Terms and conditions

1. Who these terms are between

BridgeArena is operated by an individual sole trader based in Singapore. "We" and "us" mean that person, trading as BridgeArena; "you" means the person using the site.

These terms are governed by the laws of Singapore, and the courts of Singapore have jurisdiction over disputes arising from them. That does not take away consumer rights you have under the law of the country you live in, which apply regardless of what this paragraph says.

By creating an account or using the site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site.

2. Your account

• You must be at least 16 to hold an account. BridgeArena is not intended for children.
• One account per person. Extra accounts used to inflate a rating, evade a suspension, or take a free allowance more than once will be closed.
• Register with details that are accurate, and keep your email address current — it is how we reach you about your account and your subscription.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your password to yourself; tell us at support@bridgearena.net if you think someone else has it.
• You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Account. Deletion runs shortly afterwards as a background job. Your statistics, follows, blocks, notifications and board comments are erased; the games you played, the seats you took and the messages you sent remain as part of other players' records, with the link to your account removed so they no longer identify you. The privacy policy sets this out in full.

3. Acceptable use and fair play

Bridge is a game of information, and every rule below exists because breaking it takes the game away from the other three people at the table.

While a board is live

• No collusion. Do not pass information about your hand — or anyone's hand — to another player by any route other than the bids and cards the game itself carries. That includes chat, a message, a second device, a phone call, or sitting in the same room. This is the one rule that matters most.
• No external analysis during play. Do not use a double-dummy solver, a bridge engine, another person, or any other outside help to choose a call or a card while the board is in progress. BridgeArena's own AI analysis is offered after a board is finished, which is the point of it — using an engine during play is cheating and is treated as such.
• Kibitzers stay silent. If you are watching a table, do not relay anything you can see to anyone playing at it, during the board or afterwards while the match is still running.

Generally

• No automated access. Do not run bots, scripts or scrapers against the site, and do not play through an automated client. The bots you can seat at a practice table are ours and are part of the service; bringing your own is not.
• Do not abuse, harass or spam anyone in table chat, direct messages or board comments. Disagreeing about a defence is fine. Being unpleasant about it is not.
• Do not attempt to break, overload or probe the site, or to reach data belonging to other players.
• Do not deliberately abandon rated games in progress to avoid a bad result. Life happens and disconnections are not held against you; a pattern is.

Where a rule is broken we may warn you, adjust or void an affected rating, suspend the account, or close it, depending on what happened. We will tell you which and why. If we close a paid account for a serious breach we are not obliged to refund the remaining period, though you can ask and we will consider it.

4. Free and paid tiers

Free

• Casual play is unlimited, and stays that way. It is not a trial.
• Seven rated games a week.
• A bundle of four AI-coached boards when you start, once per account, then one coached board a week after that.

Paid

• Ranked — $5.99 a month, or $49.99 a year.
• Premium — $7.99 a month, or $59.99 a year.
• Prices are in US dollars and exclude sales tax, VAT or GST, which Paddle calculates and adds at checkout according to where you are.

Founding members. The first 100 accounts hold Premium at no cost for as long as BridgeArena runs. It is a grant on the account, it does not renew and it cannot be transferred to another account. "For life" honestly means the life of the service, not yours — if BridgeArena shuts down, it ends with it.

Weekly allowances reset weekly. An unused allowance does not roll over.

We may change what a tier includes. If a change materially reduces what you are paying for, we will tell you before it takes effect, and you may cancel and ask for a refund of the unused part of the period you have already paid for.

5. Payment

• Paddle is the merchant of record. Paddle sells the subscription to you, takes the payment, and handles tax — the Paddle company you are contracting with is named on the checkout. Your purchase is a transaction with Paddle, and Paddle's own buyer terms apply to it alongside these terms. We never see or hold your card details.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period until you cancel. A monthly plan renews monthly; a yearly plan renews yearly.
• If we change the price of a plan you are on, you will be told before the renewal it applies to, with enough notice to cancel first if you would rather not pay it.
• If a payment fails, Paddle will retry it. While a subscription is unpaid we may suspend the paid features; your account, your games and your history are not touched, and paid features come back when the payment goes through.

6. Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel at any time, and there is a 14-day refund window on every charge. The refunds and cancellation policy sets out how both work, and forms part of these terms.

7. Your content

• What you write in table chat, direct messages and board comments stays yours. You give us permission to store and display it as far as running the site requires — showing your comment under the board it belongs to, delivering your message to the person you sent it to — and no further. We do not use it for anything else and we do not license it to anyone.
• Records of play are shared, not personal. The deal, the auction, the cards played and the result belong to the table, not to one player. They stay in the other players' game histories after you leave or delete your account, because removing them would destroy their record of boards they played.
• Share links are public. When you share a board or a game, the link works without an account and without signing in. Anyone who has it — or who is given it by someone you sent it to — can read that board, including its comments. Treat a share link as published.
• We may remove content that breaks these terms, and close accounts that keep producing it. We do not otherwise moderate what you say.

8. Availability, liability and changes

• The site is provided as it is. One person runs BridgeArena, and we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or fault-free. There will be maintenance, and occasionally there will be outages.
• AI analysis — coaching notes, double-dummy results and claim checking — depends on an engine that is sometimes unavailable. It is offered on a best-effort basis, it is not guaranteed to be correct, and it is not a reason to doubt a result that the rules of bridge have already settled.
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Where we are liable, our total liability to you is limited to what you paid for your subscription in the twelve months before the claim arose — paid to Paddle, since they are the seller, but measured the same way.
• Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, and for any consumer right in your own country that cannot be contracted out of. Where a clause above conflicts with such a right, the right wins and the rest of these terms carry on.
• We may change these terms. The date at the top changes when we do, and if a change materially affects you we will email registered accounts before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the new version; if you do not, you can cancel and delete your account.

9. Contact

Questions about these terms go to support@bridgearena.net and are answered by a person, not a ticket queue.