In the current circumstances with our bridge club closed, some of our members will be thinking of playing online bridge. Some options are:-
Whiteway Duplicate Online Pairs - every Thursday at 1400 hosted on BBO - Contact John john@hazzy.net for details.
Bridge Base Online (BBO) is the largest international online bridge provider. Signing up and playing in many of the games is free, though they do have some tournaments that are paid for. Since it is an American company payment is in dollars and the most common bidding systems are Standard American type (sayc or 2/1) The BBO robots play 2/1 - see this for details . The EBU have a guide to starting playing on BBO available. There is also a guide for BBO on the Berick Bridge club site worth a read.
But a quick guide for creating a private table on BBO where you can play with three others of your bridge pals is (currently free):-
All players need a BBO login name (User Id) and password. Then one of the players creates the table and invites the other three to join by doing the following:-
- Go to PLAY OR WATCH BRIDGE on the BBO home page
- Click on CASUAL
- Click on START A TABLE
- Set Scoring to MATCH POINTS
this is the same scoring system used when you play duplicate bridge and gives credit for making overtricks
- Set the Descriptions field to +slow+
Use of that string sets the time-out period to a longer value and helps prevent players being bumped off BBO
- Click on each of the seats in turn and enter the login name of one of the four players. If they are online on BBO they will receive a pop-up invitation to join your table.
- It's best to set these options:-
ALLOW KIBITZERS off
ALLOW KIBITZERS TO CHAT WITH PLAYERS off
PERMISSION REQUIRED TO KIBITZ on
PERMISSION REQUIRED TO PLAY on
INVISIBLE on (although this option seems to be greyed out for me for some unknown reason)
B
Bridge Club Live is a UK based online bridge provider, which runs a variety of individual and partnership games for which EBU master Points are awarded to members as well as a social room for casual play. There is a free Guest room for players to try it out and a range of membership types to suit those playing more seriously. Most of its members are British so whilst Acol is prevalent, all systems are catered for and members from all over the world keep the bridge going 24/7. They have just issued a press release detailing enhancements made to help accommodate the increasing demand for online bridge from F2F Club players. You can find a link to another club's guide to playing - https://www.bridgewebs.com/3counties/Bridge%20Club%20Live%20Club%20Login%20Instructions.pdf
Funbridge hosts our regular daily online robot games, which give EBU master points. Information about them is available on the EBU webpage.
Finally a few friends have created a WhatsApp group called "Whiteway Bridge Players". The group is not specfic to any club. Please join it if you like to stay in touch and to try to arrange online games. Use this link on your tablet or smart phone - you will need to have WhatsApp installed. https://chat.whatsapp.com/B8SCl6PNFIvGVvaKjFyeZN You can also install WhatsApp on your PC or Mac - https://www.whatsapp.com/download
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