I cost my team first place on two strange auctions in the Round Robin in Hyannis on Sunday. In both cases all that I needed to do to become a hero was to draw the pass card from my bidding box and lay it tenderly on the table.

The first incident occurred against a team that had not impressed me the first time that I played against them. The auction went like this:

RHO cannot pass in this situation no matter what system they are playing. He must have been holding a very weak hand, and he probably felt guilty about opening in the first place. There was no telling what either of the other two players were holding. LHO had at least six points, but her strength was unlimited. My partner did not have enough to double, so he was limited to sixteen points. My choices boiled down to letting them play 1♥, doubling to show the unbid suits, or bidding my best suit, which was spades, in which I held AKxxx. Well, I love to bid the master suit, and it appeared to me that our best chance of a positive score was to bid 1♠. So, I did.

LHO promptly bid 4♥. The play was a little dicey, but she made it for 620 points. If I had passed, she would only have gotten 170, a swing of ten IMPs. Ouch.

The other situation occurred against a pair of elderly ladies with whom I was not at all familiar. This time the bidding went like this:

I do not know what 4♦ was supposed to mean, nor can I recall ever seeing anyone make a double jump short of game unless they were bidding a splinter. However, this could not have been a splinter — she had already bid that suit! I certainly was not going to ask what it meant and give the opponents a chance to exchange information.

This time I held eight spades to the AK with only a couple of unguarded queens on the side. I figured that LHO had a hand similar to mine with loads of diamonds and that RHO feared a big mismatch. I held two diamonds, so my partner was probably not sitting on a trump stack. It seemed to me that the offensive orientation of my hand compelled me to bid again, and, as I just said, I love to bid spades. I bid four of them.

LHO passed and so did my partner. RHO paused for a few seconds, and I thought that she might double me. But no: she bid 5♦! I could not imagine what kind of hand she might have that made her think that 5♦ was a good bid only after I expressed willingness to play in 4♠.

In this situation I was almost compelled to double or bid 5♠, but I meekly passed. Meekness was the right response, but it came one round too late. RHO actually had three-card diamond support and a pretty good hand. I expected spade shortness, but actually she had a doubleton.

My partner led a spade, of course, and LHO ruffed. For a short period of time I was upset that he, holding three spades, did not bid 5♠ over 5♦. I probably would have. It is probably a good thing that I was not in his seat — they easily took twelve tricks. I pushed them into an easy game (that our partners missed because of a bidding mixup), but at least we did not push them into a laydown slam when they had been willing to settle for a minor-suit partial!