We offer ACBL sanctioned games to all bridge players. You do not have to be a member of the ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) to participate in these high quality games. An opportunity for our North American players to collect Masterpoints, the ACBL Speedballs and other ACBL tournaments have proved popular among the non-USA community as well, thanks to their excellent Directors as well as the friendly, yet competitive atmosphere. In addition to the “all-human” games, ACBL robot tournaments are available 24/7 in a variety of flavors.
Interested? Here’s how to get started:
1. Click the ACBL World button.
2. If you are a member of the ACBL, and want the ACBL masterpoints won online added to your ACBL masterpoints total, load your ACBL membership number to your BBO account. You only need to do that once.
3. ACBL games are not free. You will need to purchase some BB$ (BBO dollars) to pay the entry fees. Click the BB$ button on the top horizontal row of buttons, or email accounting@bridgebase.com if you need assistance.
Only ACBL sanctioned tournaments award ACBL masterpoints, so that’s something to keep in mind. Not every tournament on BBO is an ACBL tournament. All ACBL games have the word “ACBL” in the tournament name. If that is missing, it is not an ACBL tournament.
Once in ACBL World, you can choose from a multitude of games:
- ACBL Speedballs are tournaments with people, either Pairs or Individuals. The Pair tournaments offer a Partnership desk, so you can pair up with someone even if you do not have a partner;
- Robot tournaments are games where you are sitting South, playing with and against three robots. Your results are compared with the other human players sitting South and playing with identical robots – which makes this form of game very “pure”. You can pick from:
- ACBL Daylong Tournaments, where you can join, play a few boards, quit, then resume any time during the day.
- ACBL Instant Tournaments, where the game starts right away and you get your scores instantly – no need to wait around for the tournament to start, or wait for everyone else to finish to see how you did.
- ACBL Robot Duplicates are played “live”, that is everyone plays the same hands simultaneously.
And finally, for the robot tournaments, it helps to familiarize yourself a little with Robot’s system. All bids are explained and alerted during the game, so you won’t have to learn it by heart, but it helps to keep the robot system notes handy.
If you get stuck or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to email us at acbl@bridgebase.com — we’ll get you going in no time! Have fun playing!