Playing Bridge Online

I'm back from Las Vegas! Why was I there? Nope, it wasn't a sorority sister's bachelorette party. Nor was I there to get hitched or gamble. Instead, I was there for a bridge tournament.

Many people think of bridge as the game their grandmother plays in the kitchen with her friends. Some have grandmothers that go to tournaments trying to gain masterpoints and achieve various ranks (I myself am a Life Master). But this game isn't just for LOLs (Little Old Ladies). This game is also played by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, James Cayne (goes by Jimmy in the bridge world), and Warren Spector (former Bear Stearns co-President and co-COO). And all four of them are known to play online on Bridge Base Online (BBO). While Buffett and Gates usually play on anonymous accounts, Jimmy Cayne can be found as "jec" (James E. Cayne), regularly hosting "Cayne vs Stars" team games where you can kibitz (in bridge, meaning to quietly watch and learn, as opposed to chess' definition of kibitz) him playing against world class players. Warren Spector can also be found on BBO, as "warrens".

Bridge Base was created by bridge expert Fred Gitelman. Before Bridge Base, most online players played on free sites such as Yahoo! Games, MSN Game Zone, or paid sites such as OKBridge, the then favorite of experts, or others. Yahoo! uses rubber scoring whereas the rest used duplicate bridge scoring. In duplicate bridge, everyone plays the same hands and the results are compared to each other, so unlike poker, it has nothing to do with the luck of what hands you get but instead, what you do with a hand. If you pick up a monster hand such as: AKQJ AKQ AKQ AKQ, which is a clear "7NT" (the highest possible bid), it will be a tie score (50% in matchpoints, or a push (tie board, zero score for both teams) in IMPS) and getting the good cards doesn't actually give an advantage to those who get the hand over those with a bad hand. Bridge Base is now the lead duplicate bridge site. It has the most world class expert players, keeps stats, broadcasts real life tournaments from all over the world through the system, has a partnership bidding section, and is completely free. Gitelman's friendship with Gates over the years has now formed a partnership with the online bridge sites as well. Yesterday, MSN Game Zone announced its partnership with Bridge Base. I see this as a great opportunity for online bridge to gain even more popularity, drawing upon the membership of MSN Game Zone as well now.

Nationals in Las Vegas continue until the end of next week. You can watch portions of the tournament online through Bridge Base's online client, downloading their bridge software, or going through their online play client. Unfortunately, the downloadable version is Windows only, but their FAQ provides ways of getting it to work on Mac or Linux.