Contract Bridge

A new online bridge platform popped in to the interweb.

Just stumbled upon them recently, not sure how long they've been around for.

They have a nice sleek app - lets you practice against their "Powershark" robot (which is supposedly an improvement over the former World Champion SharkBridge engine) - and also have Daylong IMP and MP "mini" tournaments, clearly inspired from BBO.

I played a few deals already. Powershark is quite decent, although it doesn't allow you to tweak the bidding system.

It was good to see another new platform competing with BBO, Funbridge, IntoBridge, TrickyBridge and likes.

Note : I am not affiliated with WBT in any way shape or form. Just thought of sharing this with the community because it's always good when more people get involved with bridge :-)

I started playing Bridge after moving to a new community as a way to sort of force myself to get some social interaction. That was maybe a bad move as the bridge community is so old, and sort of insular, that it didn't really lead to much. Though I imagine if I was traveling to lots of tournaments I'd feel differently.

That being said, I play a lot online despite a preference for in-person.

Is it more difficult for you all to play in-person recently? Does it feel like we are moving into a largely online space?

I will start.

I find two things most fascinating about Bridge (among a million other things lol)

(1) The first being the obligatory Duplicate scoring system. It revolutionized the game by getting rid of the luck factor in a card game where hands are dealt randomly. Basically it says "I get a shit hand, and you get the same shit hand. Let's see who deals with it better !"

(2) The other thing that fascinates me is - when the dummy comes down, each of the other three players gets to see about half the deck, but they each have a distinct version of reality in front of them, which drives their individual decision processes. This is a beautiful aspect of Bridge that I haven't seen in other card games.

Would love to hear others' comments on this !

Basically what the title says.

Presently, when we talk about "competitive chess", we mean Duplicate. However, I know people still play Rubber and/or Chicago when it comes to "social bridge" or "kitchen table" bridge.

Just being curious, do any of you still play Rubber or Chicago ? And why ?

An article which might be of interest to people starting out, and in general, everybody.

The original Wall Street Journal article has been paywalled since this came out - so posting a wayback url.

Prodding through this earth-shattering silence in this community for over two weeks - here I decided to debut with an opening post.

Nothing special - just comment with what bidding systems ya'll play, how long you have been playing Bridge, and any other interesting thing about you that you want to share.

To start with - I am an intermediate level 2/1 GF player, started getting into Bridge a couple of years ago - after playing Chess for over two decades.

Apart from BridgeWinners, I joined the Bridge Subreddit just in search for civilized Bridge discussions.

After the Reddit API saga - I jumped ship and landed in Lemmy.

So far liking it here. Would like more if people continue the discussion.

Next ?

Welcome to Lemmy, all the Bridge Addicts !

I am an Intermediate hobbyist player (2/1 GF). I was a lurker (but did post reasonably as well lol) in r/bridge.

I noticed that Lemmy was sorely lacking a community on Bridge, and so I created one.

Welcome once again !