Bridge and Online Casinos
Playing Bridge is most commonly done in physical locations, but thanks to modern day innovation, you can play this classic for real money online.
by Annie Beeson for Great Bridge Links. Bridge, since its inception, has remained one of the most popular card games on the planet. Most often played in duplicate/tournament form or among friends in the privacy of home, playing bridge online is a foreign idea to many lovers of the game. But this is changing, and money bridge is now an option to play at casinos online.
Card Games at the Casino In General
Bridge is a partnership game, and you might wonder how an online casino can maintain fairness. Bridge partners should not be able to see each other’s hands and the only communication should be through the bidding and play of the cards. Any other communications between partners – say by telephone, chat, text or perhaps they’re playing in the same room – would totally defeat the purpose of the game. Online casino operators have seen it all, which is why most online casino games, like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Casino Hold’em, involve a single player playing against the casino rather than other players. This ensures that cross communication is impossible. There are some multiplayer games, such as Poker in Poker Rooms, where individual players are playing against each other and while it’s tough to prevent table talk online t. And since Poker is not a team game, only one player would benefit anyway. These methods are now also being used with online bridge to ensure there is no cheating.
How Online Bridge Works
In some online bridge casinos your partner will be a robot, and the opposing team will consist of a real person and their computer software partner. While the game is still four players, only two of them are real people. The positions of the humans and robots are randomly generated and since the partners are robots, players are not able to engage in any form of unauthorized communication.
In this kind of online bridge, the robots used are very good, but what makes the game really fair is that all the robots have the same skill level.
At BridgeBase.com’s Money Bridge, the robots are built using the bridge-playing program Ginsberg’s Intelligent Bridge Player (GIB). It’s an excellent program and would give even master bridge players a run for their money in some cases, but certainly not all. The decision-making, bidding, and general complexity makes bridge a game that does not always have a set mathematical formula that determines the best odds of a bid or even play, especially when you are dealing with an fallible partner. Nobody’s perfect, including robots!
In other bridge casinos, for example BridgeBig.com, you are able to play with a human partner in what is known as Individual Competition. However, because being able to choose said partner would almost guarantee cheating at some level by some players, the casino will randomly place human players together at tables when they choose to play. This ensures that your partner is a stranger, or at least is more than likely a stranger, unless you and your friend are lucky enough to be randomly placed on the same table and on the same team, though if cheating is detected, both of you could be banned. In these same casinos, a robot is often used to fill in for spots at the table if there are not enough players looking for a game. This ensures that you can play bridge whenever the mood strikes and don’t have to wait around for all four seats to be filled. These robots, too, are most commonly based on GIB.
Should I Play Bridge Online?
If you are a good bridge player, just like if you are a good poker player, you can win a lot of money playing online. It is important to be sure that the online casino that offers it has a good reputation, is highly ranked on third-party review sites, and has the proper licensing, jurisdiction, and certifications. If that is established, we see no reason why playing bridge online would be any different than playing any other casino game online. You don’t have to wait around for a local tournament or your friends to come over. In just a few clicks, you can be instantly in a game, and many of these casinos even offer deposit-matching bonuses that give new players free money to play with.
The world of online bridge also includes hundreds of games that don’t involve money. In these games you can play with your friends or favourite partners and teams. You can take classes, practice for tournaments, or even play against robots for the mental exercise. Watch for an upcoming blog on playing bridge online.