Bridge Base Online (BBO) is the world's largest bridge-playing online platform, with about 10 million monthly visits, as of November 2021. Originally created by professional bridge player
Fred Gitelman
Frederick "Fred" Gitelman (born February 6, 1965) is a Canadian-American bridge player, developer of bridge software, and a founder of the online bridge platform Bridge Base Online.
Biography
Gitelman has won one world championship, nine North A ...
, BBO was first published by Bridge Base, Inc. in 2001, as a
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
downloadable software, offering free online
multiplayer
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
bridge rooms for practice and play. Around 2008, BBO was ported to a
web application
A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection.
History
In earlier computing models like client-serve ...
to also support
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
and
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
users, as well as mobile devices.
In 2018, Bridge Base Online was inducted to the
American Contract Bridge League
The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) is a governing body for contract bridge in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda. It is the largest such organization in North America having the stated mission ''"to promote, grow and sustain t ...
's Hall of Fame, for its long-term commitment to bridge. As of February 2022, BBO was the only organization ever inducted by the Hall of Fame.
BBO was acquired by th
52 Entertainmentgroup in December 2018, and Fred Gitelman retired