[pclayton]

Mike's post about not reading a reverse brings up an interesting question: Whats the dumbest thing youve done at the table in the last 5 years?

I havent revoked but I lead out of turn 1x a year and I get a penalty card 2-3 times / year. I havent passed any forcing bids but at Anaheim in 2000 I forgot I was playing a strong club and opened 1C with an 8 count against Don Stack. After some accusations and a confused director - we sorted it out (you cant psyche a strong club - oh ok )

[Free]

Hard to choose between all these blunders I remember.

I guess I forgot the absolute worst one because I was completely wasted

[Mr. Dodgy]

I've started playing more F2F this year and my first (I think) revoke a few weeks ago was a shocker.

As Declarer, I followed the opening ♣ lead, ♣s continued and I followed again...suddenly opps were telling me I'd revoked! And I had - on the first trick I had actually inadvertently played a ♦!?

A pity, too - I made the contract which would have been a good score

[the hog]

This was a while back. In the middle game I ruffed a Club and then promptly led....a Club. well, it was the only way to beat the contract.

[bid_em_up]

I guess the dumbest thing I did recently was accepting a bid out of turn using bidding boxes. I was dealer, and my RHO pulls the 1H bid out of his box and plops it on the table, I had a preemptive opening and just made my bid without even noticing (thereby accepting the call) that RHO had bid out of turn. They find 6H, it makes for a cold zero, and it cost us several places.

Funniest story is on my partner, however. 1st board, 1 session, we sit down at table against a little old lady and her young partner. She is repeatedly telling her partner, cuebid of opening bid is ALWAYS michaels. ALWAYS. ALWAYS.

So, I pick up my hand and am pleasantly surprised to be able to open 2C on the first board of the session, LOL bids 3C, partner is looking at good hand with clubs, he doubles. Pass Pass, she runs to 3H, he doubles, all pass. Of course, we are cold for 6C, and she goes off 2 or 3 in 3H. Yup, it is ALWAYS michaels, and evidently even when the opening is 2C. Partner can't believe it. Gets very upset, starts calling director. Director won't do anything......so much for this session.

I ask him. Didn't you hear the woman say "cuebid is ALWAYS michaels?"

[Quantumcat]

I've made good use of my few months of bridge experience to do plenty of stupid things ... one I remember well was in the national open teams in january this year where on one board I revoked, not once, not twice, but THREE times as declarer! And on the same board I made an insufficient bid! My partner was barred from the auction, I was extremely lucky and chose the right game, it was as cold as a fish, but then I somehow managed to revoke and the adjusted score made us 2 down. It was so sad. It was a bit lucky though, the opponents bid slam on the same board, our teammates defended well and they went one down, so it wasn't a huge disaster. We would have beaten them because of my insufficient bid and thus lucky guess though, if I hadn't revoked.

[cherdano]

About 15 months ago, I failed to break up a compound squeeze on opening lead. That's really the dumbest thing I have ever done in the last 5 years.

[GeeGee]

Using bidding boxes, partner opened 1 ♦, RHO passed. I had 16 pointer hand with ♠, so I responded 1♠. LHO passed, and RHO made an opening lead, face up!

I said 'Huh', looked down, and there was a pass card in front of me. I'd pulled the wrong card out of the bidding box.

Geoff

[awm]

Perhaps the dumbest thing I've done was during a midnight swiss teams (but I wasn't drunk). We had just had a disastrous result on the previous board, and we were running very short of time in the round (these things are played at 5 minutes per board). My opponents were happily chatting away about their great result on the last board, and not paying much attention to the fact that it was their turn to deal. Frustrated that we were about to have a board taken away, I purposely opened out of turn. Strangely, no one else at the table noticed this. The auction continued normally. Amusingly, at the other table one of my teammates almost did the same thing! In any case, I got my just desserts when we were actually ahead in the match, except for the terrible score I obtained on the very last board (which would've been taken away had I not intentionally opened out of turn).

Perhaps the funniest sequence I've seen from a partner on a single board -- my partner first miscounted his points and made the wrong opening bid. Then during the play, he revoked. Twice. Finally, when it came time to score up the board (he was sitting north), he wrote down the wrong score. Fortunately, this hand was the total of his serious mistakes for the session.

[1eyedjack]

One of the dumbest things I did was to shuffle, deal and play 8 boards of a Gold Cup match - which had already been shuffled, dealt and played in the other room.

[gwnn]

I'm not sure if this is the dumbest thing I've ever done but:

1♣ opener by LHO
1♠ by p
p by RHO

What's your bid holding a hand like

xx
AKxx
QJTx
Jxx

?

Luckily enough, I had enough composure to make a take-out double (btw is this a t/o or a neg. X? ). LHO told me, in tears "son, stop drinking all those carbonated drinks, they suck your brain-cells".

Of course I'm not sure if defensive mistakes are on topic here. I won't start with them now - I believe there is a length-limit of posts here.

[sceptic]

How long have you got?

[Fluffy]

This one was maybe moer than 5 years ago, but not more than 7, on national teams round robin (of 6 teams).

I was playing against Daddy's arch-enemy, and he doubled our 6♥ with just ♥J109xx and ♦Kxx

I made the rigt move after 5 minutes to go to 6NT (doubled again). When I saw dummy I could sense I had him squeezed, so I rectified the count by ducking a ♥ (I had 5 and parter 3) and run my tricks*

Alas, He was sitting behind me and that didn't work because I had to discard before him.

A simple strip squeeze instead would had worked.


*: Daddy would tell me later I played that in about 15 seconds

[whereagles]

My worst one was to make a brilliant surrounding play on defense only to blunder later and let 3NT through.. lol

[Gerben42]

Too much to list. A costly one was: Miscounting Aces, thus costing my team an important KO match.

[jvage]

Most posts seems to discuss honest mistakes, but here is something really stupid. I was playing in the Norwegian national pairs final against one of the better pairs (Brogeland - Erichsen) about 5 years ago. I had 9x, -, K9xxxx, T98xx at favourable. The bidding went something like this:
(1♠) - 1NT - (2♣) - 2♦
(4♥) - X - (pass) - 5♣
(pass) - pass - (X) - all pass

2♣ showed hearts with secondary spades, the rest was natural. I ducked the opening spade-lead, and while RHO was thinking I concluded that 4♥ (doubled!) was probably making (as it was) and that my dubious bid had resulted in an excellent save, I was destined to make 9 or 10 tricks. So far so good, but since RHO was still thinking I started considering the play in 5♦X, since that would be much more difficult and interesting. RHO finally played a heart, I ruffed and led to the next trick. Partner and both opponents then shouted in unison "It's not your turn to play!"

I realized I had "ruffed" with a diamond when playing 5♣X

That of course cost a trick, and I blew at least one more in pure embarrasment (once more playing the wrong minor, this time drawing clubs (they were 3-1) before diamonds were established), going for 800.

There was a funny follow-up to this disaster. Partner reacted in an outstanding way, his only comment was made to calm me down and forget it. So we did fairly well and also ended well within the prizes. Having done such a mistake myself I didn't say anything critical to partner until after the very last board of the day. Then I blurted out:
"Why didn't you give me a ruff, wasn't it obvious my lead was a singleton?". Partner leaned back in his chair, smiled and responded: "Of course I knew you had a singleton, but there was no point in giving you a ruff since I didn't expect you to remember which suit was trumps!"



John

[Codo]

While playing a national championship against our best german pair, I reached a nice 6 ♥ with a nine card trump fit.
This slam had been made as long as trumps were 2-2 or when a side suit was 4-2 or 3-3 (with some extra chances when the 3 trumps are with length in this suit) Unluckily I was able to miscount their trumps and drew three rounds of trump despite the 2-2 break.
Of course the side suit splits 5-1 so I was down in a cold slam.

To my defence: They had more then 3 trumps in their combined hands, quite a high number to count to.

[brianshark]

About a year ago, I was playing in an individual with a field of experts and a few world class Irish players (obviously I was way out of my depth but I do well in indys for some reason).

In the last session, I was playing with a certain European silver medalist, and I was concentrating so much about various suit combinations, squeezes and exit cards and when would be best to ruff with my last trump, that I forgot basics like following suit, so I revoked and ruffed a suit I still had a card left in. Then I started to ponder what was my safest exit card, and 10 seconds later, still completely oblivious to what I had just done, I exited in the suit I had just revoked in!

Also, more recently, I was playing with a good player in a small club one evening, and I was particularly tired that evening that I made a few silly mistakes. Throughout the session, I opened the bidding out of turn twice, led out of turn once and I made an insufficient bid of 1♠ over partner's 1♠ response (I intended 1NT). Apart from those, my card play and bidding was spot on though and we did really well!

[Al_U_Card]

f2f, about a month ago, playing in a club game against Martin Caley and Peter Schwartz, at my turn to bid, I pulled out the stop card, got my stack from the bid box and as I was laying it down....there, where the stop card was supposed to be was......a pass card!

Being the ever consummate gentlemen, with rather large smiles on their faces, they allowed me to make my intended bid ......not the dumbest perhaps, but certainly the most recent.