BridgeScanner: A New Social Network for Bridge?

BridgeScanner: A New Social Network for Bridge?

 By Alex J. Coyne

Depending on where you live, sometimes it can be hard to find a bridge game, event or tournament to participate in that’s within or near your area. This statement can become even more true if you aren’t part of a local bridge club, if you’ve recently moved and you haven’t integrated into the local bridge circuit just yet or if you live in areas that would be considered further away from town.

BridgeScanner could be the answer to finding bridge games and events in a matter of seconds; you can even list your own event if you are a bridge club or organizer.

 

What is BridgeScanner?

BridgeScanner is like an online classifieds listing for bridge events and games, and the listings are organized by area so that you can find games to participate in that are close to you – or where you’re going to be on holiday. It’s great for bridge professionals who have to keep an eye on bridge events that they might not have known about, and it’s just as great for bridge amateurs who want to connect.

It’s like Craigslist, but exclusively for bridge games.

You can click on an event and be taken to an event page which holds details and links. And after the event is over, there’s  a link to the results.

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Interviewing BridgeScanner

We caught up with Bridge Scanner CEO Erikas Vainikonis by email this week and asked him to tell us about their project.

“I noticed there are a lot of problems in the world of bridge regarding communication of bridge events. The websites are technologically old, not updated regularly and there’s no multi-language ability.” wrote Erikas.

The lack of a comprehensive platform for communicating bridge events is what led to the start of the website. “After talking to some organizers, I realized that many of the things that needed to be done are too expensive for each stand-alone tournament – but it could be achieved if it was created for everyone.”

Future plans for BridgeScanner include an online entry fee payment option for certain tournaments which would allow you to fill in your entry application online. The logistics involved in setting this up means that it wouldn’t work for just a single tournament – but it works a lot better when we’re talking about a platform instead.

While they’re listing bridge events manually now, the company plans to quickly upgrade the platform to allow bridge organizers to create an individual account for listing their events. “We hope that at some point the majority of events will be updated by their organizers. All they need to do is create an account and start using the platform.”

And that’s just the beginning! Erikas outlines BridgeScanner’s plans for the future: “More languages, more handy tools for players to create their own calendars; we’re also planning to integrate certain software so we can display direct results optimized for mobile view.” And, Erikas says, they’re working on a “follow” feature that will allow players to follow certain events or players.

Could this be the start of a top social network aimed at bridge players – professionals or not?

Erikas thinks so, and the team welcomes any feedback that can help make the platform even better.

“We’re open to your ideas and feedback. We’re also very open to bridge organizers who want to list their events. Get in touch with us and we’ll try to make your event and BridgeScanner even better with your support.”

 Screenshot of website:BridgeScanner Bridge Tournaments Schedule Calendar