What is BBO World?

BBO World is where you will find all tournaments hosted by BBO. Our goal is to offer high quality and interesting tournaments to suit every BBOer's taste. Our tournaments include:

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 must 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.

Bingoed

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 ofsquares 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.
  • In a Bingo Reward tournament, different hands are randomly dealt to different tables. In a Bingo Race tournament, all tables are dealt the same hands, "Duplicate" style.
  • 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.

    • bingo 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.


    Express tournaments

    Express tournaments are automated tournaments that run without directors, and utilize robots sparingly compared to robot tournaments. Instead of human directors, the software ensures all players conform to stated rules for the tournament. Eg. Speed of play, or convention card in use. Players who are unable to comply with stated rules are replaced permanently with a robot.

    Express - Automated Fun highlights

  • An Express tournament is a 6 round x 1 boardindividual.
  • In an Express tournament, everyone agrees to play the preloaded GIB 2/1 convention card.
  • Every player receives 30 seconds to take an action (whether bid or play).
  • The time limit for each board is 5 minutes, after which the board is adjourned. A sufficiently played out board will be completed by house robots and that score used as final result. An insufficiently played out board will earn the standard Ave scores for everyone involved.
  • The tournament lasts about 30 minutes.
  • Chat is disabled during the tournament.
  • Express tournaments are free, but available only to those using the new version of BBO.

    • BBO Monthly Royal Reward tournaments

    BBO Monthly Royal Reward is a monthly event that celebrates BBO's elite tournament players by rewarding them with a free tourney that awards Masterpoints. Two unique tournaments are created for the 28th of each month, at 11AM Eastern and 3PM Eastern time. These tournaments are restricted to players with a BBO masterpoint award symbol of A, K, Q, J or T.

    About robots in tournaments

    The robots used on BBO are called GIB (Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridgeplayer). GIB is widely considered to be one ofthe 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 robot partner plays especially poorly (or if a particular robot opponent plays especially well) on a given hand, but, these things will even themselves over time. We think that our robots plays at least as well as the average BBO member. In simulations, our robots currently average around 55% in a duplicate tournament setting.
    Sometimes the robot does something totally crazy (don't we all). But everyone has the same robot 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. However, we cannot, under any circumstances, offer a refund.

    The GIBs used in our tournaments play a relatively simple and natural 2/1 bidding system. 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.