Bbo Online Just Play Bridge

Just Declare Bridge is a solitary bridge game available through Bridge Base Online that allows you to play a game of bridge against intelligent robot players – with you as the game's declarer by default. It can be a great way to practice your skills and improve your overall game with just a click.

Join the largest community of bridge players. Play with your real life partner, or find a partner online. Relax and kibitz world class players. Chat, hang out and meet bridge players from all over the world. Join the community. Introduction to Playing Bridge Online If you're new to online bridge, you will find it is a lot easier than you might think. All you need is a computer and an internet connection! Phyllis Court Bridge Club uses the Bridge Base Online (BBO) to play our online duplicate sessions. Below is an introduction and some of the basics for playing bridge. How to Play Bridge. Bridge is a card game that uses a regular 52-card deck and features four players that are in teams of two. When you play bridge online you're matched up with a virtual partner and battle against virtual opponents. The object of bridge games is to win points by taking tricks off of your opponents. Play Bridge for free online! Pit your wits against the computer, online opponents of all abilities, or play competitively and in online tournaments.

Just Play Bridge 4 Hands Game

Where to Play

Just Declare Bridge is available on Bridge Base Online. Alternatively, you can also check out Just Declare through the ACBL's website using your BBO login details.

How it Works

JDB puts you up against BBO's robot players. Each game puts you in the declarer's seat by default – and you're also choosing the cards for your virtual bridge partner.

The first interesting thing about JDB is the fact that it skips the bidding stage completely. All bids are pre-selected by the system, and you have to make it work from there. This makes it a great way to practice your game away from bidding.

The second thing is a live score-board. You can keep track of other players and their scores if they're currently online.

If you want to see the bidding table, just click up top where you see the contract. Users online right now are displayed to the right of the cards with their scores.

Note: Remember to hover over to the settings and turn off the sound effects (or your speakers) if you don't want the daylights scared out of you by loud shuffling noises.

Once you're done, you can view your score and the amount of won tricks. Either read them and weep – or rejoice. If it went badly, press refresh and try again.

The terms 'solitary' and 'bridge' don't often go together, and this is a great initiative to see. It's as great for regular players who want to practice as it is for anyone who wants to pick up the game for the first time.

The Robot Behind the Curtain

Bridge Base Online utilizes GIB as their default robot bridge player. It's considered to be one of the world's best.

The name is short for Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridge Player – but also stands for Goren-in-a-Box. It was developed by software guru and card player Matt Ginsberg, and has been tweaked from there until it's become the equivalent of Big Blue, the famed chess AI.

Want to know more?

We know the potential merits of robot bridge well, and we've written about the World Computer Bridge Championships before – check that out here.

More information about GIB and its use on BBO is available at the Bridge Base website here.

The company behind the software can be found over here, or you can read one of the early studies about GIB from the 1999's written by Matt Ginsberg himself.

By Alex J. Coyne

Double the Fun – and Your Points – on Valentine's Weekend

Earn DOUBLE masterpoints® (50% red, 50% black) during Valentine's Weekend, a special ACBL Virtual Club event! Simply play in your usual Virtual Club on Bridge Base Online on Saturday, February 13, and Sunday, February 14.

Here are the details:

• Any Virtual Club game that starts between 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, February 13, and 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 14, will automatically be included in the event.
• All games will pay DOUBLE regular club masterpoints, , 50% red and 50% black.
• You do not need to do anything special to participate these games; Virtual Club play is automatically included.

Lights! Camera! Masterpoints!

Play in Hollywood Magic, the latest regionally rated event, February 18-21. It's sure to be a technicolor tournament! Click here for the cast of games.

Win Double Points AND Foster Bridge Learning

Join us for Educational Foundation Week to earn double black masterpoint awards while also supporting bridge education and growth.

From February 22-28 (Monday to Sunday), part of each Virtual Club entry fee will be given to the ACBL Educational Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to learning and spreading the game of bridge far and wide. (Click here to read a message from the Foundation.)

These fundraising games will be held in the Virtual Clubs on Bridge Base Online. No registration is required. Simply play in your usual Virtual Club game.

Here's how the event works:

• Any Virtual Club game that starts between 12:01 a.m. on Monday, February 22, and 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 28, will automatically be included in the event.
• All games will pay DOUBLE regular club points, 100% black.
• You do not need to do anything special to participate these games; Virtual Club play is automatically included.

Black Point Online Games on Bridge Base Online

In these unusual times, ACBL has partnered with Bridge Base Online (BBO) and The Common Game to bring members a way to play and earn black, silver, red and gold masterpoints® while sheltering at home.

Events use matchpoint scoring, and masterpoints® earned in these games will count toward annual races.

Remember, as in any bridge game, cheating online is prohibited. See FAQ below for additional information.

Daily Online Events

Two kinds of events are held every day on BBO – Support Your Club Games and Daylong Tournaments.

Support Your Club Games: These pair events are held on BBO three times a day (10 a.m., 5:10 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time), and the majority of the game fees will be given to your local club to help during this difficult time. The games award black points, and your partner may be any other ACBL member with a BBO account. Registration opens two hours before each game time.

Daylong Tournaments: A solo event, this kind of event is played with BBO's robots. You have up to 24 hours to complete your game, and it doesn't have to played all at once. You can even pause in the middle of a hand. Register anytime, and you'll have until midnight Easter time to finish the 18 boards.

Virtual Clubs

Visit your local club from home with a game in a Virtual Club on BBO. These games are the same as the regular club games held at the club, and they are similar to the Support Your Club Games (just at your club's typical game time). If your usual club is not yet a Virtual Club, have them contact club@acbl.org for more information.

Special Online Events

Periodically, ACBL will hold events and tournaments on BBO that award silver, red or gold masterpoints®. New events will be announced on the ACBL site, on this page and via email. Please visit acbl.org/confirm to be sure you are receiving ACBL's emails.

Online Bridge Event FAQ

Support Your Club games start at 10 a.m., 5:10 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. See acbl.org/virtual for special tournament schedules.

Sometimes BBO experiences network errors, this guide will explain what to do if you experience any issues.

This guide explains the different formats available for daylong games.

For an online regionally rated event, each series consists of four available sessions – series one is the first session each day for the four days, series two is the second session each day for the four days, and so forth. Players can play in as many sessions as they want of each four-session series, but the four series are separate events.

ACBL Virtual Club Games – Visitor Policy

Due to face-to-face bridge play shutting down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACBL moved quickly to allow bridge clubs to start playing online on the BBO platform. There were three main objectives to an online social bridge club project, branded as Virtual Club Games:

1. Allow bridge clubs to continue to operate and generate income so that they could survive the period during which their club was shut down.
2. Allow our players an opportunity to play with friends from their local club. The social aspects of bridge cannot be understated. Everyone could have played in Speedball games or Support Your Club (SYC) games, but a large majority of our players want to play with the people whom they know.
3. Replace some of the table fee income that ACBL lost.

To implement Virtual Club Games, a list was created for each club. The list included players who had played in that club from January 2019 through February 2020. New ACBL members who listed a particular club as referring them were also added to the referring club's list. What has in effect happened is that we have turned every club into an Invitational club, but the ACBL is still awarding full masterpoints®. Why did this need to be done? Why not just let everyone play wherever they want? While allowing a totally free marketplace may have actually helped objective #3 above, it would have destroyed objectives #1 and #2. If every player could play everywhere, the friendly club atmosphere goes away and, even worse, price wars could start as clubs realize that pricing their games lower than others would attract more players. Without this invitational club concept, the ACBL might as well have just started running SYC games all day every day and forgotten about Virtual Club Games.

Virtual Club Games have worked quite well, but one major issue is that the ACBL cannot totally prevent clubs from allowing players who are not on their list into their Virtual Club Games. This is due to some BBO technical limitations, particularly when it comes to non-members (we have no way of including them on club lists). There are some genuine reasons why it might be right to allow someone into a Virtual Club Game who is not on that club's list of members. Please note that this policy will be reviewed on a regular basis and is subject to change. We have moved very quickly into the online world and continue to learn new things every day. The main objective is, as always, to do what is best for our members and our clubs.

Revised Visitor Policy

Your online club, as an invitational club, is not required to allow anyone into your Virtual Club Game who is not a member. For Virtual Club Games, a member is someone who appeared on the particular club's list of previous players. You may, however, allow non-member players into your Virtual Club Games with the following stipulations:

1. You may allow anyone who has played in your club since January 1st, 2019 who was left off your initial list of members.
2. You may allow your membersto play with a visiting partner, but the number of visiting players should be kept to less than 15% of your field, on average (the ACBL will consider weekly numbers in the aggregate, not individual games).
3. You are not to solicit outside players to find a partner and come play at your club. You may communicate with your members to tell them they are welcome to bring a guest partner but 'selling' this too much may jeopardize your ability to stay under the allowed threshold.
4. Guest pairs are allowed but will count as two visitors. This should be used for circumstances such as a couple that moved away from your area a couple of years ago or for limited point pairs looking for a game because their options are limited.

The mechanism to allow a visiting player into your Virtual Club Game is to 'follow' them on BBO with your VACB ID. The problem is, once you have 'followed' them, that player can register for your future Virtual Club Games without visibility to you. Nevertheless, you are responsible for keeping your visiting players under 15% of your total entries!

Violations of Visitor Policy

Repeated violations of this Visitor Policy will lead to consequences up to and including removal of the club's ability to run online games. Please remember that your ability to run your club games online is a privilege, not a right. None of the ACBL's 2020 club sanctions included anything regarding running games online – any sanction was solely for face-to-face games.

Note: Remember to hover over to the settings and turn off the sound effects (or your speakers) if you don't want the daylights scared out of you by loud shuffling noises.

Once you're done, you can view your score and the amount of won tricks. Either read them and weep – or rejoice. If it went badly, press refresh and try again.

The terms 'solitary' and 'bridge' don't often go together, and this is a great initiative to see. It's as great for regular players who want to practice as it is for anyone who wants to pick up the game for the first time.

The Robot Behind the Curtain

Bridge Base Online utilizes GIB as their default robot bridge player. It's considered to be one of the world's best.

The name is short for Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridge Player – but also stands for Goren-in-a-Box. It was developed by software guru and card player Matt Ginsberg, and has been tweaked from there until it's become the equivalent of Big Blue, the famed chess AI.

Want to know more?

We know the potential merits of robot bridge well, and we've written about the World Computer Bridge Championships before – check that out here.

More information about GIB and its use on BBO is available at the Bridge Base website here.

The company behind the software can be found over here, or you can read one of the early studies about GIB from the 1999's written by Matt Ginsberg himself.

By Alex J. Coyne

Double the Fun – and Your Points – on Valentine's Weekend

Earn DOUBLE masterpoints® (50% red, 50% black) during Valentine's Weekend, a special ACBL Virtual Club event! Simply play in your usual Virtual Club on Bridge Base Online on Saturday, February 13, and Sunday, February 14.

Here are the details:

• Any Virtual Club game that starts between 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, February 13, and 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 14, will automatically be included in the event.
• All games will pay DOUBLE regular club masterpoints, , 50% red and 50% black.
• You do not need to do anything special to participate these games; Virtual Club play is automatically included.

Lights! Camera! Masterpoints!

Play in Hollywood Magic, the latest regionally rated event, February 18-21. It's sure to be a technicolor tournament! Click here for the cast of games.

Win Double Points AND Foster Bridge Learning

Join us for Educational Foundation Week to earn double black masterpoint awards while also supporting bridge education and growth.

From February 22-28 (Monday to Sunday), part of each Virtual Club entry fee will be given to the ACBL Educational Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to learning and spreading the game of bridge far and wide. (Click here to read a message from the Foundation.)

These fundraising games will be held in the Virtual Clubs on Bridge Base Online. No registration is required. Simply play in your usual Virtual Club game.

Here's how the event works:

• Any Virtual Club game that starts between 12:01 a.m. on Monday, February 22, and 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 28, will automatically be included in the event.
• All games will pay DOUBLE regular club points, 100% black.
• You do not need to do anything special to participate these games; Virtual Club play is automatically included.

Black Point Online Games on Bridge Base Online

In these unusual times, ACBL has partnered with Bridge Base Online (BBO) and The Common Game to bring members a way to play and earn black, silver, red and gold masterpoints® while sheltering at home.

Events use matchpoint scoring, and masterpoints® earned in these games will count toward annual races.

Remember, as in any bridge game, cheating online is prohibited. See FAQ below for additional information.

Daily Online Events

Two kinds of events are held every day on BBO – Support Your Club Games and Daylong Tournaments.

Support Your Club Games: These pair events are held on BBO three times a day (10 a.m., 5:10 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time), and the majority of the game fees will be given to your local club to help during this difficult time. The games award black points, and your partner may be any other ACBL member with a BBO account. Registration opens two hours before each game time.

Daylong Tournaments: A solo event, this kind of event is played with BBO's robots. You have up to 24 hours to complete your game, and it doesn't have to played all at once. You can even pause in the middle of a hand. Register anytime, and you'll have until midnight Easter time to finish the 18 boards.

Virtual Clubs

Visit your local club from home with a game in a Virtual Club on BBO. These games are the same as the regular club games held at the club, and they are similar to the Support Your Club Games (just at your club's typical game time). If your usual club is not yet a Virtual Club, have them contact club@acbl.org for more information.

Special Online Events

Periodically, ACBL will hold events and tournaments on BBO that award silver, red or gold masterpoints®. New events will be announced on the ACBL site, on this page and via email. Please visit acbl.org/confirm to be sure you are receiving ACBL's emails.

Online Bridge Event FAQ

Support Your Club games start at 10 a.m., 5:10 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. See acbl.org/virtual for special tournament schedules.

Sometimes BBO experiences network errors, this guide will explain what to do if you experience any issues.

This guide explains the different formats available for daylong games.

For an online regionally rated event, each series consists of four available sessions – series one is the first session each day for the four days, series two is the second session each day for the four days, and so forth. Players can play in as many sessions as they want of each four-session series, but the four series are separate events.

ACBL Virtual Club Games – Visitor Policy

Due to face-to-face bridge play shutting down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACBL moved quickly to allow bridge clubs to start playing online on the BBO platform. There were three main objectives to an online social bridge club project, branded as Virtual Club Games:

1. Allow bridge clubs to continue to operate and generate income so that they could survive the period during which their club was shut down.
2. Allow our players an opportunity to play with friends from their local club. The social aspects of bridge cannot be understated. Everyone could have played in Speedball games or Support Your Club (SYC) games, but a large majority of our players want to play with the people whom they know.
3. Replace some of the table fee income that ACBL lost.

To implement Virtual Club Games, a list was created for each club. The list included players who had played in that club from January 2019 through February 2020. New ACBL members who listed a particular club as referring them were also added to the referring club's list. What has in effect happened is that we have turned every club into an Invitational club, but the ACBL is still awarding full masterpoints®. Why did this need to be done? Why not just let everyone play wherever they want? While allowing a totally free marketplace may have actually helped objective #3 above, it would have destroyed objectives #1 and #2. If every player could play everywhere, the friendly club atmosphere goes away and, even worse, price wars could start as clubs realize that pricing their games lower than others would attract more players. Without this invitational club concept, the ACBL might as well have just started running SYC games all day every day and forgotten about Virtual Club Games.

Virtual Club Games have worked quite well, but one major issue is that the ACBL cannot totally prevent clubs from allowing players who are not on their list into their Virtual Club Games. This is due to some BBO technical limitations, particularly when it comes to non-members (we have no way of including them on club lists). There are some genuine reasons why it might be right to allow someone into a Virtual Club Game who is not on that club's list of members. Please note that this policy will be reviewed on a regular basis and is subject to change. We have moved very quickly into the online world and continue to learn new things every day. The main objective is, as always, to do what is best for our members and our clubs.

Revised Visitor Policy

Your online club, as an invitational club, is not required to allow anyone into your Virtual Club Game who is not a member. For Virtual Club Games, a member is someone who appeared on the particular club's list of previous players. You may, however, allow non-member players into your Virtual Club Games with the following stipulations:

1. You may allow anyone who has played in your club since January 1st, 2019 who was left off your initial list of members.
2. You may allow your membersto play with a visiting partner, but the number of visiting players should be kept to less than 15% of your field, on average (the ACBL will consider weekly numbers in the aggregate, not individual games).
3. You are not to solicit outside players to find a partner and come play at your club. You may communicate with your members to tell them they are welcome to bring a guest partner but 'selling' this too much may jeopardize your ability to stay under the allowed threshold.
4. Guest pairs are allowed but will count as two visitors. This should be used for circumstances such as a couple that moved away from your area a couple of years ago or for limited point pairs looking for a game because their options are limited.

The mechanism to allow a visiting player into your Virtual Club Game is to 'follow' them on BBO with your VACB ID. The problem is, once you have 'followed' them, that player can register for your future Virtual Club Games without visibility to you. Nevertheless, you are responsible for keeping your visiting players under 15% of your total entries!

Violations of Visitor Policy

Repeated violations of this Visitor Policy will lead to consequences up to and including removal of the club's ability to run online games. Please remember that your ability to run your club games online is a privilege, not a right. None of the ACBL's 2020 club sanctions included anything regarding running games online – any sanction was solely for face-to-face games.

While on the topic of violations, this also applies to other issues that may arise. The vast majority of bridge clubs have shown a great sense of cooperation and community and have been more than willing to assist other clubs. That being said, there have been a few incidents of what the ACBL considers as unfair business practices (examples: unreasonable price undercutting, purposefully scheduling games to mirror a competitor's schedule, naming events to appear as a competitor's events). Please be aware that unfair business practices (including allowing too many visitors) will not be tolerated. Depending on the flagrancy and level of these violations in the ACBL's sole opinion, warnings, suspension and revocation of a club's VACB rights will be considered.

Effective date: July 24th, 2020

Bbo Base Online

As in any bridge game, cheating in online bridge is prohibited. Do not share any private information about your hand with your partner or anyone else. Discussion via phone, video, in person or any other means is not allowed.

When you play on BBO, every call and every play are recorded. If you cheat online, you will get caught! In addition to player reports by Bridge Base Online, there are automatic surveillance tools to alert the game operators of potential cheating. If a player is found to be cheating in an ACBL-sanctioned game, the club will bar that player from BBO. In addition, the player may be subject to discipline under the ACBL Code of Disciplinary Regulations. Both ACBL and BBO are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of these online games so that honest players can be confident of a fair contest.

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