Bridge Base Online Australia
Onesimo Olafeso
Join the largest community of bridge players.
Play with your real life partner, or find a partner online.
Relax and kibitz world class players.
Chat, hang out and meet bridge players from all over the world.
The largest ACBL club in the world.
Simplest and cheapest way to play 24/7 and earn ACBL masterpoints.
Pairs, individuals, play with humans or with robots.
Choose from a large variety of ACBL sanctioned games.
Three annual NABC events.
Dr Anne Russell, a bridge player and retired academic at Queensland University of Technology, is a co-author of this article. Polly Fong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.Polly Fong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Catherine Haslam has received funding to support her research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Rotary Health, Australian Department of Veteran's Affairs, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, EU Commission for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, Higher Education Funding Council of England, the Church Urban Fund, Northcott Devon Medical Foundation, and the Canberra Region Medical Foundation
Tegan Cruwys receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council. Her research on social connectedness is also supported by Relationships Australia and Australian Rotary Health.
Third places have been recognised as important for forming community identities based on common experiences or shared interests. As Ray Oldenburg first observed, third places are where the heart of communities is found.
In particular, the bridge club provided them with meaningful engagement with others through a common interest. So strong was their community spirit that a core group of members has been working tirelessly for years to raise funds, and lobby politicians, for larger facilities to accommodate their steadily growing community.
At first, they played online as individuals with strangers or robots on the Bridge Base Online platform. But they soon started using their phones to communicate and a small group formed to play together online.
When these scheduled games became more regular, three of the members decided to create a new online version of their club. They offered to help anyone who needed technical assistance to play from home. About 200 members now regularly play online in casual games and tournaments.
Of course, online bridge is not the same as playing in person at the club. It comes with a steep learning curve and unavoidable internet connection issues. Players use their phones between games to speak with others, but they miss out on the casual banter that normally goes on during in-person games at the club.
These are the questions we strive to answer in our research. This research can help policymakers work out how to support those who are most vulnerable to the pandemic. For if we are to tackle the growing problem of community isolation, we all need to learn new tricks.
If you're enjoying the free area of our bridge platform, you may have noticed adverts. These ads, especially on mobile devices have become more prominent in the last few months. Mobile apps, unlike web pages, show full screen ads, sometimes small videos, which, although fairly common on free mobile applications, can be quite disruptive. If you play on BBO through your web browser you won't see full screen ads (login via www.bridgebase.com).
The BBO Prime Bridge Club allows for an ad free playing experience, as well as a range of other benefits. Every Saturday there's a dedicated daylong where you can earn BBO points and on top of that there's a monthly Prime Bridge Club tournament, with prepared hands. Inside the club you have access to play with unlimited advanced robots when needed. All this for a fixed monthly fee of $5.99. To get subscribed please start by clicking the BBO Prime button in the main BBO menu as shown below.
Enjoy a week without ads on BBO by trying any of our premium games. You can play both free and premium games on BBO. The premium games include fun, affordable games that you can play for just 20 cents, to ACBL-sanctioned games where you can win ACBL Masterpoints. Every time you play a premium game, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience for a week. Entry fees for these games are paid with BB$, which you can purchase by clicking here.
Universal base for Tunamatic bridge installation on jazz guitars. Suitable for 73.5 and 89.5 mm stud spacing (+/- 0,5mm).
Two rosewood base Stcks are connected by a flexible pertinax strip, so they adjust perfectly to the curve of an arched guitar top.
The bridge is mounted on two threaded studs, like on a classic jazz guitar bridge.
Enclosed are: 2 different pertinax strips to match the two stud spacings, 2 pairs of M4 studs (20 and 25 mm),
and 2 thumbwheels for height adjustment. Final attachment of the spacer strip with superglue
Immersed in the manifold horrors of lockdown, we do what we must to survive. For many of us, that involves a hobby: either a new one, or an old one taken to hitherto undreamt of heights. There are the pandemic pet people, the sourdough tragics (of whom I am the most tragic of all), the wine club weirdos, the Netflix junkies, the crazy crafters. And, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, there are also the bridge addicts, quietly (and not so quietly) meeting triumph and disaster over the bridge table every hour of the day and night, global scourge be damned.
This microcosm of COVID-19 life was recently revealed by a friend who is a bridge player herself: an award-winning investigative journalist who confessed that in lockdown she has been playing bridge almost every day, and dreaming about it at night. She wanted to talk more about her compulsion, but she couldn\\u2019t, because she was about to play bridge with a Supreme Court judge, a filmmaker and a QC.
Wait! I said. You need four people, all gathered round a small table, all stationery, and usually indoors, to play bridge. On what grounds can you possibly pretend you\\u2019re exercising? \\u201CIt\\u2019s all online!\\u201D she cried. Then she hung up.
She wasn\\u2019t the only one. As it turns out, it\\u2019s extremely difficult to talk to anyone about playing bridge during lockdown, because everyone is, in fact, playing bridge. I call Di Jagelman, a Sydney society doyenne with a lovely warm voice. Her first words are: \\u201CHullo? I\\u2019ve got to play a card! Oh no! Oh no!\\u201D
Joan Butts is the Australian Bridge Federation\\u2019s national teaching co-ordinator and has represented Australia as a player. In 2017, she founded her own online bridge school, . Oh yes, she says apologetically: bridge people are hopelessly distracted during games. (Butts herself once played an entire tournament without realising she was in labour \\u2013 i.e. in the actual process of having a baby \\u2013 that\\u2019s how focused she was on the game. After winning the tournament, she put down her cards, went to hospital, and swiftly gave birth to her son Tom.)
But even she admits COVID has taken bridgemania to a whole new level. People who formerly played once or twice a week \\u2013 occasionally, socially, at dinner parties when they were \\u201Ctired of making conversation but didn\\u2019t want to go home\\u201D, as one player put it to me \\u2013 are suddenly playing every day, sometimes multiple times a day.
But thanks to all the COVID-play, one of her group recently got to three points on the BBO ranking system. This isn\\u2019t very high, but even so, all of Chapman\\u2019s competitive instincts rose to the fore: \\u201CI immediately decided I must get to three, too. I was like a crazy woman. I was playing in tournament after tournament; I\\u2019d go to bed and have these visions of hands flashing through my head. And I didn\\u2019t get to three. In the end I had to go cold turkey \\u2013 then I got totally sledged by everyone, telling me I needed bridge AA: \\u2018My name is Penny and I am an inveterate underbidder.\\u2019\\u2006\\u201D
Addiction notwithstanding, \\u201CBridge has saved our lives during COVID,\\u201D says Judy Crawford, board member (of the Australian Chamber Orchestra), ambassador (of the Sydney Dance Company) and inveterate bridge player (in London and Paris, as well as Australia). \\u201CWe play online five or six times a week at the moment. It\\u2019s a godsend.\\u201D But not necessarily one calculated to increase domestic harmony. \\u201CI\\u2019ve had two husbands [millionaire businessman Ian Joye, and the late Macquarie Bank co-founder Robin Crawford] who played bridge. I thought it could be something we would do together. And then I thought perhaps not.\\u201D
John Roberts, former bridge pro and founder, in 1987, of Bridgetoday.com.au, describes one bridge-partner couple he knows who have found online bridge far preferable to the face-to-face version. \\u201CThey play on devices in separate rooms, and the husband said it\\u2019s much more relaxing now, because his wife can\\u2019t look at him.\\u201D
Of course, sometimes it\\u2019s not only the game people feel passionate about. \\u201CLots of people have bolted with their bridge pros,\\u201D says Di Jagelman. \\u201CThey\\u2019re the ski instructors of old ladies. They do something you like doing much better than you can do it.\\u201D She has a friend who did exactly that, in fact. Did it improve her bridge? Jagelman laughs. \\u201CNot markedly.\\u201D
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