Challenges are a new and exciting one-on-one match against a friend or a random opponent.  You play with and against our GIB robots, and so does your opponent, in a fun duplicate format. To begin a challenge, you would select your preferences (IMP, MP, TP) and genre (friend or stranger) and let the software do the rest.

Challenge a Friend

Play a head to head challenge against someone you know. Type the username of the player you wish to challenge in the Invite box and launch your challenge! Your friend has 7 days to accept or reject your challenge.

Challenge a Stranger

Play an 8-board challenge against a random opponent. Enter the Bridge Arena and see how you do! Arena challenges expire in 24 hours.



You can have multiple challenges in various stages - Pending, Active, or Completed.  And you don't have to play all the boards in an Active challenge at one sitting. Active challenges have a set duration by which both players have to complete their assigned set of boards to compete.

Whether or not you choose to duel a friend or pit your wits against random opponents in the bridge arena, the battle for bridge supremacy awaits.

About the robots

The robots used on BBO are called GIB (Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridgeplayer). You can find out more about GIB's bidding system by clicking here.

The GIBs used in BBO play a relatively simple and natural 2/1 bidding system. You can find out the meaning of any bid by clicking on that bid as it appears in the bidding diagram. Furthermore,when it is your turn to bid, moving your mouse over the buttons for the various possible bids will cause an explanation of the bid you are considering (as your GIB partner will understand it) to be displayed.These explanations can be somewhat cryptic, but reading them carefully before you bid will help you to avoid misunderstandings with your GIB partner.