Bridge Base Online (BBO) is the world's largest bridge-playing online platform, with about 10 million monthly visits, as of November 2021. Originally created by professional bridge player

Fred Gitelman Frederick "Fred" Gitelman (born February 6, 1965) is a Canadian-American bridge player, developer of bridge software, and a founder of the online bridge platform Bridge Base Online. Biography Gitelman has won one world championship, nine North A ...

, BBO was first published by Bridge Base, Inc. in 2001, as a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

downloadable software, offering free online

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

bridge rooms for practice and play. Around 2008, BBO was ported to a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

to also support

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

users, as well as mobile devices. In 2018, Bridge Base Online was inducted to the

American Contract Bridge League The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) is a governing body for contract bridge in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda. It is the largest such organization in North America having the stated mission ''"to promote, grow and sustain th ...

's Hall of Fame, for its long-term commitment to bridge. As of February 2022, BBO was the only organization ever inducted by the Hall of Fame. BBO was acquired by th
52 Entertainment
group in December 2018, and Fred Gitelman retired from the company in July 2019.

Main Features

In addition to bridge rooms for casual play and teaching, BBO hosts many types of duplicate bridge tournaments, including events sanctioned by official bridge organizations such as the

or the

English Bridge Union The English Bridge Union or EBU is a player-funded organisation that promotes and organises the card game of duplicate bridge in England. It is based at offices in Aylesbury. The EBU is a member of the European Bridge League and thus affiliat ...

, which award official

masterpoints Masterpoints or master points are points awarded by bridge organizations to individuals for success in competitive bridge tournaments run under their auspices. Generally, recipients must be members in good standing of the issuing organization. At t ...

to players. Bridge Base Online also features free tools that help novice players learn and improve their game skills, like 'Bridge Master' and 'Minibridge'. Users can register at no cost. Many playing activities are also free, while premium tournaments charge an entry fee. Players may also rent robots for play practice. A significant contribution to the game are the Vugraph
broadcasts
, which present live matches from around the world and are enhanced by expert commentary. As with other online bridge platforms, because the language of bridge bidding and play uses only 15 words and because all selections are done via mouseclick, people who speak different languages can play together. BBO's interface supports several languages and it allows players and " kibitzers" to chat, mainly using a text-based interface, at tables and other virtual rooms. Records of hands played are archived, and are publicly accessible, enabling players to view their own and other competitors' actions and results.

Robots in BBO

BBO also offers playing robots, which allow users to practice or compete without human partners and/or opponents. The "NABC Robot Individual", for example, is a 3-day duplicate tournament where about 3000 players compete partnering with robots. The BBO robot is also known as Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridgeplayer (GIB). GIB is an

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

bridge player. It can be rented on BBO. It plays the 2/1 game forcing system and can be used either to fill in for one or more players or to provide advice.

American Contract Bridge League

In partnership with the

(ACBL), Bridge Base Online sponsors ACBL-sanctioned tournaments on its website. These tournaments award online masterpoints. The colorless masterpoints awarded for online play can be combined with other types of ACBL masterpoints, which helps players achieve higher ACBL ranks. During the

COVID-19_pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, BBO partnered with ACBL an
The Common Game
to initiate an online platform name
ACBL Virtual Clubs
This grew significantly during the pandemic by allowing duplicate bridge clubs to hold their games via an online platform, with the majority of the game fees going to the clubs.

References

External links

Bridge Base Online
{{WPCBIndex 2001 video games Browser games Digital card games Online video game services Companies based in Las Vegas Contract bridge websites Video games developed in the United States