Where to play
What BBO is
BBO stands for Bridge Base Online. It is the largest online bridge site in the world, it has been running since 2001, and if you have played bridge on the internet there is a good chance it was there.
What the name means
Three letters, one for each word: Bridge Base Online. Players use "BBO" and "Bridge Base" interchangeably.
The company behind it, Bridge Base Inc., was founded in 1990 by Fred Gitelman and Sheri Winestock and sold bridge teaching software. The online platform followed in 2001, first as a Windows program offering free multiplayer rooms.
What you can do there
Registration is free, and a lot of the site is free to use.
- Casual play with other people, in a very large open lobby.
- Solo play against robots — the Just Play Bridge format, free and unlimited.
- Tournaments, many of which charge an entry fee.
- Sanctioned events run with national bridge organisations including the ACBL and the EBU, which is the part no other site really replicates.
That last point is the real reason BBO is where the bridge world lives. If you hold a national ranking and want results that count towards it, that is decided by your national organisation, and BBO is where those events are run.
GIB, the robots
BBO's robots are GIB — Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridge player, named for its author Matthew Ginsberg. They bid two over one game forcing, and they can fill an empty seat or give advice.
A subscription offers robots playing other bidding systems. GIB is strong at the play of the cards and its bidding is the part players argue about, which is true of every bridge robot ever written.
Just Play Bridge
The format most people mean when they say they play bridge on BBO. You take one seat, robots take the other three, and you play a full deal on your own.
It is free, unlimited, and needs no account. It also does not keep your hands — Just Play Bridge deals are not stored in My Hands the way a normal table's are, so there is nothing to go back to afterwards.
It has its own guide here: how Just Play Bridge works.
Where else people play
BBO is the default and there is no need to leave it if it suits you. People generally look elsewhere for one of three reasons.
- They want their hands kept. Reviewing your own boards afterwards is how you get better, and the free solo format does not save them.
- They find the lobby overwhelming. A very large open room is a feature if you want a game at 3am and a wall if you are new.
- They want a quieter interface. Taste, mostly.
BridgeArena is one of the alternatives, and the honest summary is that it is much smaller and does a narrower set of things. Practice against three robots is free and unlimited, every board is saved with its auction and all four hands, and you can replay it trick by trick or export it as PBN. There are no sanctioned events.