This Sunday, November 24, we organized a 2-hour BBO Prime Questions and Answers session hosted by yellow hosts and BBO staff members diana_eva, macaw, aurora and nolexpeet.
The setting was a Main Bridge Club table where our 4 hosts played, chatted, joked and took questions from kibitzers. In case you missed it or want to go over what was discussed, here’s the transcript.
Q: Is BBO Prime a new site?
A: https://www.bridgebase.com/doc/prime/About_Prime.php It’s a new subscription service and a new club on BBO. That link explains more.
Q: People who suddenly received the Prime badge in profile, without subscribing to BBO Prime are concerned they will be charged
A: So to clarify this. About 35,000 BBO users who have been online for a long time and made many friends and were very “socially active” so to speak… received free Prime membership for a couple of months.
That’s a LOT of people. That’s why there are so many badges all over the place. But they will not be charged. It’s free, it’s a gift and no commitment to pay when the free months end
Q: Ok I have a problem. In some tournaments 2♦ multi is not allowed
A: In ACBL tournaments specifically 2♦ multi is not allowed
Other tournament don’t have that rule, and it’s up to the tournament organizer. In live bridge it depends on the country and on the jurisdiction.
In Italy for example psych is forbidden in club games. But in ACBL it is allowed. Depends on the jurisdiction.
Q: When does the free admission to the Prime Club end for the “popular” people?
A: In about a month from now.
Q: In bbo new mobile version I got 10$=₹924.84. But I see in google 1$=₹71. Can you tell me about it.
A: The mobile app purchase does have a premium cost from the app company involved.
The appstores have some pretty big fees (30-50% more than web). So the prices for BB$ on the mobile apps will be higher, especially if taxes in your country are high (eg VAT in European countries).
On web though the BB$ prices have not changed.
Q: One problem for Beginners and intermediate is the fast pace of Speedball. Can you replicate a similar competition but allowing more time, maybe 7-8 minutes? It hurts the ability to count and visualize the hands when it is so short and you are trying
A: Good suggestion and one we’ve talked about on occasion.
The time issue is harder. We’ve tried the longer games and the players really didn’t join the games and they rarely ran.
The ACBL requires we have 3 tables, and most of the time the slow games didn’t have that many tables.
Q: In this Prime Club, are there organized tourneys & what is the setup? ACBL sanctioned.
A: Not at this time. And no, not ACBL. The prime bridge club is just that, a club for social play and chat and an easier to police community. But we are considering adding more benefits to the BBO Prime membership. Some way to award masterpoints too, although not sure how ACBL might fit in there.
Q: In the Prime Club can we get masterpoints?
A: Not at the moment, but we are considering adding more benefits to the BBO Prime membership.
Q: Will the advanced bots still be available gratis for paying Prime Members?
A: Free advanced robots are one of the benefits of the BBO Prime Club. That’s a permanent benefit, not something temporary.
Q: In the Prime club will there be any kind of “bulletin board” where you can post perhaps a partnership search? Perhaps you could also search for times your “partner” might be available.
A: That’s an interesting suggestion. Right now the Prime Club works like all the other clubs. You start a table, maybe send a chat to club to call people to your table. But some sort of a partnership desk would be interesting.
Q: There is BBO forums to find a partner but it is not used by many. Maybe a special section on BBO forums?
A: There is one already but we haven’t seen it to be very successful. We usually are careful to feature the partner requests in newsfeed too, to help the player asking.
Maybe the simple truth is most people just don’t look or read, they click their Play button and are pretty oblivious of anything else. We’ll keep trying, it’s something useful for sure
Q: When BBO repare BBO HOSING fast Keys one new update? sent mails 2 times. Fast keys are keys you or other program in Window to host Tourneys Not work New Update.
A: If you are referring to an external software that doesn’t work with BBO’s html version that’s not something we control.
Q: If I’m paying for BBO prime, can I invite non-paying members to my table?
A: Yes, you can. You can reserve the seat for your friend and this allows them to join your table even if they are not a member – as your guest.
Q: What about when BBO is a full pay site in a year, will non-paying members still have some access?
A: We are not aware of plans to make BBO a full pay site. The BBO mission has always been “free unlimited access”.
Of course some features are pay but they are completely optional.
Basic playing, watching, play with robots is free and doesn’t even require a membership in some cases.
Q: I tried several times to play it seems there is never any open table! Always you are the host and if you figure out change the players to robots you have to wait and wait.
A: Yes that’s a problem. The robots help so you won’t sit and wait forever, but the purpose was to make friends and socialize. That’s not going very well at the moment. I think chatting to the club to call for players would help.
Q: How can I pay *BBO PRIME*? through bb$?
A: When you first join you are not charged because the first month is free. When the free month expires, BBO first checks your BB$ balance. If there are enough BB$ there, it takes the $$ from your balance. If not, it charges your credit card.
But — if you subscribe on mobile, the subscription mechanism is handled by the appstore (Android, or Apple). So on mobile, it’s like any other subscription, eg netflix or spotify, they charge the CC directly after the free trial expires.
Q: Some discount for pay 1 years subscription?
A: At the moment it’s just monthly. We’ll probably finetune in the future, but right now we are trying to get the basic functions right and find out what players would like to see in their subscription.
Q: I am trying to understand why should I continue after the trial period? So far it doesn’t look good.
A: Depends what you like to do. If you are a “competitive” player, there isn’t much competitive in the Prime offer. It’s for club, social, casual players, newcomers to BBO who are not ready yet to dive into tournaments.
BBO Prime is supposed to be mostly around the club, but indeed the club still needs help to take off.
Q: I think that the advanced bots are just genius!
A: Yes we found them very helpful too. Something like “sub my bot” to allow anyone to take over would be the best of both worlds — use the robot as a sub until a human joins.
Q: In *Club* chat option is the message sent to all prime members?
A: Yes, if you send a chat to club in the Prime club it goes to all players in the club.
Q: So I’m trying to justify BBO prime…. what does it give me that I don’t already have?
A: It gives free advanced robots in the prime club, some pretty cool bridge articles every day and every week, a shiny badge in profile so you can brag you’re special and access to the Prime Club. Plus the usual stuff all pay things give – no ads, tender love and care from support.
Q: Any teaching sessions in Prime?
A: Not at the moment, but there are very good educational bridge articles every week.
Q: Does BBO know how many NEW people join each month? Can BBO distinguish between a NEW person and an ongoing BBO person who is so rude they try again under a new bbo ID?
A: That’s actually one of the reasons for making prime a pay thing. Unfortunately, with how many devices, networks, vpns and whatnot it’s getting almost impossible to block someone determined to come back.
To make things even harder, the laws about tracking users are becoming more strict, so we cannot use information like device identifier and anything very personal because it would infringe on that person’s privacy.
So, one way to keep track better is to ask for credit card, that’s one way to get “verified”.
Q: I am interested to know why you picked the particular “price point”. You clearly seek MONTHLY money. Did you overprice?
A: Depends how you count and whether what Prime offers is useful to you. Only the advanced robots are normally 1 BB$/day…
Q: I know many of my friends trying prime memberships but when check under prime no friends show!
A: The “Friends” tab in the Prime Bridge Club shows whether or not there are friends of yours playing in the club. But this is a good idea, to list Prime people in the People tab to make it easier to find someone (even when they are not sitting at a table in the Prime Club).
Q: When flash goes so goes any decent BBO computer interface. I think 90% of BBO spare money should go to software upgrades of the dreadful V3.
A: We hope to improve the html version and make it much better than the older flash version, but it’s true that we have not made progress very fast. We have a team of new developers who are still getting used to the BBO setup and convolutions.
Q: We used to be able to colour code BBO IDs. Is there a plan to continue that on the new version?
A: Yes, the color coded categories will be back at some point.
Q: I run team matches every single day. Do those developers ask me HOW they need to improve? Or just ponder it alone?
A: We are aware that there’s a flurry of bugs and UX improvements related to team match creation, sorry about that. It’s on the pipeline, we’ll address
Q: Who came up with prime club idea? Obviously good for business but it’s not clear why player should pay.
If I had to give BBO a recommendation, it would be to have a “ranking” system, so that people could play with players and opponents of their caliber. But BBO is wonderful even absent that.
Also I would reconstruct the team format so that the team didn’t dissipate when players leave… very frustrating to join a team and have it extinguish in the middle of the event.
A: Noted the suggestion to add ranking and filters, we’ll consider it, along with country filters.
For the team matches that dissipate, something like a minimum completion rate should be enough to prevent frequent runners from spoiling it. So yes, you are right, that also needs improvement.
Q: Another suggestion is not to cancel partnership entry to a tourney at beginning when one player is disconnected at the beginning of a tourney.
A: Yes, this is something on our wish list for the ACBL games. We have some planned improvements for orphaned pairs. Hope we’ll be able to add them soon.
Q: Any extra facilities for juniors?
A: Like give them prime membership? Or what do you mean?
Q: One suggestion for prime could be adjusting membership fees for teachers and students with special tournaments.
A: We already give a lot of facilities to students and teachers. Tournaments aren’t really a Prime thing, at least not at the moment.
As for students, teachers, juniors… BBO isn’t really suitable for juniors due to the live chat, so we usually give anonymous tools and games to the teachers, like for example minibridge or bridgemaster, which do not require a BBO username.
We’ll consider prime access too.
Q: Hi when is New update get Bug out off member listing for private clubs?
A: The last BBO upgrade introduced a bug affecting private clubs. It will be fixed with the next server upgrade, planned for early next week.
It was not an intentional mastermind play to emphasize the Prime club, just a bad bug. Sorry about that, we’ve scheduled maintenance for next week to fix it.
Q: I think that in the new Prime Club every member should have a name in his/her profile. Can’t use a CC verified name because some people use their spouses’ CC…
A: Not sure about that. Sharing real name is optional, we can’t really force people to share their name if they don’t want to and we don’t need it.
That is not mandatory information to enjoy bridge or use the site. Normally the common sense rule is “only ask for what is necessary”. We can play with each other and enjoy it without knowing the name on credit card.
Q: If it’s supposed to be a friendly club then we should at least know the person’s first name even if it is a false one.
A: Sure, so we can ask them 🙂 And some people like being a superhero and not giving their real name — Part of the play
We don’t have to impose it as a membership rule, I think…
Q: After a while the articles from BBO Prime will be available also on BBO news?
A: Yes, the archives will become public after a year or two, not sure yet how long.
Q: It is possible to transfer or share the BBO Prime membership?
A: Nope re transfer.
Share, not sure what you mean. We can’t really control whether someone shares the same tablet and username, I guess there are families who do it. In theory no, but in practice we won’t really know who’s behind the screen.
We would be able to see if it’s a different device, but if same device and people take turns to play on it, probably not.
Q: One of the most frequent questions we’ve been receiving related to BBO Prime is “How do I join”?
A: We thought it would be really intuitive, but perhaps it isn’t that clear. So, if you want to give it a try, click the BBO Prime button, then “Join the BBO Prime Community”. First month is free.
This mix of Main Club play and AMA was fun and enjoyable, so we’re thinking to do it more often. Look for diana_eva, macaw, aurora or nolexpeet in the list of online Hosts or in the list of Main Bridge Club tables and don’t hesitate to send them your questions via private chat, or join their table. They will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Comments
9 responses to “BBO Prime Q&A – Summary”
i tried to open atable to play with 3 robots but cant seem to get it to work i must be missing something ?
click the empty seats to place the robots, maybe that’s the part that was missing.
i had tried reserving the empty seats maybe that’s what was wrong thanks for your prompt and helpful response
I have discussed this with support and it seems there is no immediate plan to address this.
However, I am interested in Prime but am hesitant to have my credit card in too many places. Bigger outfits than Bbo have had security issues. Currently I prefer to have my credit card t in one place and conduct all transactions from there.
You allude to wanting it as recognization tool. That’s the 1st meaningful reason I’ve heard for insisting on it. But still I am unconvinced.
Aside from that, at a high level I see it as a simple thing. Join Prime and if there are not enough BBO$ in your account your membership is suspended until $ appears. Perhaps a message stating the shortage of funds could be sent. Similar to when not enough $ are there when you try to register for a game.
This is a reasonable suggestion, we’ll discuss and improve the various ways to subscribe.
Is there a way to make the robots play faster in in IMP and MP regular game, i.e. not prime games?
You can turn off card animation in the settings. Click Account, then Settings. It is possible that they are slow due to connectivity problems, in which case a setting won’t fix it. Check your internet connection too, see if using a wired connection or simply moving closer to the router helps.
how to unsubscribe prime membership
Click BBO Prime, then “Leave the BBO Prime Community”. If you only see an option to “Join” the Prime Community it means you already unsubscribed, and you’re enjoying the rest of the month before the subscription expires.