[Hanoi5]

I've been trying to find out about the creation of the Stop Card in the bidding box. I believe people used to announce 'Stop!' or 'Skip Bid' (or both, or any of those?) before a jump would be made in the auction. When was that announcement created?

I searched the internet and found out that Gosta Nordenson created the bidding box. I asked Brian Senior and he said he supposed it was from the same time as the Bidding Box. Roland Wald told me to ask Jens Brix Christiansen. Nothing has come up from there.

Does anyone know about this? How can I find out about it?

[ArtK78]

The skip bid warning in the ACBL dates from the early 1970s. I began playing in 1972, and i remember the introduction of the skip bid warning shortly after I started playing.

The STOP card was always a part of the bidding boxes used in the ACBL. If I remember correctly, bidding boxes were introduced in the ACBL in the late 1980s or early 1990s (perhaps a little earlier - if someone has any concrete info, please feel free to correct me). The STOP card was a substitute for the verbal skip bid warning.

[WellSpyder]

I'm slightly confused as to whether you are really asking when the stop card was introduced or the stop (skip bid) procedure.

Although I can't give dates, I would be confident that the stop procedure was introduced in England a long time before bidding boxes (as Art says for the US), so it seems logical that the stop card would be included in bidding boxes as soon as they were invented (as Brian Senior appears to have suggested).

[nige1]

Before the introduction of STOP regulations, many of us displayed home-made CPOP cards (acronym for "Compulsory Pause Over Pre-empts") with similar intent. This was an undertaking to wait a few seconds whenever RHO pre-empted, before calling, and so relieve partner of UI constraints from a possible BIT