IMPORTANT! Don't read just the text you see; SCROLL DOWN!

Bridgebase Online allows us to form a "bidding table" where zero to three of the players at the table will be robots (See GIB). The auction transpires, but the resulting contract is not played out— excellent for bidding practice.

One option when sitting at a bidding table is to press the "Deal Source" button where you will see a series of tabbed windows. There, specific bidding constraints can be entered for the hands BBO will deal. The "Advanced" tab leads to the most powerful feature: the ability to enter constraints in a programmer-like language. Through this, you can specify very tightly how BBO will deal the cards in a way that lends itself to practicing a given convention. The links in the table below lead to constraint files I have used.

To use a constraint file, click one of the links below and copy the file (text only). Be sure to copy the entire thing, parentheses and all; they matter. Save it to your own machine and paste it into the BBO bidding table advanced tab. Before you leave the "advanced" tab, be sure you check "Use this input for the Dealer program." If you forget this check box, the content you just pasted won't be used.

The robots you bid against can be made silent or noisy. When you create a BBO bidding table, check the radio button labelled "Opponent's Bidding" "Controlled by Host". This will cause the BBO robot players to interfere with your auction per the GIB schema.

Important: Switcheroo. You and partner may be confident that you can handle every combination of hands that might respond to a one notrump opener, but are you just as confident that you could handle the same 26 cards if the opposite hand were the dealer (in other words, the responding hand is the balanced 15-17)? This is the sort of thing switcheroo forces you to check. Don't be surprised when BBO makes the "wrong" hand the dealer.