REVIEW: Bridge Baron

Software: Bridge Baron 11
Platform: Windows and Macintosh/iMac
Publisher: Great Game Products
Web Site: www.BridgeBaron.com
Price: $59.95 (upgrade price: $29.95)

NOTES:
If you have never tried a bridge-playing program, read about them before continuing this review to learn, in general, how the programs work and the features they normally have.

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Playing Bridge Baron

BB's interface consists of two screens. The main menu screen is where you are able to enter options for bidding systems and players, among other things. BB11 has added a beautifully done graphic of a card table in an enormous, ornate room, complete with flickering flames on a candelabrum and in the fireplace. (See footnote 1.)

The playing screen is where the playing of games takes place. BB 11 has an improved interface for bidding. In BB9 and before, you had to click a number and a suit. Now you just have to click once on the suit in the desired number row.

If you do not understand what the bidding shows, you can click on a button (Interpret) for the program's interpretation of what the bidding has shown each hand to have.

You can also click for an evaluation of your own hand, and "Hint" on the menu bar will suggest a bid if you feel you need help or if you are just curious about what BB would bid with your hand.

Conventions

BB 11 has a couple of dozen bidding conventions, almost half of which were added to this version. This is still a small number of conventions compared to the other top programs. (Note 2)

For some reason, neither the program nor its Help file gives even the briefest of explanations of what the conventions are. However, once you have researched them on your own, a new feature in BB 11 will generate hands which will let you practice bidding specified conventions.

In addition to the conventions, BB supports five different ranges for opening 1NT: 16-18, 15-17, 14-16, 13-15, and 12-14. (Note 3)

BB lets you choose any of three systems (Standard American, 2/1 Forcing, and ACOL) which have a few opening bid differences which cannot otherwise be selected from the conventions list.

ACOL uses 4-card majors, a 20-22 point 2NT, and 3NT to show a solid minor. Standard American uses 5-card majors, a 22-24 point 2NT, and a 25-28 point 3NT. "2/1 Forcing" is the same as S.A., except for 2/1 being forcing and two other conventions from the list. (Note 4)

As far as defensive conventions, BB does not allow you to specify lead or discard conventions. BB plays mostly normal leads and attitude discards.

Convention Cards

A new feature of BB11 is the ability to see a Convention Card for either side during play. This is a very worthwhile addition to the program, since it is good practice for becoming more familiar with the Convention Card.

The BB Convention Cards go beyond showing you which conventions you selected. It also shows how the program is playing conventions and bidding "styles" over which you have no control, For example, you can choose to play Negative Doubles, but your card shows that BB plays Negative Doubles through 2S, a feature which you cannot alter.

The Convention Card also shows the Defensive Carding and Lead conventions that BB uses (and over which you have no control), such as Attitude signals and leading Middle-Up-Down from three small.

Although you can view the CC during a game, you cannot change conventions during a game. And if you quit a game to change conventions (or players), you lose your cumulative score. (Note 5)

Playing Strength

BB's time-to-think can be set from 0 to 120 seconds. Our impression is that BB's algorithms are extensive enough that its play does not degrade substantially when its thinking time is set to zero.

This means if you have a Type A personality and cannot stand waiting for a program to think, you can still get a good game out of BB.

Compared to version 9, BB11 has improved its play substantially. Its set of algorithms still has holes in it, but they come up a lot less frequently. (Note 5)

You can even follow its algorithms on a pop-up flowchart

Whereas an average duplicate player used to be able to trounce BB9 in the Duplicate scoring mode, BB11 can compete with such a player pretty evenly now.

Duplicate Scoring

One feature of BB which is just about enough to make it preferable to other programs which may play a little bit better is its optional Duplicate scoring mode.

In this mode, you play a deal, then the program replays the same deal, bidding and playing the same cards you just had. Then your score is compared to the computer's and points awarded to the player who did the best.

As regular duplicate bridge players know, this makes playing more fun even when you are not getting good cards. In rubber bridge scoring, which the other top programs have, you can never beat the computer players when they are getting all the good cards, and you win too easily, even when you play poorly, when you are getting all the good cards.

Only BB's duplicate scoring really lets you compare your bidding and play against the computer for each deal and score accordingly. It's not enough that you get good cards, you still have to bid and play them optimally.

Extra Features

In addition to playing against the computer, Bridge Baron lets you play bridge against other humanoids over the Internet, local networks, or computer-to-computer connection via serial port or modem.

BB also lets you play games from actual bridge tournaments and compare your results to the experts. Version 11 adds two new tournaments for a total of five tournaments, and more can be purchased separately on CD-ROM. One tournament may consist of over 15 sessions with 27 or more boards per session, so this is a major feature.

New bridge challenges have been added for 2001, for a total of 72 bridge challenge deals. These are deals for which you have to play to make a specified contract. The program beeps at you if you select a wrong card, so you don't waste time on a hopeless line of play. The challenges are a fun way to test and improve your skill. (Note 6)

Another practice feature BB has is the ability to generate deals matching your specified criteria. This is useful for practicing your bidding system.

The Bottom Line

You could easily spend over $100 to buy separate programs from other companies which do pretty much the same as the Extra features just discussed, so this makes BB a pretty good deal.

As far as its bridge playing ability goes, compared to the other top programs, BB plays perhaps the best fast game, but it is not quite as strong as GIB and Q-Plus when taking more time to think.

Its support for Conventions is not as extensive as the others, but it generally has better extra features.

The more casual player will have his hands full with Bride Baron 11 and will find it to be an excellent learning tool, in addition to being a lot of fun to play.

Even the more expert player should enjoy Bridge Baron 11, if for no other reason than it is the only program to offer duplicate scoring, and it still plays a reasonably decent game.

Nitpicking Footnotes

The following problems are too small to affect your buying decision, yet they still deserve mentioning for the sake of preparing you for what to expect. The numbers are footnotes in the review text. If you clicked on a footnote to get here, click the Back button to return.

(1) BB 9.0 had a problem in that it always started up in full screen mode, which spreads the hands out too much when you play. So there was a nuisance of having to resize the display every time you started the program. BB 10.0 fixed this problem, remembering the window size and placement each time.

Now BB 11.0 has brought the problem back, presumably so that you can enjoy the beautiful menu screen each time you start the program. This is an unnecessary nuisance, especially considering that the graphic adds no functionality to the program.

(2) The selection boxes for conventions do not work like selection boxes in most programs. You cannot simply double-click a convention to move it into the "selected" box. You must click it, then move down and click a button, then back up and click another one, etc. The ideal would be to be able to select more than one convention at a time.

(3) BB supports 5 ranges for 1NT opening, but stops short of supporting 11-13, which is probably played a lot more than, say 13-15 or 14-16. Some people play one-point wider ranges, such as 15-18 or 11-14, which is not supported. The program should allow you to enter your own range.

(4) There are so few differences in the three "systems", it is not clear why BB has "selecting a system" (S.A., ACOL, 2/1) as a "feature". The only differences which cannot be selected from the conventions list are for ACOL -- 4-card majors and different ranges for 2NT and 3NT. It would be better if these features were selectable separately.

(5) You cannot change players (nor conventions) during a game in BB11 as you could in version 9. Being able to change players at any time was a nice feature in BB9 because it had some horrible bidding bugs. If one of these came up, you could change the guilty player from BB to Human, make the correct bid, then change back to BB and continue on. Not ideal, since you had to see the offender's cards, but better than nothing.

BB11 does not make as many goofy bids as did BB9, but it still makes some. The software should provide some means for changing such bids. As you can see in this screen shot, the program says that South has 9+ HCPs and 26+ Total Points, meaning that it thinks South has 17 points worth of distribution.

One problem held over from BB9 is that BB tends to be bull-headed when bidding a 6-card suit and partner has signed off at 3NT. (See an example.)

(6) To get to the next game in the bridge challenges and deal library lists is a bit of a nusiance. It would be nice if BB had a button for "next deal".

Bridge Baron