[mike777]

Any help in describing the different types of online ACBL tournament games appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Time to dip my toes back into the game.

You forum posters are wonderful, knowledgeable and so kind in taking the time to share in improving my game.

[mikeh]

I’ve been bored between playing a lot of ‘real’ online Bridge….on vacation in Hawaii but the weather has been dreadful. So been playing some acbl bbo ‘tournaments’

These are with robot partners and opps….your ‘real’ opps are all the humans holding your hands. You are guaranteed to have the most hcp…or tied. No robot gets more than you, but may have a better playing hand.

It’s not Bridge as you know it. While the openings are sort of 5 card majors, weak twos and strong 1N, the robot is incredibly bad at competitive decisions. It’s rarely good to balance…it plays you for a good hand. It’s almost always a disaster to make a strong jumpshift after opening. And so on

Plus there’s no point signalling suit preference on defence. It ignores you.

But as for what each event is, as best as I can tell there are a number of acbl sanctioned events.

Instant tournaments…..either imps or mps, 12 boards. Some are with, I think, 20 players. Some, labelled with the number 100, have one hundred players.

I think the smaller game pays .90 mp for 1st…not sure how low the payout goes. I think the 100 pays about 1.5 for first.

Other tournaments, in ACBL World, are either 12 or 18 boards…choose the length you want. The 18 board ones are much more expensive on a per board basis. In terms of, say, the 12 board ones, there are, I think, 6 mp tournaments per day. #1 routinely gets 1300+ players….the number rises over the course of 24 hours and your results may change, especially if you played very early when only a few people have played.

The other numbers appear to get diminishing participation….fewer play 2 than 1, fewer play 3 than 2 etc. payout is, I think, about 1.5 for winning

I haven’t played the 18 board ones…

You can also play imp pairs, same basic idea


Cost for the instant tournaments and the 12 board ACBL ones is either 2.09 or 2.19 US.


Personally, I think they are terrible for one’s game. But they’re kind of addictive, lol.


A good player can rack up 5-6 mps a day in maybe an hour or at most two. At the same cost as a club game that pays maybe half as many mps, if you win, and takes over 3 hours not counting travel time. But they seem popular and I’m sure the ACBL is laughing all the way to the bank


Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’ll improve your real life game😀

[mike777]

There seem to be individual games. These are robot only? You never play with rotating humans as partners?

Some are an hour and end? Others are 24 hours, not really sure.

Then there seems to be human only tournaments? When I glance in I see known world class players or platinum life masters and everyone else seems to be expert rated?

Thanks for the responses.

[mikeh]

mike777, on 2025-February-02, 19:13, said:

There seem to be individual games. These are robot only? You never play with rotating humans as partners?

Some are an hour and end? Others are 24 hours, not really sure.

Then there seems to be human only tournaments? When I glance in I see known world class players or platinum life masters and everyone else seems to be expert rated?

Thanks for the responses.

I tried an individual game once. I thought robots were bad…until I played with some (not all) of the humans. As for rating. The odds of a self-rated WC bbo player being expert, at least back a few years ago when I actually played in the Main Bridge Club appeared to be approximately the odds of being hit by lightning twice in one day.

As for self-rated experts, I don’t think I ever encountered one worthy of advanced status. BBO did try a little, with the Star system….disclosure, I was given star status….and I’d say maybe 50% of the star players play fairly well….much higher percentage if they’re from a recognized bridge power, such as US, Italy, Poland, France etc.

I’d look for ‘private’. I think that correlates more accurately with bridge skill.


The whole thing is silly. I’m entitled to call myself WC because I’ve represented my country in WC events. I’ve played a couple of teams in World Seniors championships who would have a tough time breaking average in one of our sectional Swiss. They come from tiny Zones with very few players and even fewer willing to spend the time and money averaging 1.5 VPs a match, yet they are, by BBO standards, entitled to call themselves WC.

Platinum Life Masters will have, usually, reasonable skill levels, but why are they not Grand Life Masters?

[diana_eva]

BBO offers many ACBL-sanctioned games. Most are individual games with robots, as Mike described, but we also offer a variety of pair games.

In ACBL World, you can find:

ACBL Pair Games
- Speedballs (12 boards): Run every hour, alternating between Matchpoints and IMPs.
- 18-board games: Matchpoints only.

• Open: Start every hour at :10 past the hour.
• Limited (<1500 and <500): Start every hour at :30 past the hour, alternating between 499ers and <1500.

ACBL Individual Games (with human partners):
- Available once per hour, alternating between Matchpoints and IMPs.

ACBL Robot Games:
- ACBL Robot Duplicates: Real-time, 12-board games with a 1-hour time limit.
- ACBL Daylong Tournaments: Play anytime within 24 hours (usually pinned at the top).
- ACBL Instant Tournaments: No time limit—play at your own pace, but inactivity can cause timeouts.

All ACBL World games award "unpigmented" ACBL masterpoints (full masterpoint award capped at 4 points), which are equivalent to club-level black points.

Other ACBL-sanctioned options:

ACBL Virtual Club Games:

• Managed by face-to-face clubs that also offer online sessions.
• These are all pairs, and they are typically longer (18+ boards), slower-paced, and more expensive than ACBL World games.
• Closer to the F2F club experience with a smaller, community-focused player pool.
• They award Black points and sometimes have promotions like "win 200% Black masterpoints". The masterpoint awards are capped at 2.5 (and multiple of that when there are special promos)

ACBL Clubhouse Games:

• A new initiative where ACBL HQ partnered with BBO to offer online pigmented masterpoints (Black, Red, Silver, and Gold). Masterpoint awards are higher in these, they cap at 4 points (and multiple of that when there are special promos)
• Only pair games, matchpoints scoring available, and most of them are 18-boards long. Short games are available for players <300
• The schedule is work in progress but they are typically available 4 times a day (around 10am, noon, 3pm and 7pm).
• Less frequent and more expensive than ACBL World games.

[mycroft]

"If you have not been passed in Blackwood, you cannot win an Individual" - Jeff Goldsmith (long time member of the ACBL C&C committee, probably was up in the MikeH skill category)
"I used to think the robots were bad, but then I played in an individual" - MikeH (paraphrased).

The players on these forums who complain about how bad the robots are come in two categories:

• those who are not flexible enough to "learn the GIB system and its idiosyncracies, and play that";
  
• those who are better than GIB and have played with partners who are near their level (even their students/mentees or "occasional"s, partly because they teach them) and have forgotten what the average(*) bridge player's skill looks like. Note: many of those "worse than GIB" partners are in the first category, and they're not flexible enough to play what you're giving them either.

I would always listen to MikeH when he says "[something] will not improve your game". That is his [near sole] goal; in fact many of my online disagreements with him come from the fact that that isn't everyone's bridge goal, and sometimes goes so far that "you won't get better if/unless" is a reason *not* to do what he suggests, for that player. And I don't really think he understands that (or, frankly, how that could be possible). But it also means that when he says "[something] will [not] improve your game", you know he's spent a lot of time looking at it and judging it, and has made that decision hundreds of times, and is right almost always.

(and frankly, more power to him for making that decision for him and his partners. That is a very hard road to hoe; it can be incredibly disheartening, even if you do get to "least bad in the world" (Hamman), because that still means you make mistakes and lose much more often than you win. It is not the decision I have made for myself (there was a time when I was at that decision point. I'm stuck with it now. But it was and is right, for me). I am very certain that my decision on what was best for me WRT bridge would be equally "would be nice, but a hell of a lot of work for something I really don't care that much about" in his eyes.)

But take that all in stride. Know what's available, and what you want out of bridge, and decide what is best for you and what BBO can offer.

[mikeh]

Mycroft is, imo, 100% correct. Back in the day, this forum attracted a LOT of expert players and near-experts actively looking for advice on how to improve. Without limiting the number, mostly because I’ve forgotten many of them, we had Justin Lall, Fred Gitelman, Frances Hinden and (rarely) her late husband.Roland Wald was a wonderful contributor. Cherdano and I had some spectacular feuds, but there is no doubt but that he was a valued contributor. Sometimes the discussions got heated.

I personally learned quite a bit, even from those with whom I disagreed…in fact, mostly from them

It’s been years since we had those players posting. Some have died. Some no doubt backed away from the game. Some no doubt got disillusioned with the site or got bored


Be that as it may, the overall level of bridge knowledge here is far below what it used to be,but I think I’ve never realized what that implies. We still have a handful of experts occasionally chiming in, but it’s not the same. This has become a forum where inexperienced players either seek simple advice or want to show off their (almost invariably not great) ideas.

So I think I’ll take a break. Maybe a permanent one. It’s pretty obvious that I’m wasting my time. Heck, even when I post a fairly simple but, imo, superb J2N structure, it falls on deaf ears.

I do miss the old days��

[jdiana]

mikeh, on 2025-February-03, 16:19, said:

So I think I’ll take a break. Maybe a permanent one. It’s pretty obvious that I’m wasting my time. Heck, even when I post a fairly simple but, imo, superb J2N structure, it falls on deaf ears.

I do miss the old days��

This goes back to mycroft's point - what you consider simple many of us consider too complicated for us, emphasis on the "for us". It doesn't mean that we haven't considered it, learned from your description of it, maybe even copied and pasted it into a Word document for later study. We've just concluded that, in our circumstances, it's not something we're ready to play. If I'm being honest, I think your good commentary is often marred by unnecessary rudeness, but I always read what you write in spite of that. I hope you decide to stick around. And I hope David Kok and others come back. The more knowledgeable bridge theorists, the better.