The playing strength of BB12 can be set according to the “reflexion time” allotted per deal, and the first thing that one should do after installing (which on my computer went as smoothly as possible) is to set up the playing options: Options / Gameplay Settings.

Choose your preferred game type (Duplicate, Rubber or Chicago), and put the thinking time at the highest or second highest level. Below that, BB12 tends to make ma ny silly mistakes (and even at those levels, sometimes, strange things happen…) Inside the Gameplay Settings there is a number of additional options that can be tweaked, according to personal taste. Now, choose your conventions and bidding style: Options / Bidding Conventions and Bidding Aggressiveness.

After setting up these options, you should be ready to go… There are a number of possibilities: You can “just” play some hands against the computer, or you can “compete”. In Competition mode, you can enter a team game, comparing with the computer or with other players playing with your cards, or play one of a number of matchpointed events that come with the program, with scoring after the end of each hand. After playing all the events, it is possible to order some more. You can also play online, locating players through a chat room in Yahoo. There is a “Learn” option, where it is possible to practise bridge conventions or play problems. In the module of convention learning, I found that the learning is not very effective because the computer starts by saying exactly what convention will be practised, and the hand always fits the USE of the convention, and never the NON USE, which is equally important. This is an area where BB12 can improve a lot (providing better means for the aspiring players that want to learn new things).

There are two interesting tools: A deal generator, and the possibility to store and retrieve deals to/from libraries. The possibility to read hands in ABCL (.dat) and Portable Bridge Notation (.pbn) formats is welcomed. Imagine for example that your bridge club can provide you with the deals that are played… Just feed them into BB12 and replay them at your leisure. If you can understand “.pbn”, you can even annotate the hands and create a library of “brilliances and blunders” to quickly improve your game.

I tried this (my club uses .dup files, which can be converted to .pbn with a number of shareware programs available) and was a little sad to see that I could select which player to “be” (N/S/E/W), but could not avoid looking at all four hands! I want a program that shows me only “my” hand, when reading from a library file. Seeing all four hands at the same time just makes it a lot less useful than what BB12 could be.

One great feature for beginners is the number of help options, like the use of the program itself (to be expected…), bridge initiation, etc.

One irritating feature is that you can claim as declarer, and the program tries to guess how many tricks you can claim, but you cannot claim (or concede) in defense, which sometimes is very annoying.

Adding it up, there is still a long way to go before you can call this program a “Helgemo” in terms of bridge abilities. Just look at the hand enclosed (imported from a .pbn file with the hands of one of my tournaments): 4H by East, lead of the C3. 7, 8, Q. S8, SMALL(!), Q, small. Small heart, 9, A, 5.

	North J 6 K 9 Q 5 4 2 A 10 8 6 5
West Q 7 3 J 8 7 4 J 10 6 K 9 7		East A 8 A 10 6 3 A K 9 8 7 Q 2
	South K 10 9 5 4 2 Q 5 2 3 J 4 3