What is Bridge Bingo?

Bridge Bingo melds Bridge and Bingo to form a brand new game. In Bridge Bingo, players receive a Bingo card with Bridge contracts instead of numbers, and try to "Bingo" as soon as possible by crossing out the squares in their Bingo card. Crossing out a square is achieved by bidding and making the named contracts in a square. Successfully crossing out all the squares in a row in any direction (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal) grants a Bingo. The picture below shows a possible vertical Bingo.

Bridge Bingo Tournament Rules

In a Bridge Bingo Tournament, each table consists of a single human player, seated South, and three robot players seated in the other three seats.

Each player in the tournament is dealt an identical Bingo card, and has 25 minutes to try and "bingo" by crossing out a row of squares in any direction.

The sooner a player bingos, the higher his chance of receiving an award. All available prizes are listed in the leaderboard.

The tournament ends after 25 minutes, and all remaining prizes are distributed among the runner-ups, as listed in the leaderboard.

Hands are randomly dealt, "best hand" style, which means South, the human player, always receives the hand with at least the most High Card Points.

Players are granted a "redeal" option for every 500 points they accumulate, total points style. Players can exercise their "redeal" option whenever they wish to, as long as one is available.

The "redeal" button will indicate how many redeals are available. The picture below shows a redeal button with one possible redeal.

Prizes

The Bridge Bingo tournaments with an entry fee will award BB$ prizes and BBO Masterpoints to winners automatically upon completion of the tournament. All prizes, if any, are posted in the tournament leaderboard.

How do the robots work?

The robots in use are called GIB. The GIB robot is widely considered to be one of the best computer bridge programs ever created. It is occasionally capable of brilliance. It is also occasionally capable of some really poor bids and plays (just like all human players).

Some players may find it frustrating if a particular GIB partner plays especially poorly (or if a particular GIB opponent plays especially well) on a given hand, but, these things will even themselves over time. We think that GIB plays at least as well as the average BBO member. Some times the GIB does something totally crazy (don't we all). This is what the GIB does. Everyone has the same GIB as partner and opponent, so, everyone is on a level playing field. If your GIB does something crazy we want to know about it so we can see if it is fixable, but, we cannot, under any circumstances, offer a refund.

The GIBs used in our tournaments play a relatively simple and natural bidding system. When you play in a Robot Tournament you can find out the meaning of any bid by clicking on that bid as it appears in the bidding diagram. Furthermore, when it is your turn to bid, moving your mouse over the buttons for the various possible bids will cause an explanation of the bid you are considering (as your GIB partner will understand it) to be displayed. These explanations can be somewhat cryptic, but reading them carefully before you bid will help you to avoid misunderstandings with your GIB partner.

You can find out more about GIB's bidding system by clicking here.