Donna Lyons and I played in the Open Pairs at the 2019 Great Barrington Sectional. By the end of the tenth hand we had entered the Twilight Zone.

Neither of the North players at our first two tables had ever used a BridgeMate before. So, Donna and I had to talk both of them through the process. To make things worse, a computer glitch prevented scores from being entered in the first round. Two sets of scores then need to be entered at once. It was a mess.

Normalcy returned for the first two hands that we played in the third round. Then a bidding sequence that I had never seen emerged. Here was the layout:

I held that lovely West hand. Donna stretched a bit to open 1♦. South overcalled 2NT. I deemed that my solitary face card merited no mention, and so I passed. Assuming that South was bidding the Unusual Notrump, North bid 3♣. South, however, interpreted that as Stayman and rebid 3♦, Donna’s suit. At that point, North did not know what to think, and so she passed. They made the contract, but both 3NT and 5♣ were cold.

South, you see, had made a natural 2NT jump overcall, a bid that I had not seen in thirteen years of tournament bridge. I fully expected not to see it again for another thirteen years. Boy, was I wrong.

We moved to the next table. The first hand that we played was the following one.

After two passes Donna again opened 1♦. North bid 2NT. Since I had an even worse hand than on the previous board, I played the green card. This time North made the call that I least expected, pass, as did Donna. So, we played 2NT.

We took two tricks. I am pretty sure that I have never written down a score of 210 before. 6NT, 5 of either minor, and 4 of either major are possible. That’s right. They could make game in any strain, and they stopped in 2NT!

I checked the Notrump Overcalls section of the convention cards of both teams. On the cards used on hand #33, the one for the player on my left had nothing at all. The one for the guy who bid 2NT had the “Minors” box checked on the “Jump to 2NT” line, which was consistent with his first bid, but not his rebid. The second team had nothing checked and nothing written in.