EBU Online Bridge Games

This page is here to give details of online bridge games organised by the EBU. 

More information is also available on another page about the various bridge platforms and other ways of playing on them.

EBU National Teams League

The National Teams League has replaced the Lockdown League which ran from March 2020 to August 2022. It offers organised Wednesday 16-board matches on RealBridge, with the option of playing them on BBO.

Bid72

 Bid72 hosts the EBU Bidding Contest. Every week each participant receives in-app (tablet or mobile phone) 5 hands to bid with their favourite partner in accordance with their own bidding system. One week later hand records, results and rankings will be mailed to all participants and they will be placed in divisions according to how well they do, moving up and down divisions according to their results. This service is completely free for EBU members and made available by bid72, the premium app on bridge bidding.

RealBridge

RealBridge uses your computer’s audio and video to simulate live play at a table, so that you can see your partner, opponents and the TD. This provides reassurance to players about board security and communication between players, and it is the platform used by the EBU for most of its major online competitions. Details of these can be found on our Events Summary page.

Bridge Base Online

Bridge Base Online (BBO) is the largest international online bridge provider. Signing up and playing in many of the games is free, though they also have tournaments that are paid for. This is the platform on which our EBU daily 12-board tournaments are run and where our Virtual Clubs' games are held. Clubs that are interested in this can find more information online.

Our EBU games run every day at 11am (Relaxed 9-high game), 12 noon (fast game) and at 2pm, 3:30pm, 7:30pm, 7:30pm (Relaxed 9-high game) and 9pm. They are all 12 boards long and cost $2.30.

The Relaxed 9-high games are limited to players with NGS grade of 9 or below. Systems are also restricted and details of permitted systems can be found here.

We also run Daylong 12-board Games on BBO, where you play with and against BBO robots at any time in the 24-hour period, pausing and re-starting as you wish. All of these games offer EBU master points.

EBU members do not need to register your EBU number anywhere with BBO. When you register for an EBU tournament it should prompt for your EBU number only if we do not already have it stored on BBO. If you have played in an EBU tournament and it has not appeared on your record in My EBU then please contact us via jonathan@ebu.co.uk and we will sort it out.

Since BBO is an American company payment is in dollars and the most common bidding systems are Standard American type (sayc or 2/1). Members who need to buy BB$ to play in paid games should buy them through the BBO website and not through the app, which will add on a significant surcharge.

Our advice to players who are interested in playing in paid games is first to sign up for a free login to BBO and play in some free games to familiarise themselves with how the game works, so that they can take part as soon as they are ready. Help with doing this is available in this document.

NB In tournaments, BBO records all table history including chat between individual players at a table. This can be accessed by our EBU TDs but will only be used for the purposes of disciplinary and ethics cases or resolving disputes about timing or disclosure.

More useful links:

Funbridge

Funbridge hosts our regular daily online robot games, which give EBU master points. Information about them is available on our webpage. They have also provided a document explaining how a club can create its own (robot) games exclusively for its own members.

The 12-board daily robot games are scored by match-points and cost 20 Diamonds. These games are in addition to the 20-board daily games (40 Diamonds), scored by IMPs on Monday and Friday, and matchpoints otherwise. The games are accessed by logging on to Funbridge and navigating to Federation Tournaments.

You can play them at any time during the competition period, stopping and restarting as often as you wish. Games take place every day and run until midnight (24 hours). Acol is one of the bidding systems available for you to choose (which isn't always the case with some online platforms), and you can set which conventions and carding methods you and your robotic partner play.There are also ladders each month for the main competitions as well as a handicap ladder and a quarterly ladder, each with cash prizes. The games are open to everyone. Please see the FAQ for more details on the competitions and for information on how to take part.