penalties in club contracts or conceded game. Truly a board deserving of poor bridge!

Just to show that I don't just report poor bridge perpetrated by others, here is a fine example from a pairs event not long after the events of the previous hand. You pick up the following hand, once again you are vulnerable and the opponents do not intervene.

Not the worst 18 count in the world by any means. Partner opens 1 and your hand looks even better, you respond 1 and partner raises to 2 — better and better! What now? A jump to 4 will surely end the bidding and you have no way of investigating a slam, the main danger being two club losers off the top. An experienced partnership may have scientific ways of exploring slam possibilities after this start to the auction but not when you're in an untried partnership. To cut a long story short I elected to bid 4NT RKCB — a bid that wastes lots of bidding space and won't tell you everything you need to know. Partner responded 5 (2 key cards without the Q) and now I had to decide whether to bid on or not. Taking into account the following evidence:

I decided to bid 6 — hey it's got at least a 50% chance of making! Now here are the full hands:

As you can see all the chances I had considered were not materialising on this hand. However after dropping the Q under the A lead and LHO switching, 12 tricks were wrapped up without further ado and the pendulum of poor bridge had swung from me to my LHO.

Note: 6 may be an absurd contract but several other pairs had also bid to it (their LHOs had not been so obliging as mine and had cashed their AK) and one pair had found the even more absurd 6NT — this time there was no chance of false carding the Q and hope the opponents switched!