Practice Bidding Scenarios Installation & User Guide
Hi, I’m David Bailey, creator of Practice Bidding Scenarios. This is a tool that lets you practice bidding on BBO, with random deals suitable for specific bidding conventions or other scenarios. There are over 300 scenarios to choose from. This is, and always will be, a free resource. Here’s an introduction to the latest installment.
PBS with BBA Compare is a browser extension that works with BBO. It works in Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox browsers. Click the link below to install the extension on your browser:
You may see a ‘Trust’ warning. This is common for small enterprises. You may safely ignore it.
When you go to BBO, it’s right side panel will look like this:
There is one addition. The bottom vertical tab on the right — the circled one that says "PBS" — click it. Voilà! You've arrived at Practice Bidding Scenarios with BBA Compare. Note that all of BBO’s other vertical tabs are still there. What you see here are the PBS Shortcuts.
The Strt Bid Tbl and Strt Teach Tbl start a BBO Bidding Table or Teaching Table. The Auction Compare activates code that will compare the local auction with the bidding of Bridge Bot Analyzer (another popular bidding robot). The last small button, the one with the double-headed arrow, is a toggle that will activate/deactivate BBO's "Randomly Rotate" feature. That feature randomly rotates the deals 180 degrees so that a partnership can see the deals from each side of the table. You would probably want to rotate when you're practicing with a partner.
To get started, click the button to Start a Bidding Table. That will seat you in the south seat and BBO’s GIB robots in the other seats. Then expand a section and click a button. Here, I’ve expanded the Minor/Major Sequences section and clicked GIB after 1C. This loads code into BBO’s Deal source/Advanced and Redeals. All of the deals for this scenario are expected to open 1C.
The Auction Compare button opens a smaller window on the right. At the completion of each auction, the Auction Compare popup will show how Bridge Bot Analyzer would bid the same hand. After you’ve reviewed the deal, click BBO’s Redeal button to get the next.
Bidding is NOT an exact science. You’ll see that GIB and BBA often bid differently and arrive at different contracts. This is what makes bridge interesting -- what’s the best way to bid, to play, and to defend a hand.
Buttons with a white background work OK with the GIB robots, but for the pink ones, GIB's bidding won't match what the scenario anticipates. It’s best to practice these with a partner.
You'll see (Lev) on some of the buttons. This means that the various types of hands are leveled so that the occurrence of the common ones doesn't overwhelm the less common ones.
One last thing. This project has been evolving for several years. Bridge Base Online has attracted lots of bridge players to their robot games, pair, and team tournaments. Stanislaw Mazur, the creator of the great bridge tool, BBOalert, created the foundation for this add-on. Stan’s extension had shortcut buttons. I realized the potential to use those buttons to load Dealer code for practice bidding. Stan created a SetDealerCode function to load my code into BBO’s Deal source/Advanced, where it is used to filter random deals for Bidding and Teaching tables. I have created Dealer code for over 300 hundred scenarios.
Edward Piwowar’s Bridge Bot Analyzer is used to bid the deals and for us to judge how well the bidding conforms to the intention of the scenario. BBA uses Convention Cards and supports a wide variety of bridge bidding agreements. Most importantly, BBA has a command-line interface that enables us to capture the bidding on lots of deals. We sometimes capture the BBO Robot bidding, but the lack of a command-line interface limits its usefulness.
Some time ago, Rick Wilson joined the team. Leveling was one of Rick’s early contributions. More recently, Rick reorganized and streamlined the process of creating the scenarios. He’s introduced Claude Code, an AI tool that really speeds things up AND improves the quality. Rick’s added Auction Compare, which compares bidding at the BBO Table to BBA’s bidding and adds Double-Dummy analysis. And he’s created lightweight browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari, which streamlined the code for Practice Bidding Scenarios and simplified the installation. PBS works with or without BBOalert.
It’s been a fun project. Help us imagine the next opportunity!
Postscript
The Facebook Group -- Practice Bidding Scenarios, is the place to talk about this, ask your questions, and give me your feedback. You DO NOT have to join Facebook to use it. That said, I wish you would. I will try to watch for posts on Bridge Winners, too.
You may also contact me via email: adavidbailey@gmail.com. I expect to create more bidding scenarios and, perhaps, incorporate some of yours.